Amber Leigh Williams - Married One Night

It seems that everyone’s got that one friend, the hopeless matchmaker. In the first book, Olivia’s cousin Briar even goes so far as to compare her to Emma Woodhouse…that is, if Emma were a forthright tavern-keeper with a bawdy laugh. It struck me that, although Olivia’s character likes to match up friends and family members with their prospective mates, she’s alone. A few allusions to her past reveal that her own love life has not been ideal. My editor must have noticed, too, because in her notes to me, she seemed to want to know more about Olivia’s history and what it would take for her to meet her match…. Enter Gerald Leighton! He’s charming, handsome, British…he’s even wealthy, a self-made man (and, believe it or not, a renegade earl). Another fun fact about Gerald? He’s a man not at all afraid of commitment, and from the moment he sees Olivia, he knows what he wants. When I realized that Gerald would be Olivia’s hero, he struck me as an unlikely match for her. I dove in and hoped for the best…and (as Gerald would say) blimey, did I have a blast! Pitting the commitment-phobic heroine against the idealistic yet irresistible hero was an entertaining experience. I was surprised, too, by how much they had to learn and gain from each other. As the saying goes, opposites attract, and oftentimes it’s because one gives the other something no one else can. I hope you enjoy Married One Night! Stay tuned for the third book in the series—Adrian’s story—coming soon… Amber Leigh Williams

Title Page Married One Night Amber Leigh Williams www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR ABOUT THE AUTHOR 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 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN CHAPTER EIGHTEEN CHAPTER NINETEEN CHAPTER TWENTY CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO EXTRACT Copyright Amber Leigh Williams lives on the Gulf Coast. A Southern girl at heart, she loves beach days, the smell of real books, relaxing at her family’s lakehouse and spending time with her husband, Jacob, and their sweet blue-eyed boy. When she’s not running after her young son and three large dogs, she can usually be found reading a good romance or cooking up a new dish in her kitchen. Readers can find her on the web at www.amberleighwilliams.com !

Dedication To family—near, far and dearly departed. I respectfully ask forgiveness for borrowing a few footnotes from our respective Scottish and English (even the illegitimately royal) bloodlines. Enormous gratitude for writing down and passing on the stories. Cheers to you for the inspiration (and hold fast)!

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

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

EXTRACT

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

OLIVIA LEWIS WOKE up in a Sin City penthouse amidst petal-strewn, silk sheets. She bolted upright in bed...and groaned, wavering as the world turned. And turned again.

Okay, make that silk sheets, rose petals...and the most vicious hangover of her life .

Hissing, she pressed a hand over her eyes, the other on her head to stop the contents from sloshing around. Her mouth felt like sandpaper, and her stomach writhed. Obviously the obscene amount of liquor she’d consumed the night before was turning on her in sickly rebellion.

“Oh, holy moly,” she wheezed. “What the hell happened last night?” Peering around, she squinted against the desert sunlight streaming through the undraped floor-to-ceiling window that spanned the entire left wall of the bedroom. At the sight of several curiously unmentionable items scattered across the bed and floor, she became more than a little curious about the events of the previous evening. Especially when she saw the tattered remains of her red dress hooked on the wall sconce at the other end of the room.

Frowning, she lifted the covers and looked underneath. She was naked as sin. And she’d spent enough nights with men to know how she should feel the next day. With a groan, she laid back into the pillows and pulled the covers over her head.

So sometime during the night, she had snuck away from the bachelorette party for her friend Roxie Honeycutt and gotten frisky—very frisky—with an unknown man.

It wasn’t her first one-night stand. Nor did she think it would be her last. But considering she’d been the hostess of Roxie’s bachelorette party and it had been her idea to bring the bash to Vegas, Olivia felt shame rushing up to meet her.

She sighed, flopping her arms over her head. “Well done, Liv,” she muttered at the ceiling. It was painted with a mural complete with puffy white clouds and baby-faced cherubs.

How many inappropriate things had those cherubs seen last night?

Olivia pursed her lips, thinking back hard to what she could remember of the past twenty-four hours. She and her friends had flown into Vegas, then checked into their casino hotel room. They’d gone to a bar...no, a club. The venue had been packed elbow to elbow. Olivia’s other friend and invitee, Adrian Carlton, had kept ordering drinks for the three of them. Tequila shots. That would explain the gargantuan headache pounding away at the inside of Olivia’s head and the base of her neck.

Then...there’d been dancing on the parquet dance floor. And a man. Olivia braved the thumping, eyes watering as she thought hard to bring him into sharper focus. She got only an impression—tall. Tailored suit. A black necktie, which she’d had fun unknotting later here in the penthouse...with her teeth?

She grimaced and focused again on the man’s features. Blond hair, a bit tousled as the night wore on. There was a limo, one exclusively for Olivia and her mystery man. Some frisky business in the backseat as Vegas lights blurred together outside the tinted windows. Yes, she’d run her fingers through that gilded crown of his, raking her nails lightly over his scalp. He’d liked that. Big, skillful hands on her hips. Roaming over her back...getting lost in her hair. He’d spoken to her, sweet endearments. She wasn’t usually one for sweet endearments—just the answer of skin on skin and the satisfaction that came with it.

But he’d been different. Why, Olivia couldn’t say.... The accent. His sweet words had been accentuated with a devastating—British?—accent that had, quite literally, charmed the pants off her.

Olivia raised a hand to her hair as her scalp tingled in remembrance. She smiled a bit at the memory, then closed her eyes on another wave of fierce pounding. If she could summon enough energy to rise from the rumpled bed, she might be able to find her purse amidst the chaos of the room. There was aspirin in that little red handbag. She needed aspirin. ASAP.

Carefully, she sat up again and braced her hands in the thick bedding. She waited for the world to stop revolving and settle back on its axis before taking a deep, bracing breath and pulling the covers back. Instant chills racked her skin, made worse by the fine sheen of sweat courtesy of the savage aftermath of tequila drinking.

She slung her legs over the side of the bed. Her toes sank into a thick black rug. Shivering, she wrapped the white silk top sheet around her, knotting it at her collarbone so that it stayed as she stood.

It took more effort than she would have liked to stay upright. She reached forward to catch the wall as she staggered in the general direction of what she hoped was a bathroom. The floor quaked beneath her and she could feel dregs of nausea rising up from the pit of her stomach. Yes, yes, that’d better be a bathroom.

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