Overview

Running Toward Passion is a small-town foodie romance about a celebrated food critic who quits her life in New York and collides with a widowed chef whose cooking has kept his family-and his town-alive. Set in a cozy Southern town, this sensual chef romance blends culinary passion, found family, and healing love into a story that tastes as good as it feels. Clara Whitmore didn't plan to fall in love. She planned to disappear-away from deadlines, expectations, and a career that no longer fit. One wrong turn lands her in Johnstown Creek, where a bed-and-breakfast, a dangerously good plate of fried chicken, and a quiet, tattooed chef named Cal Mercer change everything. Cal cooks the way some people pray-with reverence, memory, and heart. Since losing his wife, the restaurant he built has been less about profit and more about survival-for his daughter, his father, and himself. He isn't looking for love. He's just trying to keep the lights on and the food honest. What begins as attraction turns into something deeper: long conversations, shared grief, stolen kisses, and meals that blur the line between nourishment and desire. As Clara rediscovers who she is-and what she wants-she realizes Cal's food isn't the only thing worth fighting for. With the help of a sharp-witted teenage daughter, a town that shows up when it matters, and a kitchen full of memories, Clara and Cal learn that love doesn't always arrive gently-but when it does, it can rebuild everything. Running Toward Passion is a heartfelt, sensual romance about starting over, honoring the past, and choosing joy-with flour on your hands, heat in your chest, and someone worth coming home to.

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Kira Lorne writes the kind of stories people read in private and remember in public. Before turning to fiction, she worked behind the camera as a producer in the adult film industry-where she learned how desire behaves when no one is pretending, how intimacy fractures or deepens under pressure, and how performance differs from truth. Those years gave her a rare, unfiltered education in sexuality, vulnerability, and power-one she now channels into stories that are sensual, emotional, and disarmingly honest. Today, Kira teaches literature at the university level, guiding students through narrative, voice, longing, and the quiet architecture of human connection. By night, she writes emotionally charged romance-stories where desire functions as language, not performance. Kira lives in Branson, Missouri, by way of California, where the landscape changed but her fascination with longing, reinvention, and quiet rebellion did not. She shares her home with a deeply unimpressed cat who believes all writing intentionally takes time away from belly rubs and scratches behind his ears. Her work is known for its softness, its sharpness, and its unapologetic heat. Not explicit for the sake of shock, but intimate because her characters earn it. ""I try to write desire the way it actually happens-messy, hopeful, and real."" Contact Kira at kiralorne1@gmail.com

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