The Millionaire's Proposition

The Millionaire's Proposition
Natalie Patrick

WILL YOU…When down-on-her-luck Becky Taylor was pursued by billionaire Clark Winstead, she thought her prince had finally arrived. But Becky blinked at Clark's offer. Clark wanted a mistress and a child–but not a wife! Well, Becky refused to be seduced into motherhood. That is, unless Clark wooed her the old-fashioned way….HAVE MY BABY?Clark believed his proposal–uh, proposition–was the best solution. It skipped the marriage and jumped to the essentials: joint custody. But while Becky dreamed of white lace, Clark vowed never to walk down the aisle. Surely a powerful, sophisticated businessman couldn't be roped into commitment by a sweet virgin–or could he?

I love kids and they love me. When the time comes, I think I’d be a very good mother. (#u3d8a06d9-e0f9-5d46-8bb7-dc4ae29125c6)Letter to Reader (#uc838644d-f36a-5464-9397-1059c4649195)Title Page (#u7cac869d-f19a-580e-990c-6a22202f4d00)About the Author (#ua16090c6-f2b5-5410-b513-30f1b587df39)Chapter One (#u4fe4c756-d25a-5f7e-9d49-7e7af0801fdc)Chapter Two (#ua5149d70-d817-5a8d-a754-e2eb3327ee63)Chapter Three (#ua7175862-100e-50db-8176-c958bd6f4bfd)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)Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

I love kids and they love me. When the time comes, I think I’d be a very good mother.

Becky’s words echoed through Clark’s mind.

Clark did not often run into women like Becky. The novelty of her spirit and innocence intrigued him, stirred something up in him.

Flawless-as-cream skin, hair that looked like the spun gold curls straight off a Christmas angel and every bit as wholesome. And she was a virgin, too. He’d stake his fortune on that fact.

That “fact” touched something in him, awakened his male protective instinct and made him feel proprietary, even though he hardly knew Becky. And any woman who did that for a man like Clark deserved due consideration.

Yes...Becky Taylor might just be exactly what he was looking for....

Dear Reader,

The end of the century is near, and we’re all eagerly anticipating the wonders to come. But no matter what happens. I believe that everyone will continue to need and to seek the unquenchable spirit of love...of romance. And here at Silhouette Romance, we’re delighted to present another month’s worth of terrific, emotional stories.

This month, RITA Award-winning author Marie Ferrarella offers a tender BUNDLES OF JOY tale, in which The Baby Beneath the Mistletoe brings together a man who’s lost his faith and a woman who challenges him to take a chance at love...and family. In Charlotte Maclay’s charming new novel, a millionaire playboy isn’t sure what he was Expecting at Christmas, but what he gets is a very pregnant butler! Elizabeth Harbison launches her wonderful new theme-based miniseries, CINDERELLA BRIDES, with the fairy-tale romance—complete with mistaken identity!—between Emma and the Earl.

In A Diamond for Kate by Moyra Tarling, discover whether a doctor makes his devoted nurse his devoted wife after learning about her past... Patricia Thayer’s cross-line miniseries WITH THESE RINGS returns to Romance and poses the question: Can The Man, the Ring, the Wedding end a fifty-year-old curse? You’ll have to read this dramatic story to find out! And though The Milllionaire’s Proposition involves making a baby in Natalie Patrick’s upbeat Romance, can a down-on-her-luck waitress also convince him to make beautiful memories...as man and wife?

Enjoy this month’s offerings, and look forward to a new century of timeless, traditional tales guaranteed to touch your heart!

Mary-Theresa Hussey

Senior Editor, Silhouette Romance

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

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

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Out L2A 5X3

The Millionaire’s Proposition

Natalie Patrick

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

NATALIE PATRICK

believes in romance and has firsthand experience to back up that belief. She met her husband in January and married him in April of that same year—they would have eloped sooner but friends persuaded them to have a real wedding. Ten years and two children later, she knows she’s found her real romantic hero.

Amid the clutter in her work space, she swears that her headstone will probably read: “She left this world a brighter place but not necessarily a cleaner one.” She certainly hopes her books brighten her readers’ days.

Chapter One

Why don’t you just come home to Woodbridge, Indiana, meet a nice fellow, get married get a mortgage, a minivan, and have a couple terrific kids? Becky Taylor could just hear her older brother Matt’s very sensible and very predictable advice. And she wasn’t taking it!

No, when she came home to Indiana, it would be in triumph. Even Matt could appreciate her need for that. Growing up—he the oldest, Becky the baby—in one of the poorest families in town, they knew what it meant to go hungry, to not know what crisis they would face next, to be scared often and sometimes angry. But they’d also known a lot of love and had been raised to believe they could do better for themselves. A lot of folks around town doubted that, but Matt had proved them wrong and so had her other brothers and sisters—now it was her turn.

No, she certainly would not go slinking back with her tail between her legs after only five months in Chicago. She would not go through the struggle just to end up in another low-paying dead-end job, about the only kind a town as small as Woodbridge could provide a girl without a degree and her limited work experience.

And how could she go back and face her old boyfriend after telling him she’d outgrown the town, the life-style and most especially her puppy love/first attraction for him? The last was certainly true and had been true for most of the year they’d dated. But then how hard was it to outgrow a guy who thought buying you a microwave burrito at his father’s gas station was taking you out to eat?

A guy who thought all women should be barefoot and pregnant—except when they put on their steeltoed boots to go to work at the local factory? A guy who had never understood, much less supported, her quest for self-improvement, her plans to go back to college, her longing for something more?

She shuddered. If she never saw the likes of Frankie McWurter again, it would be too soon. And if she never took her brother’s typical Midwestern male advice, then...

She fingered the two tiny silver baby booties on her charm-laden bracelet, one for each of Matt’s children, her niece and nephew. Thinking of her brother and his wife, Dani, and those adorable toddlers did make her think twice about never taking her brother’s imagined advice. Actually, she did want to get married eventually and have those babies. In fact, she counted on it.

Marriage, after all, was what girls in Woodbridge, Indiana, were raised to do best—even enlightened, educated girls, um, women of the so-caded “Generation X.” And babies? Becky loved babies, their tiny toes and fat tummies, the way they smelled, the way they cooed and laughed. The very idea of having one of her own someday radiated through her like sunshine through the dreariness of her day.

Becky absolutely wanted to get married and have a baby—with the right guy, at the right time and under the right circumstances. A triple threat, her sister-in-law would tease her and tell her the odds were stacked against realizing all three of her goals at the same time.

“Find Mr. Right,” Dani would say, “and the rest suddenly won’t matter quite so much.”

“Find Mr. Right?” Becky muttered, clutching her thin all-weather coat close to her body. Right now she’d be happy to bump into Mr. Coffee. She stopped by the glass front of a chaotic little coffee shop on the first floor of an elegant skyscraper.

The aroma of the exotic blends, the rich lattes, the freshly ground beans all enticed her. She shut her eyes, tipped up her nose and savored it. Since savoring was all she could afford, why not enjoy the very best? she thought.

She’d checked her budget again this morning, trying to find just enough extra to allow her to replace the contact lens she’d lost the night before. She glanced at the image of herself reflected in the huge plate-glass window before her. Even her best perfectpink job interview suit didn’t make up for the pair of bent wire-framed glasses perched on her nose or the still-damp mass of golden-brown curls glommed on top of her head. If only her roommate hadn’t moved out last week and taken the blow dryer along with her half of the living expenses, her hair at least might be presentable, Becky thought.

No, her budget would not budge for contacts or coffee. When she’d lost her job last week, she’d stocked the fridge and paid the rent and figured out the total cost of utilities, necessities and buying a paper every day for job-hunting purposes. Luxuries like latte did not fit in the picture.

She gazed longingly at the hot steaming cups set down by the waitress. Even the half-empty ones, which got whisked away almost before the patrons had left the premises, didn’t look bad to Becky today. She fought off a yawn and moved her bedraggled umbrella from one shoulder to the other. In the shop, two women in stark business attire got up from their seats, their cups still brimming, and left the coffee disregarded as lightly as the cast-off newspaper one tossed onto the counter.

Of course! Becky brightened. If she spent her allotted money for a plain, small cup of coffee and lingered over it long enough, she could gather up someone’s unwanted paper for free. Not only could she get the want ads that way but she wouldn’t go through the day feeling like some job-hunting zombie.

Her heavy charm bracelet jangled and icy water droplets splashed on her wrist and leg. She yanked and pulled and finally got her miserable pink-and-blue floral umbrella shut. She looked at the sad old thing with one rib bowed out and another bent at a forty-degree angle so that even closed it seemed as if about to burst into a rendition of “I’m a little teapot.” As soon as she got a job, that umbrella was going to go and the first thing she was going to buy was a new one, she told herself. No, make that the second thing.

She pushed through the heavy glass doors of the mammoth building, heading for the inner entrance to the shop. The first thing she would buy was a new charm for her bracelet—to mark the passage into this new, mature phase of her life. She gave her bracelet a confident shake and forged ahead, throwing herself into a throng of gray suits and shuffling wing tips.

Ping.

“My charm!” She’d felt the small object bounce against her knee moments before it hit the floor. A quick check of her bracelet told her she’d lost one of the baby booties she so cherished. Replacing it at a time like this was not an option, she thought. She had to find it!

She scanned the floor. The bright silver should stand out against the black marble, shouldn’t it?

She raised her hand to bite her fingernail and unintentionally stabbed not one, but three passersby with the tip of her crooked umbrella.

“Sorry. So sorry. I’m sorry.” She tried to meet the eyes of each of those she’d gouged.