KIM LAWRENCE - Secret Baby, Convenient Wife

Welcome to the new collection of Harlequin Presents!

Don’t miss contributions from favorite authors Michelle Reid, Kim Lawrence and Susan Napier, as well as the second part of Jane Porter’s THE DESERT KINGS series, Lucy Gordon’s passionate Italian, Chantelle Shaw’s Tuscan tycoon and Jennie Lucas’s sexy Spaniard! And look out for Trish Wylie’s brilliant debut Presents book, Her Bedroom Surrender!

We’d love to hear what you think about Harlequin Presents. E-mail us at Presents@hmb.co.uk or join in the discussions at www.iheartpresents.com and www.sensationalromance.blogspot.com, where you’ll also find more information about books and authors!

Harlequin Presents ®

ITALIAN

HUSBANDS

They’re tall, dark…and ready to marry!

If you love reading about our sensual Italian men, don’t delay, look out for the next story in this great miniseries!

ITALIAN HUSBANDS

TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

Though lacking much authentic Welsh blood, KIM LAWRENCE—from English/Irish stock—was born and brought up in north Wales. She returned there when she married, and her sons were both born on Anglesey, an island off the coast. Though not isolated, Anglesey is a little off the beaten track, but lively Dublin, which Kim loves, is only a short ferry ride away.

Today they live on the farm her husband was brought up on. Welsh is the first language of many people in this area and Kim’s husband and sons are all bilingual. She is having a lot of fun, not to mention a few headaches, trying to learn the language!

With small children, she thought the unsocial hours of nursing weren’t too attractive, so, encouraged by a husband who thinks she can do anything she sets her mind to, Kim tried her hand at writing. Always a keen Harlequin reader, she felt it was natural for her to write a romance novel. Now she can’t imagine doing anything else.

She is a keen gardener and cook, and enjoys running—often on the beach because, living on an island, the sea is never very far away. She is usually accompanied by her Jack Russell, Sprout—don’t ask, it’s a long story!

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

EPILOGUE

DERVLA’S skirt lifted in the updraft as the helicopter carrying their guests lifted off. Her husband—it had taken her three months before she could use the term even in the privacy of her own thoughts—laughed huskily, his dark eyes glinting with amusement as he watched her frenzied efforts to smooth the fabric back down modestly over her thighs.

She gave him a half-hearted glare, avoiding prolonged exposure to those mocking eyes because mingled in with the amusement was a glint of insolent sexual challenge that made her hand shake slightly as she lifted it to smooth her tousled red hair into a semblance of order—never an easy objective to achieve where her wayward pre-Raphaelite curls were concerned.

Gianfranco made no attempt to restore order to his own mussed dark hair, but he looked gorgeous anyway.

With his glorious vibrant Mediterranean colouring, dark fallen-angel features and six-foot-five lean, muscle-packed frame, Gianfranco Bruni could not not look gorgeous if he tried!

Gorgeous in a way that triggered a hot hormonal rush and made the muscles low in Dervla’s pelvis tighten when she looked at him; gorgeous in a way that never failed to make her throat tighten with emotion she had no trouble putting a name to—but she didn’t!

While not mentioning love had not been included in their marriage vows, it might as well have been because Gianfranco had made his own feelings on the subject crystal-clear when he had proposed.

He had proposed!

Now how bizarre was that?

Gianfranco arched a darkly delineated brow and looked down at her, one corner of his wide sensual mouth lifting in a teasing half-smile. ‘What does that enigmatic little smile mean, cara mia?’

Dervla shivered as he traced the curve of her mouth with the pad of one long brown finger and tilted her face up to his like a flower seeking sunlight. She turned her flushed cheek into the curve of his hand as she looked at him through her lashes, marvelling at the perfect symmetry of his slashing cheekbones, velvety dark eyes and sensually sculpted lips.

‘I just have to pinch myself sometimes. It all seems so surreal.’

His darkly delineated brows drew together above his aquiline nose. ‘And bruise such perfect flawless skin?’ he said, allowing his finger to drop, trailing sensuously down over the pale flesh of her neck until it came to rest in the pulse spot at the base of her throat.

Dervla swallowed as the slumberous heat in his dark eyes made her wildly sensitive stomach flip and her heartbeat stumble and quicken.

‘I can’t think straight when you look at me like that and we still have a guest, Gianfranco,’ she protested, her heart skipping another beat as his wicked smile flashed, deepening the sexy creases around his bold dark eyes.

‘Carla?’ Frowning at the reminder, he dismissed his distant cousin with an eloquent shrug of one shoulder. ‘I don’t know why you invited her anyway. It was meant to be a weekend to catch up with Angelo and Kate.’

The gentle reproach made Dervla’s green eyes widen in incredulity.

‘Me invite her?’ Not only had Gianfranco issued the invitation to the gorgeous brunette, but he’d forgotten to even mention it to her!

So when the older woman had appeared looking her usual immaculately groomed self with an amount of luggage that had seemed to Dervla more appropriate to a two-month luxury cruise than an informal weekend in the country, Dervla had had to think on her feet and pretend she knew all about it.

And Gianfranco himself had not exactly helped the situation when, on heaving himself dripping from the pool, he had found the older woman watching him through her designer shades.

His, ‘What are you doing here, Carla?’ had not exactly oozed warmth and welcome!

Actually he’d said it in Italian, but Dervla’s command of the language had progressed to the point where she could even get the gist of fairly rapid conversations. She despaired of her accent, but Gianfranco had promised her it was extremely sexy.

Dervla didn’t entirely believe him, but it was always flattering to be told you were sexy, especially by a man who was lusted after by every female under ninety that came in contact with him!

‘I know you two are friendly, but I would like my wife to myself sometimes.’

Friendly?

Dervla felt a spasm of guilt. She ought to think of Gianfranco’s cousin as a friend; the other woman had gone out of her way to make Dervla feel at home when she had arrived.

If it hadn’t been for Carla’s tactful suggestions she could have made a number of painful faux pas—actually she’d made them anyway, but that was because she didn’t always accept the older woman’s very good advice.

It had been Carla who had supplied the identity of the gorgeous, nubile young woman who had plastered herself against Gianfranco as they did a circuit of the dance floor when everyone else she had asked changed the subject or pleaded ignorance.

Carla had explained about the blonde’s on/off relationship with Gianfranco. It seemed that they picked up the threads of their relationship when it suited them both.

‘More of a habit than a relationship, really,’ she observed dismissively.

Habits, Dervla thought, watching Gianfranco’s ex-girlfriend trail her scarlet fingertips down his lapel before drawing his face down to kiss his lips, were hard to break.

Even if you wanted to, and she wasn’t sure in the early days Gianfranco did!

Carla advised her not to bring up the subject.

‘You really mustn’t feel insecure about it, Dervla, because I’m sure he would never disrespect you by being unfaithful.’

Carla was the only one who didn’t clam up when she mentioned Sara, Gianfranco’s first wife and mother of his son.

‘He adored her,’ Carla confided when she walked into a room and saw Dervla staring at a framed portrait by a famous photographer of a newborn Alberto in the arms of his mother, who had the serene look of a glowing Madonna.

Not exactly news, but it had made Dervla’s spirits sink like a lead weight anyway.

If she considered anyone a friend here in Italy it really ought to be Carla. Yet somehow she never felt totally easy in the Italian woman’s sophisticated company.

Maybe, she mused, it was because of the incident just after her move to Tuscany when she had still been feeling totally out of her depth and insecure.

Understandable really—Dervla had been less philosophical about the mix-up at the time—that a person would assume that Carla was Gianfranco’s wife. The stylish Italian woman was the sort of person you expected to find married to an incredibly attractive Italian billionaire.

But he chose me, she reminded herself, sticking out her chin in an attitude of defiance.

‘We should get back to the house. Carla’s on her own.’ She caught her lower lip between her teeth and grimaced. ‘I think we’ve neglected her a bit this weekend,’ she reflected guiltily.

The moment Angelo and Kate had arrived the two men had exchanged their suits for jeans and tee shirts and headed out onto the hills on horseback while Angelo’s heavily pregnant wife had understandably been pretty much unable to talk about much else but pregnancy and birth.

‘Carla’s not really a woman who feels comfortable in the company of other women,’ Dervla mused, thinking how the other woman became more animated when a man walked into a room—which made her efforts to seek out Dervla all the more considerate. ‘And she definitely doesn’t like baby talk,’ she added, recalling the other woman’s glazed expression and yawns.

Gianfranco threaded his thumbs into the belt loops of his jeans and turned his squinting regard on the panoramic view of the valley, drawing her a little to one side as they joined the path through the trees that led back to the house.

‘But were you all right with it?’ His eyes swivelled towards her, the expression in the dark depths concealed from her by the sweep of his ebony lashes. ‘All the baby talk?’

Not fooled by his casual tone, Dervla knew exactly what Gianfranco was really wondering.

Was being around the heavily pregnant and glowing Kate a painful reminder of her own infertility? Did it make her mourn for the child she could never carry for the man she loved?

If she had been being strictly honest about the subject—which she never was, not even to herself—Dervla would have had to reply yes to his question. Or she would have, but, fingers crossed, things had changed. Excitement fizzed up inside her and she quickly lowered her lashes like a shield, because she knew he would see the hope she felt sure was shining in her eyes.