The Italian's Blackmailed Mistress

What have we got for you in Harlequin Presents books this month? Some of the most gorgeous men you’re ever likely to meet!

With His Royal Love-Child, Lucy Monroe brings you another installment in her gripping and emotional trilogy, ROYAL BRIDES; Prince Marcello Scorsolini has a problem—his mistress is pregnant! Meanwhile, in Jane Porter’s sultry, sexy new story, The Sheikh’s Disobedient Bride, Tally is being held captive in Sheikh Tair’s harem…because he intends to tame her! If it’s a Mediterranean tycoon that you’re hoping for, Jacqueline Baird has just the guy for you in The Italian’s Blackmailed Mistress: Max Quintano, ruthless in his pursuit of Sophie, whom he’s determined to bed using every means at his disposal! In Sara Craven’s Wife Against Her Will, Darcy Langton is stunned when she finds herself engaged to businessman Joel Castille—traded as part of a business merger! The glamour continues with For Revenge…Or Pleasure?—the latest title in our popular miniseries FOR LOVE OR MONEY, written by Trish Morey, truly is romance on the red carpet! If it’s a classic read you’re after, try His Secretary Mistress by Chantelle Shaw. She pens her first sensual and heartwarming story for the Presents line with a tall, dark and handsome British hero, whose feisty yet vulnerable secretary tries to keep a secret about her private life that he won’t appreciate.

Check out www.eHarlequin.com for a list of recent Presents books! Enjoy!

He’s got her firmly in his sights and she’s got only one chance of survival—surrender to his blackmail…and him…in his bed!

Bedded by… Blackmail

The big miniseries from Harlequin Presents®.

Dare you read it?

JACQUELINE BAIRD was born and raised in Northumbria, U.K. She met her husband when she was eighteen. Eight years later, after many adventures around the world, she came home and married him. They still live in Northumbria and have two grown-up sons.

Jacqueline’s number one passion is writing. She has always been an avid reader and she had her first success as a writer at the age of eleven, when she won first prize in the Nature Diary of the Year competition at school. But she always felt a little guilty because her diary was more fiction than fact.

She always loved romance novels and when her sons went to school all day, she thought she would try writing one. She’s been writing for the Harlequin Presents line ever since, and she still gets a thrill every time a new book is published.

When Jacqueline is not busy writing, she likes to spend her time traveling, reading and playing cards. She was a keen sailor until a knee injury ended her sailing days, but she still enjoys swimming in the sea when the weather allows.

She visits a gym three times a week and has made the surprising discovery that she gets some good ideas while doing the mind-numbingly boring exercises on the cycling and weight machines.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

MAXIMILIAN ANDREA QUINTANO—Max to his friends—walked out of the bathroom wearing only a pair of navy silk boxer shorts. Just the effort of bending to pull them on had made his head spin. He needed air and, walking out onto the balcony that ran the length of the suite, he willed the pain behind his eyes to vanish. It was his own fault. It had been his thirty-first birthday two days ago, and although Max owned a penthouse in Rome and a house in Venice, he had done what was expected of him and spent the day at the family estate in Tuscany with his father, stepmother, Lisa, and other family members.

But on his return to Rome yesterday, after he had taken his yearly medical exam for insurance purposes, he’d met up with his best friend Franco and a few others from his university days for lunch. The party that had ensued had ended up with Franco belatedly remembering his wife was expecting him home in Sicily. Max, due to fly there the next day anyway, had agreed to accompany Franco to the island to carry on the party there.

Finally, at four-thirty in the morning and feeling much the worse for wear, Max had got a taxi to the Quintano Hotel, the hotel he was scheduled to arrive at that same afternoon in place of his father.

Ever since Max’s grandfather had built his first hotel on the island, before relocating the family to Tuscany, it had become a tradition for the Quintano family to holiday at the Sicilian hotel during the month of August. For the last decade Max had rarely visited, leaving it to his brother Paulo and the rest of the family to carry on the tradition.

A deep frown suddenly creased Max’s broad brow as he thought of his older brother’s tragic death in a car accident just four months ago. When Paulo had enthusiastically entered the family business and become a top hotelier, Max had been given the freedom to pursue his own interests, and he knew he owed his brother a lot.