MEMORANDUM Letter to Reader Title Page ELIZABETH BEVARLY, Dedication Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Epilogue Copyright
MEMORANDUM
To: Audrey Finnegan, my most alluring—and temporary—new secretary
From: Wheeler Rush, your slightly confused boss!
Re: I can’t seem to forget you....
Ms. Finnegan,
Attached please find a proposal designed to renew your tenure here indefinitely. Your secretarial skills are somewhat...rusty. Nonetheless, Ms. Finnegan, I find myself unable to get you off my mind.
You see, Ms. Finnegan, the attraction here is not just your sea-green eyes, your ivory complexion—or your body that just won’t quit. It’s the way you’ve taken hold of my heart—and that despite your claim that bad luck seems to follow you wherever you go, I’ve had nothing but good luck since you crashed—um, walked, into my life.
Therefore, I respectfully request that you accept my proposal—and its accompanying engagement ring. You see, Ms. Finnegan, I happen to love you.
Yours sincerely,
Wheeler Rush
Dear Reader,
Silhouette Desire matches August’s steamy heat with six new powerful, passionate and provocative romances.
Popular Elizabeth Bevarly offers That Boss of Mine as August’s MAN OF THE MONTH. In this irresistible romantic comedy, a CEO falls for his less-than-perfect secretary.
And Silhouette Desire proudly presents a compelling new series, TEXAS CATTLEMAN’S CLUB. The members of this exclusive club are some of the Lone Star State’s sexiest, most powerful men, who go on a mission to rescue a princess and find true love! Bestselling author Dixie Browning launches the series with Texas Millionaire, in which a fresh-faced country beauty is wooed by an older man.
Cait London’s miniseries THE BLAYLOCKS continues with Rio: Man of Destiny, in which the hero’s love leads the heroine to the truth of her family secrets. The BACHELOR BATTALION miniseries by Maureen Child marches on with Mom in Waiting. An amnesiac woman must rediscover her husband in Lost and Found Bride by Modean Moon. And Barbara McCauley’s SECRETS! miniseries offers another scandalous tale with Secret Baby Santos.
August also marks the debut of Silhouette’s original continuity THE FORTUNES OF TEXAS with Maggie Shayne’s Million Dollar Marriage, available now at your local retail outlet.
So indulge yourself this month with some poolside reading—the first of THE FORTUNES OF TEXAS, and all six Silhouette Desire titles!
Enjoy!
Joan Marlow Golan
Senior Editor
Please address questions and book requests to:
Silhouette Reader Service U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269 Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont L2A 5X3
Elizabeth Bevarly
That Boss of Mine
ELIZABETH BEVARLY,
who marks her twenty-fifth book with That Boss of Mine, is an honors graduate of the University of Louisville and achieved her dream of writing full-time before she even turned thirty! At heart, she is also an avid voyager who once helped navigate a friend’s thirty-five-foot sailboat across the Bermuda Triangle. Her dream is to one day have her own sailboat, a beautifully renovated older-model forty-two-footer, and to enjoy the freedom and tranquillity seafaring can bring. Elizabeth likes to think she has a lot in common with the characters she creates—people who know love and life go hand in hand. And she’s getting some firsthand experience with motherhood, as well—she and her husband have a four-year-old son, Eli.
For David and Eli,
my good-luck charms
One
Wheeler Rush braced his elbows on the top of his desk, buried his face in his hands and bit back the barrage of obscenities he really, really wanted to shout. Loudly. On the other side of his desk, in the posh office on a very desirable block of Main Street in downtown Louisville—an office for which he’d signed a lease less than nine months ago—stood two men leaving scattered, colossal footprints in their wake. Two men, he noted as he looked up again, whose brawn genes had exceeded their potential.
The larger of the men, the one who had identified himself as Bruno—that was all, just...Bruno—shifted his massive weight from one beefy foot to the other and scratched the back of his head. At least, Wheeler thought it was the back of the man’s head. Having no neck that way, and with all that scruffy hair springing out from the open collar of his shirt, Wheeler supposed it could have been his back the man was scratching.
“Look, buddy,” Bruno said. “We don’ wanna hafta do this, but we got no choice. When you can’t pay the money you owe, this is what happens. It’s that simple.”
“I won’t submit to this kind of terrorism,” Wheeler insisted, feeling much less confident than he sounded. “Leave now, or I’ll call the police.”
“It ain’t terrorism,” Bruno assured him. “This is bidness, plain and simple. You can’t call the cops. You don’ have a leg to stand on.” He cracked his knuckles menacingly, suggesting that Wheeler really wouldn’t have a leg to stand on, once the other man broke it. “You hear what I’m sayin’?” Bruno continued. “Now stand up and move away from the desk. Hey, you brought this on yourself, pal. Be a man about it, for God’s sake.”
Wheeler narrowed his eyes, hating to hear his manhood impugned