LIZ FIELDING

HER WISH-LIST BRIDEGROOM

I'm just delighted to see this lovely BY REQUEST from Mills & Boon in the UK this month. Apart from the joy of being teamed up with two of my favourite authors - Jackie Braun and Natasha Oakley, Her Wish List Bridegroom was nominated as Best Harlequin Romance by Romantic Times in 2005.

I'd written on book in the What Women Want mini series, The Bridesmaid's Reward, and this was driven by the same idea. What did Juliet really, really want. Well, that was easy. As a teenager she'd made a life plan. Did that thing we're all advised to do, made lists. Small dreams, big dreams.

The big ones were academic success, a great career and Gregor McLeod. Two out of three wasn’t bad. But then the rug was pulled from beneath her feet and she was back where she started. Well, she still had the academic paperwork, but the career she'd spent years building was in ruins and she was back home, in her childhood room, with her mother nagging her. But then, just when she needed a hero, Greg was at her door offering to kiss it better.

There were several problems with that.

She had sworn off men for life.
And he had quite a few secrets of his own.

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‘Tell me what you want, Juliet.’

Greg knew he was crazy. She was saying “please” in a way that no man could possible misinterpret. He could feel her body yielding to him, feel it softening, opening, the soft little sounds she was making in the back of her throat.
All he had to do was kiss her and she’d dissolve, crumple up right here on the floor if that’s what he wanted.

And still he held back, offering her a way out, giving her a chance to think again.

Why?

She wasn’t some nervous virgin who didn’t know whether she wanted this or not. He’d never been interested in those. He’d liked women who knew what they wanted and weren’t afraid to show him. Juliet was a grown woman and they’d both known where this would end the minute they’d started baiting one another with verbal foreplay.

He had his hands full of hot, sexy womanhood. She knew exactly how he was feeling right now and she wasn’t exactly pushing him away. This should have been so damned simple.

But it wasn’t.

And he didn’t know why.

Except, except...

‘I need to know that this is what you want.’

Her response was to lift a hand, lay it along his cheek. She was trembling, he realised. Not with fear, because if she’d been afraid she would have been rigid in his arms, would not have been openly encouraging his mouth on her breasts. She was trembling with desire and knowing that made him feel ten times, a hundred times stronger, more powerful than he’d ever felt in his life. And still he waited, doing nothing to encourage her, nothing to discourage her.

He wanted her to know that despite his sudden lapse into the kind of machismo behaviour that he despised, that was an invitation to any self-respecting woman to show him the door, he was not so lost to his own needs that he wouldn’t step back if that’s what she wanted.
As if rewarding him for his patience, she lifted her other hand so that she was cradling his face. And then she lifted her mouth to his and kissed him, very gently.

It was the sweetest kiss.

The kind that an innocent teenage girl might bestow on her first boyfriend. All soft, trembling lips. Uncertain longings. The kind that was wasted on a hot, horny youth who had only one thing in mind. The kind that could steal a man’s heart. She couldn’t begin to imagine how much it cost him to hold back, allow her to take the lead, set the pace. Had no way of understanding that her tenderness was burning him up in a way that not even the hottest of kisses had ever achieved.

Then he realised that her face was wet, that tears were pouring down her cheeks and mingling with their lips.

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It's available from the Mills & Boon website. And also from The Book Depository who will send it anywhere in the world for a discounted £4.49 without charging postage.

HER WISH-LIST BRIDEGROOM has also been released as an eBook.


From the book: Her Wish-List Bridegroom
By: Liz Fielding
Mills & Boon “Tender” Series & Harlequin “Romance” Series
Publication Date: February, 2005 (UK), July 2005 (US)
Copyright: Liz Fielding 2004