Annie O'Neil - Tempted By The Bridesmaid

A woman to unlock his heart?

The last time brooding Italian surgeon Luca Montovano saw bubbly heiress Francesca Martinelli was at his best friend’s failed wedding. Sparks flew then, and now she’s made a surprise appearance at his mountaintop clinic, bringing a much-needed whirlwind of laughter!

Aristocratic Luca just wants to be left alone to care for his orphaned niece. The scars on his face reach right to his heart, and he’s learned to push people away. Until Fran forces him to see the world through her eyes!

Italian Royals

Two royal medics—can they find their perfect match?

Take a trip through the cobbled streets of Venice and discover the secrets that lie within them in Annie O’Neil’s decadent duet! When a royal wedding is turned upside down it sets in motion a truly unforgettable and unexpected journey for Princess Beatrice and her best friend and bridesmaid Fran.

Find out more in…

Tempted by the Bridesmaid

Bridesmaid Fran Martinelli’s ideal Italian summer goes south when she turns up for work after the disaster of her friend’s wedding and finds out the best man is her new boss!

Claiming His Pregnant Princess

When Princess Beatrice di Jesolo is jilted by her royal fiancé, she must hide her secret pregnancy… A great idea until she discovers her new boss is The One Who Got Away…

Available now!

Dear Reader,

Welcome to the first story of what I’m hoping you will think is a magical trip to Italy.

When I was dreaming up the perfect location for Luca, my tall, dark and dangerously handsome hero, I came across a website filled to the brim with photos of beautiful ‘ghost towns’ in Italy and simply had no choice but to get him to move into one.

This was an interesting book for me to write as it’s the first time I’ve had a heroine who prefers working with dogs to people. After all, they’re not only man’s best friend, right? ( My dogs are totally up there in the besties category.) And it took one very special human to bring Fran around to her HEA.

Enjoy—and don’t be shy about getting in touch. You can reach me at annieoneilbooks.com, on Twitter, @annieoneilbooks, or find me on Facebook…

Annie O’ xx

Tempted by the Bridesmaid

Annie O’Neil

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ANNIE O’NEILspent most of her childhood with her leg draped over the family rocking chair and a book in her hand. Novels, baking, and writing too much teenage angst poetry ate up most of her youth. Now Annie splits her time between corralling her husband into helping her with their cows, baking, reading, barrel racing (not really!) and spending some very happy hours at her computer, writing.

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

This book could go to no other than Jorja and Grissom—my own fluffy hounds who are always there when I need them… and sometimes when I don’t!

Furry friends…simply the best!

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Italian Royals

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

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

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

IT FELT AS if she were watching the world through a fishbowl. Everything was distorted. Sight. Sound. Fran would have paid a million dollars to be anywhere else right now.

Church silence was crushing. Especially under the circumstances.

Fran looked across to the groomsmen. Surely there was an ally within that pack of immaculately suited Italian gentry who...?

Hmm... Not you, not you, not you... Oh!

Fran caught eyes with one of them. Gorgeous, like the rest, but his brow was definitely more furrowed, the espresso-rich eyes a bit more demanding than the others... Oh! Was that a scar? She hadn’t noticed last night at the candlelit cocktail party. Interesting. She wondered what it would feel like to—

“Ahem!” The priest—or was he a bishop?—cleared his throat pointedly.

Why had she raised her hand? This wasn’t school—it was a church!

This wasn’t even Fran’s wedding, and yet the hundreds of pairs of eyes belonging to each and every esteemed guest sitting in Venice’s ridiculously beautiful basilica were trained on her. Little ol’ Francesca “Fran” Martinelli, formerly of Queens, New York, now of...well...nowhere, really. It was just her, the dogs, a duffel bag stuffed to the hilt with more dog toys than clothes and the very, very pretty bridesmaid’s dress she was wearing.

Putting it on, she’d actually felt girlie! Feminine. It would be back to her usual jeans and T-shirt tomorrow, though, when she showed up for her new mystery job. In the meantime, she was failing at how to be a perfect bridesmaid on an epic scale.

Fran’s fingers plucked at the diaphanous fabric of her azure dress and she finally braved looking straight into the dark brown eyes of her dearest childhood friend, Princess Beatrice Vittoria di Jesolo.

The crowning glory of their shared teenage years had been flunking out of finishing school together in Switzerland. That sun-soaked afternoon playing hooky had been an absolute blast. Sure, they’d been caught, but did anyone really care if you could walk with a book on your head?

Their friendship had survived the headmistress dressing them down in front of their more civilized classmates, grass stains on their jeans, scrapes on their hands and knees from scrabbling around in the mountains making daisy chains and laughing until tears shot straight out of their eyes... But this moment—the one where Fran was ruining her best friend’s wedding in front of the whole universe—this might very well spell the end of their friendship. The one thing she could rely on in her life.

Fran squeezed her eyes tight against Bea’s inquiring gaze. The entire veil-covered, bouquet-holding, finger-waiting-for-a-ring-on-it image was branded onto her memory bank. Never mind the fact that there were official photographers lurking behind every marble pillar, and hundreds of guests—including dozens of members of Europe’s royal families—filling the pews to overflowing, not to mention the countless media representatives waiting outside to film the happy power couple once they had been pronounced husband and wife.

Which they would be doing in about ten minutes or so unless she got her act together and did something!

“What exactly is your objection?” asked the man with the mystery scar through gritted teeth. In English. Which was nice.

Not because Fran’s Italian was rusty—it was all she and her father ever spoke at home...when she was at home—but because it meant not every single person in the church would know that she’d just caught Bea’s fiancé playing tonsil tennis with someone who wasn’t Bea.

She stared into the man’s dark eyes. Did he know? Did he care that the man he was standing up for in front of Italy’s prime guest list was a lying cheat?