The Unlikely Mistress. Sharon Kendrick

      “You know you can always come and stay with me.”

      She stared at him in disbelief. “How could I come and stay with you, not knowing—” Sabrina met his gaze without flinching. “Whether we…we…”

      

      “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” he snapped, as the meaning of her words became clear to him. “Do you really think that I’m about to start extracting rent in the form of sexual favors?”

      Dear Reader,

      One hundred. Doesn’t matter how many times I say it, I still can’t believe that’s how many books I’ve written. It’s a fabulous feeling but more fabulous still is the news that Mills & Boon are issuing every single one of my backlist as digital titles. Wow. I can’t wait to share all my stories with you - which are as vivid to me now as when I wrote them.

      There’s BOUGHT FOR HER HUSBAND, with its outrageously macho Greek hero and A SCANDAL, A SECRET AND A BABY featuring a very sexy Tuscan. THE SHEIKH’S HEIR proved so popular with readers that it spent two weeks on the USA Today charts and…well, I could go on, but I’ll leave you to discover them for yourselves.

      I remember the first line of my very first book: “So you’ve come to Australia looking for a husband?” Actually, the heroine had gone to Australia to escape men, but guess what? She found a husband all the same! The man who inspired that book rang me up recently and when I told him I was beginning my 100^th story and couldn’t decide what to write, he said, “Why don’t you go back to where it all started?”

      So I did. And that’s how A ROYAL VOW OF CONVENIENCE was born. It opens in beautiful Queensland and moves to England and New York. It’s about a runaway princess and the enigmatic billionaire who is infuriated by her, yet who winds up rescuing her. But then, she goes and rescues him… Wouldn’t you know it?

      I’ll end by saying how very grateful I am to have a career I love, and to thank each and every one of you who has supported me along the way. You really are very dear readers.

      Love,

      Sharon xxx

      Mills & Boon are proud to present a thrilling digital collection of all Sharon Kendrick’s novels and novellas for us to celebrate the publication of her amazing and awesome 100th book! Sharon is known worldwide for her likeable, spirited heroines and her gorgeous, utterly masculine heroes.

      SHARON KENDRICK once won a national writing competition, describing her ideal date: being flown to an exotic island by a gorgeous and powerful man. Little did she realise that she’d just wandered into her dream job! Today she writes for Mills & Boon, featuring her often stubborn but always to-die-for heroes and the women who bring them to their knees. She believes that the best books are those you never want to end. Just like life…

      The Unlikely Mistress

      Sharon Kendrick

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      Caius Niger

      For my poet, mentor, muse

      and Blue-Eyed Boy.

      Contents

       Cover

       Dear Reader

       About the Author

       Title Page

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      CHAPTER TWELVE

      CHAPTER THIRTEEN

      CHAPTER FOURTEEN

      CHAPTER FIFTEEN

      EPILOGUE

       Copyright

       CHAPTER ONE

      SABRINA looked, and then looked again, her heart beating out a guilty beat while she tried to tell herself that her eyes were playing tricks on her. Because he couldn’t possibly be for real.

      He was standing close to the water, close enough for her to be able to see the carved symmetry of his features. Chiselled cheekbones and a proud, patrician nose. The mouth was luscious—both hard and sensual—a mouth which looked as though it had kissed a lot of women in its time.

      Only the eyes stopped the face from being too beautiful—they were too icily cold for perfection. Even from this distance, they seemed to glitter with a vital kind of energy and a black, irresistible kind of danger…

      Oh, Lord, thought Sabrina in despair. What am I thinking of? She was not the kind of woman to be transfixed by complete strangers—especially not when she was alone and vulnerable in a foreign country. And while Venice was the most beautiful place on earth—she was there on her own.

      On her own. Something she was still having to come to term with. Once again, guilt stabbed at her with piercing accuracy.

      But still she watched him…

      

      By the edge of the water, Guy felt his body tense with a sense of the unexpected, aware of the unmistakable sensation of being watched. He narrowed hard slate-grey eyes as they scanned the horizon, and his gaze was suddenly arrested by the sight of the woman who drifted in the gondola towards him. Madonna, he thought suddenly. Madonna.

      The pale March sun caught a sheen of bright red-gold hair, drifting like a banner around her shoulders. He could see long, slender limbs and skin so pale it looked almost translucent. She’s English, he thought suddenly as their eyes clashed across the glittering water. And for one mad, reckless moment he thought about…what? Following her? Buying her a cup of coffee? His mouth hardened into a brief, cynical smile.

      It was reckless to want to pick up a total stranger and he, more than most people, knew the folly of being reckless. Hadn’t his whole life been spent making amends for his father’s one careless act of desperation? The knock-on effect of impulsive behaviour was something to guard against. Resolutely he turned away from her distractions.

      Sabrina felt something approaching pain. Look at me, she urged him silently, but her gondolier chose that moment to give an expert twist of his wrist to glide the craft into shore and he was lost to her eyes.

      She pushed her guidebook back into her handbag and stood up, allowing the gondolier to steady her elbow, nodding her head vigorously, as if she understood every word of his murmured Italian. But she had paid him before the journey and didn’t have a clue what he could be saying to her.

      And