The Vineyards of Calanetti
Saying “I do” under the Tuscan sun…
Deep in the Tuscan countryside nestles the picturesque village of Monte Calanetti. Famed for its world-renowned vineyards, the village is also home to the crumbling but beautiful Palazzo di Comparino. It’s been empty for months, but rumours of a new owner are spreading like wildfire … and that’s before the village is chosen as the setting for the royal wedding of the year!
It’s going to be a roller coaster of a year, but will wedding bells ring out in Monte Calanetti for anyone else?
Find out in this fabulously heart-warming, uplifting and thrillingly romantic new eight-book continuity from Mills & Boon Romance!
A Bride for the Italian Boss by Susan Meier
Return of the Italian Tycoon by Jennifer Faye
Reunited by a Baby Secret by Michelle Douglas
Soldier, Hero … Husband? by Cara Colter
His Lost-and-Found Bride by Scarlet Wilson
The Best Man & The Wedding Planner
by Teresa Carpenter
His Princess of Convenience by Rebecca Winters
Saved by the CEO by Barbara Wallace Available February 2016
His Princess of Convenience
Rebecca Winters
REBECCA WINTERS, whose family of four children has now swelled to include five beautiful grandchildren, lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, in the land of the Rocky Mountains. With canyons and high alpine meadows full of wildflowers, she never runs out of places to explore. They, plus her favorite vacation spots in Europe, often end up as backgrounds for her romance novels, because writing is her passion, along with her family and church.
Rebecca loves to hear from readers. If you wish to email her, please visit her website, www.cleanromances.com.
This book is dedicated to every woman who was once a little girl with a dream to be a princess.
Contents
August, Monte Calanetti, Italy
THE FLOOR-LENGTH MIRROR reflected a princess bride whose flowing white wedding dress, with the heavy intricate beading, followed the lines of her slender rounded figure to perfection. It probably weighed thirty pounds, but her five-foot-nine height helped her to carry it off with a regal air.
The delicate tiara with sapphires, the something-borrowed, something-blue gift from the queen, Christina’s soon-to-be mother-in-law, held the lace mantilla made by the nuns. The lace overlying her red-gold hair, to the satin slippers on her feet, formed a whole that looked...pretty.
“I actually feel like a bride.” Her breath caught. “That can’t be me!” she whispered to herself. Her very recent makeover was nothing short of miraculous.
Christina Rose, soon-to-be bride of Crown Prince Antonio de L’Accardi of Halencia, turned to one side, then the other, as past memories of being called an ugly duckling, the chubby one, filled her mind.
From adolescence until the ripe old age of twenty-eight, she’d had to live with those unflattering remarks muttered by the people around her. Not that she really heard people say those things once she’d grown up and had been spending her time doing charity work on behalf of her prominent family. But she knew it was what people were thinking.
In truth her own parents were the ones who’d scarred her. They’d left her with nannies from the time she was born. And as she’d grown, her father had constantly belittled her with hurtful barbs by comparing her unfavorably to her friends. “Why is our daughter so dumpy?” she’d once heard him say. “Why didn’t we get a boy?” They’d picked out the name Christopher, but had to change it to Christina when she was born.
His unkind remarks during those impressionable years had been wounds that struck deep, especially considering that Christina’s mother had been a former supermodel.
Christina didn’t know how her father could have said such cruel things to his daughter when she had loved both her parents so much and desperately wanted their approval. Between her unattractive brownish-red hair she’d always worn in a ponytail, to her teeth that had needed straightening, she’d been an embarrassment to her parents, who moved in the highest of political and social circles in Halencia.
In order to keep her out of sight, they’d sent their overweight daughter to boarding school in Montreux, Switzerland, where forty-five girls from affluent, titled families were sent from countries around the world.
Her pain at having to live away year after year until she turned eighteen had been her deepest sorrow. Christina was a poor reflection on her parents, whose world revolved around impressing other important people in the upper echelons of society, including the favor of the royal family of Halencia. Her father particularly didn’t want her around when they were entertaining important dignitaries, which was most of the time.
If it hadn’t been for Elena, the daughter of Halencia’s royal family attending the French-speaking boarding school who’d become her closest friend, Christina didn’t know how she would have survived her time there. With both of them being from Italian-speaking Halencia, their nationality and