Misbehaving Under the Mistletoe: On the First Night of Christmas... / Secrets of the Rich & Famous / Truth-Or-Date.com
’Tis the season to be naughty…ON THE FIRST NIGHT OF CHRISTMAS…Christmas is all about fun, so Cassie is throwing caution to the wind to find herself a bad-boy-turned-billionaire for a just-for-Christmas fling! Jace Ryan is the perfect candidate, but she only has one rule: Do not start falling in love…SECRETS OF THE RICH & FAMOUSCan anyone bag a Chelsea millionaire? Journalist Jen Brown is going to find out! With delicious billionaire Alex Hammond on her arm, Jen is ready for all the glam Christmas parties she’s blagged her way into. But is it just perks of the job when she finds herself kissing Alex under the mistletoe?TRUTH-OR-DATE.COMWhen Andromeda Davies meets Miles Gibson, she’s blown away by their intense connection! But irresistible ‘lust-at-first-sight’ has a habit of getting complicated… especially around Christmas!
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Misbehaving Under the Mistletoe
On the First Night of Christmas…
Heidi Rice
Secrets of the Rich & Famous
Charlotte Phillips
Truth-Or-Date.com
Nina Harrington
Table of Contents
On the First Night of Christmas…
Secrets of the Rich & Famous
HEIDI RICE was born and bred and still lives in London. She has two sons who love to bicker, a wonderful husband who, luckily for everyone, has loads of patience, and a supportive and ever-growing British/French/Irish/American family. As much as Heidi adores London, she also loves America, and every two years or so she and her best friend leave hubby and kids behind and Thelma and Louise it across the States for a couple of weeks (although they always leave out the driving off a cliff bit). She’s been a film buff since her early teens and a romance junkie for almost as long. She indulged her first love by being a film reviewer for ten years. Then a few years ago she decided to spice up her life by writing romance. Discovering the fantastic sisterhood of romance writers (both published and unpublished) in Britain and America made it a wild and wonderful journey to her first Mills & Boon>® novel. Heidi loves to hear from readers—you can e-mail her at [email protected], or visit her website, www.heidi-rice.com.
To my Mum and Dad,
for so many wonderful Christmas memories
IF ONLY my love life were as perfect as Selfridges at Christmas.
Cassie Fitzgerald let out a wistful sigh as she gazed at the explosion of festive bling in the iconic London store’s window display. The Sugar Plum Fairy sparkled flirtatiously on the shoulder of a hunky mannequin dressed in a dinner suit, silver snowflake lights making her tiny wings twinkle. Cassie’s heart lifted. Selfridges’ Christmas window dressing never let you down. It always captured the hope and expectation of the season of goodwill so beautifully. And okay, maybe her love life wasn’t perfect—in fact, it was non-existent—but that was still a big improvement on last year.
A frown creased Cassie’s brow as she recalled the Christmas wish she’d made the year before while standing in front of Selfridges—involving Lance, her boyfriend of three years, and a proposal of marriage.
She wrinkled her nose in disgust, the frozen air making it tingle, as her mind conjured up the image of Lance and Tracy McGellan getting up close and pornographic on the sofa in Cassie’s flat a month after Valentine’s Day. A month after Cassie had accepted that wished-for proposal.
Colour hit her cheeks as she remembered her shock and disbelief, swiftly followed by the shame of her own idiocy.
What on earth had possessed her to agree to marry a deadbeat like Lance?
As Christmas wishes went, it was one of her worst. Right up there with wishing for a pair of inline skates when she was eight—which had resulted in a broken wrist and four hours in Accident and Emergency on Christmas Day. Marriage to Lance would have been worse, but in her typically romantic fashion she’d overlooked all his shortcomings, determined to convince herself that he was The One.
Cassie hunched her shoulders against the brisk winter wind. From now on she was going to stop looking at life through rose-tinted glasses … because all it did was blind her to reality. And she wasn’t making a Christmas wish this year, because it might come true.
It would be a shame not to have anyone to wake up with this Christmas morning—and she’d been in a funk about it for days. She adored bounding out of bed, brewing a pot of spiced apple tea and then savouring the presents artfully arranged under the tree. Having to do all that alone wasn’t quite the same.
But as her best friend Nessa had pointed out, Cassie was better off doing it alone than with Lance the Loser. Cassie huddled in her coat. Absorbing the bright sparkle of Sugar Plum and her beau, she let the thought of her lucky escape from Lance strengthen her resolve.
‘What you need is a candy man—to give your girly bits a wake-up call. Then you wouldn’t need another deadbeat boyfriend.’
Cassie’s lips edged up as she recalled Nessa’s use-him-then-lose-him advice when they’d chatted on the phone that morning. Sometimes she really wished she could be as pragmatic about sex as Nessa. If she could just take sex a little less seriously, maybe she could have some fun without getting tangled up with creeps like Lance.
