Settling The Score

Settling The Score
Sharon Kendrik

Mills & Boon are proud to present a thrilling digital collection of all Sharon Kendrick’s novels and novellas for us to celebrate the publication of her amazing 100th book! Many of these books are available as e books for the first time.Revenge is a dish best served hot!Romy Salisbury was everything he despised in a woman and Dominic Dashwood couldn’t wait for retribution. Not usually a patient man, he has waited five years for this moment…But there are things Dominic doesn’t know about Romy, and when he discovers the true extent of her innocence, he is horrified. Now he must find a way to convince her to give him one last chance… but will she?Don’t miss the linked booksGetting Even, Kiss and Tell, and Wait and See by Sharon Kendrick

Dear Reader (#u7ef1337a-6c71-54a1-b304-1f8cfa8f807c),

One hundred. Doesn’t matter how many times I say it, I still can’t believe that’s how many books I’ve written. It’s a fabulous feeling but more fabulous still is the news that Mills & Boon are issuing every single one of my backlist as digital titles. Wow. I can’t wait to share all my stories with you - which are as vivid to me now as when I wrote them.

There’s BOUGHT FOR HER HUSBAND, with its outrageously macho Greek hero and A SCANDAL, A SECRET AND A BABY featuring a very sexy Tuscan. THE SHEIKH’S HEIR proved so popular with readers that it spent two weeks on the USA Today charts and…well, I could go on, but I’ll leave you to discover them for yourselves.

I remember the first line of my very first book: “So you’ve come to Australia looking for a husband?” Actually, the heroine had gone to Australia to escape men, but guess what? She found a husband all the same! The man who inspired that book rang me up recently and when I told him I was beginning my 100

story and couldn’t decide what to write, he said, “Why don’t you go back to where it all started?”

So I did. And that’s how A ROYAL VOW OF CONVENIENCE was born. It opens in beautiful Queensland and moves to England and New York. It’s about a runaway princess and the enigmatic billionaire who is infuriated by her, yet who winds up rescuing her. But then, she goes and rescues him… Wouldn’t you know it?

I’ll end by saying how very grateful I am to have a career I love, and to thank each and every one of you who has supported me along the way. You really are very dear readers.

Love,

Sharon xxx

Mills & Boon are proud to present a thrilling digital collection of all Sharon Kendrick’s novels and novellas for us to celebrate the publication of her amazing and awesome 100th book! Sharon is known worldwide for her likeable, spirited heroines and her gorgeous, utterly masculine heroes.

SHARON KENDRICK once won a national writing competition, describing her ideal date: being flown to an exotic island by a gorgeous and powerful man. Little did she realise that she’d just wandered into her dream job! Today she writes for Mills & Boon, featuring her often stubborn but always to-die-for heroes and the women who bring them to their knees. She believes that the best books are those you never want to end. Just like life…

Settling The Score

Sharon Kendrick

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

Contents

Cover (#u45a0aac1-ff2e-54d1-99c1-cd174da6a2a6)Dear Reader (#uea93febb-7109-5517-9c3f-15ab9c4ac66b)About the Author (#uddf7a436-6e3d-551d-87e6-6a037b453c49)Title Page (#udbbaf87e-04e8-529f-8001-717a600183f2)CHAPTER ONE (#u010e3516-6583-54e2-8f3b-cd5daee4fb91)CHAPTER TWO (#uae303ff8-66e8-5f6c-be1c-96ea095b4899)CHAPTER THREE (#litres_trial_promo)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)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ONE (#u7ef1337a-6c71-54a1-b304-1f8cfa8f807c)

DOMINIC DASHWOOD drove through the ornate golden and navy gates of St Fiacre’s Hill estate with just a little more speed than was necessary. Though not with as much speed as he would have liked, he decided, with a grim smile which nonetheless transformed his devastating features into the kind of face that most women only ever fantasised about.

Tensing one long, muscular thigh, he depressed the accelerator pedal, and his dark green Aston Martin shot forward like a bullet.

What he would have liked was to be on some wide, empty highway, where he could put his foot down and succumb to the heady lure of mechanical power. Machines and speed were two of Dominic’s great passions. In the past women had accused him of being cold and unfeeling.

‘You love that damned car more than you love me!’ some sultry beauty had once poutingly accused him.

And Dominic had been unable to deny the truth which lay behind her accusation. He had taken her to bed one last time—because she had begged him to and, in truth, because he had wanted to—and had then walked away, wondering what it was that made him immune to the pain of emotion.

You know damn well what it is! mocked an inner voice, and Dominic’s long fingers tightened convulsively around the soft leather of the steering wheel, as if they were biting deliciously into a woman’s tender flesh. But not just any woman. He felt the potent flicker of desire as he slowed to take the bend near the clubhouse.

His sensual mouth twisted as a woman in tennis whites emerged from the St Fiacre’s club-house. She stopped dead and stared at the car as it roared by, her eyes narrowing with speculation as they took in the hard, handsome profile of the driver.

But Dominic deliberately avoided eye contact with her. The woman’s body language made it patently clear that she was available, and Dominic avoided such openly available women like the plague.

His unconscious sexual appeal had become the bane of his life. In his youth he had used it, squandered it even. For many years now he had desired the challenge of a woman who would not melt with early submission into his arms.

Unfortunately, the woman he was scheduled to meet in just under an hour was not going to provide the challenge he needed, though once again he felt the reluctant heat coursing around his veins which just the thought of her could provoke.

For Romy Salisbury was everything he despised in a woman.

She was a siren who used her sexuality indiscriminately. Who had ruined at least one man’s life and had haunted his own for longer than he cared to admit.

A muscle worked in his lightly tanned cheek as he drove past another sports car, unwilling excitement shivering its way up his spine as he anticipated what he intended to happen.

Dominic smiled—but it was a cold, cruel smile as his mind lingered on the pleasure of the retribution he was going to exact in the next few days.

He had waited five years for his moment and now it had come at last.

It was high time that he settled the score with the delicious Miss Romy Salisbury.

Romy missed the turning for St Fiacre’s Hill and said something rather rude underneath her breath. The entrance was so well camouflaged she was surprised that even the residents could find it!

But then, didn’t they always say that you got what you paid for? And what St Fiacre’s residents were paying for—apart from ultra-luxurious houses in the jewel-like setting of nine hundred prime Surrey acres—was privacy, pure and sweet.

Privacy from nosy tourists with their instant cameras always to hand, who were curious to know how the super-rich really lived. And privacy from good, old-fashioned fortune-hunters—people with an eye to the main chance who thought they could get rich quick by marrying into money!

Romy glanced in the rear-view mirror, realising that she would have to go right round the roundabout and come back in again.

Minutes later, she was heading back towards the St Fiacre’s turn-off in her zippy little black car, bought largely with the bonus given to her by her last grateful client.

Not for the first time, Romy thanked her lucky stars that in business at least she had succeeded beyond her wildest dreams. No job was too big, too small or too difficult for Romy to tackle, and Top Class, her very own company, was going from strength to strength.

She drew up in front of the distinctive navy blue and gold wrought-iron gates which separated St Fiacre’s from the rest of the world, and decided to risk a quick, critical glance at herself in the driver’s mirror.

Not too bad, she thought dispassionately as she squinted her eyes against the glare of the sun reflected there. She flicked a trace of dust from one smooth, pale cheek and risked a closer look.

Her face carried the barest trace of make-up and her thick, straight hair was expertly styled in the urchin cut which was currently so fashionable and which made the most of the unusual pale honey colour.

She wore a silk and linen trouser suit in a neutral dark cream colour which flattered the pale magnolia of her skin and the deep velvety brown of her eyes. Beneath the suit Romy wore a simple white silk T-shirt, and she looked as she had intended to look—professional and efficient and ready for anything.

Or anyone, she reminded herself, with a wry little twist of her wide mouth as she punched in the security number she had been given.

The gates swung open and Romy drove through them to have her first inside view of the St Fiacre’s estate.

She could see immediately why it was dubbed ‘the Beverly Hills of England’ by the popular Press. It didn’t just exude money—it positively shouted it from the summit of every beautifully designed rooftop!

Or at least what you could actually see of every rooftop, thought Romy as she craned her neck to try to get a better look at some of the palatial mansions she was passing.

Impossible to see anything, really. The hedges were too high, the gates and the fences too impenetrable. Several houses even had menacing-looking signs bearing the message “Warning! Dogs Loose!”.