Blogger Bundle Volume VIII: SBTB's Harlequins That Hooked You

by Jennifer Crusie

  The last pocket of air bubbled out of the helicopter cockpit.

  No way was he going to die. Ronnie wanted to marry him. No way was he going to drown. Or bleed to death, damn it.

  The water was cold as hell, but it would slow his bleeding.

  All he had to do was get his arms and legs to work.

  But he hurt.

  Every single cell in his body hurt, and it took so much goddammed effort to lift even a finger.

  This was worse than anything he’d ever experienced, worse even than Hell Week, that torturous final week of SEAL training that he’d lived through so many years ago.

  He’d never wanted anything as badly as he’d wanted to be a SEAL. It had kept him going through the nonstop exertion, through the pain, through the torturous physical demands. “You got to want it badly enough,” one of his instructors had shouted at them, day after day, hour after hour. And Joe had. He’d wanted to be a SEAL. He’d wanted it badly enough.

  He’d wanted to be a SEAL almost as much as he wanted Veronica St. John.

  And she was there, up there, above the surface of that freezing water, waiting for him. All he had to do was kick his legs, push himself free and he would have her. Forever. All he had to do was want it badly enough….

  Veronica stared at the water, at the place where first the helicopter and then Blue had disappeared.

  Please, God, if you give me this, I’ll never ask for anything ever again….

  Seconds ticked into one minute. Two. Three…

  Was it possible for a man to hold his breath for this long, let alone search for a wounded, drowning man…?

  Please, God.

  And then, all at once, a body erupted from beneath the surface of the water. Veronica peered into the area lit by the searchlights. Was that one head or…

  Two! Two heads! Blue had found Joe!

  A cheer went up from the sailors on board the boat, and they quickly maneuvered closer to the two men, and pulled them out.

  Dear God, it was Joe, and he was breathing. Veronica stood aside as the medics sliced his wet clothes from his body. Oh, Lord, he’d been shot in the abdomen, just above his hip. She watched, clutching her own blanket more tightly around her as he was wrapped in a blanket and an IV was attached to his arm.

  “Cat was coming up as I was going down after him,” Blue said, respect heavy in his voice. “I think he would have made it, even without me. He didn’t want to die. Not today.”

  Joe was floating in and out of consciousness, yet he turned his head, searching for something, searching for…

  “Ronnie.” His voice was just a whisper, but he reached for her, and she took his hand.

  “I’m here,” she said, pressing his fingers to her lips.

  “Did you mean it?” He was fighting hard to remain conscious. He was fighting, and winning. “When you said you’d marry me?”

  “Yes,” she said, fighting her own battle against the tears that threatened to escape.

  Joe nodded. “You know, I’m not going to change,” he said. “I can’t pretend to be something I’m not. I’m not a prince or a duke or—”

  Veronica cut him off with a kiss. “You’re my prince,” she said.

  “Your parents are going to hate me.”

  “My parents are going to love you,” she countered. “Nearly as much as I do.”

  He smiled then, ignoring his pain, reaching up to touch the side of her face. “You really think this could work?”

  “Do you love me?” Veronica asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Then it will work.” The boat was pulling up alongside of the USS Watkins, where a doctor was waiting. From what Veronica had gathered from the medics, they believed the bullet had passed through Joe’s body, narrowly missing his vital organs. He’d lost a lot of blood, and had to be stitched up and treated for infection, but it could have been worse. It could have been far worse.

  Joe felt himself placed onto a stretcher. He had to release Ronnie’s hand as he was lifted up and onto the deck of the Watkins.

  “I love you,” she called.

  He was smiling as the doctor approached him, smiling as the nurse added painkiller to his intravenous tube, smiling as he gave in to the drug and let the darkness finally close in around him.

  Joe stared up at the white ceiling in sick bay for a good long time before he figured out where he was and why he couldn’t move. He was still strapped down to a bed. He hurt like hell. He’d been shot. He’d been stitched up.

  He’d been promised a lifetime filled with happiness and Veronica St. John’s beautiful smile.

  Veronica Catalanotto. He smiled at the idea of her taking his name.

  And then Blue was leaning over him, releasing the restraints. “Damn, Cat,” he said in his familiar drawl. “The doc said you were grinning like a fool when he brought you in here, and here you are again, smiling like a fox in a henhouse.”

  “Where’s Ronnie?” Joe whispered. His throat was so dry, and his mouth felt gummy. He tried to moisten his dry lips with his tongue.

  Blue turned away, murmuring something to the nurse before he turned back to Joe, lifting a cup of water to his friend’s lips. “She’s getting checked by the doctor,” he told Joe.

  Joe’s smile disappeared, the soothing drink of water forgotten. “She okay?”

  Blue nodded. “She’s just getting a blood test,” he said. “Apparently she needs one.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m hoping to get married,” Ronnie said, leaning forward to kiss him gently on the mouth. “That is, if you still have that ring. If you still want me.”

  Joe gazed up at her. Her hair was down, loose and curling around her shoulders. She was wearing a sailor suit that was several sizes too large, white flared pants and a white shirt, sleeves rolled up several times. She was wearing no makeup, and her freshly scrubbed face looked impossibly young—and anxious—as she waited for his answer. “Hell, yes,” he somehow managed to say.

  She smiled, and Joe felt his mouth curve up into an answering smile as he lost himself in the ocean color of her eyes. “Do you still want me?”

  Blue moved quietly toward the door. “I guess I’ll leave you two a—”

  Ronnie turned then, looking up at Joe’s XO and best friend. “Wait,” she said. “Please?” She looked back at Joe. “I’ll marry you, but there’s one condition.”

  Blue shifted his weight uncomfortably.

  “Anything,” Joe said to Veronica. “I’d promise you anything. Just name it.”

  “It’s not something you can promise me,” she said. She looked up at Blue again, directly into his turquoise eyes. “I need Blue’s promise—to keep Joe safe and alive.”

  Blue nodded slowly, taking her words seriously. “I’d die for him,” he said, matter-of-factly.

  Veronica had seen them in action. She’d seen Blue dive into the icy Alaskan waters after Joe, and she knew he spoke the truth. It wasn’t going to make her fear for Joe’s safety disappear, but it was going to make it easier.

  “I didn’t want to marry you because I was—I am—afraid that you’re going to get yourself killed,” she said, turning back to Joe. “I knew I couldn’t ask you to leave the SEALs and…”

  She saw his eyes narrow slightly as he understood her words. “Then…”

  Veronica felt more than saw Blue slip from the room as she leaned forward to kiss Joe’s lips. “I wasn’t ‘slumming.”’ She mock shuddered. “Nasty expression, that.”

  He laced his fingers through her hair, wariness and concern in his eyes. “I can’t leave the SEALs, baby—”

  She silenced him with another kiss. “I know. I’m not asking you to. I’m not going to quit my job and become a career navy wife, either,” Veronica told Joe. “I’ll travel and work—the same as you. But whenever you can get leave time, I’ll be there.”

  As she gazed into Joe’s midnight-dark eyes, the last of his reservations drained away, leaving only love—pure and powerful. Bu
t then he frowned slightly. “Your ring’s back in Little Creek,” he said.

  “I don’t need a ring to know how much you love me,” Veronica whispered.

  Joe touched his chest, realized he was wearing a hospital gown, then pressed the call button for the nurse.

  A young man appeared almost instantly. “Problem, sir?”

  “What happened to my uniform?” Joe demanded.

  “There wasn’t much left of it after the medics cut it off you, sir.” The nurse gestured toward a small table just out of reach of the bed. “Your personal gear is in that drawer.”

  “Thanks, pal,” Joe said.

  “Can I get you anything, sir?”

  “Just some privacy,” Joe told him, and the nurse left as quickly as he had come.

  Joe turned to Veronica. “Check in that drawer for me, will you, baby?”

  Veronica stood up and crossed to the table. She pulled open the drawer. There were three guns inside, several rounds of ammunition, something that looked decidedly like a hand grenade, a deadly-looking knife, several bills of large denominations, a handful of change…

  “There should be a gold pin,” Joe said. “It’s called a ‘Budweiser.”’

  A gold pin in the shape of an eagle with both an ocean trident and a gun, it was Joe’s SEAL pin, one of his most precious possessions. He’d gotten it on the day he graduated, the day he became a Navy SEAL. Veronica took it from the drawer. It felt solid and heavy in her hand as she carried it to Joe.

  But he didn’t take it from her. He wrapped her fingers around it. “I want you to have it.”

  Veronica stared at him.

  “There are two things I’ve never given anyone,” he said quietly. “One is this pin. The other is my heart.” He smiled at her. “Now you got ’em both. Forever.”

  He pulled her head down to him and kissed her so gently, so sweetly, so perfectly.

  And Veronica realized again what she’d known for quite some time.

  She had found her prince.

  The Millionaire’s Indecent Proposal

  By Emilie Rose

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Prologue

  “Must you marry every woman you sleep with?” Franco Constantine demanded of his father. Furious, he paced the salon of the family chateau outside Avignon, France. “This one is younger than me.”

  His father shrugged and smiled—the smile of a besotted old fool. “I’m in love.”

  “No, Papa, you’re in lust. Again. We cannot afford another one of your expensive divorce settlements. Our cash reserves are tied up in expanding Midas Chocolates. For God’s sake, if you refuse to have a prenuptial agreement, then at least sign everything over to me before you marry her and jeopardize our business and the family properties with mistake number five.”

  Armand shook his head. “Angeline is not a mistake. She is a blessing.”

  Franco had met the misnamed harpy at lunch. She was no angel. But he knew from past experience his father would not listen when a woman had him transfixed. “I disagree.”

  Armand rested a hand on Franco’s shoulder. “I hate to see you so bitter, Franco. Granted, your ex-wife was a selfish bitch, but not all women are.”

  “You’re wrong. Women are duplicitous and mercenary creatures. There is nothing I want from one that I cannot buy.”

  “If you’d stop dating spoiled rich women and find someone with traditional values like Angeline, you’d find a woman who would love you for yourself and not your money.”

  “Wrong. And if your paramour loves you and not your wealth, she’ll stick by you once you’ve divested yourself, and I won’t have to borrow against our estate again, close stores or lay off workers when your ardor cools and her lawyers start circling.”

  “If you want to control the Constantine holdings so badly, then marry.”

  “I won’t endanger the family assets by marrying again.”

  “And what of an heir? Someone to inherit all this when you and I are gone?” Armand’s sweeping gesture encompassed the chateau which had been in the family for hundreds of years.

  Something in his father’s tone raised the hackles on the back of Franco’s neck. “Is Angeline pregnant?”

  “No. But son, you are thirty-eight. I should be bouncing grandbabies on my knee by now. Since you’re not willing to provide heirs to our estate then I think perhaps I should. Angeline is only thirty. I could have several more sons and daughters by her before I die.”

  “You can’t be serious. You’re seventy-five.”

  His father speared him with a hard glance. “If you marry before my September wedding, I’ll sign everything over to you. If you do not…” He extended his arms and shrugged. “I’ll take matters into my own hands.”

  Franco could easily find a woman to marry. Any number of his acquaintances would agree, but the stench of his ex-wife’s betrayal still clung to him. He’d been a young love-struck fool, blind to Lisette’s faults and her treachery. He would never let a woman dupe him like that again. Marriage was out of the question.

  He stood toe to toe with his father. “If I find one of these mythical paragons and prove she’s just as greedy as the rest of her sex, then you will sign the Constantine properties over to me without a parody of a marriage on my part.”

  “Prove it how exactly?”

  How indeed? “I’ll offer her a million euros for the use of her body for one month without the pretense of love or the possibility of marriage. That amount is but a fraction of what each of your divorces has cost us.”

  “I accept your terms, but don’t try to weasel out of this by finding an impossible woman. She must be one who you find attractive and beddable, and who you would be willing to marry if she cannot be bought.”

  A woman who could not be bought. No such animal existed.

  Confident he would win, Franco extended his hand to shake on the deal. Victory would not only be sweet, it would be easy, and his father’s most recent parasite would not get the chance to sink her fangs in the family coffers and suck them dry.

  One

  “Le chocolat qui vaut son poids en or,” Stacy Reeves read the gilt script on the shop window aloud. “What does that mean?” she asked her friend Candace without looking away from the mouthwatering display of chocolates on gold-rimmed plates.

  “Chocolate worth its weight in gold,” a slightly accented and thoroughly masculine voice replied. Definitely not Candace.

  Surprised, Stacy pivoted on her sandaled foot. Wow. Forget chocolate. The dark-haired blue-eyed hunk in front of her looked good enough to eat.

  “Would you care for a piece, mademoiselle? My treat.” Monsieur Gorgeous indicated the shop door with his hand. A silver-toned, wafer-thin watch winked beneath his suit sleeve. Platinum, she’d bet, from the affluent look of what had to be a custom-tailored suit. Nothing from a department store would fit those broad shoulders, narrow hips and long legs so perfectly.

  Never mind that she’d probably dream of licking chocolate from the deep cleft in his chin tonight, Stacy had learned the hard way that when something looked too good to be true it was. Always. A seductively sexy stranger offering free gourmet chocolate had to be a setup because sophisticated guys like him didn’t go for practical accountants like her. And her simple lilac sundress and sensible walking sandals weren’t the stuff of which male fantasies were made.

  She glanced up and down the Boulevard des Moulins, one of the principality of Monaco’s shopping streets, searching for her friend. Candace was nowhere in sight, but she had to be behind Mr. Delectable’s appearance and offer. Her friend had joked about finding husbands for each of her bridesmaids before her wedding in four weeks time. At least Stacy had thought
she was joking. Until now.

  Stacy tilted her head, considered the man in question and gave him a saccharine smile. “Does that line usually work for you with American tourists?”

  The corners of his oh-so-tempting lips twitched and his eyes glinted with humor beneath thick, straight eyebrows. He pressed a ringless left hand to his chest. “You wound me, mademoiselle.”

  With his fantasy good looks he had to have an epic ego to match. “I sincerely doubt it.”

  She scanned the sidewalks again looking for her MIA friend. Anything would be better than embarrassing herself by drooling over something she couldn’t have. Namely him or the five-dollar—make that euro—per-piece candy.

  “You are looking for someone? A lover, perhaps?”

  Lover. Just hearing him say the word, rolling that R, gave her goose bumps.

  “A friend.” One who’d been right behind her seconds ago. Candace must have ducked into one of the quaint shops nearby, either to purchase something wedding-related or to spy if she was the one responsible for this encounter. After all, stopping by the chocolate shop had been Candace’s idea.

  “May I assist you in locating your friend?”

  He had the most amazing voice. Deep and velvety. Was the accent French or native Monégasque? Stacy could listen to him talk for hours.

  No. She couldn’t. She was here with Candace, the bride-to-be, and two other bridesmaids to help prepare for Candace’s wedding the first weekend in July, not to have a vacation romance.

  “Thanks, but no thanks.” Before Stacy could walk away, Candace popped out of the shop next door waving a scrap of lace.

  “Stacy, I found the most exquisitely embroidered…” She trailed off as she spotted the Adonis beside Stacy. Surprise arched her pale eyebrows. “…handkerchief.”

  Maybe this wasn’t a set-up. Stacy rocked back on her heels, folded her arms and waited for the inevitable. Candace had naturally white-blond hair and big baby-blue eyes. Her innocent Alice-in-Wonderland looks tended to bowl men over. No doubt this guy would fall at Candace’s dainty feet. Stacy had never had that problem and that suited her fine. Forever wasn’t in the cards for her. She’d never trust a man that much.