Allison Leigh: Married To A Stranger

Tristan would have been amused at the panic rounding her violet eyes if he hadn’t been wondering the same thing himself.

He rarely acted impulsively. He trusted his instincts, which seldom failed him. But this time his instincts had fully deserted him.

All because of this virginal, violet-eyed temptress.

“What have we done?” he repeated.

The irony burned. A week ago he’d started out thinking he’d like to taste Hope Leoni’s soft-looking lips. That was all.

He hadn’t gotten a kiss. He hadn’t “gotten” anything that everybody in town seemed to think he’d been “getting.”

No, he hadn’t gotten a kiss.…

He’d gotten a wife!

Dear Reader,

During the warm days of July, what better way to kick back and enjoy the best of summer reading than with six stellar stories from Special Edition as we continue to celebrate Silhouette’s 20th Anniversary all year long!

With The Pint-Sized Secret, Sherryl Woods continues to delight her readers with another winning installment of her popular miniseries AND BABY MAKES THREE: THE DELACOURTS OF TEXAS. Reader favorite Lindsay McKenna starts her new miniseries, MORGAN’S MERCENARIES: MAVERICK HEARTS, with Man of Passion, her fiftieth book. A stolen identity leads to true love in Patricia Thayer’s compelling Whose Baby Is This? And a marriage of convenience proves to be anything but in rising star Allison Leigh’s Married to a Stranger in her MEN OF THE DOUBLE-C RANCH miniseries. Rounding off the month is celebrated author Pat Warren’s Doctor and the Debutante, where the healthy dose of romance is just what the physician ordered, while for the heroine in Beth Henderson’s Maternal Instincts, a baby-sitting assignment turns into a practice run for motherhood—and marriage.

Hope you enjoy this book and the other unforgettable stories Special Edition is happy to bring you this month!

All the best,

Karen Taylor Richman,

Senior Editor

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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For my daughters.

Live your dreams.

Silhouette Special Edition

*Stay… #1170

*The Rancher and the Redhead #1212

*A Wedding for Maggie #1241

*A Child for Christmas #1290

Millionaire’s Instant Baby #1312

*Married to a Stranger #1336

started early by writing a Halloween play that her grade-school class performed for her school. Since then, though her tastes have changed, her love for reading has not. And her writing appetite simply grows more voracious by the day.

Born in Southern California, she has lived in eight different cities in four different states. She has been, at one time or another, a cosmetologist, a computer programmer and an administrative assistant.

Allison and her husband currently make their home in Arizona, where their time is thoroughly filled with two very active daughters, full-time jobs, pets, church, family and friends. In order to give herself the precious writing time she craves, she burns a lot of midnight oil.

A great believer in the power of love—her parents still hold hands—she cannot imagine anything more exciting to write about than the miracle of two hearts coming together.

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

Epilogue

All he’d wanted was a kiss. A simple kiss.

So how on God’s green earth had his life gotten so out of control in just one week over something so simple?

Tris rolled his head against the cushioned seat and looked across the aisle of the custom-fitted jet. Hope was still asleep. She certainly had no head for alcohol.

His jaw was so tight it ached. He had earned himself a doozy of a headache, too. But he knew it wasn’t from champagne, or whiskey or anything even remotely alcoholic. He’d barely choked down the few toasts they’d had at the reception—half a glass of champagne wasn’t anywhere near enough to set this pain in his head to throbbing.

No, his headache had begun a little over a week ago, he knew. Brought on strictly by himself.

He shoved his fingers through his hair and closed his eyes. But the sight of the woman stretched out on the long seat across from him was firmly burned into his brain.

Hope’s toffee-colored hair had fallen loose at some point on the drive to the airport. When he’d carried her onto the private jet, the long, thick waves had clung to his shirt, flowed over his arm and streamed behind them in the night breeze. Now, they lay tangled and gleaming over her shoulders, off the couch, nearly touching the carpeted floor.

He’d slipped off her narrow-heeled shoes and set them on the floor beside her. Her dress—so obviously an antique that he knew women who’d have given their eyeteeth for the ankle-length garment—had worked its way up her shapely calves. With one knee drawn upward, the fabric pulled in a taut stretch of beige-tinted lace over the back of her thighs and her derriere.

She was a total innocent, and lying there, so soundly asleep, she was temptation personified.

Temptation. That’s what had gotten them into this mess in the first place. Tris should have known better than to flirt with temptation. God knows she didn’t have enough experience to fight the blistering sparks between them.

But he was experienced. And older. And he should have known better. His heart might not be programmed for love and happily-ever-after, but he was on a first-name basis with the desires of the flesh.

Tris could feel the plane banking. There was no point in looking out the little oval windows. It was pitch-dark out there. Dark above, dark below, dark all around.

Even this luxurious main cabin of the plane was dark, except for one small lamp burning near him. It cast enough glow to highlight the lace dress and glossy hair of the woman across from him.

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, legs sprawled out before him, his chin resting on his steepled fingers. It could have been one hour or three. But finally, Hope sighed deeply and shifted. Her hand tumbled off the cushion and grazed the carpet. The light glinted on the platinum rings—one plain and one studded with a trio of excruciatingly perfect diamonds—circling her ring finger.

The rings he had put there.

She turned her head and pushed her thick hair out of her eyes. She blinked drowsily and he figured her vision was probably blurry, because her eyeglasses were sitting on the round side table beside his seat.

Comprehension slowly dawned in her eyes. He waited, knowing just when that memory clicked into place, because she breathed in sharply and yanked her feet off the cushion to sit up.

“Where are we?” Hope pressed a trembling hand to her head.