Shirley Jump - The Dating Game

Mattie was going to bolt.

David needed to do some fast talking if he wanted her to stay, or his story would be dead before it even began. “The prize money is the same, you know. And you don’t have to eat bugs. Fifty thousand to the Average Jill just for suffering through all the dates and then a hundred-thousand-dollar purse for her to split if she falls in love and gets engaged at the end.”

Mattie’s eyes grew wide. For a second, David had to remember to breathe. It wasn’t fair that one woman should have eyes that captivating. “With who?”

“With me, of course.”

“You?”

He cleared his throat. Whoa. That hadn’t come out as he’d intended. In fact, he hadn’t even wanted it to come out. Besides, he wasn’t here to fall in love. He wanted the story—not the girl.

Didn’t he?

Dear Reader,

What is the best gift you ever received? Chances are it came from a loved one and reflects to some degree the love you share. Or maybe the gift was something like a cruise or a trip to an exotic locale that raised the hope of finding romance and lasting love. Well, it’s no different for this month’s heroes and heroines, who will all receive special gifts that extend beyond the holiday season to provide a lifetime of happiness.

Karen Rose Smith starts off this month’s offerings with Twelfth Night Proposal (#1794)—the final installment in the SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE continuity. Set during the holidays, the hero’s love enables the plain-Jane heroine to become the glowing beauty she was always meant to be.

In The Dating Game (#1795) by Shirley Jump, a package delivered to the wrong address lands the heroine on a reality dating show. Julianna Morris writes a memorable romance with Meet Me under the Mistletoe (#1796), in which the heroine ends up giving a widower the son he “lost” when his mother died. Finally, in Donna Clayton’s stirring romance Bound by Honor (#1797), the heroine receives a “life present” when she saves the Native American hero’s life.

When you’re drawing up your New Year’s resolutions, be sure to put reading Silhouette Romance right at the top. After all, it’s the love these heroines discover that reminds us all of what truly matters most in life.

With all best wishes for the holidays and a happy and healthy 2006.

Ann Leslie Tuttle

Associate Senior Editor

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To my husband, who almost went to the wrong address on our first date, and who stole my heart through letters and packages. If we’d have been smart, honey, we’d have bought stock in FedEx and UPS when we met.

For my daughter, who knows her mother has the athletic ability of a goldfish, and coached me through the soccer scenes without laughing. Finally, to all the young female athletes, who work and play hard. The boys certainly have something to contend with when the girls are on the field. Girls rock!

Silhouette Romance

*The Virgin’s Proposal #1641

*The Bachelor’s Dare #1700

*The Daddy’s Promise #1724

Her Frog Prince #1746

Kissed by Cat #1757

*The Marine’s Kiss #1781

The Dating Game #1795

spends her days writing romantic comedies with sweet attitude to feed her shoe addiction and avoid housework. A wife and mother of two, her real life helps her maintain her sense of humor. She swears that if she didn’t laugh, she’d be fatally overcome by things like uncooperative llamas at birthday parties and chipmunks in the bathroom. When she isn’t writing, Shirley’s either eating or shopping. Or on a really good day, doing both at the same time.

Her first novel for Silhouette, The Virgin’s Proposal, won the Bookseller’s Best Award in 2004. Though she framed the award, it didn’t impress the kids enough to make them do the dishes more often. In fact, life as a published author is pretty much like life as it was before, except now Shirley conveniently pulls a deadline out of thin air whenever the laundry piles up.

Read excerpts, see reviews or learn more about Shirley at www.shirleyjump.com.

Dear Reader,

Did you ever get the wrong package delivered to your house? What if that wrong package had been delivered on purpose, and it could lead to finding your true love? That’s where this book begins, with matchmaker and deliveryman Bowden Hartman taking love matters into his own hands.

He sets his sights on Mattie Grant, a soccer coach who has everything but love on her mind when she signs up for a reality survival show. Bowden has other plans for her, though, and sends her to a completely different show—a dating game that’s about to change her life and that of jaded reporter-turned-bachelor David Bennett.

The story just proves one thing—you never know when that package might lead you to love!

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Epilogue

On Monday morning Bowden Hartman toyed with the envelope in his hands and considered breaking every rule that went with the hideous olive-green uniform he wore. Well, not every rule. Just a couple of the more important ones.

The front of the envelope made no bones about his mission. “Overnight delivery, by 10:00 a.m.,” blared the red banner. A quick, on-time delivery—his specialty, and what they paid him to do every day at Speedy Delivery Services.

Okay, he’d make the overnight delivery. Just not this letter to this person.

He knew better than to mess with the packages, of course. But when had he ever followed the rules, rather than what his instincts told him was right?

Not very often. That was, indeed, what made his life fun and kept this job from being unbearable.

He didn’t need to work—not since he’d inherited the rest of the Hartman fortune. But since his father’s death two years ago, Bowden had found he liked to work, especially jobs where people were glad to see him and he got to indulge his bad habit of meddling in other people’s lives.

Especially their love lives. If there was anything Bowden Hartman liked to see, it was a happy ending.

“You got lucky, Hartman,” one of his co-workers, Jimmy Landry, said from across the room, hoisting a coffee mug in tribute. “What I wouldn’t give to be delivering that letter today.”

“Which one?”

“The one to the hot woman who’s going to be on the Love and the Average Jill reality show. I heard they got the former Miss Indiana. Bet she gives you a kiss for bringing that by.” Jimmy flipped him a thumbs-up. “I know I’ll be tuning in every night to see that girl, er, show.”

Bowden glanced again at the envelope in his palm. It was, as he already knew, addressed to Tiffany Barrett, Miss Indiana of two years ago. Across from him sat stacks of other envelopes meant for the rest of that show’s and another show’s contestants, many of which were in the pile for his route. Some were going to the bachelors who’d been chosen to go on the show with her and compete for the “average” Jill, the newest star in Lawford, Indiana’s, Channel Ten nightly seven-o’clock lineup. Other letters were designated for the outdoors-loving competitors of Survival of the Fittest, the second reality show Lawford Channel Ten was debuting this week.