“Miss Carrie Dunn from Colorado, we meet again,” he smiled. About the Author Title Page Letter to Reader CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN Copyright
“Miss Carrie Dunn from Colorado, we meet again,” he smiled.
Carrie hadn’t a clue what to say or do. “Forgive me,” she said in a polite but firm tone, “but actually I’m wondering what you’re doing here.”
“It’s you who should forgive me.” He held out his hand to her. “Here I am in your home and I haven’t even introduced myself. I’m Leone,” he told her. “Leone Montecrespi.”
Their eyes met and he smiled. “We have unfinished business.”
“I wasn’t aware that you and I had any business to finish.”
“Perhaps not, strictly speaking, business.”
Count Leone Alberto Cosimo George di Montecrespi, the heir to the throne of San Rinaldo, simply smiled at her reaction. I’m going to enjoy this, he was thinking. This one’s definitely no pushover. It would make a pleasant change from the easy victories he was used to.
Stephanie Howard was born and brought up in Dundee, Scotland, and educated at the London School of Economics. For ten years she worked as a journalist in London on a variety of women’s magazines, among them Woman’s Own, and was latterly editor of the now-defunct Honey. She has spent many years living and working abroad—in Italy, Malaysia, the Philippines and in the Middle East.
The Colorado Countess
Stephanie Howard
Dear Reader,
Welcome to ROYAL AFFAIR! By appointment to her loyal readers, Stephanie Howard has created a blue-blooded trilogy of romeos, rebels and royalty. It follows the fortunes of the San Rinaldo royal family: Damiano, the Duke of San Rinaldo, his brother, Count Leone, and their sister, Lady Caterina. Together the three of them are dedicated to their country, people and family. But it takes only one thing to turn their perfectly ordered lives upside down: love!
COUNT LEONE MONTECRESPI, the younger brother of the ruling Duke, is a habitual heartbreaker. A playboy of the old school: love them, leave them and on no account, marry them. But will small-town American girl, Carrie Dunn, be the one to finally get him up the aisle?
LADY CATERINA MONTECRESPI. Leone and Damiano’s baby sister, has sworn off men since her last disastrous encounter with the opposite sex. And Matthew Allenby is hardly the man to change her mind. As far as Caterina is concerned, he’s a crook and a charlatan. Unfortunately he’s also proving irresistible!
The DUKE OF SAN RINALDO, DAMIANO MONTECRESPI, had married Sofia to secure his dukedom and produce an heir. But duty for Sofia is a cold bed partner—she wants Damiano to love her as much as he does their baby son, Alessandro. Is a happy ending to their fairy-tale romance too much to ask for?
Each of these books contains its own stand-alone romance, as well as making up a great trilogy. Follow Leone and Carrie’s tale in The Colorado Countess. In The Lady’s Man, it’s Caterina and Matthew’s turn. And finally, The Duke’s Wife features Sofia and Damiano’s story—not forgetting little baby Alessandro!
Happy Reading!
The Editors
CHAPTER ONE
‘CARRIE DUNN, you’re a lucky devil. I wish I was spending a couple of months in this little paradise!’
Carrie smiled at her friend Louise across the table where they were sitting, right at the very front of the magnificent terrace of the ultra-chic restaurant where they had come for dinner. Then she turned to cast a glance at the magical view spread out before them—a shimmer of lights that seemed to tumble down the hillside, setting out in sharp relief against the starstudded sky the higgledy-piggledy red-tiled roofs of the city, with, off in the distance, the illuminated turrets of the ancient rosy-stoned Palazzo Verde, and, down below, the glistening waters of the little marina, with its fleet of bobbing yachts twinkling like diamonds.
‘No, it’s not bad,’ she consented. ‘I think I’ll manage to put up with it.’ Then, catching Louise’s eye, she threw back her head and laughed. ‘How on earth did a girl from Boulder, Colorado, ever end up in a place like this?’
Both girls, in fact, knew the answer to that one. A bucketful of hard work was what had transported Carrie Dunn, the honey-haired, hazel-eyed elder daughter of a grocery store manager and his wife, to the glitzy little dukedom of San Rinaldo, set like a precious jewel on the edge of the Mediterranean. Though not so long ago it had been just a name to her, a place she’d simply read about in glossy magazines, famous for its wines and its wonderful porcelain, for the rich and famous who came here on holiday and, last but not least, for its colourful ruling family.
For the Montecrespis, the royal residents of the ancient Palazzo Verde—the Duke, Damiano, and his wife, his playboy brother, Count Leone, and their younger sister, Lady Caterina—had a knack of making newspaper headlines. Especially Count Leone, who went through more women than a brigade of Guards. Even Carrie, who didn’t much interest herself with such things, had heard a fair bit about the dashing count and his exploits.
But all the gossip and glamour associated with San Rinaldo were not what had brought Carrie to the sundrenched little dukedom. And she assured her friend now, pulling a face as she did so, ‘Don’t worry, I promise I won’t let it go to my head. You can go back to New York tomorrow with no worries on that score. The only reason I’m here is to work.’
‘Oh, I know it won’t go to your head,’ Louise threw her a frank look. ‘You’re not the type.’ For she knew Carrie well. Then she glanced round her and laughed. ‘But how can you even think of work in a place like this?’
Carrie was about to answer good-humouredly that she always thought of work, but at that moment she was distracted by the sound of raised voices coming from the end of the busy, table-packed