www.millsandboon.co.uk

      Dear Reader,

      What is it about the Mediterranean male that makes him so hard to resist? Is it the olive-skinned good looks, the flashing eyes and thick dark hair? Is it the rich accent that curls its way into your senses? Both get a huge tick from me.

      But what really sets the Mediterranean male apart is passion, a passion for life, a passion for family and a passionate nature that means he’ll meet any conflict head on. And if that conflict comes in the shape of a woman, then watch out, because the sparks will really fly!

      Alejandro Rodriguez is one such passionate man. Nobody had ever walked out on this Spaniard before. Not until a certain blue-eyed bombshell, Leah Mitchell, who decided to cut her losses and walk away, before she ended up losing her pride as well as her heart to him. But Alejandro hadn’t finished with Leah, so there was no way he was going to let her get away with that!

      I’m thrilled to be part of this Her Latin Lover anthology in this, Harlequin Mills & Boon’s Centenary year. I hope you enjoy it!

      With love and best wishes,

       Trish

      x

      With thanks to Bec, Kate, Karen, Alison and Robbie for a fabulous girls’ own weekend.

      Here’s to row boats, abandoned beaches, chilled lime cordial on a hot summer’s day and fabulous Thai food.

      But most of all, here’s to great friends!

      May there be many more such adventures.

      With love and fond hugs,

      Trish

      CHAPTER ONE

      NOBODY walked out on Alejandro Rodriguez. Not business tycoons or CEOs or poker-faced politicians. And definitely not women. Leah Mitchell was just going to have to get that through her head.

      He watched her working through the window of her small dressmaking shop from his vantage point across the narrow street, her head down, totally focused on the task at hand, her fingers nimble and quick as they worked the fabric through the machine.

      He remembered those fingers, long and slender like the woman herself, and he remembered how they’d once worked their skilful magic on him …

      He missed them.

      He growled, low in his throat, a familiar thumping demand building below. Soon, he knew, soon he would feel her hands weave their magic upon him once again.

      All of a sudden those same fingers stilled and she looked up, her eyes alert, searching the streetscape outside, the passing pedestrians and traffic, almost as if she’d sensed his presence. He smiled as he flipped the collar of his coat up against the unseasonable November cold. So she wasn’t over him? He’d suspected as much.

      And he’d enjoy proving it to her.

      He’d make her wish she’d never left him, make her beg for more.

      And then he’d unceremoniously dump her.

      The peak hour Sydney traffic was bumper to bumper along the narrow one-way street, but somehow Alejandro forged a path through, parting the sea of cars as if he had a God-given right, the tails of his long black coat swirling in his wake like the wings of a manta ray.

      He was oblivious to the sound of car horns, oblivious to the calls from irate drivers to get off the road. Because right now his focus was on one thing and one thing only—Leah Mitchell, and how he was going to get her back into his bed.

      Leah rolled her head, trying to relax her neck and shoulders, trying to dispel the crazy feeling that someone was watching her. It was nerves, she told herself, crazy nerves following the panicked phone call from Jordan, informing him that the bank had given him a week to pay them back or they would foreclose. She’d hardly eaten in the two days since, desperately trying to work out how she could help him while surviving on nothing more than coffee and dry crackers. No wonder she was jumpy.

      She’d barely turned her attention back to the garment she was altering when a movement outside caught her eye. Nothing more than a flash of black, but enough to set every hair on the back of her neck to prickling awareness. There was something about the way that dark shadow had moved—something that had rippled through her on a wave of dread and taken her right back to another time, another place.

      But it couldn’t be him.

      Not here.

      Not now.

      And then the door opened, the ancient bell above tinkling. An incongruous sound, given the man who had just entered. A man, it occurred to her, who should more likely be accompanied by a thunder clap or heralded by a blast of trumpets, not the mere tinkle of a tiny bell.

      Nor even the desperate thumping of her heart.

      He stood there across the small room like some kind of gunslinger ready to draw, looking simultaneously more dangerous and yet more handsome than any man had a right to.

      ‘Leah,’ he uttered, and heat infused her veins, his deep Mediterranean voice filling all the places in the room that his sheer presence didn’t already occupy. She rose behind her machine, refusing to dwell on the ripple of pleasure that had accompanied hearing her name spoken in that rich accent once again, desperately wishing she was wearing heels instead of her workaday flats, so she felt at less of a disadvantage.

      Yet there had never been a time when she hadn’t felt at a distinct disadvantage where Alejandro Rodriguez was concerned, even wearing the highest heels or when done up to the nines. It wasn’t just his height, or the span of his shoulders. Only in bed had she ever felt anywhere near his equal, and even there just the force of his dark personality had always been enough to make her feel inconsequential.

      And then there were his eyes.

      Dark and fathomless under a dark slash of brow, and framed in lashes women would kill for, those eyes stared at her now, pinning her to where she stood. There was still traffic outside. She was vaguely aware of the bustle and movement of a city in motion. But all that shrank in her ears under the thump of her beating heart and the questions that framed themselves so jaggedly in her mind.

      ‘What do you want?’ Her voice sounded unnaturally tight in the tiny shop—but how could it sound anything else now that he was absorbing all the space, effectively shrink-wrapping the room? She’d heard not a word from Alejandro since she’d left his home in Spain two months ago, and the look in his eyes