At The Italian's Command

A warm welcome to all our readers; it’s cold outside, but the books Harlequin Presents has got for you in January will leave you positively glowing!

Raise your temperature with two right royal reads! The Sheikh’s Innocent Bride, by top author Lynne Graham, whisks you away to the blazing dunes of the desert in a classic tale of a proud sheikh’s desire for the young woman employed to clean his castle. Meanwhile, Robyn Donald is back with another compelling Bagaton story in The Royal Baby Bargain, the latest installment in her immensely popular New Zealand-based BY ROYAL COMMAND miniseries.

Want the thermostat turned up? Then why not travel with us to the glorious Greek islands, where Bought by the Greek Tycoon, by favorite author Jacqueline Baird, promises searing emotional scenes and nights of blistering passion, and Susan Stephens’s Virgin for Sale—the first title in our steamy new miniseries UNCUT—sees an uptight businesswoman learning what it is to feel pleasure in the hands of a real man!

For Cathy Williams fans, there’s a new winter warmer: in At the Italian’s Command, the heart of a notoriously cool, workaholic tycoon is finally melted by a frumpy but feisty journalist. And try turning the pages of rising star Melanie Milburne’s latest release—Back in her Husband’s Bed, about a marriage rekindled in sunny Sydney, Australia, is almost too hot to handle!

For a full list of titles and book numbers, see inside the front cover (opposite)—and enjoy!

She’s his in the bedroom,

but he can’t buy her love…

Showered with diamonds, draped in exquisite

lingerie, whisked around the world…

The ultimate fantasy becomes a reality.

Live the dream with more

MISTRESS TO A MILLIONAIRE titles by your favorite authors.

Available only in Harlequin Presents^>®

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Cathy was born in the West Indies and has been writing Harlequin romances for over fifteen years. She is a great believer in the power of perseverance as she had never written anything before and from the starting point of zero has now fulfilled her ambition to pursue this most enjoyable of careers. She would encourage any would-be writer to have faith and go for it!

She loves the beautiful Warwickshire countryside where she lives with her husband and three children, Charlotte, Olivia and Emma. When not writing she is hard-pressed to find a moment’s free time in between the millions of household chores, not to mention being a one-woman taxi service for her daughters’ never-ending social lives.

She derives inspiration from the hot, lazy, tropical island of Trinidad (where she was born), from the peaceful countryside of middle England and, of course, from her many friends, who are a rich source of plots and are particularly garrulous when it comes to describing her heroes. It would seem from their complaints that tall, dark and charismatic men are too few and far between! Her hope is to continue writing romance fiction and providing those eternal tales of love for which, she feels, we all strive.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EIGHT-THIRTY on a Sunday evening. Rafe heard the phone ring next to where he was sitting, in the room that had once been a library and was now his office away from the office. Global deals had no respect for English working hours, and Sundays were never days of rest for him. They were simply time when he could catch up with whatever needed doing, make calls to Australia, make sure, in essence, that everything was ticking over nicely.

Furthermore, he knew who would be on the other end of the line.

With a little sigh of half pleasure, half frustration, he picked up the receiver and as he’d predicted heard his mother’s voice on the other end of the line.

‘You’re working, Rafael. Aren’t you? You’re in that office of yours working. You shouldn’t be working on a Sunday. How many times have I told you that?’

‘Hullo, Mother.’ He smiled into the telephone, pushed his leather chair away from the desk and swivelled round, bringing the phone with him, so that he could stare out of the window. In the depths of winter, there wasn’t much to see outside, just the vague shapes of his back garden, which was large for a London house but small in comparison to the acres of land on which he had grown up. ‘How are you?’

‘I, Rafael, am fine. You, on the other hand, are heading for high blood pressure and an early grave.’

‘Thank you for that.’ He grinned and ran his fingers through his short, dark hair. ‘Never let it be said that a businessman’s life isn’t fraught with danger.’

He listened abstractedly as Claudia Loro continued more or less in the same vein for a few minutes, lecturing to him about his lifestyle, asking him about his health and punctuating his answers with pointed clucking and elaborate sighs. It was a familiar routine and one that he accepted with good-natured tolerance. He would never have allowed any other woman to preach to him about his life, and some had made the mistake of trying in the past, but his mother was different. He listened, even if he chose to ignore most of her advice.