Maureen Child - The Next Santini Bride

Rounding the edge of the old brick building, she looked up and saw Dan Mahoney. Arms folded across his chest, feet crossed at the ankles, he stared at her from across the lot, and even at a distance, Angela felt the power, the hunger, in his gaze.

Parts of her body struggling back to life throbbed and hummed with an electrical pulse. As she started toward him, her heels tapped loudly against the asphalt and kept time with the pounding of her heart.

He leaned toward her. “So, Angela,” he said softly, his voice whispering along her spine. “Do we still have a date?”

One last chance to back out, she told herself. To forget about the craziness of what she’d been planning and go home alone. But she knew that he was exactly what she needed. What she wanted.

There would be no backing out.

Not tonight…

Dear Reader,

As we celebrate Silhouette’s 20 thanniversary year as a romance publisher, we invite you to welcome in the fall season with our latest six powerful, passionate, provocative love stories from Silhouette Desire!

In September’s MAN OF THE MONTH, fabulous Peggy Moreland offers a Slow Waltz Across Texas. In order to win his wife back, a rugged Texas cowboy must learn to let love into his heart. Popular author Jennifer Greene delivers a special treat for you with Rock Solid, which is part of the highly sensual Desire promotion, BODY & SOUL.

Maureen Child’s exciting miniseries, BACHELOR BATTALION, continues with The Next Santini Bride, a responsible single mom who cuts loose with a handsome Marine. The next installment of the provocative Desire miniseries FORTUNE’S CHILDREN: THE GROOMS is Mail-Order Cinderella by Kathryn Jensen, in which a plain-Jane librarian seeks a husband through a matchmaking service and winds up with a Fortune! Ryanne Corey returns to Desire with a Lady with a Past, whose true love woos her with a chocolate picnic. And a nurse loses her virginity to a doctor in a night of passion, only to find out the next day that her lover is her new boss, in Doctor for Keeps by Kristi Gold.

Be sure to indulge yourself this autumn by reading all six of these tantalizing titles from Silhouette Desire!

Enjoy!

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To my cousins, Jimmy and Doris Semon, who showed us

just how beautiful Louisiana really is. Thank you for

everything, you guys. We love you.

was born and raised in Southern California and is the only person she knows who longs for an occasional change of season. She is delighted to be writing for Silhouette Books and is especially excited to be a part of the Desire line.

An avid reader, Maureen looks forward to those rare rainy California days when she can curl up and sink into a good book. Or two. When she isn’t busy writing, she and her husband of twenty-five years like to travel, leaving their two grown children in charge of the neurotic golden retriever who is the real head of the household. Maureen is also an award-winning historical writer under the names Kathleen Kane and Ann Carberry.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Epilogue

“No man has a right to be that good-looking,” Angela Santini Jackson said, nodding toward a man standing on the opposite side of the room.

Her sister Marie Garvey leaned in close and whispered, “He is a hunk, isn’t he?”

Hunk barely covered it. The man had to be six feet four inches of solid muscle. His cheekbones were sharp enough to draw blood, and his eyes were a pale, brilliant green that seemed to glitter in his deeply tanned face.

He looked, Angela thought, like the poster boy for a don’t-let-your-daughter-near-this-man campaign. She smiled to herself. He looked her way, and their gazes locked. Embarrassed to be caught staring, Angela quickly realized she had two choices here—glance away quickly and pretend to be oblivious…or meet his gaze squarely and refuse to back down.

She went with the latter. After all, it was a free world. A woman should have the right to look at anyone she wanted to. Right?

A long minute or two passed in silent observation. All around them people wandered about the private dining room of the Bayside Crab Shack. Her youngest sister’s rehearsal dinner was almost over, and now the wedding party and their guests had time to chat. She heard snatches of conversations without really registering them. She knew her sister Marie was talking to her, but her voice sounded more like an annoying background buzz than anything else.

All she saw, all she focused on, was him. His eyes. The way he stood in the middle of everything and yet separate and apart from the crowd. It was as if he was off in his own world and was drawing her in there with him.

She shifted slightly in her seat, fought down the rush of warmth that slammed through her, and still couldn’t look away.

It was as if they were in one of those old movies, where the hero and heroine exchange glances across a crowded room and the rest of the world blurred as the director homed in on his stars.

And that wild thought was enough to break the spell holding her. She smiled to herself, and as she did, one corner of his mouth quirked up in a tilted smile, and he lifted his beer bottle in a mock salute as if to call their silent staring competition a draw.

Angela swallowed hard, gave him what she hoped was a regal nod, and when he looked away, turned her attention back to the sister who had now resorted to nudging Angela’s ribs with her elbow. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Funny,” Marie said, giving a quick look across the room at the tall man now talking to Gina’s fiancé, Nick. “I was just going to ask you the same thing.”

“What are you talking about?” Angela picked up a place card and used it as a minifan in a futile attempt to cool her still-heated blood.

“What exactly were you and Mr. Wonderful over there doing?”

She dropped the card back onto the table and straightened up in her seat. “We weren’t doing anything,” Angela said, though even she didn’t completely believe that. For the few seconds their gazes had been locked, she’d felt something almost…electrical pass between them. Oh, my, she thought, and reached for her glass of wine. Taking a sip, she let the cool liquid slide down her throat and hoped the chill would ease the last of the heat still crouched inside her.

“Not what it looked like from where I’m sitting,” Marie muttered.

“Get a new seat,” Angela told her shortly. Then, in an attempt to change the conversation, she pointed to their youngest sister and said, “Look at her. She’s practically glowing.”