Table of Contents
Cover Page
Excerpt
Dear Reader
Title Page
About The Author
Dear Reader
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Copyright
I DidntI NeverMeant To
Lead You On,
Paige told Stefan.
Lead me on?
Lead you on means to tease you. She swallowed.
To make you think I was inviting a chance to sleep with you
That, he had no trouble understanding. We neck, yes. But we did not get it on. We did not hit your sack. You still even have your socks on. No reason to be afraid, Paige.
Im not afraid, she said sharply.
She was disastrous at fibbing, Stefan noted. Shed come apart in his arms as if she were a lover born for him. That kinship of spirits was rare and precious, and he couldnt believe he had mistaken her response.
And she was afraid. Of something.
Somehow Stefan had to find a way to uncover whatever it was.
Dear Reader,
Its the CELEBRATION 1000 moment youve all been waiting for, the publication of Silhouette Desire #1000! As promised, its a very special MAN OF THE MONTH by Diana Palmer called Man of Ice. Diana was one of the very first Silhouette Desire writers, and her many wonderful contributions to the line have made her one of our most beloved authors. This story is sure to make its way to your shelf of keepers.
But thats not all! Dont miss Baby Dreams, the first book in a wonderful new series, THE BABY SHOWER, by Raye Morgan. Award-winning author Jennifer Greene also starts a new miniseries, THE STANFORD SISTERS, with the delightful The Unwilling Bride. For something a little different, take a peek at Joan Elliott Pickarts Apache Dream Bride. And the fun keeps on coming with Judith McWilliamss Instant Husband, the latest in THE WEDDING NIGHT series. Our Debut Author promotion introduces you to Amanda Kramer, author of the charmingly sexy Baby Bonus.
And youll be excited to know that theres more CELEBRATION 1000 next month, as the party continues with six more scintillating love stories, including The Accidental Bodyguard, a MAN OF THE MONTH from Ann Major.
Silhouette Desirethe passion continues! Enjoy!
Senior Editor
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, Ont. L2A 5X3
The Unwilling Bride
Jennifer Greene
www.millsandboon.co.uk
JENNIFER GREENE
lives near Lake Michigan with her husband and two children. Before writing full-time, she worked as a teacher and a personnel manager. Michigan State University honored her as an outstanding woman graduate for her work with women on campus.
Ms. Greene has written more that forty category romances, for which she has won numerous awards, including the RITA for Best Short Contemporary Book, and both a Best Series Author and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Romantic Times.
Dear Reader,
I can still remember finding the first Silhouette Desire novel in the bookstoresand rushing home to put my feet up and savor those pages!
I moved to Silhouette over a decade ago. This is home for me, and I couldnt be more thrilled to be part of our Celebration 1000. When I write a Desire novel, I feel as if Im talking to a fellow sister. I know you. You believe in love and commitment the way I do; you believe in families and healthy relationshipsand you have the same problems I do as a woman living in the nineties. My books are to you as well as about youand that caring between reader and writer is something that someone outside the romance field probably wouldnt understand. Romances are about usour struggles, our hopes, our needs. I never had to work to create a heroineshes every one of you, coping with the problems and trials of a woman today, striving to make the best life she canand hopefully with a special lover, a man who deserves her.
I see our Celebration 1000 as a celebration of youall of you Desire readers are the heroines of today. We share our dreams together in every love story.
My best wishes to all of you.
One
Someone was violently knocking on her front door, which Paige Stanford ignored. The phone had been ringing incessantly for the past hour, which shed blithely ignored, too.
Growing up, her sisters used to tease her that she was so absentminded that shed probably forget her own wedding. Paige had always vociferously resented that accusation. She wasnt in the least absentminded. She simply had a gift for intense concentration.
Like now.
Heaven knew what time it was. Paige wasnt sure when she had last eaten, eitherand didnt care.
Watery winter sunlight poured through the south windows on the bench counter and cement floor. Her whole workshop was strewn with veiners, gravers, chisels and pumice stones, grindstones and Eskimo stylers, drills and sanders and files. None of it would make a lick of sense to anyone but her. A stranger had no way to understand that sometimes it took chaos and a dusty mess to create a treasure of incomparable beauty.
Her eyes were riveted on the exquisite piece of jade. Weeks ago, the jade had been nothing more than a jagged lump of stone.
Now it was a finished cameo.
Paige couldnt take her eyes off it. Shed made the cameo for her older sister, Gwen, whose birthday was six months away. Starting the project so far ahead was necessary, because it could so easily go wrong. There was no way of knowing, ever, what an innocuous lump of stone or shell would turn into until she started carving. Every stone held a mystery. Years ago shed picked up an old saying in the sculpting world: The truth is always there. You dont have to find it. All you have to do is carve away what isnt the truth.
Discovering that truth was what she lovedand what challenged herbut Paige knew better than to claim credit for the result. Maybe it took talent and skill to reveal the stones secrets, but either there was beauty and truth intrinsic to the raw material or there wasnt. As it happened, this particular piece of jade had hidden a damn near breathtaking treasure.
But holy kamoly. When shed stepped back to study the finished cameo, it was as if a ghost had walked on her shadow. Her arms still had goose bumps, and her pulse had picked up an uneasy, disturbing beat. Her whole work studio seemed flooded with an eerie silence. She felt edgy and unsettled, almostfrightened.
Normally it took an avalanche to shake Paigeand shed have been real annoyed at the avalanche. She couldnt even remember being scared since she was sixteen, and that was an incident that had totally changed her life around. She was a practical, no-nonsense, unbudgeably tough cookie these days, and for Petes sake, shed made hundreds of cameos. To have some strange emotional reaction to this one was not only stupid but downright confounding.
Someone thunderously knocked on her front door again. The sound registered like the vaguely annoying buzz of a gnat. She heard it. She just paid no attention.
With an impatient scowl, she examined and reexamined the piece from every angle. There had to be a reason the cameo was giving her the willies. Paige being Paige, wasnt about to drop the problem until she figured it out.
The slab was a rough oval, perhaps ten inches across, and the image that had gradually emerged from the stone was simply a scene with a woman. Nothing frightening about her. Nothing weird. Like some primitive woods maiden, the woman was bent over a pond of water, gazing at her reflection with an expression as if she were discovering what she looked lite for the first time. She was bare, sitting with her legs tucked under her, the carving revealing full breasts and the slender slope of her spine. A mane of long, flowing hair streamed down her back. Her profile revealed a sensual classic beautyhigh cheekbones, a slim nose, mysterious deep-set eyes. Something in those eyes spoke of innocence, a woman untouched by man, yet that innocence was a striking contrast to the inherent sexuality and sensuality in everything else about her.
Paige reached up and scratched her chin. The piece was good. Beyond good. It was totally wrong for her sisterGwen was unshakably traditional and would have a conniption fit at the nudity. Paige never set out to carve the woman with bare boobs; it was just how the stone came out. Thankfully she had enough time to make an entirely different gift for her sister, but that problem shouldnt take away from her own artistic sense of satisfaction. Without question, the cameo was one of the best things shed ever done. Shed lucked out. The jade had magic. And it was always a thrill when she found a stones secrets were this wondrous, this precious.
Except for this time. For some absolutely ridiculous reason, her hands were trembling.
From her denim overalls to the calfskin Uggs on her feet to the long, practical braid hanging over her shoulder, Paige wasnt the trembling type. All her life shed been a rebel. As a teenager, shed taken that too far, but as an adult shed been grateful for those sturdy New England individualist genes. If she hadnt had the guts to beat to her own drummer, shed never have had the courage to take up cameo carving as a profession. Being a little weird didnt bother her, but at the vast age of twenty-seven, shed never been so ditzy as to believe in the fanciful or impossible.
The woman in the cameo appeared painfully familiar, when she couldnt be. Paige could not possibly know that woman, that face, that scene. The stone revealed its own secrets, and those secrets had nothing to do with the artistno sculptor could impose or force an idea that wasnt inherent in the raw material. The woman had no special meaning for her. Couldnt. Period. Pfft. End of subject.
So why couldnt she shake this stupid, silly, and damnably eerie déjà vu feeling?
For a few moments, she was vaguely aware that the repetitive pounding on her front door had finally ceased. But then a new sound intruded-in the background. Apparently her unwanted visitor had entered the house, because she heard a voice calling out. A deep, booming, male voicepositively one she didnt recognizecoming from the muffled distance of the front hall.
On a scale of one to ten, her interest in chitchatting with a stranger was a negative five. Paige figured it was an even-Steven chance the guy would take off if he found no one home, and she was hidden pretty good. The workshop had once been a porch off a spare bedroom, tacked on to the old Vermont farmhouse as if it were a surprise and handily buried at the end of a wing. She didnt imagine a thief would choose to announce his presence with a big booming yell, so it was mighty unlikely the stranger represented any threat worth worrying about, and she was loath to break her concentration on the cameo if she had a choice.
It seemed she didnt.
Faster than gossip could spread bad news, the intruder barreled through her workshop doorway. Paige only had a few seconds to form an impression before all hell broke loose.
A slim memory slapped in her mind of someonemaybe Joanne, the clerk at the grocery store?mentioning that she had a new neighbor whod rented the old Jasper place down the road. In a tiny Vermont town like Walnut Woods, Paige knew every face and kissing cousin in the whole burg, so this had to be the newcomer.
Positively, though, Joanne had neglected to mention that the man was genetic kin to a bear. Wild, shaggy black hair framed a ruddy face with high Slavic cheekbones. A thick, wiry beard hid his chin. His eyes were piercing black with the shine of wet onyx. She really only had time for one quick glanceshe guessed his age in the early thirties, definitely a man and not a boyand one fast eyeful took in the cossack boots, the tree-trunk solid torso that stretched well past six feet, and the red-and-black flannel jacket that was dusted with snow and flapping open.
The devil spotted her and started yelling. Roaring, more like. She couldnt understand a wordshe guessed the foreign language was Russian, because he seemed to be bellowing at her in all consonantsand offhand, she suspicioned he was communicating primarily in swear words. His voice volume was accompanied by wild pantomiming gestures indicating he wanted her to come with him. Now.