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Conquering King's Heart / Montana Mistress: Conquering King's Heart
Maureen Child
Sara Orwig
Be swept away by passion… with intense drama and compelling plots, these emotionally powerful reads will keep you captivated from beginning to end.Conquering King’s Heart Maureen ChildFor three years she’d haunted his dreams. And the memory of that heated anonymous night sent tycoon Jesse King back to Morgan Beach, California, determined to find her. He would have his mystery woman once more – a King never lost.Montana Mistress Sara OrwigLaurel Tolson had had enough of wealthy, arrogant men who thought their money could buy anything and anyone. But then tycoon Chase Bennett swept into her little Montana town and made her an offer as enticing as it was indecent. He’d more than match the price of her entire hotel – if she’d be his mistress for just one month. The idea was shocking, scandalous, yet strangely seductive!
Conquering King’s Heartby Maureen Child
“It’s you.”
She staggered a little. “What?”
“You. On the beach. Three years ago.”
She blinked up at him, rubbed her fingertips across her mouth and then drew in a long, shaky breath.
“Congratulations,” she said at last. “Finally you remembered.”
“You knew?” he demanded, bracing his legs wide apart as he folded his arms over his chest. “You remembered and didn’t say anything to me?”
“Why would I?” she asked, gathering up the fabric she’d dropped when he was kissing her. “You think I’m proud of that night?”
“You ought to be,” he told her sharply, “we were great together.”
“We were strangers. It was a huge mistake.”
Montana Mistressby Sara Orwig
“I want to make you an offer,” Chase said.
Laurel stepped out of his embrace. Trying to gather her wits, she picked up her champagne flute to take a sip, thinking he was taking unfair advantage by kissing her senseless before talking business. “Go ahead,” she said.
“You want to sell your hotel,” he stated.
“Yes, you know that. That’s what this is all about.”
“That’s part of what this is about,” he replied. “It’s what you want.”
“All right, Chase,” she said warily. “What do you want?”
He took her glass from her hand, setting it on the mantel beside his and holding her hand in his. “I want you, Laurel. I want you so much that I’ll buy your hotel for your full asking price, plus half a million dollars – if you’ll be my mistress for a month.”
Available in June 2010
from Mills & Boon
Desire™
Conquering King’s Heart by Maureen Child & Montana Mistress by Sara Orwig
The Billionaire’s Fake Engagement by Robyn Grady & Man from Stallion Country by Annette Broadrick
The Illegitimate King by Olivia Gates & Friday Night Mistress by Jan Colley
Conquering
King’s Heart
By
Maureen Child
Montana
Mistress
By
Sara Orwig
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Conquering
King’s Heart
By
Maureen Child
Dear Reader,
Thanks to all of the letters I received asking for more KINGS OF CALIFORNIA books, I’m happy to offer you the first book in a new Kings mini-series – with more to come, I promise!
Conquering King’s Heart is about Jesse King, a former world champion surfer. Jesse is the youngest of four brothers, and in the next few months you’ll be seeing more of them as well.
But for now, let’s talk about Jesse. He’s travelled all over the world, living life his way. Now he’s retired from competition and has settled down in Morgan Beach – a place that haunts his memory thanks to the “mystery woman” he met one night three years ago.
Bella Cruz is that mystery woman and she’s not happy that Jesse has moved into her home town, changing everything she loves about the place.
When these two meet again, the fireworks are well worth watching!
The KINGS OF CALIFORNIA will continue in August and October with stories about Jesse’s brothers Justice and Jefferson. Then, of course, there’s still Jericho to be heard from.
I hope you have as much fun reading this story as I did writing it. I love hearing from my readers! E-mail me at maureenc@maureenchild.com or send via post to PO Box 1883, Westminster, CA 92684-1883, USA.
And please visit my website at www.maureenchild.com.
Until then, happy reading!
Maureen
Maureen Child is a California native who loves to travel. Every chance they get, she and her husband are taking off on another research trip. The author of more than sixty books, Maureen loves a happy ending and still swears that she has the best job in the world. She lives in Southern California with her husband, two children and a golden retriever with delusions of grandeur. Visit Maureen’s website at www.maureenchild.com.
To Patti Canterbury Hambleton.
For years of friendship and laughter.
For shared memories and too many adventures to count.
For always being a touchstone in my life.
I love you.
Chapter One
Jesse King loved women.
And they loved him right back.
Well, all except one.
Jesse walked into Bella’s Beachwear and stopped just inside the store. His gaze wandered the well-kept if decrepit building and he shook his head at the stubbornness of women.
Hard to believe that Bella Cruz preferred this ramshackle building to what he was offering. He’d arrived in Morgan Beach, a tiny coastal town in southern California, nine months ago. He’d bought up several of the run-down, eclectic shops on Main Street, rehabbed some, razed others, then built the kind of stores and offices that would actually attract shoppers to the downtown district.
Everyone had been happy to sign on the dotted line. They’d accepted his buyout offers with barely disguised glee and most of them were now renting retail space from him. But not Bella Cruz. Oh, no. This woman had been working against him for months.
She’d spearheaded a sit-in campaign, getting a few of her friends to plant themselves in front of his bulldozers for an afternoon. She’d held a protest march down Main Street that consisted of Bella herself, four women, two kids and a three-legged dog. And finally, she’d resorted to trying to pull off a candlelight vigil in memory of the “historic” buildings of Morgan Beach.
There had been five people standing outside his office holding candles the night the first big summer storm had blown in. Within minutes, they were all drenched, the candle flames drowned out. Bella was the only one left standing in the dark, glaring up at him as he looked at her through his office window.
“Why is she taking this all so personally?” he wondered. It wasn’t as if he’d come to town to deliberately ruin her life.
He’d come here for the waves.
When professional surfers stopped riding competitively, they settled in a place where they could always find a good ride year-round. Most ended up in Hawaii, but, as a native Californian, Jesse had decided on Morgan Beach. His whole family still lived in the state and Morgan was close enough that he could keep in touch and far enough away from his three brothers that he wouldn’t trip on them with every step. He liked his family. A lot. That didn’t mean he wanted to live right on top of them.
So he was building himself a little kingdom here in this small town and the only thing keeping it from being absolutely perfect was Bella Cruz.
“The evil landlord stops by to gloat,” a low, female voice said from somewhere nearby.
He turned around and spotted his nemesis, crouched behind the counter, rearranging a display of sunglasses, flip-flops and tote bags. Her dark brown eyes were fixed on him with the steely look of a woman about to spray a roach with Raid.
“You’re not armed, are you?” he asked, walking toward her slowly. “Because you look as if you’d like to put me out of my misery.”
“Out of my misery is more like it,” she answered wryly. Then she stood up and Jesse took in her latest outfit.
Bella stood about five foot eight, which was good, because he liked his women tall enough that he didn’t get a crick in his neck when he kissed them. Not that he was thinking about kissing Bella. It was just an observation.
She had wavy black hair that fell to the middle of her back, huge chocolate eyes and a lusciously full mouth he had yet to see curved into a smile. Pretty, he thought. Except for the clothes.
Every time he saw her she looked as if she were about to pose for the cover of Amish Monthly: loosefitting cotton tops and full, floor-length skirts. Probably just as well, he told himself. He liked his women curvy and by the look of her, she had all the curves of a box. Seemed strange to him, though, that a woman who made her living designing and selling women’s swimwear looked as if she’d never worn one of her own garments.
“What do you want, Mr. King?”
He grinned deliberately. He knew the power of that smile. Enough women over the years had told him just what his dimples did to their knees. Bella’s knees appeared to be rock solid. Oh, well. He wasn’t interested in seducing her anyway. Or so he kept reminding himself.
“I wanted to tell you that we’re going to start rehabbing this building next month.”
“Rehabbing,” she repeated and screwed up her face as if even the word itself were distasteful. “You mean knocking down the walls? Tearing up the hardwood floor? Getting rid of the leaded windows? That kind of rehabbing?”
He shook his head. “What is it exactly, that you have against well-insulated buildings and sound roofs?”
She crossed her arms under her breasts and Jesse was distracted for a moment. Apparently, she did have at least one good set of curves.
“My roof doesn’t leak,” she told him. “Robert Towner was an excellent landlord.”
“Yes, so I’ve heard,” he said with a sigh. “Repeatedly.”
“You could take lessons from him.”
“He didn’t even bother to repaint the outside of your shop,” Jesse pointed out.
“Why would he do that?” she demanded. “I painted it myself three years ago.”
His mind boggled. “You actually chose to paint your business purple? On purpose?”
“It’s lavender.”
“Purple.”
She inhaled sharply and gave him another glare that should have set his hair on fire. But Jesse was made of sterner stuff. He was a King. And Kings didn’t cave for anybody.
“You won’t be happy until every building on Main Street is beige with rust-colored trim, will you?” Shaking her head, she gave him a pitying look now, but it was wasted on Jesse. Kings didn’t need anyone’s pity. “We’re all going to be Stepfords. Will we all march in lockstep, do you think? Dress alike?”
“Please God, no,” he said, with a glance at her ensemble.
She colored briefly. “My point is, there’s no individuality here anymore. Morgan Beach used to have personality.”
“And wood rot.”
“It was eclectic.”
“Shabby.”
“You’re nothing but a corporate robot,” she accused.
Jesse was stunned that anyone would describe him that way. He’d never set out to be a corporate anything. Hell, he’d gone out of his way to avoid the trap that all Kings eventually landed in. The business world. In fact, the King name had been a pain in his ass for most of his life.
