Tainted by Temptation (27 page)

I
want to acknowledge the people who were vital to me in getting this book written: Keri Smith, Heather Snow, and Elisabeth Burke, my wonderful critique partners. Esi Sogah, my fantastic editor, who was able to see what I was trying to do and helped me make it better. Maureen Walters, my agent, who deserves a medal for hanging in there with me. And last but not least, the amazing Carla Cassidy, who gets me and likes me anyway. I don’t know what I would do without her.

L
ucian and his first wife suffered from Rh incompatibility, a medical condition not understood or treatable until after 1940, when the Rh factor was identified in the blood of Rhesus monkeys. An Rh-negative mother such as Lilith can develop antibodies against an Rh-positive baby. While Lilith’s first child was fine (presumably fathered by a man who passed the Rh-positive gene on to his son) during that pregnancy she developed antibodies to the Rh factor. All subsequent Rh-positive babies fathered by Lucian were born suffering from blue baby syndrome. Lilith’s body recognized the Rh-positive component of their blood as an antigen, and the resulting antibodies crossed the placenta and attacked the infants’ blood cells. In order to survive, Iris had to receive an Rh-negative gene from her sire. But knowing that Lilith had borne two healthy children to two different men left Lucian to believe his seed was flawed.

My mother’s second cousin Ruth Ann, born in 1942, was one of the first “blue babies” to ever survive. One of the doctors had recently read a paper about the Rh factor and recognized that might be the reason Ruth Ann was turning blue and failing shortly after her birth. He saved her life by giving her a complete blood transfusion. Nowadays a simple shot is given to an Rh-negative mother that prevents her from developing the antibodies.

KATY MADISON
has always loved stories and books. As a child she was always lugging a book around. In third grade, she fell in love with the romance genre when her mother fed her voracious appetite for books with a romance novel. Sidetracked by real life, a husband, kids, and a career at
The Kansas City Star
, where she authored a few incident reports and a system manual, she returned to her love of the genre with her gothic romance,
Tainted by Temptation
.

Katy makes her home on a tree-lined street in Kansas City, Missouri, and thinks there is nothing better than curling up in front of the fireplace with a good book while a storm rages outside.

Please visit her on the web at
www.KatyMadison.com
.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

Romances by
Katy Madison

T
AINTED BY
T
EMPTATION

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2011 by Karen L. King

ISBN 978-0-06-201734-5

EPub Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780062106759

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1