Liz Fielding: A Secret, A Safari, A Second Chance

A luxury escape...

A chance to reveal her baby bombshell!

In this Destination Brides story, a bid at a charity auction wins Eve Bliss a dream holiday on safari! As a penniless single mom, she’d be foolish not to go, but she’s not expecting Kit Merchant to be there on business. She and Kit once shared a passionate moment. Now, together in beautiful Africa, how long can she keep her four-year-old secret? Kit has a daughter!

LIZ FIELDINGwas born with itchy feet. She made it to Zambia before her twenty-first birthday and, gathering her own special hero and a couple of children on the way, lived in Botswana, Kenya and Bahrain—with pauses for sightseeing pretty much everywhere in between. She now lives in the west of England, close to the Regency grandeur of Bath and the ancient mystery of Stonehenge, and these days leaves her pen to do the travelling. For news of upcoming books visit Liz’s website: lizfielding.com.

Also by Liz Fielding

Vettori’s Damsel in Distress

The Sheikh’s Convenient Princess

Her Pregnancy Bombshell

Destination Brides collection

Summer Escape with the Tycoon by Donna Alward

Swept Away by the Venetian Millionaire by Nina Singh

One Night in Provence by Barbara Wallace

A Secret, a Safari, a Second Chance

All available now

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

A Secret, a Safari, a Second Chance

Liz Fielding

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-09151-0

A SECRET, A SAFARI, A SECOND CHANCE

© 2019 Liz Fielding

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, 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 publisher.

® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Version: 2020-03-02

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For Donna, Barbara and Nina,

with whom I have shared great hugs,

both in cyberspace and in reality.

Forever friends.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

PROLOGUE

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 FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Extract

About the Publisher

‘ARE YOU COLD, RED?’

Eve was shivering, but the Nantucket evening was balmy; the cold was coming from inside.

She’d been cajoled into joining this beach party by the older women in her family, who were worried about her and thought she needed to get out, assuring her kindly that some young company would ‘cheer her up’.

Her cousins, given no choice in the matter, had done their best to include her, but these teenagers had known one another all their lives. She was twenty-one, in her last year at university; they all seemed so young, and her novelty value as ‘the English cousin’ was outweighed by the awkwardness of the fact that her mother had just died.

Bit of a downer, that.

She’d taken pity on them, pleading a headache to move away from the music and the bonfire to sit in the quiet shadow of the dunes, welcoming the chance to be on her own for a while, without having family fussing around her. Counting down the time until her grandmother would be in bed and she could slip back into the house, so that she wouldn’t have to pretend to have had a good time.

So that her grandmother wouldn’t have to pretend to care.

The last thing she needed was for someone to hit on her.

‘If I lend you my sweater can I join your escape party?’ She managed to stuff the little soft elephant she’d been cradling for comfort out of sight in her bag but, before she could tell the guy to get lost, he had draped a soft cashmere sweater across her shoulders and flopped down beside her on the sand. The sweater smelled not of woodsmoke but of the sea and, as her body relaxed into its soft warmth, she didn’t shake it off but pulled it around her.

‘Hi,’ he said, offering a large, square hand. ‘I’m Kit.’ Years at an English boarding school had drummed in the automatic ‘politeness’ response but as she reached up to take it, her own name died in her throat.

She might only be an occasional summer visitor to her mother’s birthplace, but everyone knew Kit Merchant. An island legend, he’d been a teenager when he’d brought home sailing gold from London and had been collecting trophies ever since.

Now in his mid-twenties, he was too old, and a lot too glamorous, to be hanging out at a teenage beach party.

‘This isn’t a party,’ she said, but curiosity beat her irritation that he’d called her Red. Her hair, a gift from her mother’s Scottish ancestors, had been an unending source of nicknames ever since she’d gone to school and it had got old. ‘What are you escaping from?’

Without taking his eyes off her, or letting go of her hand, he waved in the general direction of the fun on the beach. ‘It’s my kid sister’s birthday and I’ve been appointed the responsible adult.’