Crazy For Love. Victoria Dahl

Praise for VICTORIA DAHL

      “Dahl delivers a fun, feisty and relentlessly sexy adventure in her first contemporary.”

      —Publishers Weekly on Talk Me Down

      “Sassy and smokingly sexy, Talk Me Down is one delicious joyride of a book.”

      —New York Times bestselling author Connie Brockway

      “Sparkling, special and oh so sexy—Victoria Dahl is a special treat!”

      —New York Times bestselling author Carly Phillips on Talk Me Down

      “[A] hands-down winner, a sensual story filled with memorable characters.”

      —Booklist on Start Me Up

      “Dahl has spun a scorching tale about what can happen in the blink of an eye and what we can do to change our lives.”

      —RT Book Reviews,

      4 stars, on Start Me Up

Dear Reader,

      A few years ago, my family and I moved from the mountains of Colorado to the coast of Virginia. If you and I are ever stuck together in an elevator, I’ll happily tell you the horror story of that cross-country move, but for now, let’s just say it was an adventure. Yes, an adventure!

      Before then, I’d only seen the ocean a handful of times, but during our two years in Virginia we traveled up and down the coast and spent hours exploring the Chesapeake Bay and the Great Dismal Swamp. Every day was an exciting discovery (ever heard of biting flies?) and I loved it.

      I knew that any story told in this setting would have to have some thrills, but I had no idea it would be quite so chock-full of them! A plane crash, a federal investigation, tabloid scandals, a runaway groom, the paparazzi, sunken treasure and lies, lies and more lies! Plus, of course, a steamy vacation fling on a nearly deserted island. And perhaps the strangest part of the whole story…there’s a nice, normal, average girl at the center of it all. (This is reminding me more and more of that cross-country move.)

      So how does a nice, normal girl find herself in the middle of an international tabloid scandal? I hope you don’t mind the quick detour from the mountains to the beach to find out. After all, the wild coast of Virginia is perfect for adventure, and who couldn’t use a few days in a beachside cottage? With a handsome treasure hunter. And ice-cold margaritas.

      Enjoy!

      Victoria Dahl

      Crazy for Love

      Victoria Dahl

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      This book is for Bill, of course.

       Thanks for always taking such good care of us.

Bridezilla on the Loose

      Where in the world is Chloe Turner? Less than a week before her fiancé’s day of reckoning in a Virginia courthouse, the infamous Bridezilla is nowhere to be found. Her family denies knowing where she might be hiding, but at least one of them is concerned. “I don’t know what’s going on with her,” her cousin Tiffany Capshaw says. “She won’t call me back now that the wedding’s off. I just want to know how she’s doing, but she refuses to return my calls.”

      It’s unlikely that her fiancé Thomas DeLorn has any idea where she is either. By all accounts, Chloe hasn’t tried to reach him since the world discovered that he’d survived the plane crash that destroyed his PIPER AIRCRAFT in the depths of the Great Dismal Swamp. “They haven’t spoken,” a source close to the runaway groom has said. “It’s really weird.” Why? Because Thomas and Chloe were supposed to have been married on the twentieth, and would’ve been finishing up their honeymoon this very week. But while Thomas prepares to face possible felony charges related to his escape from the engagement, not to mention possible civil suit over search and rescue costs, Chloe Turner maintains her silence.

      Thomas has released the occasional statement, but Chloe hasn’t said a word about either his ill-planned escape from their engagement or the charges that she pushed him to that recklessness with her increasingly overbearing behavior.

      “She was impossible,” cousin Tiffany claims. “She was always a little stuck up, but once the wedding plans started, you’d have thought she was marrying the president of England.” England, of course, doesn’t have a president, but Tiffany clarified her statement. “Everything had to be perfect. The groomsmen had to be handsome. Her bridesmaids couldn’t be fat. I found out why she didn’t ask me. I’m too short. She said I’d throw off the pattern from medium to tall. I heard she rejected another friend because her coloring didn’t go with the dresses Chloe wanted.”

      Despite the stories of tantrums and bad behavior, a few people deny that Chloe was a bridezilla at all. “It’s ridiculous!” her best friend Jenn Castellan shouted when pressed for a comment. “She’s never been anything but nice. Never!” Jenn, who recently accused the paparazzi of chasing Chloe Turner down like a wild animal, has been her constant defender, but even she can’t explain what could’ve driven a man to fake his own death in order to escape a perfectly nice girl. “You’ll have to ask Thomas,” was her terse reply.

      But Thomas has been a gentleman, at least in that regard. He has yet to comment on any of the stories about Chloe’s alleged mood swings, and a new story seems to emerge every day. “She seemed nice at first,” said LaShawna Hays, who sold Chloe Turner her wedding dress. As owner of Unique Bridal, she’s had years of experience with every type of Bridezilla, but says her internal alarms didn’t go off at first. “She came in with Thomas the first time. He was sweet to her, and she acted pretty excited.” But as the weeks went on, LaShawna explained, Chloe started making demands. “She wanted changes made to the dress, but when something didn’t turn out the way she wanted, she lost it. I never saw Thomas with her again.”

      Of course, brides are under an enormous amount of pressure, explains Hollywood psychologist Harold Woolsey. “For aggressive, perfectionist personalities, this can push them to a sort of emotional break. They need the day to be perfect. They can’t accept that mistakes are inevitable. So they force everyone around them to perfection too. But once the wedding plans are in place, the idea of stopping the process is a devastating prospect. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Mr. DeLorn simply felt he had no other option but to disappear.”

      The world first became aware of Thomas when his small plane crashed into Virginia’s Great Dismal Swamp. Rescue crews searched the dense woods for two days, assuming he’d wandered injured from the plane. But authorities soon found clues that Thomas hadn’t been in the plane when it crashed. The four-day manhunt for the missing bridegroom captivated the nation, and the mystery only deepened when he was found lounging on a beach in Florida.

      Clearly, Thomas DeLorn was in dire straits when he chose to parachute out of his personal plane and make a run for it. But what, exactly, was going on behind the scenes? He’s already been charged with fraud, but we’ll undoubtedly find out more on Monday when the Commonwealth of Virginia is expected to file additional charges against Thomas DeLorn. The District Attorney is being close-lipped, but there’s increasing talk that Thomas was helped by someone.

      “He was waiting for someone,” says an anonymous source who works at the beachside resort where Thomas hid during his disappearance. “He looked relaxed the first couple of days, and then he started getting nervous. He kept wandering into the lobby,