Heidi Rice - The Virgin's Shock Baby

The Italian’s one-night heir

Vulnerable Megan Whittaker has orders to find out if tycoon Dario De Rossi plans to acquire her father’s business. Reluctantly, she agrees, but doesn’t expect to be so distracted by their searing chemistry that she ends up in his bed!

Dario does have takeover ambitions, but when Megan is violently punished for her night with the enemy, he feels honor-bound to protect her. They escape to Italy, but this commanding businessman soon discovers a deeper problem. Not only is Megan suffering from amnesia, meaning she believes they’re engaged and passionately in love...but she’s also carrying his baby!

‘Dario, are you even listening to me?’

He forced his gaze back to Megan’s face. Her pale skin had acquired a healthy sun-burnished glow in the last week, her cheeks now a bright scarlet hue even more tempting than that damn bikini. He wanted to lick that fluttering pulse in her collarbone so much that he could almost taste her sweet, spicy aroma on his tongue.

The way he had every night in his dreams.

Her eyes had widened. Was that trepidation or shock he could see in them, their misty green bright with stunned knowledge? Then she rolled her lip under small white teeth and everything inside him shattered. All the smart, practical, moral reasons why he couldn’t taste her seemed to explode in a cloud of nuclear fallout.

‘Stop biting your lip,’ he said, his voice a low, husky croak he barely recognised as his own.

‘Dario! Don’t speak to me like that.’

He wrapped his hands around her upper arms and hauled her to him.

Then all coherent thought fled as his lips landed on succulent skin and his hands captured the lush curves that had finally pushed him over the edge into madness.

One Night With Consequences

When one night…leads to pregnancy!

When succumbing to a night of unbridled desire it’s impossible to think past the morning after!

But, with the sheets barely settled, that little blue line appears on the pregnancy test and it doesn’t take long to realise that one night of white-hot passion has turned into a lifetime of consequences!

Only one question remains:

How do you tell a man you’ve just met that you’re about to share more than just his bed?

Find out in:

The Sheikh’s Baby Scandal by Carol Marinelli

A Ring for Vincenzo’s Heir by Jennie Lucas

Claiming His Christmas Consequence by Michelle Smart

The Guardian’s Virgin Ward by Caitlin Crews

A Child Claimed by Gold by Rachael Thomas

The Consequence of His Vengeance by Jennie Lucas

Secrets of a Billionaire’s Mistress by Sharon Kendrick

The Boss’s Nine-Month Negotiation by Maya Blake

The Pregnant Kavakos Bride by Sharon Kendrick

A Ring for the Greek’s Baby by Melanie Milburne

Engaged for Her Enemy’s Heir by Kate Hewitt

Look for more One Night With Consequences stories coming soon!

The Virgin’s Shock Baby

Heidi Rice

www.millsandboon.co.uk

USA TODAY bestselling author HEIDI RICE lives in London, England. She is married with two teenage sons—which gives her rather too much of an insight into the male psyche—and also works as a film journalist. She adores her job, which involves getting swept up in a world of high emotions, sensual excitement, funny, feisty women, sexy, tortured men and glamorous locations where laundry doesn’t exist. Once she turns off her computer she often does chores—usually involving laundry!

Books by Heidi Rice

Mills & Boon Modern Romance

Vows They Can’t Escape

One Night, So Pregnant!

Too Close for Comfort

Mills & Boon Modern Tempted

Beach Bar Baby

Maid of Dishonour

Cupcakes and Killer Heels

The Good, the Bad and the Wild

On the First Night of Christmas…

Visit the Author Profile page at millsandboon.co.ukfor more titles.

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To Bryony, who made sure I gave this story the depth it deserved.

And Daisy, who talked me off the ledge a few times while I was doing that!

Dario, Megan and I thank you both sincerely.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

One Night With Consequences

Title Page

About the Author

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

EPILOGUE

Extract

Copyright

PROLOGUE

‘DARIO DE ROSSI IS escorting you to the Westchester Ball tomorrow night and you need to seduce him while you’re there.’

‘What? Why?’ Megan Whittaker was fairly sure she’d just been transported into an alternate universe. An alternate universe that was two hundred years past its sell-by date. Either that or her father had lost his mind. Whichever way you looked at it, the demand he had just levelled at her from across his walnut desk in the Manhattan offices of Whittaker Enterprises, without even the hint of a smile on his face, was not good news, because he did not appear to be joking.

‘To save Whittaker’s from possible annihilation,’ her father snapped. ‘Don’t give me your whipped puppy look, Megan,’ he added. ‘Do you think I would ask this of you if there were another option?’

‘Well, I...’ She wanted to believe him, even though she knew his love for Whittaker’s had always taken precedence over his love for his daughters.

But unlike her sister, Katie, Megan understood that. Having spent the last four years working her way up to head her own tiny department at Whittaker’s, she didn’t begrudge him his dedication to the company that had been in their family for five generations.

She also didn’t really begrudge him a request so outside the norm for a father to a daughter, or indeed a boss to his employee. She knew that to be successful in business your personal life had to suffer, and personal loyalties could be tested. But this was... Well... It wasn’t even rational. What possible reason could there be for her to seduce any man? Let alone a man like De Rossi, a corporate wolf who had risen through the ranks of New York business society in the last ten years to become one of its prime movers and shakers.

Quite apart from anything else, if her father was looking for a femme fatale, surely he must know Megan was not the best candidate for the job.

She simply did not have the necessary temperament, equipment or experience. She had always been more comfortable in business suits and flats than cocktail dresses and heels. She found going to the beauty salon tedious, the concentration on her appearance a waste of time and money. Her intellect and her work ethic were so much more important. And after the few fumbled encounters she’d had at college, she’d been beyond grateful to discover she comprehensively lacked her mother’s voracious and indiscriminate libido. At twenty-four, she was still technically speaking a virgin, for goodness’ sake! These days she would much rather spend her small amount of free time watching TV boxsets with a nice glass of Pouilly Fuissé, than finding a man—especially as the judicious use of a vibrator could take care of her needs without all the awkwardness and disappointment.