Laurey Bright - Life With Riley

Startled, Riley glanced down at her sodden shirt. Raising her eyes again, she blurted, “But you’re not—I mean, you’re my employer! I’m your housekeeper!”

“I also happen to be a man,” he pointed out, a disconcerting glint in his eyes.

Riley had known from the start that she’d have to rein in her attraction to Benedict Falkner. But he’d clearly indicated that he saw her as domestic help, nothing else.

Mutual lust, however, was totally different. Thrilling, surprising…and potentially disastrous.

It was only his male hormones reacting, she told herself. It didn’t mean he intended to carry things any further, to compromise their employer-employee relationship….

Did it?

Dear Reader,

Summer is over and it’s time to kick back into high gear. Just be sure to treat yourself with a luxuriant read or two (or, hey, all six) from Silhouette Romance. Remember—work hard, play harder!

Although October is officially Breast Cancer Awareness month, we’d like to invite you to start thinking about it now. In a wonderful, uplifting story, a rancher reluctantly agrees to model for a charity calendar to earn money for cancer research. At the back of that book, we’ve also included a guide for self-exams. Don’t miss Cara Colter’s must-read 9 Out of 10 Women Can’t Be Wrong (#1615).

Indulge yourself with megapopular author Karen Rose Smith and her CROWN AND GLORY series installment, Searching for Her Prince (#1612). A missing heir puts love on the line when he hides his identity from the woman assigned to track him down. The royal, brooding hero in Sandra Paul’s stormy Caught by Surprise (#1614), the latest in the A TALE OF THE SEA adventure, also has secrets—and intends to make his beautiful captor pay…by making her his wife!

Jesse Colton is a special agent forced to play pretend boyfriend to uncover dangerous truths in the fourth of THE COLTONS: COMANCHE BLOOD spinoff, The Raven’s Assignment (#1613), by bestselling author Kasey Michaels. And in Cathie Linz’s MEN OF HONOR title, Married to a Marine (#1616), combat-hardened Justice Wilder had shut himself away from the world—until his ex-wife’s younger sister comes knocking…. Finally, in Laurey Bright’s tender and true Life with Riley (#1617), free-spirited Riley Morrisset may not be the perfect society wife, but she’s exactly what her stiff-collared boss needs!

Happy reading—and please keep in touch.

Mary-Theresa Hussey

Senior Editor

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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has held a number of different jobs, but has never wanted to be anything but a writer. She lives in New Zealand, where she creates the stories of contemporary people in love that have won her a following all over the world. Visit her at her Web site, http://www.laureybright.com.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

“Damn!” Too late, Riley Morrisset slammed on the brake.

Backing out of the narrow shopping-mall parking space, she’d turned the wheel too early. The ominous metallic shriek of her front bumper scraping against the side of the car next to hers had come all too clearly through her open window.

Groaning, she shoved strands of straight brown hair from her eyes, pulled on the brake and switched off the key before pushing open her door and going to inspect the damage.

Her ancient red Corona seemed unmarked, but the gleaming dark-blue BMW showed a long, telltale gouge right down to the metal, with a nasty dent at the end.

“Damn, damn, damn!” She’d have to leave her name and address for the owner. But first she’d better shift the Corona from the path of other traffic. Already a battered gray van was entering the end of the lane.

Quickly she returned to her car, switching the engine on.

The van was nosing into a space farther up the row, but there could be other cars entering soon. Riley grasped the gear lever, then jumped as a dark-sleeved arm reached in the open window and long male fingers switched off the key. At the same time a grim masculine voice said, “Oh, no, you don’t!”

Riley’s strangled yelp of alarm was drowned by her horn as she pressed the flattened palm of her free hand down on it.

The sound was abruptly cut off when strong fingers gripped her wrist and forcibly lifted her hand away. “What the hell—” the man said.

Looking up in panic, Riley had a confused impression of blazing eyes—a startling meld of navy blue and deep, deep gray—close-drawn black brows and a threatening expression, before she realized that his other hand had removed the ignition key with its attendant house keys and large plastic Snoopy tag.

She snatched at Snoopy, but didn’t get a good grip, and the keys jangled to the floor of the car.

Riley tried to close the window with her free hand, but the manual winder was stuck again. Under her breath she cursed the garage mechanic who was supposed to have fixed it.

Twisting in her seat, she fumbled with her free hand for the knob to lock the door. Finding that her face was within an inch of the implacable hand encircling her wrist, she sank her teeth into the man’s flesh, tasting soap and warm, slightly salty male skin.

He let fly a vicious word and pulled back but didn’t release her. Desperately Riley opened her mouth wide and screamed. A loud, aggressive, attention-getting scream.

The mugger muttered something savage and dropped her wrist at last as pounding footsteps made him look away from her.

Riley was hugely relieved to see two large men bearing down on them. Both wore torn jeans and studded belts, and their muscular arms were heavily tattooed. One would have been described as Caucasian by the police. He looked as though he might be on intimate terms with them. His big pale head was shaved bald, and the orange T-shirt stretched over his chest had a foam-fanged, spike-collared bulldog printed on the front. The other man was Maori. Well-greased dreadlocks fell to massive brown shoulders bared by a black bushman’s vest.