Modern Romance March 2019 5-8
About the Authors
KIM LAWRENCE lives on a farm in Anglesey with her university lecturer husband, assorted pets who arrived as strays and never left, and sometimes one or both of her boomerang sons. When she’s not writing she loves to be outdoors gardening, or walking on one of the beaches for which the island is famous—along with being the place where Prince William and Catherine made their first home!
PIPPA ROSCOE lives in Norfolk near her family and makes daily promises to herself that this is the day she’ll leave the computer to take a long walk in the countryside. She can’t remember a time when she wasn’t dreaming about handsome heroes and innocent heroines. Totally her mother’s fault, of course—she gave Pippa her first romance to read at the age of seven! She is inconceivably happy that she gets to share those daydreams with you. Follow her on Twitter, @PippaRoscoe.
Canadian DANI COLLINS knew in high school that she wanted to write romance for a living. Twenty-five years later, after marrying her high school sweetheart, having two kids with him, working at several generic office jobs and submitting countless manuscripts, she got The Call. Her first Mills & Boon novel won the Reviewers’ Choice Award for Best First in Series from RT Book Reviews. She now works in her own office, writing romance.
RACHAEL THOMAS has always loved reading romance, and is thrilled to be a Mills & Boon author. She lives and works on a farm in Wales—a far cry from the glamour of a Modern Romance story, but that makes slipping into her characters’ worlds all the more appealing. When she’s not writing, or working on the farm, she enjoys photography and visiting historical castles and grand houses. Visit her at rachaelthomas.co.uk.
Also by Kim Lawrence
Maid for Montero
Captivated by Her Innocence
A Secret Until Now
The Heartbreaker Prince
One Night with Morelli
Her Nine Month Confession
One Night to Wedding Vows
Surrendering to the Italian’s Command
A Ring to Secure His Crown
The Greek’s Ultimate Conquest
A Cinderella for the Desert King
Seven Sexy Sins Collection
The Sins of Sebastian Rey-Defoe
Also by Pippa Roscoe
Conquering His Virgin Queen
The Winners Circle miniseries
A Ring to Take His Revenge
Also by Dani Collins
Bought by Her Italian Boss
The Secret Beneath the Veil
Xenakis’s Convenient Bride
Consequence of His Revenge
Claiming His Christmas Wife
The Wrong Heirs miniseries
The Marriage He Must Keep
The Consequence He Must Claim
The Sauveterre Siblings miniseries
Pursued by the Desert Prince
His Mistress with Two Secrets
Bound by the Millionaire’s Ring
Prince’s Son of Scandal
Bound to the Desert King collection
Sheikh’s Princess of Convenience
Also by Rachael Thomas
From One Night to Wife
New Year at the Boss’s Bidding
To Blackmail a Di Sione
The Sheikh’s Last Mistress
A Child Claimed by Gold
Di Marcello’s Secret Son
Married for the Italian’s Heir
Hired to Wear the Sheikh’s Ring
A Ring to Claim His Legacy
Convenient Christmas Brides miniseries
Valdez’s Bartered Bride
Martinez’s Pregnant Wife
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.
Modern Romance Collection March 2019 Books 5-8
A Wedding at the Italian’s Demand
Kim Lawrence
Claimed for the Greek’s Child
Pippa Roscoe
A Virgin to Redeem the Billionaire
Dani Collins
Seducing His Convenient Innocent
Rachael Thomas
www.millsandboon.co.uk
ISBN: 978-1-474-09555-6
MODERN ROMANCE COLLECTION MARCH 2019 BOOKS 5-8
A Wedding at the Italian’s Demand © 2019 Kim Lawrence Claimed for the Greek’s Child © 2019 Pippa Roscoe A Virgin to Redeem the Billionaire © 2019 Dani Collins Seducing His Convenient Innocent © 2019 Rachael Thomas
Published in Great Britain 2019
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk
Version: 2020-03-02
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Table of Contents
Cover
About the Authors
Booklist
Title Page
Copyright
A Wedding at the Italian’s Demand
Back Cover Text
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
EPILOGUE
Claimed for the Greek’s Child
Back Cover Text
Dedication
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EPILOGUE
A Virgin to Redeem the Billionaire
Back Cover Text
Dedication
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EPILOGUE
Seducing His Convenient Innocent
Back Cover Text
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
EPILOGUE
About the Publisher
A Wedding at the Italian’s Demand
Kim Lawrence
“Come back to Italy with me...
...as my fiancée.”
Ivo Greco is determined to claim his orphaned nephew—the infant who will inherit the Greco fortune. To do so, he needs to convince the baby’s legal guardian, fiery Flora Henderson, to wear his ring. But whisking Flora to Tuscany as his fake fiancée comes with a complication...their undeniable chemistry! A permanent marriage was never in the cards for coolheaded Ivo—until now!
Escape to Italy with this engagement of convenience!
CHAPTER ONE
THE LIGHT IN the wide corridor Ivo Greco walked along was muted, but the priceless tapestries that lined the stone walls provided their own glowing illumination as he moved towards the massive double doors of etched glass at the far end. The doors had to stay closed to maintain the carefully controlled humidity and light to preserve the priceless antiques.
They provided a light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel effect, but it was an illusion. Ivo was not expecting any version of a heavenly vision on the other side because the doors led to his grandfather’s private apartments, to which Ivo had been summoned.
His grandfather had actually sent for him forty-eight hours ago, and people did not keep Salvatore Greco waiting!
While Salvatore was on the record as saying he respected people who stood up to him, the reality was that Salvatore, a man who possessed vast wealth and enormous power, also possessed a very fragile ego.
As an eight-year-old, when Salvatore had taken over the guardianship of him and his brother, Ivo had not understood about egos, but he had quickly realised that it was easy to make his grandfather angry.
It had actually been the day before his eighth birthday when Ivo’s father had decided he could no longer live without his late wife. Ivo had found his father’s body and his grandfather had found Ivo.
Amid the horror of that day Ivo remembered the strength in his grandfather’s arms, the sanctuary they had afforded as he had picked Ivo up and taken him away from the scene that had lived on for years in his childish nightmares.
Even as a young boy Ivo had understood that he owed his grandfather a debt impossible to repay, and this knowledge did not disappear when he realised his grandfather was no guardian angel or superhero but a hard, ruthless man, not always fair and almost impossible to please.
But the fact remained that, no matter what he did, Salvatore was the one who had carried Ivo out of his hell. The debt remained, as did the gratitude burnt deep into his soul by the character-changing events of that day. Ivo had long ago stopped trying to please, even though he knew better than most that the old man hated to be thwarted and just how viciously he could react to any perceived insult, real or imagined. A very good reason why the people that surrounded Salvatore rarely disagreed with him, at least to his face.
Ivo was sanguine about the reception he was likely to receive, more bothered about the necessity of postponing a meeting than the tirade of abuse and invective inevitably waiting for him.
A nerve twitched along his hard jawline as, unbidden, a memory floated into his head; he had not always been so philosophical.
It had taken his brother several minutes to coax him out of his hiding place in one of the warren of attics in the palazzo. He couldn’t remember what he had done to outrage his grandparent but he remembered not believing his brother when he had said, ‘Never show him you’re afraid, then one day you won’t be.’
Ivo pushed the memory away, his symmetrical features hardening; the past was gone.
In his view there were few things more pathetic than people who clung onto memories until they became defined by their past. He saw them everywhere, from the people who became fixated on missed opportunities, old hurts and injustices, to the guy who constantly relived his early successes on the sports field, as if lifting a trophy at twenty defined him. All were so consumed with the past that they missed the opportunities that the future offered.
Ivo’s sights were always fixed ahead, though at that moment it was something in the periphery of his vision that caught his attention.
The suited servant, a new face to Ivo, who had shadowed him since he’d entered the building, almost collided with him as Ivo came to an unscheduled halt. Ivo let the man’s apologies slide off him as, head tilted back, he moved backwards to get the full effect of the glowing Byzantine image on the wall, again nearly falling over the man behind who delivered another flustered apology.
‘New?’
‘I’m not sure, sir.’
The response was perfectly polite but under the surface Ivo could almost feel the anxiety rolling off the man and, after one last glance at the wall, he took pity on him. Turning away, he caught sight of a look of relief on the man’s face; it was that look and not his own anxiety that made him quicken his leisurely pace.
Ivo’s personal spaces were minimalist and uncluttered—functional could still be pleasing to the eye or at least his eyes—but he appreciated beauty and artistic talent in many forms. He would have liked to study this testament to the skill of long-dead artisans for longer. The irony, of course, was that his grandfather would not appreciate the beauty.
Salvatore was a famed collector of many rare and precious objects—jade, art, porcelain—but for him it was all about the acquisition. For Salvatore, the pleasure came from possessing what someone else wanted. He might forget the history of an artwork or the name of an artist, but he had a flawless recall of the price he’d paid for any item and the identity of the collectors he outbid.
Once through the doors and into a brighter corridor, thanks to massive windows that revealed breath catching views of the Tyrrhenian Sea that glittered turquoise in the Tuscan morning sun, Ivo turned to his shadow.
‘I think I know my way from here.’
The man hesitated; clearly Ivo’s words clashed with his instructions. He began to bluster but his protests trailed away as Ivo’s dark level stare held his, and after a moment he tipped his head and faded away. Ivo’s grandfather’s private apartments were situated in one of the older parts of the building, taking up all of one of the iconic twelfth-century square towers built by an ancestor. The massive metal banded door to the study was open and Ivo walked straight in. He was prepared; even so he experienced a moment’s disorientation as he stepped over the threshold, feeling as if he’d stepped through some time portal or onto the set of a futuristic film. He almost reached for the designer shades tucked into the pocket of his suit jacket, the antiseptic white and chrome was that dazzling.
Five years earlier his grandfather had ripped out the antique panelling along with the books that had once lined the walls, and the decor was now sleek and modern. Efficient, as his grandfather had said as they’d watched the monitors being mounted on the wall, the only thing left from the past the antique desk that dominated the room.
A half-smile flickered across Ivo’s wide sensual mouth as he recalled the occasion he had casually admitted that he missed the old room, inviting further scorn when he had added he actually liked the smell of musty old books. This had apparently confirmed his grandfather’s suspicion that Ivo was a sentimental fool.
Ivo had accepted the insult with a careless shrug of his wide shoulders, aware that if Salvatore had believed either of these things he would not have given him control of the IT and Communications division of Greco Industries, although given was perhaps the wrong word. When the grand gesture was made his grandfather had not anticipated the role would have any permanence.
His gratitude at the time had been genuine even though Ivo had known that it had been intended as a wing-clipping exercise—the unspoken but universally acknowledged expectation had been that the young upstart would fail; indeed he was meant to fail, publicly.
But Ivo had defied those expectations, denying his grandfather the opportunity to ride to the rescue. A source of frustration to a man who liked to be in control.
And so far, Ivo had been allowed a free hand.
Was that about to change?
He was not given to paranoia but neither was Ivo a believer in coincidence, and the timing of this peremptory summons, coinciding as it did with the ink drying on the new global merger he had negotiated, had raised a few warning bells. Was it significant that this merger would mean the IT division was no longer the poor relation of Greco Industries but able to challenge the leisure, property and construction arms of the company, and even make the jewel in the crown, Greco’s media division, look over their shoulder?
So far Salvatore had been content to bask in the reflected glory of his grandson’s success but maybe that was no longer enough. Was he about to announce he wanted to be more hands on?
Ivo approached the possibility with more curiosity than trepidation. Considering the fact Salvatore was a control freak, this scenario had always been a possibility and Ivo had already decided that, rather than surrender his control, or even share it, he would walk away.
Just looking for an excuse, Ivo?
His dark brows twitching into a frown that drew them into a straight line above his masterful nose, he ignored the sly voice in his head as he cleared his throat.
In reality he knew he would never walk away from his duty, any more than his grandfather had walked away from him. Ivo was not his father, or his brother.
‘Morning, Grandfather.’
Close to eighty, Salvatore Greco remained an imposing figure. There was nothing fragile or infirm about his upright stance, but as he turned to face his grandson Ivo found himself thinking, for the first time in his life, that his grandfather was old.
Maybe it was the morning light shining directly on the older man’s face as he turned, revealing the depth of the lines that grooved his forehead and etched deep the furrows carved from his nose to the downward-turning corners of his thin mouth.
The line of silent speculation vanished the moment the older man began to speak, as did pretty much every other thought. There was definitely no hint of age or softness in his voice as he delivered his announcement.
‘Your brother is dead.’ He took his seat in the high-backed chair behind the massive antique desk that still dominated the otherwise minimally furnished white room, pausing only to straighten the line of meticulously sharpened pencils before he continued to speak.
Ivo didn’t notice a tremor in his grandfather’s voice as he stared blindly ahead, and the words just rolled over him in a meaningless jumble until one sentence made itself heard above the loud static hum in his head.
‘I will need you to take care of this personally, you understand?’
Ivo fought his way through the swirl of churning emotions that made their physical presence known in the fog in his head and the constricting band that felt like steel around his chest before he spoke.
‘The funeral?’ It still didn’t seem possible—would it ever? Bruno—nine years his senior...what did that make him? Thirty-eight? How did anyone die at thirty-eight?
Outrage at the thought elicited a mind-calming burst of rage followed swiftly by denial. It had to be a mistake. Yes, that was it, some awful mistake. If his brother was dead, he’d know.
His grandfather’s eyes narrowed fractionally as his lips compressed in faint irritation at the interruption.
‘Their funeral was last month, I believe.’
The words ricocheted around in Ivo’s head. He needed to sit down. His fingers clenched his knuckles white against the leather armrest...he was sitting down. He had been walking around functioning as normal for weeks while his brother was dead. How could he not have known, not have felt something? He tipped his head in a sharp motion of denial and cut across his grandfather, who was speaking again.
‘Last month?’
His grandfather looked at him without speaking before he reached for the stopper on the crystal decanter that sat on the desk and glugged some of the amber liquid into one of the glasses that sat beside it on the silver tray.
The full glass scraped on the desk as he pushed it towards his grandson.
Ivo shook his head, not mistaking the action for empathy; he had accepted years ago that his grandparent was incapable of that. Emotional responses were, in Salvatore’s eyes, weaknesses to be studied and exploited. It was not coincidental that Ivo was famed for his unreadable expression. What had begun as a self-protective device was now second nature.
‘You said their?’ Ivo’s brain was starting to function, but he was not sure if that could be classed as a good thing. The sense of loss had a physical presence; he could feel it at a cellular level in a way he’d sworn never to feel anything again. As he’d coped alone after Bruno’s desertion, the realisation that he could not count on anyone else had required he closed off the part of himself that made him vulnerable to such painful feelings. And now, the unfamiliar dormant feelings had exploded into painful life, blurring his normally sharp-edged wits.