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The CEO's Christmas Proposition / His Expectant Ex: The CEO's Christmas Proposition
Merline Lovelace
Catherine Mann
The CEO’s Christmas Proposition Merline LovelaceWhen a crippling ice storm traps Devon McShay and her handsome client CEO Cal Logan in Salzburg for Christmas, sharing a room is their only option. And sharing a bed becomes their pleasure. Could this passionate encounter evolve into anything more than a holiday affair? His Expectant Ex Catherine Mann Just seconds after signing divorce papers, Marianna Landis fainted. Shocked, her now ex-husband Sebastian discovered Marianna was three-and-a-half months pregnant. The timing was perfectly in line with their last impetuous night together. Marianna was carrying a Landis baby, and a Landis man keeps what is his!
The CEO’s Christmas Proposition
by Merline Lovelace
Cal stood by the sitting room windows, taking in the frozen cityscape…
Devon’s breath caught as she went to stand beside him. Buildings, trees, the statues on the bridge, the river itself…everything as far as the eye could see lay under a blanket of glistening white. Not a single car or bus or snowplough moved through the frozen stillness.
“Looks like most of the city must be shut down,” Devon murmured, awestruck.
“Guess we’ll have to resort to plan B,” said Cal.
“Which is?”
“We talk politics. We try to guess each other’s favourite movies. We wrap up in blankets and share our body heat. We have wild, uninhibited sex.”
Her jaw dropped.
“We don’t have to follow that precise order,” he informed her solemnly. “We could start with the sex and work our way backwards.”
His Expectant Ex
by Catherine Mann
“You’re pregnant?”
“I’m fairly certain I’m two months along.”
“We’re having a child?” he asked in wonder.
It still seemed surreal to her, too. “If all goes well.”
He pivoted hard and fast toward her. “Is something wrong?”
“I don’t think so, but I only just took a home pregnancy test this morning.”
Sebastian sat down beside her and slid his arm along the back of the sofa, almost touching her shoulders. “I still don’t understand one thing.”
She fidgeted, trying to ignore the warmth of him moving closer. She could not, would not let hormones muddle the waters between them. “What’s that?”
“If you took a pregnancy test this morning, why didn’t you tell me before the final divorce decree?”
The CEO’s
Christmas
Proposition
BY
Merline Lovelace
His Expectant Ex
BY
Catherine Mann
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk/)
The CEO’s
Christmas
Proposition
by
Merline Lovelace
A retired air force officer, Merline Lovelace served at bases all over the world, including tours in Taiwan, Vietnam and at the Pentagon. When she hung up her uniform for the last time, she decided to combine her love of adventure with a flair for storytelling, basing many of her tales on her experiences in the service.
Since then, she’s produced more than seventy action-packed novels, many of which have made bestseller lists. Over ten million copies of her works are in print in thirty-one countries. Named Oklahoma’s Writer of the Year and the Oklahoma Female Veteran of the Year, Merline is also a recipient of Romance Writers of America’s prestigious RITA
Award.
When she’s not glued to her keyboard, she and husband enjoy travelling and chasing little white balls around the fairways of Oklahoma. Check her website at www. merlinelovelace.com for news, contests and information about forthcoming releases.
Dear Reader,
If you’ve never visited Germany or Austria during the Christmas season, you’ve missed something really special. Think Kris Kringle, angelic choirs singing “Silent Night” and outdoor markets crammed with beautiful handicrafts and the most scrumptious eats imaginable. What better place to strand a heroine who’s completely turned off by the way Christmas has been commercialised and a hero who decides on the spot she’s all he wants under his tree!
Here’s hoping you, too, enjoy the beauty of this season and the powerful message of love and joy that comes with it.
And be sure to watch for more HOLIDAYS ABROAD. The Duke’s New Year’s Resolution is coming next month from the Desire
line, followed by The Executive’s Valentine Seduction.
Best,
Merline Lovelace
To Pat, my college roomie who went off to Germany
without me all those years ago but made up for it with
four decades of friendship. Al and
I still owe you and Norbert for the barn concert and dinner on the Elbe!
One
Shoulders hunched against the icy sleet pounding Germany’s Dresden International Airport, Devon McShay grimaced at the Christmas carols belting from the outdoor loudspeakers.
“Okay,” she muttered under her breath. “Call me Mrs. Scrooge. Call me the Grinchette. Call me the ultimate Krank. I hate this time of year.”
Well, that wasn’t totally true. The hopeless idealist in her still wanted to believe people might someday actually heed the messages of joy and peace the season signified. If they could get past the crass commercialization, that is. Not to mention the hole they dug for themselves every year by splurging on gifts they couldn’t afford.
Her parents’ increasingly bitter arguments over finances had always peaked this time of year and led eventually to an even more bitter divorce. Christmases after that had become a battleground, with each parent trying to outdo the other to win a daughter’s love.
Devon’s own holiday track record was just as dismal. As she sloshed through ankle-deep slush toward the terminal, she shook her head at her incredible idiocy in falling for a too-handsome, toococky newscaster at Dallas’s Channel Six. Silly her, she’d actually thought she’d broken the Christmas curse when Blake caught her under the mistletoe and slipped a diamond on her finger. Exactly one year later, she’d walked into the station to find her husband with his hand under the miniskirt of a female Santa and his tongue halfway down her throat.
Devon had put her jerk of an ex out of her life, but even now, three years later, she couldn’t work up any enthusiasm for colored lights or eggnog. That’s why she’d jumped at the chance to avoid yet another season of forced Christmas cheer when her friend and business partner came down with the flu yesterday, mere hours before she was supposed to leave for Germany.
Devon, Sabrina Russo and Caroline Walters had been friends before they became business partners. They’d met while spending their junior year at the University of Salzburg. Filled with the dreams and enthusiasm of youth, the three coeds had formed a fast friendship.
They’d maintained that friendship long-distance in the years that followed. Until last May, when they’d met for a minireunion. After acknowledging that their lives so far hadn’t lived up to their dreams, they’d decided to pool resources, educational backgrounds and interests. Two months later, they’d quit their respective jobs, relocated to Virginia and launched European Business Services, Incorporated. EBS for short. Specializing in arranging transportation, hotels, conference facilities and translation services for busy executives.
The venture was still at the risky stage. The three friends had sunk most of their savings into start-up costs. EBS now had an office, a small staff and a slew of international advertising. They’d landed a few jobs, but nothing big until the call from Cal Logan’s executive assistant.
Turns out Logan had played football in college with one of Sabrina’s old boyfriends. Said boyfriend had tipped his pal to EBS when Logan mentioned his people were scrambling to lay on a short-notice trip to Germany. Sabrina had worked twenty hours straight on the prep work and had been all set to hop a plane yesterday afternoon when the bug hit.
So here Devon was, her chin buried in a hot pink pashmina shawl, her toes frozen inside her stacked heel boots and her ears assaulted by a booming rendition of “O Tannenbaum,” on her way to meet their first major client.
Again.
He’d been scheduled to arrive earlier this morning, but his assistant had called to say his corporate jet had been grounded due to icing. After considerable effort, she’d gotten him on the last commercial flight out before JFK shut down completely.
Ah, the joys of traveling this time of year! Conditions here in Dresden weren’t much better. Sleet had been coming down all day. Praying her client’s plane made it in before this airport closed, too, Devon hurried into the terminal.
Her breath whistled out in a sigh of relief when Logan exited Customs. She recognized him right away from the newspaper and magazine articles Sabrina had found on the Internet during her frantic prep work.
Caleb John Logan, Jr. Thirty-one. Six-two. With jet-black hair, laser blue eyes and a linebacker’s shoulders under his charcoal-gray cashmere overcoat. His jaw-dropping good looks didn’t score him any points with Devon, however. She’d learned the hard way not to trust handsome heartbreakers like Cal Logan.
But he was a client. An important one. And she was willing to give someone who’d served a hitch in the Marines before earning a B.S. from the University of Oregon, an MBA from Stanford and his first million at the ripe old age of twenty-six the benefit of the doubt.
Right up until he spotted the hot pink pashmina, that is.
Sabrina had indicated she’d be wearing it, and the flash of color was certainly more visible than the sign Devon held up with his name on it. So she wasn’t surprised when Logan picked her out of the crowd and cut in her direction. She’d just plastered on her best EBS smile when he whipped an arm around her waist. The next moment, she was sprawled against his cashmere-covered chest.
“Hello, Brown Eyes.”
Swooping down, he covered her mouth with his.
Sheer astonishment kept Devon rooted to the spot for a few seconds while her mind whirled chaotically. Her first thought was that her client had downed a few too many drinks during the long flight. Her second, that he’d seriously mistaken the kind of escort and consulting services EBS provided. Her third shoved everything else out of her head.
Whoa, mama! The man could kiss!
His mouth moved over hers with a skill that ignited sparks at a half-dozen flash points throughout her body. Devon hadn’t experienced that kind of spontaneous combustion in a while. A long while.
The sparks were still popping when she pushed off his chest, only now they fueled a flush of anger.
“Do you always greet women you don’t know with a lip-lock, Mr. Logan?”
A smile crinkled the skin at the corners of his eyes. “As a matter of fact, I don’t. That was from Don.”
“Huh?”
“He said he owed you one from New Year’s Eve two years ago and made me promise to deliver it.”
She stared up at him in total incomprehension. Logan hooked a brow and attempted to prompt a nonexistent memory.
“He abandoned you at the Waldorf. Five minutes before midnight. To deliver twins.”
“I don’t have a clue who or what you’re—”
Understanding burst like a water balloon.
“Wait a sec. Are you talking about Sabrina’s old boyfriend? Your buddy, who’s now an ob-gyn doc?”
It was Logan’s turn to look startled. He recovered faster than Devon had, though. His smile widened into a rueful grin.
“I take it you’re not Sabrina Russo.”
“No, Mr. Logan, I am not. And if you’d listened to any of the voice mails we left on your cell phone in the past twenty-four hours,” Devon added acidly, “you’d know Sabrina came down with the flu and couldn’t make the trip.”
“Sorry. I’ve been in the air for twenty-three of those twenty-four hours. I had to make a quick trip to the West Coast before turning right around and heading for Germany.”
She knew that. Still, that was no excuse for his behavior. Or…what was worse…her reaction to it.
“My cell-phone battery crashed somewhere over Pennsylvania,” he said, his smile holding an apology now. “I crashed somewhere over the Atlantic. Any chance we can erase what just happened and start again?”
Oh, sure. As soon as her lips stopped tingling and her nerves snapping. Reminding herself that he was a client, Devon forced a stiff nod.
“Good.” He shifted his briefcase to his left hand and held out his right. “I’m Cal Logan. And you are?”
“Devon McShay. One of Sabrina’s partners.”
“The history professor.”
So he’d done some checking on the small firm he’d hired to work the details of his five-day, three-city swing through Germany.
“Former history professor,” she corrected as she led the way toward the baggage-claim area. “I quit teaching to join forces with Sabrina and Caroline at EBS.”
