‘I don’t think they’d agree with you, somehow.’ They both looked across the room to where Kirsty’s head rested on Drew’s shoulder.
‘No second thoughts?’ Drew asked.
‘Just one.’
Kirsty felt him stiffen and relented immediately, delighting in the power she had over him.
‘Mmm. I’m wondering if I made the right decision allowing you to bring me here. Oh, Drew,’ she told him, her eyes suddenly darkening, ‘just think—if we’d stayed at the farmhouse, by now…’
‘We’d have been lovers,’ Drew finished for her. ‘A special licence and soon we can be. I want it as much as you, Kirsty—more, perhaps,’ he added wryly, ‘but I want you as my wife; tied to me so firmly that you can’t change your mind.’
‘I won’t,’ she promised against his lips, joy flooding her heart and mind. He loved her. Really loved her!
He started to laugh.
‘What’s the matter?’ Kirsty demanded half fearfully.
‘Nothing. I’m just thinking that Shakespeare, were he to have witnessed our behaviour these last few weeks, would probably have called it Much Ado About Nothing—don’t you agree?’
She was still laughing when he silenced the sound with his mouth.
* * * * *
ISBN: 978-1-408-99932-5
A SUDDEN ENGAGEMENT
© 1983 Penny Jordan
Published in Great Britain 2015
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited
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The Suave Sicilian: Married for Revenge
Stefan Bianco is a man with one thing on his mind. Revenge. And the last person he expects to see hanging on the arm of his nemesis? The stunning Clio Norwood—the only woman to ever resist his near-lethal brand of seduction.
Clio’s life has become a mere shadow of what it once was. But Stefan’s searing gaze returns her to the fiery, passionate woman he once knew. Clio has the key to his revenge, and Stefan has the key to her freedom…but only if he agrees to her shocking proposal!
The world’s sexiest billionaires finally say “I do”!
The Sicilian’s Surprise Wife
Tara Pammi
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 THIRTEEN
CHAPTER ONE
SHE FELT LIKE GLASS, stretched so tightly that a gentle tap could shatter her forever.
Clutching her wrap tight in her fingers, Clio Norwood looked around for her fiancé, Jackson.
Ashley, his secretary, who had arrived unannounced and interrupted their meeting with a client Jackson was determined to add to his cap, was nowhere to be seen either. Something distasteful hovered in the back of Clio’s mind, as if waiting to strike.
With the small get-together of the ultrarich in full swing atop the Empire State Building, Manhattan glittered around them.
Usually, the vibrant, unrelenting pulse of the city that had become home to Clio over the past decade filled her with unending spirit for life. It had kept her going even when she had been struggling after graduation from Columbia University. And had helped her swallow her failures and her naive, broken expectations of making it by herself in the city that never slept.
But tonight, even New York couldn’t puncture the bubble of dread that had begun to pervade her of late.
Jackson had returned last night after three weeks from an overseas trip and had been in a stinker of a mood as he liked to call it, because he had missed out on some real estate deal.
They had barely exchanged a word all day today as she had been at work. When she had returned to the posh flat they had been living in for the past year, he had commanded her to get ready for this party tonight.
Commanded and not asked, much less requested. A pattern that was becoming more and more obvious to Clio. Still, she knew the stress of his business, understood the driving need to make one’s mark in the world, so she had given in.
Even if she was still bone tired from the out-of-season flu she had had a week ago.
Tonight, Jackson needed her help to convince Mrs. Alcott, an old friend of her parents’, to hire him as her personal investment banker. With her estates in Britain and substantial family business, Jane Alcott would be a coup for Jackson’s already flourishing career.
But they hadn’t even greeted Jane properly before Ashley had approached Jackson with a desperate glint in her eye.
Loath to create a scene, Clio had clenched her teeth and smiled serenely even as she saw the curious looks and stifled whispers among Jackson’s clients’ wives and girlfriends. Even the utter kindness of Jane’s question if everything was all right between Jackson and her had been unbearable.
What was going on with him? What was going on between them?
Because Clio knew with a nauseating clarity that Ashley was just the tip of the iceberg for what was going on between her and Jackson.
Suddenly, it felt blatantly scandalous of Ashley to drag him away with a barely disguised proprietary claim on him.
Squaring her shoulders, Clio let her long stride eat up the space. She hated creating a scene, hated the pitying and speculative glances that had been coming her way far too frequently the past few months, but she had endured it all silently.