Maureen Child - An Officer and a Millionaire / Mr Strictly Business - An Officer and a Millionaire / Mr Strictly Business

“What are you up to? Why are you here, in my bedroom?

“Why are you telling everyone in town that we’re married?”

“ Your bedroom,” she muttered, inhaling so sharply her towel opened wide and swished silently down her body.

Hunter got one more good look at full, high breasts. His own body sat up and howled. Then she muttered a curse, grabbed the towel and wrapped herself up again.

“Your bedroom? That’s a good one. I’ve been living in this suite of rooms for a year now, and funny, but I don’t remember seeing you.”

“A year? You’ve been pretending to be my wife, living in my house, for a year?”

What the hell was going on around here?

“If it makes you feel better,” Gabe said, “I’ll simply explain that you and I are an item again.”

Alarm flared to life in Catherine’s eyes. “Excuse me?”

“After all, it won’t be a complete fabrication. In fact, it won’t be a fabrication at all.”

She tensed. “What are you talking about?”

“You never asked my price for helping you.”

She inhaled sharply before lifting her chin. “How foolish of me. I’d forgotten what a pirate you are, Gabe.”

“That’s me,” he agreed lazily. “A pirate to the bone.”

“So what’s your price? What do you want?”

He gave it to her hard and straight. “You. I want you, Catherine. Back in my life. Back in my apartment. And back in my bed.”

by

by

MILLS & BOON®

www.millsandboon.co.uk

By

Maureen Child

Maureen Childis a California native who loves to travel. Every chance they get, she and her husband are taking off on another research trip. An author of more than sixty books, Maureen loves a happy ending and still swears that she has the best job in the world. She lives in Southern California with her husband, two children and a golden retriever with delusions of grandeur.

Dear Reader,

In An Officer and a Millionaire , you’ll meet Hunter Cabot, Navy SEAL. Hunter’s a loner and he likes it that way. His only family is a grandfather he rarely sees. Until he gets a sixty-day leave, goes home and discovers that he also has a wife he’s never met.

Margie Donohue is a loner, too—the only difference is that she’s tired of being alone. She’s looking for a place to belong. When her “husband” shows up unexpectedly though, she may be forced to give up the home she’s finally found.

I hope you enjoy Hunter and Margie’s story—I had a lot of fun writing it! Please visit my website at www. maureenchild.com and let me know what you think of the book!

And happy reading!

Maureen Child

To Desire Readers, You’ve made all of this possible with your loyalty and your enthusiasm for what we do! Thank you all.

Hunter Cabot, Navy SEAL, had a healing bullet wound in his side, thirty days’ leave and apparently a wife he’d never met.

On the drive into his hometown of Springville, California, he stopped for gas at Charlie Evans’s service station. That’s where the trouble started.

“Hunter! Man, it’s good to see you! Margie didn’t tell us you were coming home.”

“Margie?” Hunter leaned back against the front fender of his black pickup truck and winced as his side gave a small twinge of pain. Silently then, he watched as the man he’d known since high school filled his tank.

Charlie grinned, shook his head and pumped gas. “Guess your wife was lookin’ for a little ‘alone’ time with you, huh?”

“My—” Hunter couldn’t even say the word. Wife? He didn’t have a wife. “Look, Charlie…”

“Don’t blame her, of course,” his friend said with a wink as he finished up and put the gas cap back on. “You being gone all the time with the SEALs must be hard on the ol’ love life.”

He’d never had any complaints, Hunter thought, frowning at the man still talking a mile a minute. “What’re you—”

“Bet Margie’s anxious to see you. She told us all about that honeymoon trip you two took to Bali.” Charlie’s dark brown eyebrows lifted and wiggled.

“Charlie…”

“Hey, it’s okay, you don’t have to say a thing, man.”

What the hell could he say? Hunter shook his head, paid for his gas and, as he left, told himself Charlie was just losing it. Maybe the guy’d been smelling gas fumes for too long.

But as it turned out, it wasn’t just Charlie. Stopped at a red light on Main Street, Hunter glanced out his window to smile at Mrs. Harker, his second-grade teacher, who was now at least a hundred years old. In the middle of the crosswalk, the old woman stopped and shouted, “Hunter Cabot, you’ve got yourself a wonderful wife. I hope you appreciate her.”

Scowling now, he only nodded at the old woman—the only teacher who’d ever scared the crap out of him. What the hell was going on here? Was everyone but him nuts?

His temper beginning to boil. He put up with a few more comments about his “wife” on the drive through town before finally pulling into the wide, circular drive leading to the Cabot mansion. Hunter didn’t have a clue what was going on, but he planned to get to the bottom of it. Fast.

He grabbed his duffel bag, stalked into the house and paid no attention to the housekeeper, who ran at him, fluttering both hands. “Mister Hunter!”

“Sorry, Sophie,” he called out over his shoulder as he took the stairs two at a time. “Need a shower; then we’ll talk.”

He marched down the long, carpeted hallway to the rooms that were always kept ready for him. In his suite, Hunter tossed the duffel down and stopped dead. The shower in his bathroom was running. His wife?

Anger and curiosity boiled in his gut, creating a churning mass that had him moving forward without even thinking about it.

He opened the bathroom door to a wall of steam and the sound of a woman singing—off-key. Margie, no doubt.

Well, if she was his wife…Hunter walked across the room, yanked the shower door open and stared in at a curvy, naked, temptingly wet woman.

She whirled around to face him, slapping her arms across her naked body while she gave a short, terrified scream.

Hunter smiled. “Hi, honey. I’m home.”

“Who—what—how—who—”

“Now, honey,” he drawled the words out, completely enjoying watching the shock ripple across her features, “is that any way to greet your husband?”

“I—I—”

He had her nervous—that was for damn sure, he told himself. Easy enough to see by the way her eyes darted from one side of the room to the other, as if looking for an escape route.

Well, there wasn’t one. She wasn’t going anywhere until he had some answers. But that wasn’t to say he couldn’t make her as uncomfortable as possible. No better than she deserved for pretending to be his wife, for God’s sake.

The shower area was directly behind her, and steam twisted in the air like fog. A quick glance around the once familiar bathroom allowed Hunter to notice the jars and bottles of lotions women seemed to be unable to live without. Plus, the black towels he preferred had been replaced with navy-blue. Not to mention a vase full of flowers in the corner of the marble vanity counter.