Summer’s here, and to get you in the mood we’ve got some sizzling reads for you this month!
So relax and enjoy…a scandalous proposal in Bought for Revenge, Bedded for Pleasure by Emma Darcy; a virgin bride in Virgin: Wedded at the Italian’s Convenience by Diana Hamilton; a billionaire’s bargain in The Billionaire’s Blackmailed Bride by Jacqueline Baird; a sexy Spaniard in Spanish Billionaire, Innocent Wife by Kate Walker; and an Italian’s marriage ultimatum in The Salvatore Marriage Deal by Natalie Rivers. And be sure to read The Greek Tycoon’s Baby Bargain, the first book in Sharon Kendrick’s brilliant new duet, GREEK BILLIONAIRES’ BRIDES.
Plus, two new authors bring you their dazzling debuts—Natalie Anderson with His Mistress by Arrangement, and Anne Oliver with Marriage at the Millionaire’s Command. Don’t miss out!
We’d love to hear what you think about Presents. E-mail us at [email protected] or join in the discussions at www.iheartpresents.com and www.sensationalromance.blogspot.com, where you’ll also find more information about books and authors!
Wedded and bedded for the very first time
Classic romances from
your favorite Presents authors
Available this month:
Virgin: Wedded at the Italian’s Convenience
by Diana Hamilton
Available only from Harlequin Presents®
Diana Hamilton
VIRGIN: WEDDED AT THE ITALIAN’S CONVENIENCE
TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON
AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND
All about the author…
Diana Hamilton
DIANA HAMILTON lives with her husband in a beautiful part of Shropshire, an idyll shared with two young Cavalier King Charles spaniels and a cat called Racketty-Cat. Her three children and their assorted offspring are frequent visitors. When she’s not writing Presents books she’s driving her natty sports car—and frightening the locals—pottering in the garden or lazing in the sun on the terrace beneath a ridiculous hat, reading.
Diana has been fascinated by the written word from an early age, and she firmly believes she was born with her nose in a book.
After leaving grammar school she studied fine art, but she put her real energies into gaining her advertising copywriting degree. She worked as a copywriter until she and her photographer husband moved to a remote part of Wales, where her third child was born. In Wales she enjoyed pony-trekking and walking in the mountains, but four years later they returned to Shropshire, where they have been ever since, gradually restoring the rambling Elizabethan manor that Diana gave her heart to on sight. In the midseventies Diana took up her pen again, and over the following ten years she combined writing thirty novels for Robert Hale of London with bringing up her children and the ongoing restoration work.
In 1987 Diana realized her dearest ambition—the publication of her first Harlequin romance. She had come home. And that warm feeling persists to this day as, more than forty-five Presents novels later, she is still in love with the genre.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER ONE
WITH a convulsive shiver Lily Frome wriggled her skinny frame deeper into the swamping fabric of her old dufflecoat. Saturday morning the High Street of the tiny market town was usually thronged with shoppers, but today the bitter late March wind and icy flurries of rain had kept all but the most hardy at home.
Even those who had gritted their teeth and popped to the shops for essentials scurried past her, heads downbent, studiously ignoring the bright yellow collecting tin adorned with the ‘Life Begins’ smiley face logo. Usually as generous as they could afford to be, because the small local charity was well known and approved of, today the good citizens of Market Hallow obviously weren’t turned on by the idea of stopping for a chat or fumbling in purses for the odd twenty pence piece—at least not in this inclement weather.
Ramming her woolly hat lower on her head, her generous mouth downturned, Lily was about to give up and head home to the cottage she shared with Great-Aunt Edith and report failure when the sight of a tall man emerging from the narrow doorway that led up a flight of twisty stairs to the local solicitor’s office above the chemist’s. He was about to head in the opposite direction, turning up the collar of his expensive-looking dark grey overcoat as he began to stride away.
She’d never seen him before, and Lily knew pretty much everyone in the area, but he looked well heeled—at least from what she could see of his impressive back view he did. Her wide, optimistic smile forming naturally, she sprinted after him, ready to spell out the charity’s aims and efforts, and neatly inserted herself in front of him, avoiding an undignified head-on collision by the skin of her teeth, waving the collecting tin and leaving the explanations until she’d got her breath back.
But, staring up at six feet plus of devastating masculine beauty, she felt that by some freak of nature her lungs and breath would for evermore be strangers. He was the most fantastically handsome man she had ever seen or was ever likely to. Slightly wind-rumpled and rain-spangled dark-as-midnight hair above a pair of penetrating golden eyes had what she could only describe as a totally mesmeric effect.
It was so strange to find herself completely tongue-tied. It had never happened before. Great-Aunt Edith always said she would be able to talk her way out of a prison cell, should she ever be so unfortunate as to find herself locked up in one.
Her smile wobbled and faded. Transfixed, she could only stare, her water-clear grey eyes sliding to his wide, sensual mouth as he spoke. His voice was very slightly accented, making her skin prickle and shivers take up what felt like permanent residence in her spine.
‘You appear to be young and relatively fit,’ he opined flatly. ‘I suggest you try working for a living.’
Sidestepping her after that quelling put-down, his hands in the pockets of his overcoat, he walked away. Behind her, Lily heard someone say, ‘I heard that! Want me to go and give him a slapping?’
‘Meg!’ The spell broken, her wits returning, Lily swung round to face her old schoolfriend. At almost six foot—towering a good ten inches above Lily’s slight frame—Meg was a big girl in all directions. No one messed with her—especially when she was wearing an expression that promised retribution!
Her cheeks dimpling, Lily giggled. ‘Forget it. He obviously thought I was a beggar.’ A rueful glance at her worn old dufflecoat, shabby cord trousers and unlovely trainers confirmed that totally understandable conjecture. ‘All I lack is a cardboard box and a dog on a piece of string!’
‘All