Married By Christmas
Made to marry! Lilli had drunk just a little too much champagne. However, barely three months had passed since her world had been rocked by trauma. She remembered allowing herself to be taken away from the party by devastatingly handsome banker Patrick Devlin… but how had she come to wake up the next morning in his bed?Whether or not they'd become lovers, Patrick wasn't about to let Lilli forget it. He vowed that she'd marry him within a month. The fact that only Patrick could save Lilli's father's chain of hotels from going bust meant that she had no choice - she would become Patrick's bride by Christmas!
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She was not going to marry Patrick. Devlin!About the AuthorBooks by Carole MortimerTitle PageCHAPTER ONECHAPTER TWOCHAPTER THREECHAPTER FOURCHAPTER FIVECHAPTER SIXCHAPTER SEVENCHAPTER EIGHTCHAPTER NINECHAPTER TENCHAPTER ELEVENCHAPTER TWELVECopyright
She was not going to marry Patrick. Devlin!
He was mad. Completely. Utterly insane!
His mouth quirked with amusement as he saw those emotions flashing across her expressive face. “A month, Lilli,” he told her softly. “You will be my wife within the month.”
Lilli looked up at him frowning; his gaze was enigmatic now. He sounded so sure of himself, so calmly certain....
CAROLE MORTIMER says: “I was born in England, the youngest of three children—I have two older brothers. I started writing in 1978, and have now written over ninety books for Harlequin Presents>®.
“I have four sons—Matthew, Joshua, Timothy and Peter—and a bearded collie dog called Merlyn. I’m in a very happy relationship with Peter Senior; we’re best friends as well as lovers, which is probably the best recipe for a successful relationship. We live on the Isle of Man.”
Books by Carole Mortimer
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1929—A MARRIAGE TO REMEMBER 1966—THE DIAMOND BRIDE 1977—JOINED BY MARRIAGE
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CHAPTER ONE
‘WHO is that gorgeous-looking man over there?’ Sally gushed eagerly at Lilli’s side.
Until that moment, Lilli had been staring sightlessly at a barman across the room as he quickly and efficiently served drinks to the multitude of people attending what had so far been a pretty boring party.
Or maybe it wasn’t the party that was boring; maybe it was just Lilli who felt slightly out of sync with the rest of the people here: if the babble of noise was anything to go by they were having such a good time.
She hadn’t attended a party like this in such a long while, and so much had happened in the preceding months. Once upon a time, she acknowledged, she would have thought this was a great party too, would have been at the centre of whatever was going on, but tonight—well, tonight she felt like a total outsider, rather as the only sober person in a room full of inebriates must feel. Except she had already consumed several glasses of champagne herself, so that wasn’t the reason she felt so out of touch with this crowd with which she had once spent so much time.
As for gorgeous men, the house was full of them—gorgeous and rich. When Geraldine Simms threw a party, this a pre-Christmas one, only the rich and beautiful were invited to attend, in their hundreds. Geraldine’s house, in a fashionable part of London, was as huge and prepossessing as its neighbours, and tonight it was bursting at the seams with bejewelled women and handsome men.
Lilli dragged her gaze away from the efficient barman, obviously hired for the evening. It was time she looked away anyway—the man had obviously noticed her attention several minutes ago, and, from the speculative look in his eyes, believed he had made a conquest! He couldn’t have been further from the truth; the last thing Lilli was interested in was a fling with any man, let alone someone as transient as a hired barman!
‘What gorgeous man?’ she asked Sally without interest. Sally was the one who had persuaded her to come in the first place, on the basis that a Geraldine Simms party, an event that only happened twice a year, was a party not to be missed.
‘Over by the door—Oh, damn it, he’s disappeared again!’ Sally frowned her irritation. She was a petite blonde, with a beauty that could stop a man in his tracks, the black dress she almost wore doing little to forestall this.
Lilli had met her several years ago, during the usual round of parties, and, because neither of them had any interest in becoming permanently entangled with any of the handsome men they encountered, they often found themselves spending the evening together laughing at some of the antics of the other women around them as they cast out their nets and secured some unsuspecting man for the evening. Rather a cruel occupation, really, but it had got Lilli and Sally through many a tedious occasion.
‘He must be gorgeous if you’ve taken an interest,’ Lilli said dryly, attracting more than her own fair share of admiring glances as she stood tall and slender next to Sally, her hair long and straight to her waist, as black as a raven’s wing, eyes cool and green in a gaminely beautiful face, the strapless above-knee-length red dress that she wore clinging to the perfection of her body. Her legs were long and shapely, still tanned from the summer months, the red high-heeled shoes she wore only adding to her height—and to the impression of unobtainable aloofness that she had practised to perfection over the years.
‘Oh, he is,’ Sally assured her, still searching the crowd for the object of her interest. ‘He makes all the other men here look like callow, narcissistic youths. He—Oh, damn,’ she swore impatiently. ‘Oh, well,’ she sighed, turning back to Lilli with a rueful grimace. ‘That was fun while it lasted!’ She sipped her champagne.
