Best of Virgins Bundle

by Cathy Williams

  Bruno, for once, looked away and gave his head a little shake as if he was trying to clear it or else making his mind up about something.

  ‘Isn’t that some kind of start, though?’ he asked roughly. ‘I mean…you could learn to feel…to love me, couldn’t you?’

  The hesitation in his voice filled her with sudden, wild confusion. ‘What are you getting at?’

  ‘I am trying to tell you that…I don’t see this marriage as one of convenience. It wouldn’t be. At least, not for me.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re trying to say.’

  ‘Aren’t you women supposed to be intuitive?’ Bruno asked in a voice that bordered on the plaintive. He shot her a frustrated look from under his ridiculously long lashes that made her want to smile.

  ‘And isn’t Bruno Giannella supposed to be fearless?’ Katy asked.

  ‘Supposedly,’ he said with a reluctant smile. ‘Except I’m a little scared right now because I love you and I want to marry you and I want to persuade you that even if you don’t love me, you will. You can. You just need to give it time.’

  A chorus of angels began singing in her head. Bruno loved her. Her mouth parted into a smile and then she was grinning like a fool.

  ‘You just said that you loved me,’ Katy breathed.

  ‘I do. Love you. Adore you. Call it what you will.’

  ‘But when?’ She was hanging onto his every word and keen to prolong the confession that had sent her soaring up into the stratosphere.

  ‘It crept up on me,’ Bruno admitted. ‘One minute I was wondering whether you would ever be able to perform the simplest of chores on the computer, the next minute I was watching out for you and making sure that I spent as much time as possible in your company.’

  This was music to her ears. Katy sighed rapturously. ‘All this time,’ she murmured, ‘loving you and thinking that you would never be able to feel the same way about me…’

  Bruno stilled and then smiled. ‘You would have walked away from our relationship when you loved me?’ He caressed her face and pulled her tenderly towards him so that he could touch her gently parted lips with his own.

  ‘It never occurred to me that you could actually love someone like me,’ Katy broke apart to say unsteadily. Lord, now she wanted to cry.

  ‘My handkerchief’s ready and waiting,’ Bruno told her, reading her expression and smiling at her with such love that the tears dried up.

  ‘I just think what would have happened if Isobel hadn’t done what she’d done, if she hadn’t gone running to the press with some made-up story about us, if we hadn’t been thrown into that engagement.’ It was a sobering thought.

  ‘Yes—fate works in mysterious ways.’ Bruno leaned back against the door and pulled her against him, quite an awkward manoeuvre taking into account her calf-length dress.

  ‘I should be angry with Isobel,’ Katy said, raising her face to his. She was half lying with her back pressed to his torso, and she moaned softly as his hand swept beneath the length of dress, skimming up her legs and finally resting possessively between her legs. ‘But I’m not, because I love you so much, Bruno.’ He rubbed the place where his hand was and she felt herself moisten at the feel of his fingers against her underwear.

  ‘My darling.’

  ‘Perhaps we should…head back to the hotel?’ She knew that he had booked somewhere in London. It was incredible to think that she had not given it a passing thought because she had reckoned that by the time the night was over, they would be too.

  ‘Hmm. I’m not sure I can wait that long.’ He slid his hand beneath the thin cotton of her briefs and Katy closed her eyes and wriggled as he explored her. ‘You needn’t worry about Harry,’ Bruno whispered. ‘Can’t hear a thing. You can be as vocal as you like…’

  Katy surrendered to the velvety voice, shocked by the strength of her need to make love to him right here and right now. The blacked-out windows offered perfect privacy—not that there was any need for them. It was pitch-black outside. They were no longer in the city, though where they were heading she had no idea. Maybe Harry had taken his employer at his word and was whisking them off to Brighton.

  Thank goodness it was a big car. His jacket and trousers joined her dress in the footwell, and when they were finally naked the touch of their bodies against one another was like a blaze of pure heat.

  This time, there were no uncertainties gnawing at the back of her mind as they made urgent, if confined, love. He sat and she sat on him, loving the view it gave her of his mouth reaching to suckle her nipple as she leaned towards him and controlled her movements until he was as desperate as she was for fulfilment.

  They came together, their bodies slick with excitement, and she sank against him, curling into him with a little sigh of contentment.

  ‘You never answered,’ Bruno teased huskily. ‘Will you marry me and make me the happiest man on the face of the earth?’

  ‘How could any girl refuse a proposal like that?’ Katy murmured.

  ‘You’ll make a perfect wife,’ Bruno murmured into her ear, ‘and a perfect mother…’

  At which point it suddenly struck Katy that there had been no protection used. She sat up and looked down at him with an anxious expression.

  ‘Bruno! I could be pregnant!’

  ‘Let’s hope so, my love.’ He smiled wolfishly at her. ‘And if you’re not, well…“tomorrow is another day”.’

  One Hot Texan

  By Jane Sullivan

  TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

  AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

  STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

  PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  1

  THE CLOSER Cole McCallum came to the city limits of Coldwater, Texas, the more he wanted to swing his classic Porsche around in a tire-squealing one-eighty and head back to Dallas where he belonged. He thought he’d seen the last of this godforsaken place, only to have fate step up and slap him in the face one more time.

  His first introduction to Coldwater had been eleven years ago, when he’d been forced to leave Dallas and come here for his senior year of high school. His father had been thrown in jail for writing one too many hot checks, and his mother hadn’t been around since he was seven years old, so a family court judge had ordered his custody turned over to a grandmother he barely knew. He arrived with a chip on his shoulder the size of a concrete block. Throw in a pair of skintight jeans, a black leather jacket and a go-to-hell attitude, and the uptight citizens of Coldwater had naturally assumed he was the root of all evil. He didn’t let them down.

  Out of pure mischief, he committed a few minor infractions around school during his first few weeks, then dated a few of the more kiss-and-tell girls. Gossip took care of the rest. For the next year he got blamed for everything from graffiti on the water tower to Angela Putnam’s period being late. And he didn’t care enough to try to set anyone straight. Only his grandmother had known better, but even her reputation hadn’t been able to salvage his. With the exception of the girls who swooned at his bad-boy image, the townspeople would have voted him most likely to turn up on a post-office wall. And that’s why, at eighteen, he’d burned rubber on his way out of town, catching the best view of Coldwater he’d ever had—the one in his rearview mirror.

  And now he was going back.

  He followed the gentle curve of the two-lane blacktop, passing tin barns and mobile homes alternating with fields of cotton and corn and an occ
asional paint-starved farmhouse with a pickup truck out front. This corner of nowhere was home to people who didn’t know there was a world beyond it. But he knew. He knew how a kid from nothing could leave a place like this and make something of himself. At the same time he burned with anger at how everything that same kid had fought so hard to gain could be ripped out from under him in the blink of an eye.

  Cole still remembered how it felt to stand on that cold Dallas street in the middle of the night, soot clinging to his skin and heat from the massive blaze fanning his face, watching his half-finished real-estate renovation project—the one that could have made him a millionaire—light up the Dallas skyline like the fires of hell.

  And watching his dreams go up in smoke with it.

  He came around a bend and headed into the main part of town. He passed Blackwell’s Pharmacy, A New You Dress Shop and Cut & Curl, where a handmade sign advertised twenty percent off acrylic nails on Tuesdays. When he reached Taffy’s Restaurant, he pulled into a parking space next to a slick new pickup. It belonged to Ben Murphy, though he wouldn’t have known that if not for the ancient hound dog hanging his head over the tailgate.

  At least the old man had shown up.

  Cole stepped out of his car, went to the back of Murphy’s truck and scratched the old dog behind the ears.

  “Hey, Duke. I figured you’d be long gone by now.”

  The dog licked his hand, and Cole smiled ruefully. Duke was far happier to see him than Murphy was going to be.

  He gave the dog one last pat on the head, then turned toward the sidewalk. In the beauty-shop window next door, he saw a skinny brunette with a headful of rollers staring at him. She tapped a big-haired blonde on the shoulder and mouthed, Cole McCallum. The woman spun around, and when she caught sight of him her eyebrows flew halfway up to her hairline.

  By the time he reached the door to the restaurant, the beauty-shop window was filled with half a dozen women in various states of beautification, from sopping wet hair to kinky hair to hair sprouting crinkles of silver stuff that looked like aluminum foil.

  He couldn’t resist. He turned toward the window and gave the ladies a great big smile.

  A dozen eyes widened in unison. In the next second the women turned to each other, their mouths moving at the speed of light, probably repeating legends about him for the gospel truth whether they were actually true or not. Around here, any stranger made people stop and stare. But Cole McCallum, who was once rumored to have made it with the entire cheerleading squad in one night, warranted an all-points bulletin. And no doubt the things they’d read about him lately in the Dallas Morning News had only fueled the gossip.

  He went into the restaurant and spotted Ben Murphy sitting in a booth by the far window. The chattering din of the restaurant fell silent as patrons peered over their newspapers or stopped mid-bite to watch him walk across the room. The only sound he heard was a hushed, rapid-fire argument behind the counter, where a trio of waitresses gave him sidelong glances as they tried to determine which took precedence when it came to waiting on a particular table—seniority or station assignments.

  Cole slid into the booth across from Murphy and was greeted with a deadpan stare. The old man’s jaw was set in stone, his blue eyes unreadable. All seventy-two of his years were etched into his face, solidified by the harsh Texas sun. He held a toothpick in the corner of his mouth, and Cole couldn’t remember a time he’d seen him without one. Murphy was the closest thing to a grandfather he had by virtue of the fact that he’d married Cole’s grandmother. That was where their relationship began—and ended.

  A waitress appeared at the table, and it took Cole a moment to realize it was Mary Lou Culbertson, stuffed into a baby-blue waitress uniform that had probably been a really good fit ten years and twenty pounds ago. She cocked one hand against her hip and slid her other hand along the top of the booth behind him.

  “Hey, Cole. Long time no see.”

  “Mary Lou.”

  “I read about you in the papers. You had a pretty tough time of it, didn’t you?”

  “It’s over.”

  “Whatcha doin’ back in town?”

  “Taking care of a little business.” He flashed her a smile. “How about a cup of coffee?”

  “Sure.” She purred the word, as if he’d just asked her to get naked in the back seat of his car. As she sashayed toward the coffeepot, Murphy raised an eyebrow.

  “Still charming the ladies, I see.”

  Cole didn’t reply. Instead he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out several legal-size sheets of paper. He opened them up and tossed them on the table.

  Murphy eyed the papers. “I wondered if you’d be back. Cutting it a little close, aren’t you?”

  “According to Edna’s will, as long as I’m married within six months of her death, then stay on the ranch with my wife for six months, the deed goes to me. The way I figure it, I have until Sunday to move in.”

  “You thumbed your nose at this six months ago. Said hell would freeze over before you got married and came back to live at the ranch.”

  Yeah, and six months ago he’d had money in the bank with big payoffs on the horizon. Now he had exactly nothing. He shrugged offhandedly. “People change.”

  “Some do. Some don’t.” Murphy chewed his toothpick. “And some become hotshot real estate investors who solve their problems with a book of matches.”

  Murphy’s words slammed into Cole, making anger surge inside him. He struggled to keep his voice in check. “Guess you didn’t read the paper two days ago. My partner was convicted. I wasn’t.”

  Murphy shrugged. “So you had a better lawyer.”

  A hundred nasty retorts welled up inside Cole’s mind, and it was all he could do to contain them. Nothing ever changed in this town. Nothing.

  When he left Coldwater at age eighteen, he’d started renovating tiny, dilapidated houses, making a little money here and there and then rolling it over into bigger and bigger investments. Over the years, he amassed a large portfolio of rental property and a huge stash of cash.

  Then, in a move that raised more than a few eyebrows, he and a partner bought Seven-Seventeen Broadway Avenue, a huge turn-of-the-century apartment building on the outskirts of downtown Dallas. The condition of the building left a lot to be desired, and the area was practically an abandoned ghetto, but the building had a period charm unlike any Cole had ever seen. Because of nearby renovation projects along with the growing desire of young urban pioneers for downtown addresses, he decided to take the risk and create luxury condominiums, hoping the yuppies would bite and other investors would follow suit.

  Then came the fire.

  Cole thought it was the worst thing that could possibly happen, until the blaze was ruled arson and he and his partner became prime suspects. Investigators speculated that they’d gotten concerned that their huge investment in such a questionable area wasn’t going to pay off after all, so they’d torched it for the insurance money.

  Cole had spent his last dime on the best attorneys he could buy, trying to convince a jury that he’d had nothing to do with the crime, all the while assuming his partner hadn’t, either. Then it turned out the guy had a mountain of gambling debts Cole hadn’t even known about, which had driven him to set the fire to try to collect the insurance money.

  The fury Cole felt the moment he realized his partner’s betrayal was superseded only by the gut-wrenching defeat he felt when he looked at that fire-ravaged lot. Because the fire had been deliberately set, the insurance company hadn’t paid a dime, and Cole was left with nothing but a huge stack of attorney bills and a reputation that was in the toilet. Never mind that he’d been exonerated. The press had been quick to proclaim his alleged guilt on page one, then bury his innocence on page sixteen, and all the doors he’d worked so hard to open in the last ten years had suddenly slammed in his face.

  Then he remembered his grandmother’s will. He had one last shot to pull himself out financially and get back on top aga
in, and he intended to take that shot—even if he had to spend another six months in Coldwater to do it.

  “So where’s the little woman?” Murphy asked. “Don’t recall hearing anything about you getting married.”

  “She’ll be here Sunday.”

  Cole held his breath, afraid Murphy was going to ask him more questions about his wife. Instead, he moved his toothpick to the other side of his mouth and gave Cole a warning stare.

  “Part of the deal is that you work on the ranch.”

  “I’ve done it before.”

  “And hated every minute of it.”

  Cole couldn’t argue with that. Still, he’d worked hard on the ranch the year he lived there, and Murphy knew it. Cole would have shot himself before giving the old man the satisfaction of telling Edna he wasn’t pulling his weight.

  Mary Lou put a cup of coffee down in front of Cole with a provocative smile. As she walked away, Cole shoved the cup aside.

  “Edna’s will allows me a monthly salary and the use of the foreman’s house for the six months.”

  “That’s what it says.”

  “Just wanted to make sure we’re on the same track.”

  “We are, unless you’re forgetting who decides whether you’ve stuck to the terms of the will. If you so much as forget to show up for work one day, I can call the whole thing off. What makes you think I’ll cut you any slack?”

  Good question. Cole knew Murphy didn’t much like him showing up at the eleventh hour, because it meant another six months before the fate of the ranch would be decided. If Cole didn’t inherit, Murphy would. Fortunately, Cole knew the ranch meant nothing to Murphy without Edna. And since Murphy had been financially well-off long before he and Edna got married, the money the ranch would bring at sale meant very little to him, anyway. But carrying out the stipulations of Edna’s will meant everything to Murphy, whether he agreed with them or not.