Wedding Vow of Revenge Read online

  Winter will be over soon and we have new books guaranteed to put a spring in your step! Lose yourself in an absorbing read from Harlequin Presents….

  Travel to sophisticated European locations and meet sexy foreign men. In The Greek’s Chosen Wife by Lynne Graham, see what happens when gorgeous Greek Nikolas Angelis decides to make his convenient marriage real. The Mancini Marriage Bargain by Trish Morey is the conclusion of her exciting duet, THE ARRANGED BRIDES—we brought you the first book, Stolen by the Sheikh, last month.

  Fly to more distant lands for Sandra Marton’s UNCUT story, The Desert Virgin. Feel the heat as ruthless troubleshooter Cameron Knight rescues innocent ballerina Leanna DeMarco. If you haven’t read an UNCUT story before, watch out—they’re almost too hot to handle!

  If you like strong men, you’ll love our new miniseries RUTHLESS. This month in The Billionaire Boss’s Forbidden Mistress by Miranda Lee, a boss expects his new receptionist to fall at his feet, and is surprised to find she’s more of a challenge than he thought. Lucy Monroe’s latest story, Wedding Vow of Revenge, promises scenes of searing passion and a gorgeous hero.

  The Royal Marriage by Fiona Hood-Stewart is a classic tale of a young woman who has been promised in marriage to a royal prince. Only she’s determined not to be ruled by him and her declaration of independence begins in the bedroom!

  We hope you enjoy reading this month’s selection. Look out for brand-new books next month!

  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?

  Don’t miss the next book in this miniseries, coming in April 2006:

  Bought by a Billionaire by Kay Thorpe #2534

  Lucy Monroe

  WEDDING VOW OF REVENGE

  All about the author…

  Lucy Monroe

  Award-winning and bestselling author LUCY MONROE sold her first book in September 2002 to the Harlequin Presents line. That book represented a dream that had been burning in her heart for years: the dream to share her stories with readers who love romance as much as she does. Since then she has sold more than thirty books to three publishers and hit national bestseller lists in the U.S. and England. But what has touched her most deeply since selling that first book are the reader letters she receives. Her most important goal with every book is to touch a reader’s heart and when she hears she’s done that it makes every night spent writing into the wee hours of morning worth it.

  She started reading Harlequin Presents books very young and discovered a heroic type of man between the covers of those books—an honorable man, capable of faithfulness and sacrifice for the people he loves. Now married to what she terms her “alpha male at the end of a book,” Lucy believes there is a lot more reality to the fantasy stories she writes than most people give credit for. She believes in happy endings that are really marvelous beginnings and that’s why she writes them. She hopes her books help readers to believe a little, too…just like romance did for her so many years ago.

  She really does love to hear from readers and esponds to every e-mail. You can reach her by e-mailing [email protected].

  For my Grandmother Lucille and my Great Aunts…you are women who have inspired me my whole life with your wit, your work ethic, your intelligence, your generosity and your zest for living. I want to thank you for that from the very depths of my heart. I love you all. Blessings, Lucy

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  ANGELO GORDON’S blue eyes narrowed with interest.

  “You’re sure of this information, amico mio?” he demanded, his American accent spiced with Sicilian overtones that denoted his reaction to the news more strongly than words could have.

  Hawk nodded. “Positive. Baron Randall has been keeping tabs on Tara Peters since their affair ended two years ago.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “The owner of the security agency Randall has on retainer talks more than he should after a couple of whiskey sours.” Hawk didn’t make those kinds of mistakes, but didn’t mind taking advantage when someone else did.

  “That’s convenient.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Okay. Give me the scoop and don’t leave anything out.”

  Hawk tossed the file on Angelo’s desk and waited for the tall Sicilian-American to open it.

  He pointed to the news story on top that showed his client’s enemy with his arm around a woman more than a decade his junior. “Randall and Miss Peters met four years ago at a fashion show in New York. He was there with another model, but left with Miss Peters. By all accounts, he swept the young Miss Peters off her feet and into his bed. She gave up modeling and started taking college courses. They were together for eighteen months and broke up when he became engaged to his current wife. Rumor suggests he asked Miss Peters to remain his mistress.”

  “She refused.”

  “Yes.”

  “She was stronger than my mother.” Grudging respect laced Angelo’s voice. “Why is he having her watched?”

  “According to my informant, Randall still wants her. He’s given instructions to scotch any possible romantic entanglements. So far, my colleague hasn’t had to make the effort.”

  Angelo surged to his feet and turned to look out the window behind his desk. His brooding six-foot-two-inch frame blocked the light and Hawk’s view of upper Manhattan. “What the hell does he expect to accomplish? That’s what I want to know.”

  “Obviously reentrance into her life.”

  Angelo turned back, his patrician features creased with a frown of disbelief. “That doesn’t make any sense. She said no and apparently meant it.”

  “Right. It makes one wonder how long Baron Randall expected his marriage to last in the first place. When he married, his wife’s father had been recently diagnosed with an inoperable heart condition.”

  “But good living and exercise have given him a clean bill of health, or at least a new lease on life.”

  Hawk smiled cynically. “Much to Randall’s dismay no doubt. The marriage has never been a happy one.”

  For which Angelo could take some credit.

  Tara wasn’t the only woman Randall had propositioned for the role of his mistress. Others had accepted and thanks to some judicious behind the scenes handling on both Hawk and Angelo’s part, the young Mrs. Randall knew it.

  “According to my sources, she will be filing for divorce within the month.”

  Angelo inclined his head in acknowledgment of information that would not have come as a surprise. “You think he wants to take up where he left off when he’s free?”

  “I can see no other explanation for his behavior. Miss Peters is the only long-term relationship Baron Randall has had in more than a decade that did not profit him business wise. He cheated on her only when he was away from her. For an amoral womanizer like him, that is bloody significant.”

  Hawk had never before seen Angelo Gordon wearing that particular expression. “You think he loves her?”

  “Love?” Hawk flicked his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Not bloody likely, but I do think he’s obsessed by her. From what information I can gather, she is unique, if only in her ability to walk away from him. My instincts tell me it’s more than that, though. She was very
career minded as a model. He was her first serious boyfriend.”

  “You think she was a virgin when they met? How old is she?”

  “Twenty-four and yes, I think Randall’s the only lover she’s ever had.”

  “That does make her unique, especially in Randall’s jaded world.”

  “There’s more.”

  “What?”

  “You aren’t going to believe this.” Hawk had had a hard time believing it himself. “It is simply too damn perfect.”

  “And it is?”

  “She graduated with her degree in business six months ago and has been in Primo Tech’s management training program for the past four of those months.”

  Angelo had bought the hi-tech company in Portland, Oregon, three years ago. Just like all the other companies he bought and resuscitated, it was becoming a lead player in its industry. However, the success of his company was no doubt not nearly as interesting to him in that moment as the fact Tara Peters was employed there.

  “It’s fate.”

  Hawk’s laugh was every bit as skeptical as Angelo’s. “That is one way of looking at it.”

  Angelo sat at his desk after Hawk left, perusing the file on Tara Peters. Hawk had included still shots from several of her fashion shows. They showed a woman of ethereal beauty, shrouded by innocence, but wearing clothing that would tempt a saint to sin. On her tall, model slim body, that nevertheless had curves in all the right places, they were more than a temptation…they were downright provocation.

  Her dark brown eyes in the perfectly proportioned oval face, surrounded by a cascade of silky chestnut hair intrigued him…even knowing she had once been Baron Randall’s.

  He flipped through the photos until he came to those included with the tabloid articles that had sensationalized her breakup with Randall. The difference between the two sets of pictures wrenched at something inside Angelo he thought long dead. Those same chocolate-dark eyes now reflected the pain of betrayal and lost innocence.

  Just like his mother’s had.

  He needed to assimilate this piece of information and decide how best to act on it. He didn’t have much time, either. If for no other reason than that Baron Randall would go looking for Tara Peters the minute his wife filed the divorce petition.

  That gave Angelo a month, maybe less to act on his newfound knowledge of Randall’s unexpected weakness.

  The man who had stolen his company and destroyed his mother deserved to be ruined on every level and Angelo was going to make damn sure that happened.

  Tara Peters laughed at the other junior execs around her, at least the female ones. They were primping for the arrival of Angelo Gordon like he was a rock star or something.

  “Aren’t you even going to put on lipstick?” Danette Michaels demanded with her usual forthrightness after glossing her own lips and putting her compact mirror away in her desk drawer. “He’s supposed to do a tour of this floor sometime today.”

  “No lipstick.” Tara had spent years wearing just the right makeup, dressing with flair, and flaunting the assets that had made her a top model at the age of twenty.

  They had also brought her to the notice of Baron Randall and for that alone, she would spend the rest of her life devoid of makeup and dressing in conservative business attire.

  Never again.

  She straightened the papers on her desk. “My only interest in impressing Mr. Gordon is with my work and I don’t need lipstick to do it.”

  Danette rolled her eyes. “You are such an all work and no play kind of girl. Did you ever hear that makes you boring and can give you ulcers before you’re thirty?”

  Coming from a woman who had her first serious boyfriend at the age of twenty-one, that was pretty funny.

  “My twenty-four-year-old stomach is just fine, thank you and better boring than stomped on I always say.”

  “Not every man in the world is like that jerk, Baron Randall.”

  Like most people, Danette had read the tabloid accounts of Tara getting dumped by Baron so he could marry his oil heiress. However, unlike most people, the younger woman had not let the stories color her view of Tara. She thought Baron was a world class pig and that her friend was better off without him.

  Tara agreed. Now.

  But two years ago, she’d felt like she would die from the pain and humiliation of the all too public breakup.

  “Of course they aren’t,” she said, trying to stave off another lecture about getting back on the horse so she wouldn’t forget how to ride. Between Danette and her mother, she’d heard it about a thousand times too many. “But right now I’m not interested in finding out. I don’t have time for a man in my life and honestly, I don’t see how you can, either.”

  Danette shrugged, her amber cat eyes twinkling.

  “Some of us are better at multitasking than others,” she said with a grin. “Anyway, even if your career is all you care about, you should want to make a good impression on Angelo Gordon. He owns this company and several like it.”

  “I do want to impress him…with my business acumen.”

  “He’s already impressed, Tara.”

  Tara spun in her chair to face her manager, surprised Mr. Curtiss was here instead of in the schmoozing session with the upper managers and the company owner.

  “Mr. Gordon wants to speak to you privately.”

  Tension stiffened her spine as the words reminded her of a similar conversation she’d had with her modeling agent. The woman had told her that Baron Randall wanted to meet her. Tara, naïve idiot that she had been four years ago, had been both flattered and impressed.

  “Why alone?”

  If her manager thought that an odd question, he didn’t let it show. “He’s impressed with your report on workplace effectiveness. He wants to discuss it with you.”

  Relaxing, she smiled. Business. It was just about business, nothing like that other time when the introduction had been a prelude to seduction.

  “That’s great, Tara,” Danette said, “I heard the guy is a genius. If he appreciates your brains already, I guess it’s true.”

  “Does he want to see me right now?” she asked, feeling a little light-headed.

  Sure, she’d daydreamed about the owner of the company being so impressed with her recommendations he wanted to talk to her. What junior executive didn’t? But that kind of stuff didn’t happen in the real world.

  Her manager looked at his watch and frowned. “Five minutes ago, actually. I got waylaid by a phone call on my way to tell you.”

  Tara Peters walked into Angelo’s temporary office with her back straight and a credible expression of confidence. The only giveaway to her nervousness at being summoned by the owner of the company was the tight clenching of her fingers into small fists at her sides.

  Her bone structure was delicate for a woman of her height, which no doubt explained her success as a cat-walk model.

  Yet, she looked very different from the still shots of her fashion shows that Hawk had included in the Tara Peters file. Nor did she resemble the pictures that had accompanied the tabloid articles after her breakup with Randall.

  All the photos had shown a stunning woman who made the most of her beauty, but no one would accuse this Tara Peters of trading on her beauty to succeed in her job.

  She had confined the glorious length of her signature chestnut hair in a tight French braid that fell down her back. She wore no makeup and the small ovals of her nails were unpolished, but buffed. The navy-blue slacks and blazer she wore disguised her figure very well.

  He hadn’t been sure what to expect, but her current no-nonsense, almost androgynous attire fit Hawk’s report on her behavior since Baron Randall married another woman.

  Tara didn’t date and appeared uninterested in attracting men. Was she still hung up on the monster? The thought did not sit well with Angelo and his usually impassive face creased in a frown before he realized it.

  “Mr. Gordon?” The voice was questioning, but not hesitant and he liked
that.

  He admired strength because weakness…of any kind…cost far too much.

  He looked up and met her faintly quizzical brown eyes. “Miss Peters. Please take a seat.”

  She moved across the room and slid gracefully into a chair opposite his desk. His opinion changed on the suit. The jacket dipped in at her waist. Her movement had revealed curves that were neither pronounced nor were they so slight her blouse could disguise them completely. The way the clothes tried to hide, but could not help hinting at her femininity made him want to strip them off and see the beautiful body beneath.

  It did not help that pictures from her file of her clad in bikinis and other almost-there outfits flashed in his mind’s eye.

  Desire vibrated through him with shocking swiftness and urgency, making him glad for the concealment of his desk. He hadn’t responded with this level of physical intensity to the mere sight of a woman since puberty.

  He forced his mind through the mental exercises he had learned in the Aikido training he had started as a young boy. He continued to train, using it as a way to keep his body fit and mind focused. Normally it worked without him even having to think about.

  This time, he had to wait for the stunning response of his body to subside breath by breath before he could begin to concentrate on his agenda. “I’ve been reading your report on workplace effectiveness. You’ve drawn several interesting conclusions and made an equal number of suggestions that are worthy of note.”

  Her eyes lit with pleasure and she smiled, her feminine fragrance teasing his nostrils as she leaned forward. “There’s a wealth of data to be analyzed and interpreted from recent studies on the subject, much of which has been ignored by current management theory.”

  He nodded. Whatever else Miss Peters was, she had shown herself to be a natural in her chosen field. “I particularly found your suggestions regarding vacation time of interest.”