LITMIR.BIZ

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      GAIL DAYTON

      has been playing make-believe all her life but didn’t start writing the make-believe down until she was about nine years old, because it took her that long to learn how to write coherent sentences. She married her college sweetheart shortly after graduation and moved to a small Central Texas town where they lived happily for twenty years. Now transplanted to an even smaller town in the Texas Panhandle, Gail lives with her Prince Charming, their youngest son and Spot the Dalmatian, where they are still working on the “ever after” part. The “happily” they have down.

      After a checkered career with intervals spent as a mommy, the entire editorial staff of more than one small-town newspaper, a junior college history instructor and legal assistant in a rural prosecutor’s office, she finally got to quit her day job in favor of writing love stories. When she’s not writing or reading other people’s love stories, she sings alto in her church choir and teaches basic sewing as an incentive to finish her own sewing projects, which would otherwise languish. Gail would love to hear from readers. Write her at P.O. Box 176, Clarendon, Texas 79226.

      To those wonderful women from Waco,

       the best friends a writer could have. Thanks for all your support. I wouldn’t be here without you. To Myles, for worrying about me when I don’t write, and for twenty-five wonderful years.

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      One

      She’d found her target. He lounged near the makeshift bar, his perfect teeth glinting as he smiled at some dark-haired bimbette. In the warehouse-cum-nightclub in New York’s garment district, lights flashed, strobe-quick and bright, or slower, in garish colors that painted the party goers in even more ghastly shades than they’d painted themselves. Except for that man, her night’s mission. The Sheikh of Araby.

      Or rather, the Sheikh of Qarif, to give him his true name. As she maneuvered her way toward him, Ellen watched the lights turn his handsome face pink, then sickly green, then dappled blue, but his perfection continued unblemished. He knew it, too.

      He threw back that chiseled profile in a laugh that had to be calculated to show off his best features: dark sultry eyes, straight white teeth, high, carved cheekbones. His picture hadn’t done him justice.

      Oh, it had amply illustrated his movie-star features, but it hadn’t said a word about the sexuality that oozed like honey from his every pore. Ellen kept the wry twist from her faint smile at the sight of the little girl bees buzzing around him. She couldn’t let him see past the mask she wore to her real purpose. He might be the best-looking, sexiest man she’d seen in the past dozen years, but he was still her target.

      And, as mama always said, beauty is skin deep, but ugly goes clear to the bone. Somebody’s mama had said it, even if Ellen’s never had. She’d known spoiled, rich playboys. One of them she’d known very well.

      Davis Lowe had been born with a golden spoon in his mouth and upgraded to platinum at his first opportunity. He’d swept her off her middle-class feet with his charm and his money and brought her into his world, where she’d met his spoiled playboy friends. Because of Davis, she’d learned these rich men were all the same.

      Whether they were from New York or New Delhi, they all expected the world to bow and scrape and cater to their every whim. At least this one offered a nice view.

      Finally he reacted to Ellen’s laser-beam stare. He looked up and met her gaze. Ellen held it a long moment, allowed a hint of a smile to brush her lips, then she turned away and began to count seconds.

      One… She found a place at the sawhorse-and-planking bar, and ordered a gin and tonic. Seven, eight, nine… Would she have to look at him again? The pretty ones were often tougher to get to. Ellen tossed her hair back over her shoulder. Long, straight, dark blond hair with golden highlights, it was one of her best weapons.

      “Hello.”

      Bingo. He was hooked. Fourteen seconds. Not her best time, but not her worst, either. If “the look” didn’t get them, the hair usually did.

      Ellen turned and gave her sheikh a once-over. That high-beam smile of his could prove near lethal at close range. She raised a cool eyebrow. The effect was somewhat destroyed by the fact that they had to

Скачать книгу