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      MILLS & BOON

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      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

      CHAPTER THIRTEEN

      CHAPTER FOURTEEN

      CHAPTER ONE

      RICO VALERON brought the long, powerful car to a smoothly purring halt outside the house and drew on the handbrake. Checking his watch briefly, he turned the key in the ignition, silencing the idling engine. He had plenty of time, he told himself, and settled back in his seat, waiting.

      From her bedroom, Felicity heard the sound of the vehicle’s arrival just seconds before she heard her father hurry from the dining room into the hallway.

      ‘Your car’s here!’ he called up the staircase, the sound of his voice echoing slightly. ‘Are you ready?’

      Am I ready? she asked herself, looking into the grey eyes of her own reflection in the dressing-table mirror, then immediately away again. She didn’t like what she saw in those eyes. They gave too much away.

      ‘Fliss!’ Joe Hamilton was getting impatient now. ‘Did you hear me? The car’s here—we should be going.’

      ‘Just a moment!’

      Felicity had trouble forcing her voice to work, making it strong enough to carry from her bedroom to the ground floor. In spite of all her efforts it didn’t sound right. It had no strength, no conviction. It didn’t sound at all believable.

      Not at all the way a bride should sound in the moments just before she set out on her way to her wedding.

      But then this wasn’t the sort of wedding she had ever planned. Not the one she had dreamed of as a young girl. The wedding she had created in her fantasies, lying awake in her bed in the throes of her first adolescent crush. Then, she had imagined herself as Cinderella or Queen Guinevere, with her groom as a mixture of Prince Charming and one of the knights of the round table coming towards her astride a white charger, ready to sweep her off her feet and carry her off into the perfect ‘happily ever after’.

      Not like this.

      Not like this travesty of a marriage that she had been forced into by fear and desperation and had tried every possible way she could imagine to get out of. But without success.

      ‘Felicity!’

      Her father was getting impatient now. He only ever used the full version of her name when he was annoyed with her and she could sense the exasperation behind the word, could picture him pushing back his shirt cuff to glance at his watch in irritation.

      ‘I’m coming!’

      What else could she say? She had no alternative. There was no knight on a white horse galloping to her rescue. She hadn’t even been able to confide in her own mother. That would have meant revealing just what an appalling mess her father had made of things, the hole he had dug himself into, so deep that there was no hope of ever finding his way out.

      Unless she went through with this.

      ‘Just a minute!’

      Drawing in a deep, sighing breath, she turned to the mirror once more, checking her appearance.

      The white silk dress Edward had insisted on fitted her perfectly, its softly flowing lines enhancing her slender height, the sleeveless, off the shoulder style revealing slim arms and smooth skin touched by the golden tint of the sun. Her pale blonde hair was pulled away from her face, and coiled at the back of her head, under the fall of the veil that cascaded down from the delicate tracery of a small tiara. The severe style emphasised the fine bones of her face, the high, slanting cheekbones and the wide, soft grey eyes.

      But there was no colour in her skin under the carefully applied cosmetics; no light in the shadowed depths of her eyes.

      Instead she looked like someone about to set out on the walk to the scaffold.

      ‘No one’s going to believe this for a second,’ she told her reflection fiercely. ‘Can’t you at least manage a smile?’

      But no—that was much, much worse. The smile she switched on was so blatantly false it was almost a grimace and hastily she let it slide again, lifting her long skirts and heading for the door.

      ‘At last!’ Joe exclaimed as he saw her descending the stairs towards him. ‘We’re going to be late!’

      ‘Isn’t that a bride’s prerogative?’ Felicity returned, hiding her apprehension under a mask of insouciance. ‘And Edward will wait.’

      Oh, yes, Edward would wait. He stood to gain so much from this travesty of a marriage. Much, much more than he had ever promised Felicity for her agreement.

      Catching the blurred signs of movement through the frosted glass of the front door, Rico abandoned his apparently indolent pose and straightened up. Narrowed dark eyes took in his surroundings in a swift, appraising survey, and he nodded in grim satisfaction.

      There was

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