“Suit yourself,” Nic had replied. He’d shrugged, but Mattie had been far too aware that every inch of him was hewn of steel, that he was himself a deadly weapon.
She’d felt the power he wore so easily like a thick, hot hand at her throat. Worse, she’d been aware of that part of her that craved it. Him. More.
“I have a very long memory, Mattie, and a very creative approach to retribution. Consider yourself forewarned.”
“Be still my beating heart,” she’d snipped at him, and then had tried her best to ignore him.
It hadn’t worked then. It didn’t work now.
“Will we reminisce all day?” she asked, injecting a note of boredom into her voice that she dearly wished she felt, while he continued to hold her immobile. “Or do you have a plan? I’m unfamiliar with the ins and outs of blackmail, you see. You’ll have to show me how it’s done.”
“You’re free to refuse me yet again.”
“And lose my father’s company in the process?”
“All choices have consequences.” He shrugged, much the same way he had at that benefit dinner. “Your father would have been the first to tell you that.”
That he was right only infuriated her more.
VOWS OF CONVENIENCE
Bound by duty!
The Whitaker name was once synonymous with power, wealth and control. But with the family business facing certain ruin, and its reputation turning into dust, the Whitaker siblings need to make the ultimate sacrifice to safeguard their futures …
HIS FOR A PRICE
Following the death of Mattie Whitaker’s father, a merger with Greek tycoon Nicodemus Stathis’s company will go a long way towards fixing her problem—but Nicodemus’s help comes at a price …
October 2014
HIS FOR REVENGE
Chase Whitaker is playing his own dark game of revenge against Zara Elliot’s father, the chairman of his board. He plans to replace him— but he has no defences against Zara’s unstudied charm and natural beauty …
December 2014
His for a Price
Caitlin Crews
CAITLIN CREWS discovered her first romance novel at the age of twelve. It involved swashbuckling pirates, grand adventures, a heroine with rustling skirts and a mind of her own, and a seriously mouth-watering and masterful hero. The book (the title of which remains lost in the mists of time) made a serious impression. Caitlin was immediately smitten with romances and romance heroes, to the detriment of her middle school social life. And so began her life-long love affair with romance novels, many of which she insists on keeping near her at all times.
Caitlin has made her home in places as far-flung as York, England, and Atlanta, Georgia. She was raised near New York City, and fell in love with London on her first visit when she was a teenager. She has backpacked in Zimbabwe, been on safari in Botswana, and visited tiny villages in Namibia. She has, while visiting the place in question, declared her intention to live in Prague, Dublin, Paris, Athens, Nice, the Greek Islands, Rome, Venice, and/ or any of the Hawaiian islands. Writing about exotic places seems like the next best thing to moving there.
She currently lives in California, with her animator/comic book artist husband and their menagerie of ridiculous animals.
To Megan Haslam, my wonderful editor, for twenty great books together!
Here’s to twenty more!
Contents
IF SHE STOOD very still—if she held her breath and kept herself from so much as blinking—Mattie Whitaker was sure she could make the words that her older brother Chase had just said to her disappear. Rewind them then erase them entirely.
Outside the rambling old mansion high above the Hudson River some two hours north of Manhattan, the cold rain came down in sheets. Stark, weather-stripped trees slapped back against the October wind all the way down the battered brown lawn toward the sullen river, and the estate had shrunk to blurred gray clouds, solemn green pines and the solid shape of the old brick house called Greenleigh, despite the lack of much remaining green. Behind her, at the desk that she would always think of as her father’s no matter how many months he’d been gone now, Chase was silent.
There would be no rewinding. No erasing. No escaping what she knew was coming. But then, if she was honest, she’d always known this day would arrive. Sooner or later.
“I didn’t hear you correctly,” Mattie said. Eventually.
“We both know you did.”
It should have made her feel better that he sounded as torn as she felt, which was better than that polite distance with which he usually treated her. It didn’t.
“Say it again, then.” She pressed her fingers against the frigid windowpane before her and let the cold soak into her skin. No use crying over the inevitable, her father would have said in that bleakly matter-of-fact way he’d said everything after they’d lost their mother.
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