The Determined Virgin. Elizabeth August

      Table of Contents

       Cover Page

       Excerpt

       Dear Reader

       Title Page

       About the Author

Chapter One

Chapter Two

       Chapter Three

       Chapter Four

       Chapter Five

       Chapter Six

       Chapter Seven

       Chapter Eight

       Chapter Nine

       Chapter Ten

       Copyright

       Garth lay quietly wondering what he should do.

      When the alarm had gone off, he’d woken to discover his wife in his arms. He’d heard her groan of displeasure at being disturbed and lay quietly as she turned off the alarm and curled back up beside him. As she draped her leg over his, the arousal he’d been experiencing grew more intense. He knew she was more asleep than awake and, thus, not really responsible for her actions, but he couldn’t help noting that she was very sexy when her cold shield was down.

      

      She’s your wife in name only, he reminded himself. He’d made a bargain with this woman that he would make no attempt to consummate their marriage—and he was a man of his word. But he was also only human and his control was being seriously tested….

      Dear Reader,

      

      The month of June makes me think of June brides, Father’s Day and the first bloom of summer love. And Silhouette Romance is celebrating the start of summer with six wonderful books about love and romance.

      

      Our BUNDLE OF JOY this month is delivered by Stella Bagwell’s The Tycoon’s Tots—her thirtieth Silhouette book. As her TWINS ON THE DOORSTEP miniseries continues, we finally discover who gets to keep those adorable babies…and find romance in the bargain.

      Elizabeth August is back with her much-loved SMYTHESHIRE, MASSACHUSETTS series. In The Determined Virgin you’ll meet a woman whose marriage of convenience is proving to be very inconvenient, thanks to her intense attraction to her “in-name-only” husband.

      BACHELOR GULCH is a little town that needs women, and the name of Sandra Steffen’s brand-new miniseries. The fun begins in Luke’s Would-Be Bride as a local bachelor falls for his feisty receptionist—the one woman in town not looking for a husband!

      And there are plenty more compelling romances for you this month: A lovely lady rancher can’t wait to hightail it out of Texas—till she meets her handsome new foreman in Leanna Wilson’s Lone Star Rancher. A new husband can’t bear to tell his amnesiac bride that the baby she’s carrying isn’t his, in Her Forgotten Husband by Anne Ha. And one lucky cowboy discovers a night of passion has just made him a daddy in Teresa Southwick’s The Bachelor’s Baby.

      I hope you enjoy all of June’s books!

      

      Melissa Senate, Senior Editor

      

      Silhouette Romance

      Please address questions and book requests to:

      Silhouette Reader Service

      U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

      Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

      The Determined Virgin

      Elizabeth August

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

       ELIZABETH AUGUST

      lives in western North Carolina, with her husband, Doug, and her three boys, Douglas, Benjamin and Matthew. She began writing romances soon after Matthew was born. She’s always wanted to write.

      

      Elizabeth does counted cross-stitching to keep from eating at night. It doesn’t always work. “I love to bowl, but I’m not very good. I keep my team’s handicap high. I like hiking in the Shenandoahs, as long as we start up the mountain so the return trip is down rather than vice versa.” She loves to go to Cape Hatteras to watch the sun rise over the ocean. Elizabeth August has also published under the pseudonym Betsy Page.

       Chapter One

      Garth Lawton watched the older model Chevy as it came up the driveway. His was not a passive inspection. It was a trained one. During his years in the military, under the code name of Raven, he’d been involved in undercover operations that had required an acute awareness of his surroundings in order to survive. The habit had become inbred and was now a part of his character.

      Since retiring from the service, he’d been working for his former superior, Tobias Smith. From an estate outside of Craftsbury Common, Vermont, Tobias ran a very discreet, very expensive private investigative service. His clients found him through word of mouth and those mouths belonged to some of the most influential people in the world. Normally the ones who came seeking help arrived in limousines, Mercedeses or BMWs, sometimes even Rolls-Royces.

      And they were very respectful. Garth had answered when the front gate intercom had buzzed. The female voice on the other end had asked merely for Tobias, not Mr. Smith, and she’d sounded angry and impatient. There had been no hint of the deference he was used to hearing.

      Having served as Tobias’s personal bodyguard for the last years of his service, Garth’s natural reaction was to behave protectively toward his employer. He’d reported the visitor to Tobias but advised him not to admit her. However, when told that a Hesper O’Grady was at the gate, curiosity had flickered in Tobias’s eyes, then he’d grinned.

      “Well, don’t keep her waiting. Admit her,” he ordered. “I’ll be in my study.”

      When Garth had returned to buzz her in, he’d received an icy thanks,