The Monte Carlo Proposal. Lucy Gordon

      

      We laughed together and it was like being back at the Hotel de Paris, when we’d chatted for hours and known each other better in that time than some people do in a lifetime.

      The music was smoochy. He drew me close so that my head rested on his shoulder, and he dropped his own head, turning it slightly in to my neck so that his lips brushed my skin.

      It was physically exciting, and added to my frustration that I couldn’t have him. But it was also strangely cosy. The warmth that swept me was contentment. I could gladly nestle against him like this forever.

      Only it wasn’t going to be forever. Another week, perhaps less. Already I felt more in tune with him than was wise, but I knew I couldn’t be wise. Not with Jack. There was all the rest of my life for wisdom.

      Lucy Gordon cut her writing teeth on magazine journalism, interviewing many of the world’s most interesting men, including Warren Beatty, Richard Chamberlain, Roger Moore, Sir Alec Guinness and Sir John Gielgud. She also camped out with lions in Africa, and had many other unusual experiences which have often provided the background for her books. She is married to a Venetian, whom she met while on holiday in Venice. They got engaged within two days.

      Two of her books have won the Romance Writers of America RITA® award—Song of the Lorelei and His Brother’s Child in the Best Traditional Romance category.

      You can visit her Web site at www.lucy-gordon.com

      Books by Lucy Gordon

      HARLEQUIN ROMANCE®

      3780—THE ITALIAN’S BABY

      3799—RINALDO’S INHERITED BRIDE*

      3807—GINO’S ARRANGED BRIDE*

      3816—HIS PRETEND WIFE

      The Monte Carlo Proposal

      Lucy Gordon

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      MILLS & BOON

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      CONTENTS

       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 ONE

      Della’s Story

      IT WAS a great dress. No argument. Silver and slinky, low-cut in the front and high-slit at the side. It had some magic quality that made my hips and bust look bigger and my waist look smaller, and it fitted so closely that you just knew I was wearing nothing underneath. And I mean nothing. That dress was cool, sexy, provocative, sensational.

      At any other time I’d have loved it. But not now. Not now I knew why that slimeball Hugh Vanner had been so eager to get it on me. It was because he wanted one, or more, of his equally slimy ‘business associates’ to get it off me.

      And since it was a moot question whether they were more disgusting or he was—no way!

      At this point a woman with her head screwed on would have got out—fast. But that’s not easy when you’re on a yacht. Even if it is moored in the harbour at Monte Carlo.

      I’d been hired in London as a waitress, and I suppose it was naïve of me to think that ‘waitress’ meant waitress. But I was in a tight hole financially.

      Usually I demonstrated goods in department stores, but one job had just finished and another had just fallen through. I couldn’t afford to go even a week without work, and the money being offered for this trip was good. So I crossed my fingers and hoped.

      Fatal mistake.

      Never cross your fingers. It makes it so hard to fight the creeps off.

      I joined the yacht at Southampton. It was called The Silverado, and it wasn’t what most people would mean by yacht, with sails and things. This was a rich man’s version, over two hundred feet long, with thirteen staterooms, a bar, a swimming pool, a dining room that could seat twenty, and not a sail in sight. That kind of yacht.

      My nose was twitching before I’d been on board for five minutes. The place shrieked too much of the wrong sort of money in the hands of the wrong sort of people who’d acquired it by the wrong sort of means.

      Don’t get me wrong. I like money. But, for reasons I can’t go into now, I’m nervous about where it comes from. I’ve known life when anything I wanted could be served up on a plate, and life when I didn’t know where my next penny was coming from.

      I was in one of those times now, so I stayed on board and got stuck into the job.

      No. Scratch that last phrase. I stayed on board and worked hard. Better.

      I didn’t meet Vanner until several hours later, and the whole grubby, sweaty mess of him came as a nasty surprise.

      ‘You’ll do,’ he grunted, looking me up and down. ‘I told that agency I wanted lookers. I like my guests to have a good time. Puts them in the right mood, if you know what I mean.’

      I was beginning to know exactly what he meant. I was also beginning to wish I’d never come on this trip, but we were already at sea and it was too late.

      ‘So you’re Della Martin?’ he demanded, breathing booze fumes over me. ‘How old are you?’

      ‘Twenty-four.’

      ‘You look younger.’

      I knew it, and it was the bane of my life. I’ve got a face that would be right on an eighteen-year-old,