Colleen Collins - In Bed With The Wild One - In Bed With The Wild One / In Bed With The Pirate

Dear Reader,

Welcome to another fun-filled month of Duets!

Duets #29

Award-winning author Kristin Gabriel returns this month with Beauty and the Bachelor, the last book in the delightful CAFÉ ROMEO trilogy, about a coffee shop that doubles as a dating service. What better place to find both lattes and love! And talented Gwen Pemberton delivers Counterfeit Daddy, the tale of a sexy bachelor hero who poses as a family man in order to impress his gorgeous female boss!

Duets #30

Author Julie Kistler teams up this month with Colleen Collins to serve up BEDS & BACHELORS, two linked stories about a romantic but unusual B & B in San Francisco. Every bedroom has a movie theme! Julie’s tale, In Bed with the Wild One, is a romp about a mousy heroine who sets off to have an adventure with the bad-boy hero. Then B & B owner Kate encounters her very own fantasy man in In Bed with the Pirate.

I hope you enjoy both Duets volumes this month!

Birgit Davis-Todd

Senior Editor, Harlequin Duets

www.millsandboon.co.uk

In Bed with the Wild One In Bed with the Wild One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

In Bed with the Pirate

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

“I’ve got the perfect themed bedroom for you. The Wild One. You get to sleep under Marlon Brando’s picture. Cool, huh?”

“The Wild One?” Tyler looked bemused. “I can’t wait.”

An eavesdropping Emily couldn’t wait, either. She knew that movie. Leather jackets, motorcycles. Bad attitude. She tried to contain her growing excitement. Wow.

She continued to peek as he signed the register. He was so sexy. He had this hard-edged, smoky attitude that just screamed sex and lust and bad, bad things. Perfect for a good girl like her.

The minute Tyler disappeared up the stairs, Emily moved to the desk. Maybe there would be a Mata Hari room with her name on it, she mused. Or Xena, Warrior Princess. “I’d like a room, please.”

“Only one left, I’m afraid.” The innkeeper beamed. “But it’s just perfect for someone like you. Pollyanna…”

“Pollyanna…?” Sheesh. Emily might have known. Tyler was The Wild One and she was Pollyanna. And never the twain would meet….

Dear Reader,

Welcome to the world of Beau’s B & B! When Colleen Collins and I put our heads together to come up with a concept for a linked Duets volume, even the conversation was hilarious. We had so much fun, I can hardly remember who came up with what. I’m pretty sure the matchmaker angle was Colleen’s and I think the cat was my idea. But the eccentric B & B with the goofy, movie-themed rooms…Well, that could have come from anywhere.

But then I drove poor Colleen bananas when I kept changing the name of my hero’s bedroom. It only became “The Wild One” after we met with our editor, Malle Vallik, in Chicago. The three of us tripped out to dinner in 103 degree heat, ending up at a gorgeous restaurant where we laughed ourselves silly and probably embarrassed our waiter to death. Oh, well. We had fun! The best part is that this BEDS & BACHELORS concoction ended up exactly the way I’d hoped it would—funny, romantic, sexy and a little crazy. Many thanks to Colleen, Malle and Birgit Davis-Todd for making this such a pleasure to work on.

Enjoy!

Julie Kistler

To Colleen and Malle, who were the most fun and entertaining collaborators anyone could wish for.

“EMILY, IS THAT YOU? Sneaking in late? Surprise, surprise!”

Emily Chaplin stopped in her tracks. It just figured. This Friday morning in June was the first time in her entire goody-two-shoes life she’d ever been late for anything. And now she was caught red-handed, tiptoeing her way down the hall to her office, by Alissa Bergman of all people, the snoopiest, most competitive lawyer in the firm.

Emily wavered there, unsure whether to respond to or just ignore Alissa. She’d figured if she hid behind sunglasses and kept her head down, dodged the law firm’s main reception area and took the stairs, surely she could sneak into her office before anyone saw her.

No such luck.

Of course, when you were among the lowly associates at Chaplin, Chaplin & Chaplin, Attorneys-at-Law, all competing to make partner someday, your co-associates watched your every move, eager to rat you out to the senior partner. They all knew the big guy was a stickler for associates making their quota of billable hours each and every day. It didn’t help that the big guy also happened to be Emily’s father. And he rode his family members harder than anyone.

“Emily, Emily,” Alissa murmured, making a little tsk-tsk sound. “I heard you were out with Kip Enfield from the eighth floor last night. Had a late night, did we? Did the Kipster get lucky?”

Emily stiffened. “As if.”

As a matter of fact, she did blame Kip for the fact that she’d overslept and missed her ride in to the city. But not because they’d had such a hot time. Au contraire!

Kip was just the latest terrible fix-up in her never-ending series of them. Her father the senior partner, her mother the judge, her older brothers, all four of whom were lawyers—they all insisted on matching her up with eligible but insufferable young attorneys. It didn’t matter that the men bored her silly and sent her running back to the bathtub and a book about sexy spies and hard-boiled private eyes. Her well-meaning family members kept roping her into these horrible dates, no matter how much she protested.

Was it her fault the lawyers they set her up with were as limp as old noodles, while the men in the books were exciting, dark, dangerous and very, very stimulating? They saved the free world, they uncovered conspiracies, they fought off bad guys in dark alleys. They grabbed life in both hands and didn’t let go.

Whereas Kip Enfield…“Gag me,” she said out loud. He was the worst, the absolute worst. He wasn’t just stultifyingly dull—no, he was pompous, irritable, and el cheapo to boot. Dinner with Kip had stretched out endlessly while he droned on about the wine and the beef and his fine palate. After all that torture, he’d made a big point of tipping only two percent because he didn’t like the service. Exactly two percent—which took him about half an hour to figure out. Emily had to run back at the last minute on a pretext, unable to stand the idea of leaving such a pathetic tip.

So by the time Kip pulled his Beemer up the circular driveway of the Chaplins’ suburban home, she was more than ready to dump him. Except that he insisted on coming into the house—dying to sip the senior partner’s brandy out of the senior partner’s snifter, no doubt—and she couldn’t get rid of him no matter how many hints she dropped. Hours later, after several attempts to kiss her, paw her and cajole her into a little horizontal bingo, Kip finally consented to leave. She’d practically wept with relief.

After that fiasco, she could hardly help it if she’d slept for a full nine hours, just as a defense mechanism. At least her dreams were entertaining, unlike Kip Enfield.

“I’m never dating another lawyer as long as I live,” Emily declared. “In fact, I may never date anyone. I’ve got that last-straw feeling.”