Boardrooms of Power. Heidi Betts

all along, from way back when, just something waiting to be revealed…’

      ‘What you felt for me? What do you feel for me…?’

      ‘I need you…’ Gabriel felt as though he was falling off the side of a precipice. ‘I’m in love with you…’

      Rose looked at him and smiled, a slow, mesmerised smile that only touched the depth of her happiness. ‘Will you marry me?’ she asked. ‘Because I’m in love with you too and you have no idea…I’ve been waiting so long for you to tell me that you love me too…I never dared hope…’ The baby kicked and they both looked down.

      ‘My darling,’ Gabriel murmured, marvelling at how his frantic life suddenly made sense, ‘I’m yours for ever…’

Under the Tycoon’s Protection

      “No Kissing. That’s Part Of The Ground Rules, Rafferty.”

      He had the temerity to look openly amused. “I’ll agree not to kiss you. Whether you kiss me, however, is another matter.”

      She gave him a frosty stare. “I’ll do my best to resist.”

      “So, are we shacking up together?” he asked.

      “With an offer like that, how can I refuse?”

      “Is that sarcasm I detect?”

      “That, and good manners prevent me from saying what else.”

      He laughed outright then. Her stomach somersaulted and she resisted the sudden strange urge to quell his hilarity with a sultry kiss on his laughing mouth.

      Oh, boy, was she in trouble. Until last night, she’d have said that the only way she’d have thought to silence Connor was with an advanced move from her karate class.

      Connor was going to be her protector from an unknown threat, but who was going to protect her from the very real threat he represented?

      ANNA DEPALO

      A lifelong book lover, Anna discovered that she was a writer at heart when she realized that not everyone travels around with a full cast of characters in her head. She has lived in Italy and England, learned to speak French, graduated from Harvard, earned graduate degrees in political science and law, forgotten how to speak French and married her own dashing hero.

      Anna has been an intellectual-property lawyer in New York City. She loves traveling, reading, writing, old movies, chocolate and Italian (which she hasn’t forgotten how to speak, thanks to her extended Italian family). She’s thrilled to be writing for Mills & Boon. Readers can visit her at www.annadepalo.com.

      For my editor, Julie Barrett,

       and my friend Vera Scanlon,

       for knowing there’s a place

       in the heart for fairy tales…

       and for understanding that

       strong heroines write their own tales.

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Epilogue

      One

      Allison Whittaker stared at the man who might be trying to kill her.

      She shifted the slats of her window blinds slightly to get a better view of the dark Boston street stretched out below her. The yellowish glow cast by an old-fashioned gas lamp fought a losing battle with the darkness of the cool April night.

      The man sat motionless in the driver’s seat of the black car across the street, his face in shadow.

      He’d been there last night, too.

      She’d noticed. She made a point of noticing. More than four years as an Assistant District Attorney in Boston did that to a person. She’d been a lot more naive when she’d been straight out of law school.

      A nice genteel white-shoe law-firm job should have been the next rung on the ladder. Her upper-crust family had certainly expected it of her. Her mother, a respected family court judge who’d just had a glowing article written about her in The Boston Globe, certainly had.

      Instead, she’d surprised them all. She’d gone for the tough prosecutor’s job. And not as a prestigious Assistant U.S. Attorney trying federal cases either.

      Nope. She’d gone for the down-and-dirty: putting away the friendly neighborhood drug dealer or burglar as a prosecutor in the District Attorney’s Office.

      She looked down again at the man in the car. Of course, she’d surprise everyone even more if she wound up dead in her apartment, her throat slashed by the mystery man sending her death threats. She didn’t want to make that her encore.

      She held her breath as the man in the car shifted and opened the driver’s-side door.

      As he got out of the car, she strained for a better view but couldn’t make out his facial features in the dark. What she could tell was that he was tall and solidly built, with sandy-brown hair and dark clothes.

      She watched as he scanned the street up and down and then made his way toward the house. Was he heading for her?

      Her heart began to pound, her breath catching in her throat. Call the police! the rational part of her mind screamed.

      Surely the neighbors would hear if he tried to break in? Her exclusive Beacon Hill neighborhood was usually quiet and serene.

      The man below passed under a street lamp and her mind pulled the emergency brake on her thoughts.

      She knew that face.

      Suddenly fear was replaced by anger. Not the simmering variety of anger, either, but a full-blown boil. The type that any of her three older brothers would have recognized as a sign to dive for cover.

      She headed for the staircase of the redbrick townhouse that she called home, heedless of the fact that she was dressed for bed in a short silk slip and matching robe. When she got downstairs—the back of her mind taking note of the fact that she hadn’t yet heard a knock or bell—she undid the lock on the front door and yanked the door open without ceremony.

      “Hello, princess.”

      Allison felt the same rush of energy she always did in this man’s presence, quickly replaced by an undercurrent of pulsing tension.

      He had a lithe but muscular physique, one which usually reduced women to giggles and flirtatious banter. But not her. They had too much of a history for that, and she doubted his presence on her doorstep tonight was a mere coincidence.

      She crossed her arms and snapped, “Did you take a wrong turn, Connor? The last time I checked, Beacon Hill was too exclusive a neighborhood for riffraff like you.”

      He had the audacity to look amused, his gaze raking her. “And you’re still the perfect diamond blue blood, princess. Just like I remembered.”

      “If you know anything about diamonds, you’ll remember they’re the hardest stones around.”

      “Oh, I know plenty about diamonds these days, petunia,” he said, tapping the tip of her nose with his finger as he sauntered inside without invitation, forcing her to take a step back. “I’ve discovered they’re the gift of choice for women in your class.”

      She yanked her mind from the image of Connor picking out diamonds for his girlfriends. Probably at someplace like the exclusive Van Cleef &