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Passionate Calanettis: Soldier, Hero...Husband?
Cara Colter
Teresa Carpenter
Scarlet Wilson
Soldier, Hero…Husband? by Cara ColterFormer soldier Connor Benson can’t forget his time on the frontline, whilst widower Isabella Rossi has been sleepwalking through life. Will they fight for the love they deserve?His Lost-and-Found Bride by Scarlet WilsonLogan Cascini is on the edge when his ex, Lucia Moretti, comes back into his life. Will they be able to rediscover the joy they shared together twelve years ago?The Best Man & The Wedding Planner by Teresa CarpenterWedding planner Lindsay Reeves is less than impressed by best man Zach Sullivan, but when preparations reach crisis point, Lindsay is forced to ask the playboy for help!
About the Authors
CARA COLTER shares her life in beautiful British Columbia, Canada, with her husband, nine horses and one small Pomeranian with a large attitude. She loves to hear from readers, and you can learn more about her and contact her through Facebook.
SCARLET WILSON writes for both Mills & Boon Romance and Medical Romance. She lives on the west coast of Scotland with her fiancé and their two sons. She loves to hear from readers and can be reached via her website: www.scarletwilson.com (http://www.scarletwilson.com).
TERESA CARPENTER believes that with love and family anything is possible. She writes in a Southern California coastal city surrounded by her large family. Teresa loves writing about babies and grandmas. Her books have rated as Top Picks by RT Book Reviews, and have been nominated Best Romance of the Year on some review sites. If she’s not at a family event, she’s reading, or writing her next grand romance.
Passionate Calanettis
Soldier, Hero…Husband?
Cara Colter
His Lost-and-Found Bride
Scarlet Wilson
The Best Man & The Wedding Planner
Teresa Carpenter
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-08145-0
PASSIONATE CALANETTIS
Soldier, Hero…Husband? © 2015 Harlequin Books S.A. His Lost-and-Found Bride © 2015 Harlequin Books S.A. The Best Man & The Wedding Planner © 2015 Harlequin Books S.A.
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover (#ub1cc75c3-1fda-5414-a016-4ab6e59a3c25)
About the Authors (#uf702de27-2d33-5b68-9ad3-ad9804f78f93)
Title Page (#u04437f7b-f7a1-5789-8ce1-d5bc969d7cc7)
Copyright (#u722accbb-d074-5703-8002-0350e904cb59)
Soldier, Hero…Husband? (#u773dffe9-a0d3-56eb-a352-43cda510a96f)
Dedication (#u971c2c07-f042-5973-818b-66b377336af2)
CHAPTER ONE (#uf4424a3b-cfce-5caa-af26-4f3aa1d5d764)
CHAPTER TWO (#u327ac68b-0f2b-5b50-abc1-6a006a34b389)
CHAPTER THREE (#ud532a362-6f8e-5662-a39e-f64826aa86e4)
CHAPTER FOUR (#udc97d207-ea2e-57bc-a507-a24fb09179a4)
CHAPTER FIVE (#uf03c2a41-02a2-5cb0-904b-4429d13f8e8e)
CHAPTER SIX (#u7838411e-1e11-5bc9-98ee-9b44dbbf4669)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u98df5e66-2fc8-5e43-8b55-b017a9b683a1)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#u7bc24aa5-baeb-5a2f-b121-03284aef408f)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
His Lost-and-Found Bride (#litres_trial_promo)
Dedication (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
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)
The Best Man & The Wedding Planner (#litres_trial_promo)
Dedication (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
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)
Soldier, Hero…Husband? (#u1ac93c0d-dddf-5ad4-bd10-ad41f498d5b5)
Cara Colter
To the team of editors and writers who worked so tirelessly on this series:
I am proud to have been a part of it.
I stand in awe of your creative brilliance.
CHAPTER ONE (#u1ac93c0d-dddf-5ad4-bd10-ad41f498d5b5)
CONNOR BENSON AWOKE with a start. It was dark. And it was hot. Where was he? Somalia? Iraq? Afghanistan? Wherever he was, it was so secret, even his mother didn’t know.
That feeling tickled along his spine, a sense of imminent danger. It brought him to red alert. Still not knowing exactly where he was, he was suddenly extremely focused, on nothing and everything. Each of his senses was so wide-open it was almost painful.
The tick of a clock somewhere in the room seemed explosively loud. Connor could feel the faint prickliness of the bedclothes against his naked skin, and he could feel a single bead of sweat slide down his temple. He could smell the residue of his own sweat and aftershave, and farther away, coffee.
Another sound rose above the ticking of the clock and the deliberate steadiness of his own breathing. It was a whispery noise just beyond this room, and as unobtrusive as it was, Connor knew it was that sound that had woken him. It was the sneaky sound of someone trying to be very quiet.
Connor tossed off the thin blanket and was out of the bed in one smooth movement, from dead asleep to warrior alert in the time it took to draw a single breath. The floor was stone under his bare feet and he moved across it soundlessly. His nickname on his SEAL team had been “the Cat.”
At six foot five, every inch of that honed muscle, his comrades didn’t mean a friendly house cat, either.
They meant the kind of cat that lived like a shadow on the edge of the mountains, or in the deepest forests and the darkest jungles, where men were afraid to go. They meant the kind of cat that was big and strong and silent. They meant the kind of cat that could go from relaxed to ready to pounce in the blink of an eye. They meant the kind of cat that had deadly and killing instincts.
Those instincts guided Connor across the room on silent feet to the door that had a faint sliver of light slipping under it. His movement was seemingly unhurried, but his muscles were tensing with lethal purpose.
Though most people would have detected no scent at all, when he paused on his side of the door, just under the aroma of coffee, Connor could taste the air. He knew someone was on the other side of that door. He also knew they were not directly in front of it—a hint of a shadow told him someone was to the left of the door. It was not a guess. His muscles tautened even more. His heart began to pick up the tempo. Not with fear. No, there was no fear at all. What he felt was anticipation.
Adrenaline coursed through his veins as Connor flung open the door.
He was nearly blinded by sunlight in the hallway, but it didn’t stop his momentum. He hurled himself left, at the figure, back to him, rising from a crouch beside his door well. His hands closed around slender shoulders.
Slender?
A scent he had not noticed before tickled his nostrils.
Perfume?
His mind screamed, Abort! It was too late not to touch, but not too late to temper his considerable strength. Instead of taking the culprit to the ground, he used the existing momentum to spin the person skulking outside his door toward him. The force of the spin caused a stumble, and as luscious curves came in full contact with him, Connor recognized the truth.
Her.
Connor stared down into the eyes of the woman he had just attacked, stunned. It wasn’t that women couldn’t be bad guys, but this woman so obviously was not. He cursed under his breath, and her eyes, already wide, widened more.
She seemed to realize she was still pressed, full length, against him, and she pushed herself away.
“Ma sei pazzo!” she said. Her voice was gorgeous, husky and rich, a note of astonishment in it that matched the astonishment in her huge, wide eyes. She definitely had the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen.
Eyes that, at the moment, were wide with shock. Now that she had pushed away from him, her hand went to the sweet swell of her breast, and he could see where her pulse beat wildly in the delicate column of her throat.
Connor, ever the soldier, and still in that place of heightened awareness, took in every exquisite detail of her. She had long, dark hair, luxuriously thick and straight, that was capturing the incredible morning light that poured in through the arched windows of the hallway they were in. Her hair fell in a shimmering waterfall of dark chocolate past slender bare shoulders.
At least a foot shorter than he was, the woman had on a bright, flower-patterned dress. It was sleeveless and accentuated the lovely litheness of her figure. The dress was pinched by a narrow belt at a tiny waist and then the skirt flared out in a way that made him able to picture her dancing, that skirt flying around her. She had sandals on her delicate feet, her toenails painted a soft shade of pink.
Her coloring looked as if it was naturally pale, but golden from the sun. Her skin was flawless. Ma sei pazzo. It occurred to Connor he was not in Iraq. Or Somalia. Not Afghanistan, either.
He cringed inwardly at his mistake. “Jeez,” he said, out loud. “I’m in Italy.”
