Susan Stephens - Christmas Nights with the Polo Player

Spending Christmas with Brazilian polo champion Gabe Ortoya—and his whole family—opens Lucy Lavender’s eyes to a whole new side of this notorious heartbreaker. Gabe is Lucy’s in to her dream career in equine medicine, but she vows to resist her wickedly sexy boss. After a devastating kiss under the mistletoe, Lucy finds it increasingly hard not to surrender to temptation…especially when sinfully delicious Gabe seems to have put it on his holiday wish list to get her into his bed!

The Acostas!

Fiery passion, intense love and rampaging barbarians with hearts of gold!

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my wonderful readers who have shown such enthusiasm for my wild polo men. This is for you. Happy Holidays!

Dear Reader,

When my daughter chose to hold her prewedding celebrations watching polo at Smith’s Lawn, Windsor, I had no idea until the teams galloped onto the field that I was about to be bewitched by men with arms like steel girders and thighs powerful enough to control the most willful horse. Nor could I have imagined that six passionate books later I would still be receiving letters from readers asking what my polo players were up to now that they had all found love.… And were there any more polo guys in the pipeline?

The answer is, of course, yes! I could never tire of writing about dark-eyed, dangerous men, so please allow me to introduce Gabe Ortoya, captain of the Brazilian polo team. Gabe made a guest appearance in The Shameless Life of Ruiz Acosta, and even as I wrote that particular scene set in Gabe’s glamorous London nightclub, I was thinking to myself, This man needs a story.

In my September newsletter I promised I would revisit the Acosta family so we could all find out how they were getting on, and this gave me the chance I had been longing for to write about Gabe. I hope you love him as much I do. Gabe was so much fun to write. And Lucy, his veterinary student heroine, is a girl after my own heart—no pushover, and full of surprises—so I hope you love Lucy, too.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me at susan@susanstephens.com, www.facebook.com/SusanStephensAuthor, www.twitter.com/Susan_Stephens, or sign up for my newsletter at www.susanstephens.com.

And now it only remains for me to wish you the happiest of holidays. In fact, I wish you the happiest of days all year round.

With my warmest wishes to you, my friends and readers,

Susan

Susan Stephens was a professional singer before meeting her husband on the tiny Mediterranean island of Malta. In true Mills & Boon Modern style they met on Monday, became engaged on Friday and were married three months after that. Almost thirty years and three children later, they are still in love. (Susan does not advise her children to return home one day with a similar story, as she may not take the news with the same fortitude as her own mother!)

Susan had written several nonfiction books when fate took a hand. At a charity costume ball there was an after-dinner auction. One of the lots, “Spend a Day with an Author,” had been donated by Mills & Boon author Penny Jordan. Susan’s husband bought this lot, and Penny was to become not just a great friend but a wonderful mentor, who encouraged Susan to write romance.

Susan loves her family, her pets, her friends and her writing. She enjoys entertaining, travel and going to the theater. She reads, cooks and plays the piano to relax, and can occasionally be found throwing herself off mountains on a pair of skis or galloping through the countryside. Visit Susan’s website, www.susanstephens.net. She loves to hear from her readers all around the world!

DIAMOND IN THE DESERT*

TAMING THE LAST ACOSTA**

THE MAN FROM HER WAYWARD PAST**

A TASTE OF THE UNTAMED**

*linked to the Skavanga family. Visit their website at www.susanstephens.com/skavanga/index.html

**linked to the Acosta family.Visit their website at www.susanstephens.com/acostas/index.html

Did you know these are also available as ebooks?

Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Epilogue

Christmas is an amazing time in London, Lucy reflected as she stared around the sleeping nightclub where she had been lucky enough to secure a short-term job as a waitress for the holidays. A warm glow of anticipation lifted everyone’s spirits, and there was the festive food, the sparkling decorations and all the big stores competing to have the most fabulous Christmas scenes in their windows. The holiday season also gave impoverished students like Lucy the chance to take advantage of all the extra work on offer, but most important of all, friendships were rekindled. And Lucy had her friend Holly to thank for this job.

Crazy Holly. Wonderful Holly. Lucy’s long-time friend since school had insisted that this was the chance they had been waiting for to get together in London. They saw each other so rarely these days, what with Lucy’s studies and Holly accompanying her husband Ruiz Acosta—one of Argentina’s infamous polo playing brothers—on the polo tour. Which was another reason Lucy was working long after her colleagues had gone out on the town. How was she supposed to sleep, knowing she had accepted Holly’s invitation to the Acostas’ Christmas Day party tomorrow?

Not that she was shy. Much. Put her with customers and she was fine. Put her with colleagues and she was fine. But put her in a room full of fast-living, jet-setting sophisticated types and she was…not fine.

Lucy lived in the country where she attended veterinary college, and London had hit her hard in the face. Admittedly, this was the busiest time of the year with crowded streets, traffic at a standstill, breath rising in icy streams from battalions of determined, red-cheeked shoppers swathed in scarves…by comparison the nightclub was a haven of calm.

And it looked beautiful. It was the hottest nightclub in town and was tastefully decorated with slim silver Christmas trees and white fairy lights. Everything was just about perfect, apart from the mistletoe hung at strategic places—like right over her head, Lucy noticed, moving away.

She avoided mistletoe like the plague. It reminded her too much of the snooty golf club where her parents had decided she would snare a wealthy husband from the unappealing specimens on offer. The golf club always had mistletoe bristling from every corner at Christmas parties so that even the most committed singleton was bound to be caught out at some point, and Lucy neither wanted nor needed a husband, let alone the palaver that went with being a golf-club wife.

She got along fine by herself, and had almost managed to convince herself that her choice of veterinary science with a specialism in roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-down-in-the-muck equine medicine was a rebellion against the cake-making classes her mother had insisted she take in preparation for becoming the ‘perfect wife’. The irony of Lucy wanting to work with horses, specifically in the polo world, renowned for being the mothership of snobbery, hadn’t escaped her. But at least she could bake a cake and eat it while she laughed.

Her thoughts were meandering, Lucy realised, which meant it was time to go home. She should try to get some rest before the Acosta Christmas party tomorrow, but the excitement would probably keep her awake all night anyway, and she did love these rare moments of quiet and solitude—