The Wedding Ultimatum

The Wedding Ultimatum
HELEN BIANCHIN

Danielle knew Rafael Valdez was out of her league and had never dreamed he'd be interested in her as a woman. She'd turned to him as a last resort to help her family. The outrageous solution he proposed turned her world upside down!Rafael would make all Danielle's troubles disappear if she married him and gave him an heir. The idea was shocking, intriguing, tempting! To marry this devastatingly sexy man, and share his bed? Danielle had twenty-four hours before Rafael would return to claim her….

“Everything has a price, don’t you agree?”

Why did she get the feeling this was manipulation at its worst? Yet Danielle had to ask, “What is it you want?”

“A child of my own to whom I can bequeath my fortune. A child born in wedlock,” Rafe told her, his expression enigmatic.

She cast him a look of total incredulity.

“It’s a question of needs,” Rafe offered. “Yours and mine.” His gaze narrowed, and his expression assumed an implacability that was frightening. “That’s the deal. Take it, or leave it….”

Bestselling Australian author HELEN BIANCHIN has a sophisticated, intense writing style and especially enjoys creating commanding, sexy heroes and stylish, passionate heroines. The emotional sparks really fly between her characters, and the sensuality sizzles! In The Wedding Ultimatum, Helen explores what happens when an independent woman is forced into a marriage of convenience….

Legally wed,

but he’s never said…

“I love you.”

They’re…

The series in which where marriages are made

in haste…and love comes later…

Coming next month:

The Blackmail Baby (#2247)

by Penny Jordan

The Wedding Ultimatum

Helen Bianchin

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

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

WHAT did one wear to a date with the devil?

Danielle cast a practised eye over the clothes in her wardrobe, made a considered decision, and began dressing with care.

The penthouse suite she shared with her mother in Melbourne’s exclusive Brighton suburb had been home for as long as she could remember. Luxurious, spacious, it represented the epitome of moneyed class.

But not for much longer. The writing, she reflected grimly, was on the wall. Valued paintings had been sold, secondhand pieces replaced priceless antique furniture. Items of jewellery pawned and auctioned. A standard sedan replaced the stylish Bentley, and creditors circled with shark-like anticipation for the moment bankruptcy was declared and the ultimate mortgaged-to-the-hilt penthouse went on the auction block.

Her mother’s collection of credit cards had long reached their ceiling limit, and the La Femme lingerie boutique she jointly owned with Ariane could at best be described as floundering, Danielle admitted wryly as she fixed a diamond stud in each ear. An heirloom that had once belonged to her maternal grandmother, and the only jewellery Danielle had kept.

In less than a week they’d have to walk out of the penthouse, take what personal belongings the bankruptcy court would allow them, seek mediocre rental accommodation, close La Femme, and find employment.

She was twenty-seven, and destitute. It wasn’t a good feeling, she reflected as she caught up her evening purse and made her way out to the lift.

It was almost a year since they’d entertained at home, and social occasions were limited to gratis invitations from a few remaining friends loyal to the widow of a man linked to a revered Spanish dynasty.

This evening’s meeting was a last-ditch effort to appeal for some form of clemency from the man who owned their apartment building and the shopping complex which housed their boutique. That he also owned a considerable slice of prime city and industrial real estate was immaterial.

In the city’s social echelon, Rafe Valdez represented new money, Danielle reflected as she reached the basement car park.

An almost obscene fortune accumulated from means, it was rumoured, that didn’t bear too close scrutiny.

In his late thirties, he was known to gift large sums to worthy charities, and had, some waspish tongues snidely wagged, used his generous beneficence as an entrée into the élite social circle of the city’s rich and famous.

An élite circle to which Danielle and Ariane no longer held access.

Yet she couldn’t fail to be aware of his existence. His photo graced the business section of the country’s newspapers on occasion, and was reproduced among the social pages at one function or another…inevitably accompanied by the latest beautiful young thing clinging to his arm, a known society matron anxious to receive media coverage, or any one of several attractive young women who fought for his attention.

Danielle had met him once, almost a year ago, at a dinner hosted by a so-called friend who, as Ariane’s financial position became known, no longer chose to extend her hospitality.

Then, she’d taken one look at him and retreated behind a slight smile and polite but distant social conversation. Self-preservation, she’d qualified at the time, for to have anything to do with a man of Rafe Valdez’s calibre would be akin to dancing with the devil.