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 [email protected] 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!
Wedded and bedded for the very first time!
Classic romances from your favorite Harlequin Presents authors
Available this month:
The Spaniard’s Defiant Virgin
by Jennie Lucas
Only in Harlequin Presents®
Jennie Lucas
THE SPANIARD’S DEFIANT VIRGIN
ORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON
AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG
STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID
PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND
All about the author…
Jennie Lucas
JENNIE LUCAS had a tragic beginning for any would-be writer: a very happy childhood. Her parents owned a bookstore, and she grew up surrounded by books, dreaming about faraway lands. When she was ten, her father secretly paid her a dollar for every classic novel (Jane Eyre, War and Peace) that she read.
At fifteen, she went to a Connecticut boarding school on scholarship. She took her first solo trip to Europe at sixteen, then put off college and traveled around the U.S., supporting herself with jobs as diverse as gas-station cashier and newspaper advertising assistant.
At twenty-two, she met the man who would be her husband. For the first time in her life, she wanted to stay in one place, as long as she could be with him. After their marriage, she graduated from Kent State University with a degree in English, and started writing books a year later.
Jennie was a finalist in the Romance Writers of America’s Golden Heart contest in 2003, and won the award in 2005. A fellow 2003 finalist, Australian author Trish Morey, read Jennie’s writing and told her that she should write for Harlequin Presents. It seemed like too big a dream, but Jennie took a deep breath and went for it. A year later, Jennie got the magical call from London that turned her into a published author.
Since then, life has been hectic—juggling a writing career, a sexy husband and two young children—but Jennie loves her crazy, chaotic life. Now if she can only figure out how to pack up her family and live in all the places she’s writing about!
For more about Jennie and her books, please visit her Web site at www.jennielucas.com.
To my husband, who is better than ice cream.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER ONE
Tarfaya, Morocco
HE WAS waiting for her outside the Dar el-Saladin.
Marcos Ramirez held up his binoculars, watching the flower-covered limousine leave the fishing village in a whirlwind of rose petals. From where Marcos stood, the sturdy gate that protected the village from sandstorms on one side and the sea on the other seemed riddled with red bullet holes.
Tamsin Winter, at last. He’d kept tabs on her through her ten cloistered years in boarding schools until she’d returned to London last year. Since then, the wild young heiress had frequently been in the tabloids, always with a different man on her arm. The spoiled beauty was reputedly the most accomplished flirt in Britain.
Breaking her would be a pleasure.
“The car’s moving into position, Patrón,” his chief bodyguard, Reyes, noted aloud.
“Sí.” Marcos put down the binoculars. He knew his men could have kidnapped the Winter girl without his supervision, preventing her from arriving at her wedding in the Sheikh’s kasbah to the north. Marcos could be taking his ease in Madrid right now, drinking coffee and checking the latest numbers on the London and New York stock exchanges instead of sweating in the dust-choked desert.
But he’d been dreaming of revenge for twenty years, and today was the culmination of everything. After he had the girl, both she and her family would be utterly destroyed. Finally. As they deserved.
Marcos smiled grimly to himself. He only wished he could see the expression on her bridegroom’s face when he heard the news, the black-hearted bastard.
The limousine left the village, moving along the sand-covered road that separated the Sahara and the bright Atlantic shore. He pulled his black mask down over his face and turned to Reyes. “Vámonos.”
Tamsin Winter had just sold her virginity to the highest bidder.
Her white bridal kaftan, intricately embroidered with silver thread and jewels, weighed on her like a shroud as she looked through the darkened windows. She felt almost envious of a wrinkled woman selling oranges on the street. Selling oranges seemed like a pleasant fate compared with marrying a man who’d already beaten one wife to death.
She took a deep breath, closing her eyes. It didn’t matter, she told herself. She would let Aziz al-Maghrib paw at her with his meaty hands, kiss her with the stench of his foul breath and take her innocence with his flabby, wrinkled body. It would be a small price to pay, since it would save her young sister from a life of misery and neglect.
But, as recently as last month, she’d looked forward to falling in love and marrying a man she could cherish. She’d dreamed of starting a career and some day having children of her own. She’d spent all of her twenty-three years dreaming of the day her life would truly begin.
Strange to think that it was already over.
Saving her sister was the best choice she’d ever made. But, even knowing that, part of her ached for all the time she’d wasted, the romances she’d never had, the chances she’d never taken. If she’d known her life would be so short…
“Tamsin! Stop fidgeting. You’ll wrinkle your dress. Oh, you’re doing it on purpose, you stupid girl!”
Tamsin slowly opened her eyes, heavy with black kohl, and looked into the hated face of her half-brother’s wife. Camilla Winter was twenty years older than Tamsin, and her surgery-smoothed skin stretched oddly over her skull.
“Did you pay for your face-lift out of Nicole’s money, Camilla?” Tamsin asked curiously. “Is that why you were letting a ten-year-old girl starve? So you could look like a doll?”
Camilla gasped.
“Do not fear. My brother will beat the rebellious spirit out of her,” Hatima, her future sister-in-law, said confidently. Hatima and Camilla comprised her negaffa—the older female relatives who, according to Moroccan tradition, were supposed to help a young bride, to counsel her, to calm her fears about her coming marriage.
Some help, Tamsin thought bitterly. She looked down at her henna-decorated hands folded carefully in her lap. But Hatima was right. Her husband would beat her, either before or after he took her virginity. Maybe both.
