Do you believe in love at first sight? If you do, you’re in good company: a recent survey (http://www.femalefirst.co.uk/relationships/love-250110.html) found that 65 per cent of British men and 45 per cent of British women believe in love at first sight. Why the difference? I suspect it is because men are more attracted to women’s looks, initially, while women take more time to get a feel for character.

When I write romance stories, I love writing the first meeting of the characters, because so much hinges on those first moments. In Burning Embers, heroine Coral meets the man she is destined to love, Rafe, in the very first chapter. Here, aboard a ship bound for Mombasa, Kenya, the characters are in a sheltered, magical world, away from the pressures and norms of society. In the moonlight, they form a connection, offering a glimpse into the deepest reaches of their hearts.

Coral was overcome by emotion, remembering the last time she had seen this landscape. She thought of her father, who today would not be waiting for her. How empty her childhood home would seem without him. A lump formed in her throat, and she bit her lower lip while fighting to control the tears quivering on the edge of her eyelashes. Unable to restrain them for long, they spilled over and down her cheeks. She had forgotten her companion’s presence while engrossed in her sadness, so she gave a faint start when he spoke.

“Please don’t…” he whispered softly.

She did not answer; she did not even move. She simply stood there, limp and weary, tears continuing to mar her lovely features. He brushed her chin lightly with the tip of his forefinger and gently turned her drawn face toward him. With a white handkerchief he produced from his pocket, he carefully wiped away her tears.

“An African proverb says that sorrow is like rice in the pantry: it diminishes day by day.” Despite his solemn tone, he looked at her with laughing eyes that the morning light had turned golden brown but remained almost as hypnotic as they had been in the moonlight.

“Forgive me,” Coral murmured, smiling through her tears. “I didn’t intend to make a spectacle of myself. It was rather childish, I suppose.”

He gave a vague motion of his head and winked at her. “Even big boys cry sometimes, you know.” There was a slightly hard edge to his words, and once again she caught herself thinking how appealing she found his husky voice.

Love at first sight? I’m not sure life is so straightforward; for love is a choice, a verb, an action, not something that happens to us passively. But I do believe that in the first meeting there can be a connecting of souls, an epiphany deep within that foretells of future happiness should we be courageous enough to allow the love to develop – to strip away our barriers, to give ourselves completely.

The French translation of love at first sight is coup de foudre, which literally means bolt of lightning. It’s a wonderful description of that amazing feeling you get when you first set eyes on your love – a flash, electrifying and dramatic, that forever changes you. But I think, perhaps, I prefer the phrase ‘fall in love’, for it conveys that sense of relaxing into the feeling, of floating dreamily or letting go – of allowing the coupe de foudre you felt to change you. And after the shock of the coupe de foudre and the disorientation of the fall into love, that’s when you reach that place called happy-ever-after, ‘that calm and settled place’ of Edward Monkton’s poem:

In that still and settled place
There’s nobody but you
You’re where I breath my oxygen
You’re where I see my view
And when the world feels full of noise
My heart knows what to do
It finds that still and settled place
And dances there with you.