The Spaniard's Defiant Virgin. Jennie Lucas

      ORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

       AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

       STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

       PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

      All about the author…

      Jennie Lucas

      JENNIE LUCAS had a tragic beginning for any would-be writer: a very happy childhood. Her parents owned a bookstore, and she grew up surrounded by books, dreaming about faraway lands. When she was ten, her father secretly paid her a dollar for every classic novel (Jane Eyre, War and Peace) that she read.

      At fifteen, she went to a Connecticut boarding school on scholarship. She took her first solo trip to Europe at sixteen, then put off college and traveled around the U.S., supporting herself with jobs as diverse as gas-station cashier and newspaper advertising assistant.

      At twenty-two, she met the man who would be her husband. For the first time in her life, she wanted to stay in one place, as long as she could be with him. After their marriage, she graduated from Kent State University with a degree in English, and started writing books a year later.

      Jennie was a finalist in the Romance Writers of America’s Golden Heart contest in 2003, and won the award in 2005. A fellow 2003 finalist, Australian author Trish Morey, read Jennie’s writing and told her that she should write for Harlequin Presents. It seemed like too big a dream, but Jennie took a deep breath and went for it. A year later, Jennie got the magical call from London that turned her into a published author.

      Since then, life has been hectic—juggling a writing career, a sexy husband and two young children—but Jennie loves her crazy, chaotic life. Now if she can only figure out how to pack up her family and live in all the places she’s writing about!

      For more about Jennie and her books, please visit her Web site at www.jennielucas.com.

      To my husband, who is better than ice cream.

      CONTENTS

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER ONE

      Tarfaya, Morocco

      HE WAS waiting for her outside the Dar el-Saladin.

      Marcos Ramirez held up his binoculars, watching the flower-covered limousine leave the fishing village in a whirlwind of rose petals. From where Marcos stood, the sturdy gate that protected the village from sandstorms on one side and the sea on the other seemed riddled with red bullet holes.

      Tamsin Winter, at last. He’d kept tabs on her through her ten cloistered years in boarding schools until she’d returned to London last year. Since then, the wild young heiress had frequently been in the tabloids, always with a different man on her arm. The spoiled beauty was reputedly the most accomplished flirt in Britain.

      Breaking her would be a pleasure.

      “The car’s moving into position, Patrón,” his chief bodyguard, Reyes, noted aloud.

      “Sí.” Marcos put down the binoculars. He knew his men could have kidnapped the Winter girl without his supervision, preventing her from arriving at her wedding in the Sheikh’s kasbah to the north. Marcos could be taking his ease in Madrid right now, drinking coffee and checking the latest numbers on the London and New York stock exchanges instead of sweating in the dust-choked desert.

      But he’d been dreaming of revenge for twenty years, and today was the culmination of everything. After he had the girl, both she and her family would be utterly destroyed. Finally. As they deserved.

      Marcos smiled grimly to himself. He only wished he could see the expression on her bridegroom’s face when he heard the news, the black-hearted bastard.

      The limousine left the village, moving along the sand-covered road that separated the Sahara and the bright Atlantic shore. He pulled his black mask down over his face and turned to Reyes. “Vámonos.”