The Wrong Wife

“Be My Bride. Live With Me. Let Me...Take Care Of You.”Letter to ReaderTitle PageAbout the AuthorDedicationChapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter FourChapter FiveChapter SixChapter SevenChapter EightChapter NineChapter TenChapter ElevenChapter TwelveEpilogueCopyright

“Be My Bride. Live With Me. Let Me...Take Care Of You.”

“You just don’t want to admit you made a mistake,” Cassie said, her voice husky. “You think because you’re married, however...accidental that marriage was, you should stay married. Stubborn.”

“Consistent,” Gideon corrected.

“But you don’t want to be married to me.”

“Don’t I?” When his fingertips made a little circle on her arm, his knuckles grazed the side of her breast.

Oh my. “Gideon? I have to know what you want from this marriage.” Sex? she thought wildly. Was sex enough to begin a marriage with? Could she accept it if that was an he wanted from her?

Could she refuse?

Dear Reader,

A sexy fire fighter, a crazy cat and a dynamite heroine—that’s what you’ll find in Lucy and the Loner, Elizabeth Bevarly’s wonderful MAN OF THE MONTH. It’s the next in her installment of THE FAMILY McCORMICK series, and it’s also a MAN OF THE MONTH book you’ll never forget—warm, humorous and very sexy!

A story from Lass Small is always a delight, and Chancy’s Cowboy is Lass at her most marvelous. Don’t miss out as Chancy decides to take some lessons in love from a handsome hunk of a cowboy!

Eileen Wilks’s latest, The Wrong Wife, is chock-full with the sizzling tension and compelling reading that you’ve come to expect from this rising Desire star. And so many of you know and love Barbara McCauley that she needs no introduction, but this month’s The Nanny and the Reluctant Rancher is sure to both please her current fans...and win her new readers!

Suzannah Davis is another new author that we’re excited about, and Dr. Holt and the Texan may just be her best book to date! And the month is completed with a delightful romp from Susan Carroll, Parker and the Gypsy.

There’s something for everyone. So come and relish the romantic variety you’ve come to expect from Silhouette Desire!

Lucia Macro

And the Editors at Silhouette Desire

Please address questions and book requests to:

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The Wrong Wife

Eileen Wilks

EILEEN WILKS

is a fifth-generation Texan. Her great-great-grandmother came to Texas in a covered wagon shortly after the end of the Civil War—excuse us, the War Between the States. But she’s not a full-blooded Texan. Right after another war, her Texan father fell for a Yankee woman. This obviously mismatched pair proceeded to travel to nine cities in three countries in the first twenty years of their marriage, raising two kids and innumerable dogs and cats along the way. For the next twenty years they stayed put, back home in Texas again—and still together.

Eileen figures her professional career matches her nomadic upbringing, since she tried everything from drafting to a brief stint as a ranch hand—raising two children and any number of cats and dogs along the way. Not until she started writing did she “stay put,” because that’s when she knew she’d come home.

This one is for my mother,

wherever she is on her journey

One

There was a head on the pillow next to hers.

Cassandra O’Grady blinked sleepily at the back of a man’s head so close to her own. She wasn’t alarmed by the sight. Cassie never felt much of anything except reluctance when a new day first forced itself on her. If she’d been capable of thinking yet, though, she might have been amazed at how little she grudged opening her eyes this morning.

She knew that head. But whose leg was cuddled so cozily between hers?

That question had an important ring to it. Cassie’s three functioning brain cells—the ones left on, like a night-light, to lead her back to wakefulness—stirred with feeble interest. She blinked and managed to frown.

It was a nice head. Not too round or square or oblong. Just right. The hair covering it in back, her present viewing angle, was nice, too—soft and thick. In the early-morning light, with the rest of the world’s colors just starting to wake, that hair held on to the darkness of midnight. Cassie’s frown softened into a smile.

Morning, afternoon or night, Gideon’s hair was beautiful.

Gideon?

Cassie actually felt her heart start. It made a sudden jump and then began to thump so obviously against the wall of her chest, that she understood that the ignition had just been turned on and the accelerator pressed.

Gideon. Gideon Wilde. That was Gideon’s head lying on a pillow eight inches from her own.

Oh, yes, she knew the shape of his head, the darkness of his hair and the way his short, no-nonsense haircut left the nape of his neck bare. And those were his wide shoulders flowing into the strong lines of his back, lines she’d sketched only from memory because she couldn’t let him know his body fascinated her. That was Gideon’s back, because Gideon was lying on his stomach beside her in this large, strange bed, stretched out like the big cat she’d often thought he resembled. And though her line of sight didn’t go any farther, like beneath the sheet, logic suggested that the leg pressed so intimately between hers belonged to Gideon, too. Gideon’s strong, hairy, muscular thigh pressed right up against—