Leanne Banks - Billionaire, M.D. / Secrets of the Playboy's Bride - Billionaire, M.D. / Secrets of the Playboy's Bride

BILLIONAIRE, M.D.

OLIVIA GATES

AND

SECRETS OF THE

PLAYBOY’S BRIDE

LEANNE BANKS

www.millsandboon.co.uk

BILLIONAIRE, M.D.

OLIVIA GATES

His forbidden fruit. His ultimate temptation.

The woman whose very existence had been like a corrosive acid coursing through his arteries. The woman he would have been eternally grateful if he never saw again till the day he died. He would have given anything to wake up one day free of her memory.

And it was her who’d woken up free of his.

The red-hot fist that had been squeezing his heart since he’d hurtled to the crash site to find her lying inert almost drove its tentacles inside his heart.

She was telling him she didn’t remember the existence that was the bane of his. She’d forgotten the very identity that had been behind the destruction of one life. And the poisoning of his own.

And he shouldn’t care. Shouldn’t have cared.

But he did.

OLIVIA GATEShas always pursued creative passions—singing and many handicrafts. She still does, but only one of her passions grew gratifying enough, consuming enough, to become an ongoing career. Writing.

She is most fulfilled when she is creating worlds and conflicts for her characters, then exploring and untangling them bit by bit, sharing her protagonists’ every heart-wrenching heartache and hope, their every heart-pounding doubt and trial, until she leads them to an indisputably earned and gloriously satisfying happy ending.

When she’s not writing, she is a doctor, a wife to her own alpha male and a mother to one brilliant girl and one demanding angora cat. Visit Olivia at www.oliviagates.com.

To Natashya and Shane.

This one is definitely for you both.

Dear Reader,

It was such a thrill for me to write my first surgeon hero for Desire™.

I’ve written doctors before, but while in my other books medicine itself played a big part in the story, in this one I wanted to concentrate on and demonstrate in full measure why a surgeon can be such an irresistibly romantic hero.

So I created Rodrigo Valentino, the epitome of that hero. He is not only a self-made and phenomenal success, he is a savior, a protector. A tower of strength with extraordinary skills and knowledge, a man to lean on, whose strength of mind and will is surpassed only by that of his passion and tenderness. And in taking care of the injured as well as amnesic and pregnant Cybele Wilkinson, he goes all out, demonstrating those qualities that are everything a woman can dream of.

I loved writing Rodrigo so much, and the passionate, deeply emotional relationship that develops between him and Cybele, that I hope I will be writing more surgeons in the future.

I also hope that reading their story will give you as much pleasure as writing it gave me.

I would love to hear from you at oliviagates@gmail.com. You can also visit me on the web at www.oliviagates.com.

Enjoy, and thanks for reading,

Olivia Gates

She opened her eyes to another world.

A world filled with grainy grayness, like a TV channel with no transmission. But she didn’t care.

This world had an angel watching over her.

And not just any angel. An archangel. If archangels were the personification of beauty and power, were hewn out of living rock and bronze and unadulterated maleness.

His image floated in the jumble of light and shadow, making her wonder if this was a dream. Or a hallucination. Or worse.

Probably worse. In spite of the angel’s presence. Or because of it. Angels didn’t watch over anyone who wasn’t in some serious trouble, did they?

Would be a shame if he turned out to be the angel of death. Why make him so breathtaking if he was just a life-force extractor? He was way overqualified. Such overkill was uncalled for, if you asked her. Or maybe his extreme attractiveness was designed to make his targets willing to go where he led?

She’d be more than willing. If she could move.

She couldn’t. Gravity overwhelmed her, squashed her back onto something that suddenly felt like a bed of thorns. Every cell in her body started to squirm, every nerve firing impulses. But the cells had no connection to each other and the nerves were unable to muster one spark of voluntary movement. Distress bombarded her, noise rose in her ears, pounding, nauseating her….

His face came closer, stilled the vertigo, swept over the cacophony, stifling it.

Her turmoil subsided. She didn’t have to fight the pull of gravity, didn’t have to fear the paralysis.

He was here. And he’d take care of everything.

She had no idea how she knew that. But she knew it.

She knew him.

Not that she had any idea who he was.

But everything inside her told her that she was safe, that everything would be okay. Because he was here.

Now if only she could get any part of her to work.

She shouldn’t feel so inert upon waking up. But was she waking up? Or was she dreaming? That would explain the detachment between brain and body. That would explain him. He was too much to be real.

But she knew he was real. She just knew she wasn’t imaginative enough to have made him up.

She knew something else, too. This man was important. In general. And to her, he was more than important. Vital.

“Cybele?”

Was that his voice? That dark, fathomless caress? It so suited the sheer magnificence of his face….

“Can you hear me?”

Boy, could she. She more than heard him. His voice spread across her skin, her pores soaking it up as if they were starved for nourishment. It permeated her with its richness, its every inflection sparking an inert nerve, restarting a vital process, reviving her.

“Cybele, if you can hear me, if you’re awake this time, por favor, answer me.”

Por favor? Spanish? Figured. So that’s where the tinge of an accent came from—English intertwining with the sensuous music of the Latin tongue. She wanted to answer him. She wanted him to keep talking. Each syllable out of those works of art he had for lips, crooned in that intoxicating voice, was lulling her back to oblivion, this time a blissful one.

His face filled her field of vision. She could see every shard of gold among the emerald, moss and caramel that swirled into a luminous color she was certain she’d never seen except in his eyes.

She wanted to stab her fingers into the lushness of his raven mane, cup that leonine head, bring him even closer so she could pore over every strand’s hue and radiance. She wanted to trace each groove and slash and plane that painted his face in complexity, wanted to touch each radiation of character.

This was a face mapped with anxiety and responsibility and distinction. She wanted to absorb the first, ease the second and marvel at the third. She wanted those lips against her own, mastering, filling her with the tongue that wrapped around those words and created such magic with them.

She knew she shouldn’t be feeling anything like that now, that her body wasn’t up to her desires. Her body knew that, but didn’t acknowledge its incapacitation. It just needed him, close, all that maleness and bulk and power, all that tenderness and protection.

She craved this man. She’d always craved him.

“Cybele, por Dios, say something.”

It was the raggedness, tearing at the power of his voice, that stirred her out of her hypnosis, forced her vocal cords to tauten, propelled air out of her lungs through them to produce the sound he demanded so anxiously.