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       “Do you really believe I’m the sort of person who would plunk down a small fortune and move in next door to you a week before your wedding just to drive you nuts?”

      Maddy stood up slowly, looked Joe full in the face. Pronounced every word carefully. “I loved you, Joe,” she said quietly. “But you didn’t trust me. Not enough to tell me the truth.”

      Now Joe felt his temper rising, the temper he had thought had cooled long ago, to be replaced by the damning knowledge that, if he were to become rich beyond his dreams—and he had—he would never be happy, complete, without Maddy by his side. He had to love her. If he didn’t, he was just plain nuts to be putting himself back into a position where she could cut his knees, and heart, right out from underneath him.

      And still, he couldn’t help himself….

      Marrying Maddy (SR#1469)

      Jessie’s Expecting (SR#1475)

      Raffling Ryan (SR#1481)

      Dear Reader,

      Silhouette’s 20^th anniversary celebration continues this month in Romance, with more not-to-be-missed novels that take you on the romantic journey from courtship to commitment.

      First we revisit STORKVILLE, USA, where a jaded Native American rancher seems interested in His Expectant Neighbor. Don’t miss this second book in the series by Susan Meier! Next, New York Times bestselling author Kasey Michaels returns to the lineup, launching her new miniseries, THE CHANDLERS REQUEST…. One bride, two grooms—who will end up Marrying Maddy? In Daddy in Dress Blues by Cathie Linz, a Marine embarks on his most terrifying mission—fatherhood!—with the help of a pretty preschool teacher.

      Then Valerie Parv whisks us to a faraway kingdom as THE CARRAMER CROWN continues. The Princess’s Proposal puts the lovely Adrienne and her American nemesis on a collision course with…love. The ever-delightful Terry Essig tells the tale of a bachelor, his orphaned brood and the woman who sparks A Gleam in His Eye. Shhh…. We can’t give anything away, but you must learn The Librarian’s Secret Wish. Carol Grace knows…and she’s anxious to tell you!

      Next month, look for another installment of STORKVILLE, USA, and THE CHANDLERS REQUEST…from New York Times bestselling author Kasey Michaels. Plus, Donna Clayton launches her newest miniseries, SINGLE DOCTOR DADS!

      Happy Reading!

      Mary-Theresa Hussey

       Senior Editor

      Marrying Maddy

      Kasey Michaels

      For Maryanne Colas,

       for being there

       KASEY MICHAELS,

      a New York Times bestselling author of more than two dozen books, divides her creative time between writing contemporary romance and Regency novels. Married and the mother of four, Kasey’s writing has garnered the Romance Writers of America’s Golden Medallion Award and the Romantic Times Magazine’s the Best Regency Trophy.

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

       Chapter One

       T he midafternoon sun filtered through sheer white draperies that hung at a half-dozen nearly floor-to-ceiling windows in the corner bedroom on the third floor of the Chandler mansion.

      The June heat barely registered in the electronically filtered, air-conditioned atmosphere that was busily sucking dust motes out of the air as quickly as the sun could highlight them.

      Dark cherry furniture, all genuine antiques, was scattered around the room; a grouping of chairs and a small, overstuffed ivory couch placed in front of the marble fireplace. A high, four-poster bed was angled into one corner and backed by a living forest of potted plants, a tall, Oriental screen tucked into the greenery.

      Three crystal chandeliers hung from the high, stuccoed ceiling. There was a vanity table that definitely lived up to its name, displaying enough mirrors and pretty cut-glass bottles with expensive labels to keep Snow White’s stepmama too busy to look for poison apples.

      There were original oil paintings on the walls of the bedroom, even on the walls of the huge bathroom that held a marble tub that had been brought over from France forty years earlier, so enormous it probably could have been floated across the Atlantic with a three-man crew aboard.

      There was a separate dressing room, a separate showering room, both a built-in sauna and a mini beauty salon. The four-in-one walk-in closet—one large section for each season—was larger than most living rooms.

      The remainder of the apartment, for this was only a small part of it, took up half of the third floor: a living room, formal dining room, full kitchen, a large guest bedroom and maid’s quarters.

      It comprised only one half of one floor of a three-million-dollar mansion. But, hey, be it ever so humble, it was home.

      Back to the bedroom…dragging the eye from the huge poster bed, the fireplace mantel that had once resided in the Earl of Coventry’s summer house on the isle of Jersey, the massive chandeliers…and to the trio of women gathered near the tall, three-sided mirror Madame Pompadour herself had once preened in front of before the ball.

      One woman was seated on a straight-back Chippendale chair that had been moved across the carpet solely for the purpose of holding her body as she held sway over the situation. In other words, it would take no more than two seconds to play and win the game of “who’s the boss?” if anyone were to ask.

      The woman was a deceptive seventy; the sort that looks fifty, laughs like forty and can’t believe she isn’t still thirty. A tiny woman, no more than three inches over five feet, she probably didn’t outweigh the chair she sat on as if it were a throne. Her perfectly coiffed light brown hair was piled high on her head above a long neck and a chin that was only slightly soft—three face-lifts, one eye job and a forehead lift just last year.

      The manicured fingers of her right hand clasped a crystal sherry glass, half full. Her day dress was a soft blue silk paisley and she wore her skirt to the knee, because her legs were still slim, without a single telltale vein showing beneath her nude panty hose.

      This woman, the clear matriarch of the Chandler family, spent a half hour each day with her legs inelegantly raised above her head in a yoga position in order to “reverse the damages of blood flow and gravity.” That, however, was a family secret revealed only to her two granddaughters, who had caught her in this ignoble position and threatened to tell their grandfather on her.

      But enough of Almira Chandler, and on to the other two women.

      The second, Mrs. Ballantine—and always Mrs. Ballantine, even after twelve years as the Chandler housekeeper—stood to one side of the trio, a part of the scene, but really not a part of the small group.

      Nearly six feet tall, all of it straight as a poker, and with an air of command about her that would