Mills & Boon® Romance brings you a freshnew story from Australian author
Ally Blake
Indulge yourself with this vibrant,witty and fabulously flirtatious novel!
Praise for Allyâs Romances:
âThis book speaks not only to your imagination
but also to your heart, it goes that extra mile and gives the reader what they craveâromanceâ¦â âCataromance on MEANT-TO-BE MOTHER
âAlly Blakeâs MILLIONAIRE TO THE RESCUE has
a solid plot with a built-in conflict, and features two well-handled characters with a lot of chemistry.â âRomantic Times BOOKreviews
Having once been a professional cheerleader, Ally Blakeâs motto is âSmile and the world smiles with you.â One way to make Ally smile is by sending her on holidaysâespecially to locations which inspire her writing. New York and Italy are by far her favourite destinations. Other things that make her smile are the gracious city of Melbourne, the gritty Collingwood football team, and her gorgeous husband Mark
Reading romance novels was a smile-worthy pursuit from long back. So, with such valuable preparation already behind her, she wrote and sold her first book. Her career as a writer also gives her a perfectly reasonable excuse to indulge in her stationery addiction. That alone is enough to keep her grinning every day!
Ally would love you to visit her at her website www.allyblake.com
Ally Blake also writes for Modern Heatâ¢!
Recent books by the same author:
FALLING FOR THE REBEL HEIR
(Romance) THE MAGNATEâS INDECENT PROPOSAL (Modern Heatâ¢)
Dear Reader
Locations play a huge part in my stories, and for that I only have my home town of Melbourne to blame. Take this story, for exampleâ¦
On the very day I planned to sit down and decide what my next book would be about I received an invitation to attend an art auction in which a friend of mine had a painting listed. It sounded like too much fun to pass up, and I wasnât disappointed. The gallery was slick and glossy, the inhabitants even more so. The prices on the artworks took my breath away. And the hushed chatter over pink champagne and catalogues created enough energy to give a girl serious goose-bumps. Within five minutes there was no doubt where I would be setting my next book: Melbourneâs High Street, Armadale.
High Street is a long thoroughfare, bordered by mature trees light on delicate foliage, cluttered by four-wheel drives, imported luxury cars and clattering trams, and famous for its run of graceful antiques shops and auction houses.
My darling hero, Mitch Hanover, grew from this sophisticated location without my breaking a sweat. All I had to do was throw in Veronica Bing, a flashy, exuberant, rebellious heroine, who would make the elegant people of Armadale and my Mitch stand up and take notice. My beautiful Melbourne did the rest.
If you can, do visit her one day. If you canât, I only hope my books make you feel as though you have.
Ally
www.allyblake.com
I wholeheartedly dedicate this tome to
Mark, Leon, Beverley, Susan, Leith, Dennis and Alli, without whom my gorgeous little girl might never have brightened my world.
CHAPTER ONE
WHEN Veronica Bing was a little girl, her grand plan in life was to have blue eyes and blonde hair.
Long blonde hair down to her waist and the kind of baby-blue eyes that made a girl able to get away with anything. And to be a fairy princess with wings. And braces on her teeth and divorced parents as all the kids at school had them. Oh, and sheâd wanted a hot-pink car.
Not too much to ask, right?
Instead, her hair had grown thick, wavy and dark, and after six months in her late teens, when sheâd fulfilled her lifelong dream of being blonde, sheâd realised sheâd looked like a fruitcake and gone back to her natural brunette. Alas her eyes had also remained muddy brown from shortly after she was born and sheâd had to learn to find other ways to get what she wanted.
The wings had never appeared. In fact, sheâd soon discovered she was allergic to flyingâif nausea, sweating palms and shortness of breath could be classed as signs of an allergy. Funnily enough mangoes, apricots and tall, dark handsome men who saw her as the answer to all their connubial dreams produced the same symptoms. Hence the fact that she as yet remained prince-free, making the princess dream also null and void.
Her teeth had grown spectacularly well, unfortunately without help of braces. And as sheâd been a happy accident, a late and only child of Don and Phyllis Bing whoâd been about to hit their fifties at the time she was born and by that stage had been married thirty years already, her parents had never divorced. Instead her father had died of a heart attack while Veronica was still in high school and her mother had taken her time passing away from a broken heart. Though the medicos had claimed it was Alzheimerâs, Veronica had left university to care for her mum and thus knew better.
And as to the hot-pink car? Well, one out of seven wasnât bad!