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Dante's Shock Proposal
Amalie Berlin
An inconvenient desireGrowing up in the midst of her parents’ fraught union, surgical nurse Lise Bradshaw has never wanted or needed a man by her side. Until a sensual chance encounter with Dr Dante Valentino on the dancefloor of a Miami club sparks a full-blown passionate affair…leading to a shock proposal!Dante knows what he wants—a family—and what he doesn’t—love. But as the fire blazes between him and beautiful Lise he realises that he’s inconveniently falling for his convenient fiancée!Hot Latin DocsSultry, sexy bachelor brothers on the loose!
An inconvenient desire
Growing up in the midst of her parents’ fraught union, surgical nurse Lise Bradshaw has never wanted nor needed a man by her side. Until a sensual chance encounter with Dr. Dante Valentino on the dance floor of a Miami club sparks a full-blown passionate affair...leading to a shock proposal!
Dante knows what he wants—a family—and what he doesn’t—love. But as the fire blazes between him and beautiful Lise he realizes that he’s inconveniently falling for his convenient fiancée!
Dear Reader (#ulink_d372b799-e8c1-5a1d-8000-2c915da647c0),
Have you ever loved a series—book/film—so much that you couldn’t wait to talk about the latest instalment with someone else who loved it too?
Brainstorming and writing the Hot Latin Docs quartet with Annie O’Neil, Amy Ruttan and Tina Beckett was like that for me! When an email pinged on our email loop, my excitement demanded I stop everything and go and bask in the latest awesome idea, or devour a snippet one of the other authors had shared from their work in progress.
Dante’s not an easy man to love. Halfway through writing this book even I became afraid he couldn’t be saved. Thank you, Amy Ruttan, for talking me down! So I pushed on through, and now I know: it takes a strong heroine to save a broken man hidden behind his gorgeous smoke and mirrors.
All my characters become real to me as I write their stories, but these lovely ladies have made Dante’s whole family real to me now too.
Thank you for picking up Dante’s Shock Proposal, and if this is your first Hot Latin Doc please search out Santiago’s Convenient Fiancée, Alejandro’s Sexy Secret and Rafael’s One Night Bombshell.
Happy reading!
Amalie xo
AmalieBerlin.com/Contact (http://AmalieBerlin.com/Contact)Facebook.com/AuthorAmalie (https://Facebook.com/AuthorAmalie)
Dante’s Shock Proposal
Amalie Berlin
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
AMALIE BERLIN lives with her family and critters in Southern Ohio, and writes quirky and independent characters for Mills & Boon Medical Romance. She likes to buck expectations with unusual settings and situations, and believes humour can be used powerfully to illuminate truth—especially when juxtaposed against intense emotions. Love is stronger and more satisfying when your partner can make you laugh through times when you don’t have the luxury of tears.
Books by Amalie Berlin
Mills & Boon Medical Romance
Desert Prince Docs
Challenging the Doctor Sheikh
The Hollywood Hills Clinic
Taming Hollywood’s Ultimate Playboy
Return of Dr Irresistible
Breaking Her No-Dating Rule
Surgeons, Rivals...Lovers
Falling for Her Reluctant Sheikh
Visit the Author Profile page
at millsandboon.co.uk (http://millsandboon.co.uk) for more titles.
To Amy, Annie, and Tina. Expect me to whine incessantly until we do this again! No, really. When are we going to do this again? How does now work for y’all?
Amy: will pretty much always be jealous of your inspirational idea—Magic Mike: surgeon. Thank you for your tireless friendship, and for seriously raising the bar! *luff*
Annie: for being an amazing, energetic weirdo who makes this hyperactive purple-haired lunatic feel right at home! And being the other quirky medical writer.
Ugly Sisters 4 Evah!
Tina: this marks our third author-led collaboration and it keeps getting better! Thank you for continuing to come back and try again. ♥
Laura McCallen: sorry for being such a pain! And thank you for not only whipping the proposal into shape, but for all you’ve done to work with me—this year’s been a tricksy one! ♥
Contents
Cover (#ufc982ad6-2447-51bf-97ef-72d16d1ffac2)
Back Cover Text (#u93d36115-5680-568b-b4f2-a29ebec7fed4)
Dear Reader (#ulink_1fc15b49-3550-5634-9736-11d900ddf81c)
Title Page (#u1dbf91ff-6dc4-5a63-89ec-ee786505c288)
About the Author (#u6c2904ab-9a5a-5456-8687-1e40bc5b1f48)
Dedication (#u1c05434f-0e4e-5983-8386-7788fd66dc96)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_2c0f3550-f974-5292-a30a-3684f6891502)
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_2297816b-0828-5a4b-91d3-0298638da443)
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_940f6c03-862d-503f-b845-1ca0b7dc0568)
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)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_7d7e5ec7-947a-551b-8197-45404da1b8d7)
SHE WAS BEING stood up.
Badgered into a blind date by her coworkers, and they hadn’t even picked a responsible man who’d actually show up to the club where he’d asked her to meet him.
Nurse Lise Bradshaw looked at her watch for the tenth time in twenty minutes, waved down a server, ordered a mojito, then let herself look somewhere besides the door she’d been staring at since arriving.
Don’t think about him.
Don’t think about any of it.
To heck with judgmental people who had no idea what it was like to date in the current decade and absolutely didn’t support her life plan.
No one here knew she’d been stood up, and even if they figured it out, she didn’t know any of them anyway.
The music was good. Tonight could be an embarrassing footnote to her week, or it could be the fun she’d dressed for. Even if she was there alone, no one was ever really alone on a dance floor in South Beach.
If, by some miracle, her date managed to drag his sorry butt to the club, amid the black and white decor, her slinky red wrap dress would stand out whether it was crowded or not, and it was still too early to be hopping.
In her safe, quiet life, Lise went to work, worked hard, read a lot, and planned for her future—a future where she’d have a family again. She didn’t go clubbing with her coworkers, and had no close friends to speak of since moving from Jacksonville to Miami—so didn’t go dancing with them either. Basically, she didn’t go clubbing. If—no, when—she managed to get her plan rolling, there wouldn’t be any nights in her future for dancing, so she might as well make the most of it.
She’d agreed to the fix-ups not because she ever wanted to replicate her parents’ deadly marriage but because she wanted to fully enjoy her remaining not-pregnant weeks.
Her mojito arrived and she downed half of it before helping herself to the dance floor.
Instruments sat ready on a stage elevated at the far side of the dance floor, promising live music later. But for now the DJ’s choice got her feet and body moving, and they could put the song on repeat for the whole evening for all Lise cared.
Staking out a corner near the stage, she closed her eyes and let the music take her. Most of the lyrics shot past her, but she picked up on enough to get the meaning. The beat filled in the rest, and she let it wash away the week’s frustration and worry, let it warm her belly...or maybe that was the mojito.
Three songs in, the music faded, but another song didn’t start. She stopped her swinging beat and opened her eyes, her gaze landing on musicians striding past her to the stage.
A tall man in a three-piece black suit and shirt—jacket missing—and a black fedora pulled low met her gaze as he walked past her.
Eyes black as his suit connected with hers, and Lise felt the thrill of shared attraction before recognition seared through her.
Those eyes. She knew those eyes. Her breath stuttered, heat flaring in cheeks and racing down over her neck and chest.
Dr. Valentino.
While not technically her boss, she worked too closely at his side in surgery with masks covering everything but those eyes for her not to recognize them.
She would have even if she hadn’t also been ignoring an unwelcome lusty crush on the good doctor for the past two years. He looked at her like he wanted to sweep her into his arms and learn her curves right there on the dance floor, like a sugar addict at an all-you-can-eat ice-cream bar. Tempted, with intentions forming...
He’d never looked at her like that before, and she’d always tried hard not to look at him like that.
For all their time working together, she knew next to nothing about him. Great surgeon, freakishly sexy, sometimes testy, and she knew which instruments and techniques he preferred.
Some voice in the back of her mind shook her out of her staring. Go back to your table, dummy.
Her feet stayed stuck, like her eyes.
Dr. Valentino headed for a piano at her end of the stage. As he stepped over the bench his gaze connected with hers again, and her stomach bottomed out.
That was desire. Real desire. An honest-to-God, I-want-you-hot-on-this-piano heat, those gorgeous eyes filled with dirty, dirty promises.
How did he do that?
Had he always felt that way but been too proper to show it at the hospital? He could obviously hide things—like musical ability. Like him being in a band and wearing real, non-scrub-like clothing better than anyone had a right to. Who wore a three-piece suit to a nightclub—assuming there was a jacket somewhere around the establishment?
A rush left her feeling powerful and sexy, something she’d not felt in a long time. This was the emotional payoff for the red dress, which had been giving her courage and confidence all evening.
Her date may have stood her up, but she barely gave him a passing thought when Dr. Valentino looked at her like that!
Suddenly his brows snapped down over narrowing dark eyes. A scowl darkened them further and thinned his usually fine mouth. His storm shutters came down hard as he sat at the piano.
First desire—let’s have naked fun with this marshmallow fluff kind of dirty, playful sexiness. Then...
It took her a second to riddle it out, and the tipsy alcoholic butterflies in her belly figured it out first, and a ripple of something wrong stole her breath for an entirely different reason.
He hadn’t recognized her until he’d sat.
She’d probably been looking at him exactly like she’d been striving not to for two years—suggestively goofy, with added appreciation of his dirty looks. But he’d only just recognized her.
The man never said much outside of delivering orders or maybe some narration for the surgery recordings, so she’d learned to read his eyes, often the only part of his face she could see.
If she’d seen that look over a patient, she’d be readying for the worst.
Her alcoholic butterflies definitely needed another mojito. If the laws of physics could at least be counted on—as it seemed possible they could have suddenly turned against her too—going back to her table to get another glass of liquid forgetfulness would move her far enough outside the glow of spotlights for him to see her. Or how the color of her face currently probably rivaled that of her dress.
Lise unslung the small purse from across her torso, fished out her phone, and set it on the table as the music began. Soon she had another mojito in hand, and having things to fiddle with helped her settle in to listen without worrying about what his scowl had meant.
The music that had been playing before the band had taken to the stage had been modern, Latin pop—mostly Spanish and some Spanglish songs. But the band played something different, and it took her a moment to classify the bright, fevered jazz that rolled off the stage and through the speakers.
