Proposition: Marriage

Proposition: Marriage
Eileen Wilks

FIANCE ON HER DOORSTEP?One memorable adventure was what pretty, practical Jane Smith had wanted. After all, her life had proved to be as ordinary as her name. But Jane never dreamed she'd end a conventional vacation almost kidnapped by rebels, then rescued by the most seductive spy she ever could have imagined.Nor did Jane expect Samual Charmaneaux, still seductive, now an ex -spy, to show up on her doorstep and propose a marriage of convenience - just in case her holiday souvenir turned out to be his bundle of joy. She'd lost her heart to Samuel already, but could practical Jane give her hand to a mystery man who promised to make marriage a lifelong adventure?

CONFIDENTIAL (#u90553e26-2e8b-5b68-8995-437cd9336f3a)Letter to Reader (#u3fc96a09-d92a-5185-a6bb-41b0b0b818ad)Title Page (#u13eaab43-4680-5947-8f8f-90faba244da3)About the Author (#u53f6cf01-979d-5633-8b35-88c89f615fe2)Dedication (#u0a9e37f0-3043-5d95-8dc4-da37c06939bd)Chapter One (#u3bd5e103-0fa3-5a77-a1d6-ba22ec13c4ce)Chapter Two (#u6304a60a-c3e8-51fc-8781-e2d5be33a0b6)Chapter Three (#u785e298d-9161-5cfe-ad43-91569b35681f)Chapter Four (#u5304c670-1209-507f-b672-73eb79fe43c5)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)Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

CONFIDENTIAL

Jane confuses the hell out of me. Maybe it will help to write out my objectives. I’m not used to putting anything on paper, but I can always destroy this later.

Objectives Attained:

1. Quit the Agency

2. Activate Samuel Charmaneaux identity

3. Find Jane Smith

Objectives Remaining:

1. Find an ordinary job

2. Make a place for myself in my new hometown

3. Marry Jane

The first two objectives depend on the last one. Jane doesn’t like risks, so I have to make her either need me or want me enough to take a chance. I don’t understand what she wants from me, or what happens to me when I kiss her, but I know she wants me—almost as much as I want her. I can use that to get her to agree to marry me.

New objective: Seduce Jane.

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!

Wonderful and ever-popular Annette Broadrick brings us September’s MAN OF THE MONTH with Lean, Mean & Lonesome. Watch as a tough loner returns home to face the woman he walked away from but never forgot.

Our exciting continuity series TEXAS CATTLEMAN’S CLUB continues with Cinderella’s Tycoon by Caroline Cross. Charismatic CEO Sterling Churchill marries a shy librarian pregnant with his sperm-bank baby—and finds love.

Proposition: Marriage is what rising star Eileen Wilks offers when the girl-next-door comes alive in the arms of an alpha hero. Beloved romance author Fayrene Preston makes her Desire debut with The Barons of Texas: Tess, featuring a beautiful heiress who falls in love with a sexy stranger. The popular theme BACHELORS & BABIES returns to Desire with Metsy Hingle’s Dad in Demand. And Barbara McCauley’s miniseries SECRETS! continues with the dramatic story of a mysterious millionaire in Killian’s Passion.

So make a commitment to sensual love—treat yourself to all six September love stories from Silhouette Desire!

Enjoy!

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

U.S.- 3010 Walden Ave., PO Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian. PO Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

Proposition: Marriage

Eileen Wilks

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

EILEEN WILKS

is a fifth-generation Texan. Her great-great-grandmother came to Texas in a covered wagon shortly after the end of the Civil War—excuse us, the War Between the States. But she’s not a full-blooded Texan. Right after another war, her Texan father fell for a Yankee woman. This obviously mismatched pair proceeded to travel to nine cities in three countries in the first twenty years of their marriage. For the next twenty years they stayed put, back home in Texas again—and still together.

Eileen figures her professional career matches her nomadic upbringing, since she’s tried everything from drafting to a brief stint as a ranch hand—raising two children and any number of cats and dogs along the way. Not until she started writing did she “stay put,” because that’s when she knew she’d come home. Readers can write to her at P.O. Box 4612, Midland, TX 79704-4612.

This book is dedicated to my bookseller friends—

to Sherry at Miz B’s for her support, her friendship

and for many, many hours of reading pleasure;

to Rick at Waldenbooks for always going the extra yard;

and to Donita Lawrence at Bell, Book and Candle for her

loving support of romance books, romance writers

and romance readers everywhere.

One

Repentance came too late. Jane was up to her neck in lake water and trouble.

The lake was a shallow one. The trouble waited about ten feet away, in the form of a pair of combat boots planted right at her eye level on the muddy bank. Jane crouched behind a bush that clung to life in spite of its recent inundation, and wished very hard for the impossible.

She wished she’d never heard of the small-Caribbean nation of San Tomás. She wished even more that she hadn’t bought the cruise tickets a fellow teacher had been forced to sell when his wife’s appendix ruptured just before spring break. Most of all, she wished she’d never given in to the rare spirit of adventure that had moved her to leave the port city where the cruise ship was docked, and go haring off to investigate the island’s interior.

Why, oh why, had she decided to toss aside the cautious habits of a lifetime and live a little?

The boots belonged to a soldier. The soldier had one friend nearby, whom she couldn’t see through her bush, and others spread out in the surrounding tropical forest. All were looking for her, and they had guns—big, mean-looking, Rambo-type guns.

The water was warm, the air was still and hot, but Jane shivered.

Until she’d heard the gunshots, she had been enjoying herself tremendously. She’d made several friends on the bus, including a native couple who had told her proudly about the dam the government had built nearby. Jane was sure she was more profoundly grateful for that dam than anyone else could be. Especially for the newness of it. That dam had created the shallow lake where she crouched. Its waters had swallowed part of the forest and killed off the ground-hugging plants, but it hadn’t finished drowning the trees and larger bushes. Jane’s bush still had plenty of leaves to hide behind.

Though she couldn’t see the soldiers’ faces now, she’d seen them in the village before she’d fled. They had all looked terribly young to her—no older than most of the boys she taught back home in Atherton. She’d noticed the dozen-or-so youthful soldiers with wicked-looking rifles slung over bony shoulders as soon as she’d climbed off the bus, but she hadn’t thought anything of it. Not really. Soldiers were a common sight in San Tomás.