Kiss Your Prince Charming

Kiss Your Prince Charming
Jennifer Greene

A PRINCE IN WAITING… She'd kissed her share of frogs, so Rachel Martin never expected her best buddy would become her very own Prince Charming. Life-saving surgery had transformed Greg Stoner from ordinary guy-next-door to extraordinarily sexy bachelor. But it was the compelling look in Greg's eyes that had Rachel wishing their relationship could change into something… oh-so-magical.Although Rachel was a treasure, Greg knew he wasn't the man for her. Yet, whenever he insisted her "prince" still had warts, she dazzled him with intoxicating kisses and promises of forever. Dare this frog prince make all Rachel's fantasies come true?HAPPILY EVER AFTER: Your favorite fairy tales freshly told, with all the passion you've ever craved.

She Was The Princess To His Frog. (#uce65fe0f-a759-5c5e-85b5-323077f97093)Letter to Reader (#ud1b8508a-3737-50bb-bb62-cc42eebead71)Title Page (#u5787884d-4382-51ed-804e-36fa70769d1b)About the Author (#ue05061c9-2091-5ad9-9efb-63624acc58c4)Letter to Reader (#ua2e83085-f7a7-5f5e-a912-1e2201524e90)Chapter One (#u39de47a1-3ca2-58db-af79-52cb30dba5ba)Chapter Two (#uf1b11e4f-cf4d-58c4-b13f-722615c4b823)Chapter Three (#u236d265f-ab3d-5dea-8d38-35a37a60b2b0)Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

She Was The Princess To His Frog.

That’s just the way it was.

But now something was happening between him and Rachel. Something new, something different. Something threatening...

Rachel loved him. Or believed she did. It was the vulnerable, yearning way she was looking at him. It was the way her kisses started out playful and turned into something soft and dark real, real fast.

He was enjoying her treating him like a prince—he couldn’t deny it. But when push came to shove, he was the same old frog.

For once in his life, though—for Rachel—he desperately wanted to be that prince she believed in....

Dear Reader,

Welcome to Silhouette Desire—where you’re guaranteed powerful, passionate and provocative love stories that feature rugged heroes and spirited heroines who experience the full emotional intensity of falling in love’

This October you’ll love our new MAN OF THE MONTH title by Barbara Boswell, Forever Flint. Opposites attract when a city girl becomes the pregnant bride of a millionaire outdoorsman.

Be sure to “rope in” the next installment of the exciting Desire miniseries TEXAS CATTLEMAN’S CLUB with Billionaire Bridegroom by Peggy Moreland. When cattle baron Forrest Cunningham wants to wed childhood fnend Becky Sullivan, she puts his love to an unexpected test.

The always-wonderful Jennifer Greene returns to Desire with her magical series HAPPILY EVER AFTER. Kiss Your Prince Charming is a modern fairy tale starring an unforgettable “frog prince.” In a sexy battle-of-the-sexes tale, Lass Small offers you The Catch of Texas. Anne Eames continues her popular miniseries MONTANA MALONES with The Unknown Malone. And Shen WhiteFeather makes her explosive Desire debut with Warrior’s Baby, a story of surrogate motherhood with a twist.

Next month, you’ll really feel the power of the passion when you see our new provocative cover design. Underneath our new covers, you will still find six exhilarating journeys into the seductive world of romance, with a guaranteed happy ending!

Enjoy!

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

Please address questions and book requests to

Silhouette Reader Service

U S : 3010 Walden Ave , P.O Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

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Kiss Your Prince Charming

Jennifer Greene

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

JENNIFER GREENE

lives near Lake Michigan with her husband and two children. Before writing full-time, she worked as a teacher and a personnel manager. Michigan State University honored her as an “outstanding woman graduate” for her work with women on campus.

Ms. Greene has written more than fifty category romances, for which she has won numerous awards, including three RITAs from the Romance Writers of America in the Best Short Contemporary Books category, and a Career Achievement Award from Romantic Times Magazine. She was also recently inducted into the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame.

Dear Reader,

This is the second book in my HAPPILY EVER AFTER series. Do you remember The Frog Prince fairy tale? Where the girl has to kiss the frog to get the prince? Well, personally, I thought that story needed a drastic feminist update. In my version, there’s a woman, of course. And a man who’s a prince of a guy. But today’s woman is way smarter than in generations past, yes? No way, no how, would we be willing to kiss any frogs....

Unless, of course, there was an extraordinarily good reason for doing so.

I hope you like the story! And wishing you all my best—

One

Rachel Martin had had it. She zipped her ancient yellow VW into the driveway, cut the engine and then scowled at the debris piled on the passenger seat. There was no way she could carry the mail, groceries, her purse and her briefcase into the house in one haul—but she was too darn hot and cranky to make two trips.

Since the divorce, of course, Rachel had learned the obvious. A woman could always find a way to do the impossible. Sometimes the impossible was just a little more challenging than other times.

Once she climbed out of the car, she stuck the mail between her teeth, hooked the key ring on a finger and then used both arms to scoop up the grocery sack, briefcase, and purse tote. The success of her hauling mission seemed assured until she tried slamming the car door closed with her fanny—which jostled everything, particularly threatening to topple the ice cream at the top of the overstuffed grocery bag.

Oh, man. She needed that ice cream. She deserved it. The whole day had been a nonstop test of sanity. The air-conditioning had malfunctioned at work. All six of her engineers had been testy and demanding. She’d skipped lunch and then had to work late. Her blue linen suit had more limp wrinkles than a shar-pei’s face, her right stocking had a run and her stomach was making pitiful growling sounds of starvation. The unrelenting heat was so unfair. This was Milwaukee, for Pete’s sake. Cool nights should have been a guarantee by the middle of September—particularly by seven o’clock—and yet the temperature still registered a mean, cruel ninety degrees with enough humidity to melt steel.

Carefully juggling her packages, sweat drooling down the back of her neck, Rachel mentally pictured her life ten minutes from now. Forget chores. Forget the sounds of lawn mowers and honking cars and kids shrieking as they skateboarded down the sidewalks of the old neighborhood. She could be inside her rented house in two minutes. Naked in six. A few seconds after that, she could be draped under the air-conditioning vent in her living room, dipping a spoon into an entire gallon of Fudge Ripple, with an old classic Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn flick plugged into the VCR.

The fantasy was almost as satisfying as sex. Maybe even better. Sex wasn’t a remote possibility in her life right now, where ice cream was definitely a can-do.

“Ms. Martin? Wait, Ms. Martin!”

She recognized Leo Rembrowsky’s voice coming up behind her, and any other time she wouldn’t have minded chatting a few minutes with her elderly neighbor. Leo was okay. Occasionally he’d tried to peek in her bathroom window and he was an incurable busybody, but mostly he was just lonely since his wife died. Swiftly she turned around, so Leo could see her arms were completely stuffed and she was in no position to stop and visit—yet he didn’t seem to notice.

“I been waiting for you.” He huffed and puffed up the driveway until he caught up with her, his Slavic accent even heavier than usual. “You’re late today. I wait outside in the heat. But I thought you should know. Mr. Stoner was in big car accident.”

Her heart clutched. She dropped her briefcase and yanked the mail out of her mouth. “You mean Greg? Our Mr. Stoner?”

“Yes, yes. I heard from Tilda. She heard on scanner. Then Josie, she call the hospital—”

Vaguely Rachel heard the details of the neighborhood gossip vine. Vaguely she was aware of the bloodred sun, dropping fast now, painting the maple leaves gold and brushing the sky with dusky sunset shadows. Life just seemed so everyday normal that it took a jolting few seconds for Rachel to believe something had really happened to Greg. “Mr. Rembrowsky, which hospital? And do you know how badly he was hurt?”

Leo crouched down to pick up the spray of envelopes. “St. John’s, I hear. It was three-car pileup. Early afternoon. Tilda called hospital, but no one would say how he is. You have to be family or nobody wants to talk to you. But I still thought you would want to know.”

“I do. I did. Thank you, Mr. Rembrowsky, and I’m so sorry you waited out in the heat....”

He straightened up and piled the mail on top of her grocery sack. “You just tell me when you find out news, okeydoke? And if there’s something we neighbors can do, you say.”

“Okeydoke. I promise.” She hustled up the sidewalk, shifted everything so she could unlock the back door, then swiftly jogged in and dropped all the debris on the counter in her yellow-and-white kitchen.

Inside, the air conditioner was wheezing and gasping like a four-pack-a-day smoker, but at least it was working—for now. Like most homes in the neighborhood, her two-story frame house dated somewhere around the turn of the century. On the plus side, the rooms had personality and character and unique little architectural features. On the minus side, every appliance in the place had a capricious personality. Greg’s theory was that she needed to get tougher and show the appliances who was boss.