Judith Mcwilliams - Made-To-Order Wife

“You have the softest skin,” Max murmured against her hair. “Like satin.”

Jessie struggled to drag air into her lungs past her constricted throat. Her eyes instinctively slid shut to better savor the sensations flowing through her.

Disoriented, she stumbled slightly as his hands tightened and he turned her around to face him.

Jessie risked a look up and was immediately lost in the swirling depths of his eyes. They seemed to glow with some emotion that her mind was too confused to decipher. She watched with an escalating hunger that threatened to consume her as his mouth came closer. Instinctively her entire body strained upward, desperate to make physical contact with him.

As his mouth brushed lightly against hers, she felt the remaining threads of her self-control snap, freeing her to move deeper into his embrace. Hunger tore through her. A hunger that was primal, drawn from the very core of who and what she was.

Dear Reader,

Just as the seasons change, you may have noticed that our Silhouette Romance covers have evolved over the past year. We have tried to create cover art that uses more soft pastels, sun-drenched images and tender scenes to evoke the aspirational and romantic spirit of this line. We have also tried to make our heroines look like women you can relate to and may want to be. After all, this line is about the joys of falling in love, and we hope you can live vicariously through these heroines.

Our writers this month have done an especially fine job in conveying this message. Reader favorite Cara Colter leads the month with That Old Feeling (#1814) in which the heroine must overcome past hurts to help her first love raise his motherless daughter. This is the debut title in the author’s emotional new trilogy, A FATHER’S WISH. Teresa Southwick concludes her BUY-A-GUY miniseries with the story of a feisty lawyer who finds herself saddled with an unwanted and wholly irresistible bodyguard, in Something’s Gotta Give (#1815). A sister who’d do anything for her loved ones finds her own sweet reward when she switches places with her sibling, in Sister Swap (#1816)—a compelling new romance by Lilian Darcy. Finally, in Made-To-Order Wife (#1817) by Judith McWilliams, a billionaire hires an etiquette expert to help him land the perfect society wife, and he soon starts rethinking his marriage plans.

Be sure to return next month when Cara Colter continues her trilogy and Judy Christenberry returns to the line.

Happy reading!

Ann Leslie Tuttle

Associate Senior Editor

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Silhouette Romance

Gift of the Gods #479

The Summer Proposal #1562

Her Secret Children #1648

Did You Say…Wife? #1681

Dr. Charming #1721

The Matchmaking Machine #1809

Made-To-Order Wife #1817

Silhouette Desire

Reluctant Partners #441

A Perfect Season #545

That’s My Baby #597

Anything’s Possible! #911

The Man from Atlantis #954

Instant Husband #1001

Practice Husband #1062

Another Man’s Baby #1095

The Boss, the Beauty and the Bargain #1122

The Sheik’s Secret #1228

began to enjoy romances while in search of the proverbial “happily-ever-after.” But she always found herself rewriting the endings, and eventually the beginnings of the books she read. Then her husband finally suggested that she write novels of her own, and she’s been doing it ever since.

An ex-teacher with four children, Judith has traveled the country extensively with her husband and has been greatly influenced by those experiences. While not tending the garden or caring for her family, Judith does what she enjoys most—writing. She has also written under the name of Charlotte Hines.

Dear Reader,

The idea for Jessie’s occupation as a manners expert came to me one snowy late December day when my son suddenly asked, “Are there manners police?”

I glanced over to where he was sitting at the kitchen table, spared a quick look at the so far totally blank sheet of stationery in front of him and said, “Why do you ask?”

“Because I can’t figure out why grown-ups would torture little kids by making them write stupid thank-you letters unless it was a law or something.”

I briefly considered giving him the standard-issue mom lecture on how “if people care enough about you to run all over town tracking down an obscure toy that you said you wanted, the least you can do is write them a thank-you note,” before discarding the idea. Instead, I took the easy way out and said, “Yes, there are manners police, only we call them experts, and yes, they have decreed that you can’t play with your gift until you’ve written a thank-you note to the giver.”

“But what does a manners expert look like, Mom?”

“Look like?” I repeated as into my mind suddenly popped the image of a laughing redheaded woman. To my surprise she looked exactly like the heroine of a book.

I shoved the turkey to the back of the counter, grabbed a pencil and paper and hastily started to jot her description down. And thus was born Jessie Martinelli, manners expert, whose story is told in Made-To-Order Wife.

I hope you enjoy reading her adventure as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Judith McWilliams

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

He’d finally done it, and the proof was there in black and white for the whole world to see!

With a sense of exultation, Max Sheridan studied the article in Forbes that annually listed the richest Americans. For the first time his name was listed among the billionaires. Just eleven letters, but those eleven letters represented the culmination of seventeen years of single-mindedly working eighteen-hour days.

Reaching into the pants pocket of his custom-tailored gray suit, he pulled out a plain, stainless-steel key ring. Separating a small brass key, he unlocked the bottom right-hand drawer of his massive antique Regency desk. Pushing aside a pile of contracts, he pulled out a battered spiral-bound notebook. Carefully he set it on his desk and opened it to the only page that had any writing on it.

A complex swirl of remembered pain and hope engulfed him at the sight of the words penciled there. He’d been sixteen when he’d made that list of things he was going to accomplish in his life. A scared, defiant sixteen who had just buried his parents.

As he’d stood over their graves, he’d vowed that never again would he allow himself to be at the mercy of other people’s decisions. And he’d kept that vow. He’d run away from the crowded foster home the state had dumped him in after his parents had died, determined to make so much money that no one would ever again have power over him.

His gaze swept the elegantly restrained grandeur of his office with its priceless antiques and original artwork, perched fifty-two stories above the bustling New York City streets. It was as far removed from the squalor he’d grown up in as he could ever imagine.