Suddenly...Marriage! Read online

  “You’re looking at me like I should be, sitting under glass.”

  Letter to Reader

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Books by Marie Ferrarella

  Books by Marie Ferrarella writing as Marie Nicole

  About the Author

  Letter to Reader

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  “You’re looking at me like I should be, sitting under glass.”

  “No,” Grant corrected thoughtfully. “Maybe on a pedestal, though.” It was a rare thing to be the first man in a woman’s life these days. A rare and special thing. “You know that kind of thing is a double-edged sword for a man. ‘Deflowering’ you might signify a trophy for someone less scrupulous, but it puts a lot of pressure on someone with morals.”

  “Oh?” Was he talking about himself? Cheyenne wondered. No, she doubted it. If anything, now that she’d told him, he probably just thought of her as some oddity.

  “At your age,” Grant speculated, “you’ve probably built up a lot of expectations about the whole thing. A man thinks about that. What if he doesn’t live up to the expectations?”

  “That’s nothing for you to worry about,” she assured him.

  “Why not?” Grant smiled. “After all, I am your husband.”

  Dear Reader,

  August is jam-packed with exciting promotions and top-notch authors in Silhouette Romance! Leading off the month is RITA Award-winning author Marie Ferrarella with Suddenly...Marriage!, a lighthearted VIRGIN BRIDES story set in sultry New Orleans. A man and woman, both determined to remain single, exchange vows in a mock ceremony during Mardi Gras, only to learn their bogus marriage is for real...

  With over five million books in print, Valerie Parv returns to the Romance lineup with Baby Wishes and Bachelor Kisses. In this delightful BUNDLES OF JOY tale, a confirmed bachelor winds up sole guardian of his orphaned niece and must rely on the baby-charming heroine for daddy lessons—and lessons in love. Stella Bagwell continues her wildly successful TWINS ON THE DOORSTEP series with The Ranger and the Widow Woman. When a Texas Ranger discovers a stranded mother and son, he welcomes them into his home. But the pretty widow harbors secrets this lawman-in-love needs to uncover.

  Carla Cassidy kicks off our second MEN! promotion with Will You Give My Mommy a Baby? A 911 call from a five-year-old boy lands a single mom and a true-blue, red-blooded hero in a sticky situation that quickly sets off sparks. USA Today bestselling author Sharon De Vita concludes her LULLABIES AND LOVE miniseries with Baby and the Officer. A crazy-about-kids cop discovers he’s a dad, but when he goes head-tohead with his son’s beautiful adoptive mother, he realizes he’s fallen head over heels. And Martha Shields rounds out the month with And Cowboy Makes Three, the second title in her COWBOYS TO THE RESCUE series. A woman who wants a baby and a cowboy who needs an heir agree to marry but discover the honeymoon is just the beginning....

  Don’t miss these exciting stories by Romance’s unforgettable storytellers!

  Enjoy,

  Joan Marlow Golan

  Senior Editor Silhouette Books

  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

  VIRGIN BRIDES

  Marie Ferrarella

  SUDDENLY...MARRIAGE!

  To

  Melissa Senate.

  Nice to know

  the magic is

  still there.

  Books by Marie Ferrarella

  Silhouette Romance

  The Gift #588

  Five-Alarm Affair #613

  Heart to Heart #632

  Mother for Hire #686

  Borrowed Baby #730

  Her Special Angel #744

  The Undoing of Justin Starbuck #766

  Man Trouble # 815

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  The Right Man #932

  In Her Own Backyard #947

  Her Man Friday #959

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  †Caution: Baby Ahead #1007

  †Mother on the Wing #1026

  †Baby Times Two #1037

  Father in the Making #1078

  The Women in Joe Sullivan’s Life #1096

  †Do You Take This Child? #1145

  The Man Who Would Be Daddy #1175

  Your Baby or Mine? #1216

  **The Baby Came C.O.D. #1264

  Suddenly...Marriage! #1312

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  *Holding Out for a Hero #496

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  *Christmas Every Day #538

  Callaghan’s Way #601

  *Caitlin’s Guardian Angel #661

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  The Amnesiac Bride #787

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  Wanted: Husband, Will Train #1132

  Silhouette Yours Truly

  ‡The 71b.. 2oz. Valentine

  Let’s Get Mommy Married

  Traci on the Spot

  Mommy and the Policeman Next Door

  **Desperately Seeking Twin...

  The Offer She Couldn’t Refuse

  ΔFiona and the Sexy Stranger

  Silhouette Desire

  †Husband: Optional #988

  Silhouette Books

  Silhouette Christmas Stories 1992

  “The Night Santa Claus Returned”

  Fortune’s Children

  Forgotten Honeymoon

  †Baby’s Choice

  ‡The Baby of the Month Club

  **Two Halves of a Whole

  *Those Sinclairs

  ΔThe Cutlers of Shady Lady Ranch

  Books by Marie Ferrarella writing as Marie Nicole

  Silhouette Desire

  Tried And True #112

  Buyer Beware #142

  Through Laughter And Tears #161

  Grand Theft: Heart #182

  A Woman of Integrity #197

  Country Blue #224

  Last Year’s Hunk #274

  Foxy Lady #315

  Chocolate Dreams #346

  No Laughing Matter #382

  Silhouette Romance

  Man Undercover #373

  Please Stand By #394

  Mine by Write #411

  Getting Physical #440

  MARIE FERRARELLA

  lives in Southern California. She describes herself as the tired mother of two overenergetic children and the contented wife of one wonderful man. This RITA Award-winning author is thrilled to be following her dream of writing full-time.<
br />
  Dearest Reader,

  Once upon a time the woods were full of virgin brides. You couldn’t take a walk without tripping over one. Any lady not part of this club was ostracized (think Hester in The Scarlet Letter). Well, the tables have turned these last couple of decades, and virgin brides have become the oddity (what would old Nat Hawthorne have to write about today?). However, in the past few years, slowly but surely, things have been creeping back just a wee bit. Virginity is making a comeback (of course, so are bell-bottoms and platform shoes!). Say what you will, you have to admit that there is something nice, something tender, about holding back until you meet “the right one.” The one your heart has been waiting for. It makes lovemaking something really special. In a way, it’s like dieting all your life, knowing that someday you’ll meet that ice-cream sundae with your name on it, the one you’ll be free to indulge in without fear of having your hips spread out the moment the spoon touches your lips. I’ll let you in on a secret. Though it wasn’t the in thing to do at the time, I stayed on my diet until the right ice-cream sundae came along. For me, it was worth it. I haven’t left the ice-cream parlor since.

  Wishing all of you special ice-cream sundaes in your future.

  With love,

  Chapter One

  He watched her approach him.

  Classy. That was the word for the lady. Classy. She moved through the room effortlessly, with self-assurance, like poetry. Each step flowed from the one that came before and into the one that was to come next. Like a timeless symphony put to a new arrangement that stirred the blood.

  Grant studied her as she drew closer, his mouth curving. It was just like Stan to forget to tell him that the woman he was sending over was a knockout. Just one of those details that Stan Keller took for granted. He was far more aware of a reputation and the skills that went into building it than anything he might see on the surface. Ingrained habit, Grant supposed.

  Grant refused to believe that it had anything to do with what Stan professed to be the real reason: that he was too old to notice things like long, supple limbs and creamy, flawless skin. Stan was only five years older than he was, and at forty, Grant O’Hara felt himself much too young not to notice beauty. Especially when it was presented to him in such a statuesque package and was worn so casually, so unselfconsciously—as if the woman wasn’t even aware of the fact that every head in the crowded restaurant had turned in her direction as soon as she had entered.

  Perhaps she wasn’t.

  Because of who he was, who his family was, Grant was accustomed to beautiful women—or women who thought themselves to be beautiful—populating his life. Even while murmuring offhand, self-deprecating denials to a tendered compliment, there was always a certain glint in their eyes. A glint that attested to their having spent hours before a mirror, painstakingly arranging themselves to achieve just that look, just that impression. They all knew damn well what the result was and gloried in it like pampered, sly felines.

  The only glint in Cheyenne Tarantino’s eyes was one of determination. Well-acquainted with that trait, Grant recognized it immediately. That, and the look of self-confidence that highlighted her features.

  She’d have to be self-confident, Grant mused, using a name like that. Cheyenne Tarantino. She’d undoubtedly made it up. No one was born with a name like Cheyenne. That was for travel lodges and long-defunct westerns that turned up occasionally on television networks devoted to generating waves of nostalgia.

  He’d almost laughed out loud when he’d first heard it. Good breeding and self-control had prevented it. But it didn’t prevent the smile that creased his lips now.

  Grant stood up just before she reached his table, vaguely wondering if that would offend or amuse her. It would have made no difference to him in the way he behaved, but he was curious.

  He was what he was. Manners were something Grant prided himself on, and if those manners were from another generation, well, perhaps compared to her, so was he. He estimated Cheyenne Tarantino to be traveling through her twenties, possibly late-twenties if he were to take into account her reputation and proficiency. Early thirties if she was blessed with either good genes or a benevolent dermatologist who was steering her toward the right topical creams.

  And the right exercises, he silently added, his eyes skimming along her figure.

  The two-piece gray blue suit she was wearing not only managed to bring out the blue of her eyes, but accented the blond of the billowy long hair that curled and rioted about her shoulders. The outfit also managed to lovingly stroke every curve of her body as she moved.

  Like a cat, he thought. A sleek cat on the scent of its prey.

  He wondered if that’s what he ultimately was to her. Prey. That would make it interesting. Maybe this interview, now that he’d finally decided to give it, wasn’t going to be as painful an ordeal as he had first surmised. Certainly not the one for which he had braced himself.

  No, Grant decided, he was not braced for anything like this. At least, not esthetically. But she had yet, he reminded himself, to open her mouth or take the lens cover off her camera.

  The worst might very well lie ahead of him. Time would tell.

  He exuded power and confidence, Cheyenne thought, even across the length of a room. But then, she had already known that She’d been able to tell just by looking at the photographs she’d gleaned from the magazine‘s files on Grant O’Hara—third son and heir of the Newport O’Haras—that he cast an aura of power.

  Her eyes, so like the camera that was almost an inseparable part of her, missed nothing. Blue blood, she noted. He came from blue bloods all right. It was evident to even the most casual observer, right down to the buttons of his double-breasted navy jacket.

  And gorgeous. Really gorgeous in the full sense of the word.

  Cheyenne hadn’t realized just how overwhelmingly good-looking Grant O‘Hara was in person. Some people were incredibly photogenic but when seen in person, turned out to be a disappointment. That was not the case here. If anything, O’Hara’s photographs seemed to have muted the handsomeness.

  Standing before him she was struck by his power and his looks at the same time, like a one-two punch. A hell of a deadly combination.

  Her mother would have been asking to bear his children right about now, Cheyenne thought, only partially amused at the notion. But it was a fact of life she had gotten accustomed to, if not accepted, from very early on. Good-looking men had always attracted Anita Tarantino like the proverbial moth to the flame. By Cheyenne’s reckoning, her mother would have lasted approximately three seconds in O’Hara’s company before melting completely at his feet. Four, tops.

  He probably ate people like her mother for breakfast, Cheyenne surmised. Grant O’Hara was a whole different class of person from a diner waitress from Cheyenne, Wyoming—or her daughter.

  But that, she reminded herself, was all supposed to be behind her.

  “Very nice of you to meet me here.” Greeting her, Grant nodded to a nearby waiter. The man immediately presented himself at the table and pulled out Cheyenne’s chair for her.

  Before sitting down, she carefully set down her camera bag, then casually deposited her huge purse beside it. The latter seemed almost to exhale, then assumed a deflated, marshmallow-like shape as soon as it was released.

  Cheyenne sat down without looking. The waiter was quick to move the chair in to make contact with her.

  “I should be thanking you,” Cheyenne corrected, her smile a copy of the one she saw on his aristocratic face. She was very good at mimicking other people’s mannerisms. It was all part and parcel of the way she operated, setting her subjects at ease by generating an atmosphere of familiarity.

  Cheyenne laced her fingers together and rested her chin on them. He had green eyes, she noticed. A very intense green, like moss in the early morning light. She wondered how many women O’Hara had lured into bed with a hint of a smile in those eyes. As if those high cheekbones and the cleft in his chin weren’t enough.


  No doubt about it. The man was a very sexy package of goods. And she was going to capture every hint, every nuance of that sexuality on film. She was going to make the most of the interview that he’d granted in one of his rare islands of time. The female readers of Style were going to love the issue. The male readers would probably just tack the cover photo up to a dartboard and use it for practice. Either that, or look upon Grant O’Hara as an inspiration.

  Not that O‘Hara had had to work his way up from poverty, she thought, still looking into his eyes. The man was born with not one, but two, silver spoons in his mouth. But everything he was—so rumor and Stan Keller had it—he had accomplished on his own, without the help of his father, Shaun O’Hara. Or his father’s money.

  That made O’Hara stubborn. Probably not as stubborn as Cheyenne was, but then few people were. Still, it was a trait she admired.

  That’s if the limited bio she had read on him was true and if Stan Keller hadn’t just sold her a crock of goods because he wanted this feature so badly, she qualified silently. And Stan did want this story badly. The public was tired of stories about the woes of a royal clan who lived across the ocean. It wanted royalty of its own. The rich, especially the self-made rich, were as close to royalty as this country came.

  She tried to imagine the perfect jet-black hair she saw adorned with a crown. It wasn’t a stretch. Cheyenne wondered if O’Hara had a costume for tonight’s Mardi Gras celebration and how difficult it would be to talk him into wearing a crown long enough for her to take a shot.