by Annie O'Neil
Could their temporary vows...
Become a marriage for real?
When Isla MacLeay comes to the beautiful Caribbean island of El Valderon, the last thing she expects is to be forced into marriage. But the fiery Scottish redhead is in danger, and the only solution is for her to wear Dr. Diego Vasquez’s ring. Isla is already nursing a broken heart...but now she must protect it from the man she could easily fall in love with—her husband!
“We have to convince them this is what we want. That we met when you first arrived, and that we were already engaged.”
“But I only arrived a few days ago!”
“Never heard of love at first sight?”
Did she? Had she felt it, too? That crackle of connection...
Don’t be an idiot. It wasn’t love. It was lust.
Diego believed in lust. Passion even. Love? He didn’t believe in love anymore. Couldn’t. Not when he knew how the world really worked.
“When the men come back in again, make sure the diamond hits the light. They need to see the ring.”
Isla pursed her lips, looked at her hand then nodded, tendrils of her auburn hair masking her expression. He pulled his fingers into a fist, willing them not to tease a few of her wayward curls into submission.
She sniffed and shook her hair back as if she was annoyed at his choice of paint for their new living room, rather than being thrown into the vortex of fear and confusion most people would have been in if their lives depended upon marrying a complete stranger.
Dear Reader,
Have you ever had a light bulb moment and run with it? That’s what happened here with this book. A working title came to me (they are usually wildly unusable, which is why we have another lovely title for you to enjoy instead). It was “Married to the Mob Doc.” Then I thought—what if our heroine had to marry said mob doc under duress? What on earth would make you marry someone you didn’t know? I’m going to have to stop here, because the answer I dreamed up lies within these pages. I hope you find it as wild and romantic a ride as I did writing it. As ever, I love to hear from you all, so please don’t be shy about getting in touch. I’m on Facebook and on Twitter, @AnnieONeilBooks.
xx Annie O’
The Doctor’s Marriage for a Month
Annie O’Neil
Books by Annie O’Neil
Harlequin Medical Romance
Single Dad Docs
Tempted by Her Single Dad Boss
Hope Children’s Hospital
The Army Doc’s Christmas Angel
Hot Greek Docs
One Night with Dr. Nikolaides
Italian Royals
Tempted by the Bridesmaid
Claiming His Pregnant Princess
Paddington Children’s Hospital
Healing the Sheikh’s Heart
Hot Latin Docs
Santiago’s Convenient Fiancée
Christmas Eve Magic
The Nightshift Before Christmas
The Monticello Baby Miracles
One Night, Twin Consequences
London’s Most Eligible Doctor
Her Hot Highland Doc
Her Knight Under the Mistletoe
Reunited with Her Parisian Surgeon
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
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This one goes to my editor, Laurie, who I finally get to work with after she spotted me in a So You Think You Can Write competition many moons ago. Thanks to her, my confidence grew enough to keep on trying, keep on writing and, eventually, get my very first contract to write books for Harlequin. Thank you so much, Laurie! Your faith in me has led to a whole magical world of book writing I never thought would come my way! xx Annie O’
Praise for Annie O’Neil
“Santiago’s Convenient Fiancée...is a vibrant, passionate love story with a medical backdrop that adds the drama quotient to this already captivating story.”
—Goodreads
Annie O’Neil won the 2016 RoNA Rose Award for her book Doctor...to Duchess?
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
EPILOGUE
EXCERPT FROM A WIFE FOR THE SURGEON SHEIKH BY MEREDITH WEBBER
CHAPTER ONE
“NO TAKERS FOR the Nocturnal Turtle Tour?” asked Isla MacLeay as she scrubbed at her face, hoping her father couldn’t see that it was, as it had been for the past three days, stained with tears.
“Not tonight. I thought we had some takers, but...” Her father looked out at the huge expanse of beach before them. “I guess getting the sanctuary established is going to be a bit more of a task than I thought. Here you are, lassie.”
She felt one of her father’s soft cotton handkerchiefs brush against her hand. She took it with a smile she knew didn’t reach her eyes as her heart cinched tight. It was the second time this week he’d acted like a “real dad.”
If getting dumped a week before her wedding was all it took to get his attention, she would’ve faked a wedding years ago.
Before her father had found her she’d been sitting against a palm tree, next to the little tote bag that held her diary and her increasingly eclectic pen collection, almost enjoying quietly sniffling away as silvery moonlight bathed the idyllic crescent of beach, where palm leaves murmured in the light breeze as the warm Caribbean sea lapped and teased at the pure white sand.
She’d come a long way from her little Scottish home in Loch Craggen, but tonight the beach had been as far as she’d been prepared to go.
She had kissed her father goodnight when he’d pulled out yet another one of his huge folders full of plans for the El Valderon Turtle Sanctuary and, not being sleepy, had strolled to the beach for a bit of a sob, leaving the low-slung buildings of the sanctuary behind her, and losing herself to the beautiful cove which they surrounded.
The billowing foam arcing atop the waves surging in from the Caribbean Sea reminded her of a delicate glass of fizz, just about to overflow. Not that she was used to champagne being popped and poured at the drop of a hat. Her fiancé—her ex-fiancé—hadn’t really been one to plump for that sort of thing. Not for her, anyway.
Remembering his words had fresh tears rolling down her freckled cheeks. Just in case she hadn’t understood what “I’ve fallen in love with someone else” meant...he’d gone on to make it plain as day.
“How could I marry you? It wouldn’t be fair. To either of us. Sorry, babes. Now that I’ve dipped my toe into the waters of life off Craggen it’s plain as day. I’m a world traveler. And, as much as it pains me to say it, you’re a boring, rule-abiding, science nerd. It’s just not my scene, darlin’. Ciao!”
Ciao?
The man had only flown to Italy once. He’d not even left the airport and now he was fluent?
Pffft. That showed her for falling for pretty words and a handsome face. She saw it now. Plain as the hand in front of her face. Kyle had only wanted someone reliable until something better came along
. The next man she met and fell for would be a nerd through and through.
“There’s nothing wrong with being reliable as a millstone.”
When her grandmother had said it, it had sounded like a good thing.
When Kyle had said it she’d instantly heard the bell toll for the end of their marriage plans.
She couldn’t help but wonder how others might have reacted—what people who were perky flight attendants in Europe might have been inclined to say.
Not that she’d met Kyle’s new girlfriend. Girlfriend! But the rumor mill ran stronger than the mountain rivers that flowed into the inky depths of Loch Craggen. Apparently the new girlfriend was absolutely adorable and soooo sophisticated.
What was wrong with corduroy skirts, woolly tights and hand-knitted jumpers? It was cold in Loch Craggen. Even in August.
Which was precisely why she had packed just about nothing appropriate for her last-minute trip El Valderon. Was there anything appropriate, apart from mourning clothes? She wasn’t mourning Kyle, exactly. But she did feel she was mourning the loss of something intangible. Either way, she needed new clothes and had promised to take herself shopping. One of these days.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
Startled into the present, she stared with her father out into the inky darkness as the moon slid behind a cloud.
“What was that?”
Despite the late-night tropical heat, goose bumps rippled up Isla’s arms, then shot down her back.
It wasn’t a sudden chill she felt.
It was fear.
She pressed her fingers to her eyes, gave them a quick rub, then pinged them open, forcing herself to adjust to the inky darkness.
“Dad?” She couldn’t see him. He’d been right beside her a second ago!
Fear clashed with an age-old anger. Had he run off toward the danger, instead of staying with her when she truly needed him?
She squinted out into the darkness.
The gunfire sounded again.
“Dad? Daddy! Are you all right?”
Where was he?
Her heart pounded against her chest. Isla hadn’t called her father “daddy” in years. Decades, even. At thirty-one years old she was a grown woman. A doctor. But fear had a way of reducing a girl to her essential self. A little girl who’d come halfway round the world to seek solace from her father when her heart had been smashed into a thousand little pieces.
None of that mattered now.
An anguished male scream broke through the roar of blood in her head as rapid-fire Spanish was lobbed from one end of the cove to the other.
She didn’t have to be a doctor to know the sound of pain, but she was thanking heaven that she was. It narrowed her focus. Pushed away the fear. Gave her something to do: help.
She spun round and saw a young man clutching his shoulder. Her heart lurched into her throat. She saw blood pouring between his fingers. Oh no. He’d been hit.
Everything slowed down, as if she were in a frame-by-frame film sequence.
The atmosphere at the oceanside cove had flipped from tranquil to chaotic in little more than the blink of an eye. One minute she’d been quietly sobbing her heart out about her wreck of a life and the next... Gunfire and shouting erupted from each of the two heavily armed groups facing off against each other.
So these were the men her father had said “might bear a bit of a grudge” against the sanctuary.
The man stumbling toward her must have been caught in the crossfire between The El Valderon Turtle Sanctuary’s security guards and the tattooed, slick-haired members of Noche Blanca—the ragtag but reportedly vicious, mafia-type group led by the island’s one notorious criminal: Axl Cruz.
He had been enraged when the owners of a large coffee plantation had donated the land to the sanctuary. Her father had hinted that there had been a rise in tension over precious turtle eggs. Precious to Axl Cruz because they meant money on the black market. Precious to her father because the sea creatures were endangered.
Instinct set her in motion.
Flashes of gunfire lit up the inky black sky. An illustration, if she needed one, of why the so-called gang called themselves White Night.
Her nostrils stung with the sour scent of spent gunpowder.
A volley of Spanish came at her from all directions as yet another round of gunfire broke through the night. When the moon reappeared she saw her father.
“Daddy!”
Why were they dragging him away?
“I’m all right, love.” Her father’s scratchy brogue carried across the cove. “Just stay calm. You’ll be fine. They only want the eggs. They won’t hurt you if you do what they say. All right, laddies. ¡Suéltame!”
She strained to hear her father’s calm, ever-scientific voice rising and falling, explaining something in Spanish as calmly as if the gun-wielding pandilleros had come along for one of her father’s nocturnal sea turtle tours.
Ever since her mum had died the man had lived on another planet. How else could one unbelievably intelligent human think he could talk down a criminal gang intent on illegal turtle egg sales?
It was why her grandmother had raised her to be the sensible one. The reliable one.
The boring one.
She pushed aside her ex’s cruel words and tried to follow her father’s directions. As bonkers as he was, there wasn’t a chance on earth she was going to lose him too. Not after the week she’d had. So she did what she was good at: following protocol.
There was a gunshot victim and he needed help. Now.
She astonished herself by offering a polite smile to one of the burlier men closing in on her. His pitch-black hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail. If he loosened his hair and put on a smile she could imagine him as a father or son.
He grunted and looked away.
Apparently smiles weren’t going to help tonight.
Her father had told her that in a good year on the black market a family could live for a year on the proceeds of a single night’s haul of the precious eggs. Little wonder some of the men had turned to crime when the land had become protected.
Not protected well enough.
Her father’s project was meant to put an end to the need for violence. Create a viable means of making a living on the island. Bring an end to the destruction of the endangered animals. An end to the violence. A way to legitimately support a family. But it would take time. Time these men didn’t seem willing to give.
A tall, lanky man stepped forward and grabbed her arm as yet another unhooked a skein of rope from his shoulder.
Her vision blurred as reality dawned.
She was going to be held hostage.
She turned and caught a final glimpse of her father being manhandled toward the smattering of seaside bungalows where the sanctuary staff lived. Before he disappeared she heard him shouting something about calling for help.
An ice-cold flash of fear prickled along her spine.
Help? Which one of them was in any position to call for help? She’d only been on the island a few days, and those had largely been spent sobbing her eyes out over her broken engagement. The little girl in her wanted to scream with frustration. He was the one who was tapped into the local support network. He was the grown-up!
The male who’d been shot uttered a low groan as he dropped to his knees in pain.
And just like that she remembered she was an adult too. One with the power to help.
It felt as if hours had passed since she’d heard the first gunshots, but Isla knew better than most that only a few precious seconds had passed. Life-changing seconds.
The pony-tailed man shouldered an automatic weapon. She followed the trajectory of his gun as it swung to the far side of the cove.
He raised it to the starlit sky and fired. The sharp rat-a-tat-tats sounded more like a signal tha
n an attempt to get the turtle sanctuary’s ragtag protection detail to run for the hills.
Her heart ached for the sanctuary security team. They were gentle men—cooks, farmers, bricklayers, fathers—whose sole desire was to see an end to the violence that threatened to taint their lives so cruelly.
Ire burnt and stung in her chest, then reformed as a white-hot rod of indignation. They shouldn’t have to live like this. Fearing for their lives while trying to do the right thing by their families and their community.
“Everybody stop!”
Much to her astonishment, they did.
The moment’s reprieve in the shooting and shouting gave her a chance to listen for anyone approaching or more instructions from her father.
Nope.
Not a living soul.
Just a chance to realize that her heart had stopped hammering against her rib cage as if it too were trying to escape.
Two weeks ago she would’ve been hiding under something right now. Most likely the big bed in her little stone cottage on Craggen. Not standing between two gun-toting groups of men with her arms out like some sort of bonkers traffic controller.
Was being dumped more character-building than soul-destroying? Or was the truth a bit more simple.
After the week she’d had Isla really didn’t have time for this sort of ridiculous machismo.
She pushed her own issues to the wayside. Her father was here to help the community—not hinder. Nor had she faced up to a lifelong fear of flying only to get killed when she got here.
She was here to lick her emotional wounds, sulk a little. Wallow. Something she never did. And she was not best pleased to have to patch together gun-wielding turtle egg poachers just because they didn’t see the sense in her father’s big plan.
The same father, she reminded herself, who probably should’ve mentioned the fact that El Valderon was more akin to the Wild West of yesteryear than a restorative Caribbean spa.
Maybe he simply didn’t want to see the dark side.
