Taggarts Woman

Taggarts Woman
Carole Mortimer

Carole Mortimer is one of Mills & Boon’s best loved Modern Romance authors. With nearly 200 books published and a career spanning 35 years, Mills & Boon are thrilled to present her complete works available to download for the very first time! Rediscover old favourites - and find new ones! - in this fabulous collection…A marriage for inheritance…To inherit her rightful share of her family business, Heather Danvers is forced to marry her late father's partner, Daniel Taggart—a rough-edged, self-made millionaire, whose contempt for Heather seems beyond obvious!Yet in the two years since they first met, Heather has fallen for her captivating, yet distant, husband. But Heather doesn’t know that Daniel is hiding a secret—one that, if proved true, could have consequences… Can Heather show Daniel that there’s more to their marriage than convenience?

Taggart’s Woman

Carole Mortimer

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

Table of Contents

Cover (#u7535f303-58ba-5afa-8cce-36adad51128b)

Title Page (#uff65b1f3-713c-51f3-a4f6-5b1ca1deedc6)

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ONE (#ubda5bf1a-88b2-55d2-8f6c-3626bf3fcd7b)

AS PARTIES went, this was a good one. But then, all the parties at the Danvers’ house were sure to be good, the social successes of the year more than one guest had been heard to praise during the evening.

Heather kept a watchful eye on the enjoyment of all her guests, while dividing her time between the groups gathered around talking, making sure that no one was left out, that everyone was either dancing, talking, eating, or flirting, as she was. No one came to a Danvers’ party and claimed to be bored. Except, perhaps, for one man.

Her violet gaze flickered to him in annoyance. He was standing slightly apart from everyone else, looking as though he had dressed for a party in the black evening suit and snowy white shirt, even holding a partially drunk glass of champagne in his hand. And yet Heather didn’t need to be any closer to him than the length of the room to know he was looking down his contemptuous nose at both her and her guests!

Her father had always insisted on inviting his business partner to every social function they held, not because he liked the other man, but because he enjoyed seeing how uncomfortable Daniel Taggart was among people who merely tolerated him because of his wealth, rather than liked the man himself. Heather had invited Daniel for quite a different reason.

Why couldn’t he at least try to look as if he were enjoying himself—even if he wasn’t? She was no happier with this situation than he was, but at least everyone thought she was!

She stopped to chat with several people on her way over to Daniel’s side, seeming as if she were ecstatically happy, all the time getting closer and closer to him, watching as he threw the remains of his champagne to the back of his throat before reaching for another glass from one of the circulating waiters. In the two years Heather had known him she had never seen Daniel drunk, but there was a first time for everything!

At last she reached his side, the warm smile curving her lips not reaching the coldness of her eyes. ‘Could you stop swilling vintage champagne back as if it were water?’ she hissed vehemently.

‘Or beer, Miss Danvers?’ he taunted, taking another large swallow of the bubbly wine.

Her cheeks became flushed, her eyes flashing warningly. ‘The only snob standing here, Mr Taggart, is you,’ she snapped.

‘Oh, really?’ Grey eyes were narrowed angrily. ‘Then maybe I should leave——’

‘Don’t you dare!’ she warned furiously. ‘It may have escaped your notice, but you are supposed to be co-host of this party.’

‘This isn’t a party,’ he scorned, slamming his glass down angrily on the table. ‘It’s one last parting joke from Max to me!’

‘And me,’ she rasped bitterly.

Daniel’s gaze raked over her scathingly. ‘Heather Danvers, the socialite daughter of Max Danvers, marrying the self-made millionaire Daniel Taggart, for whom the rough edges haven’t even begun to be smoothed—how will you stand it, my dear!’ he derided with contempt.

The colour came and then went again in her cheeks, her eyes hugely purple. She knew the figure she presented tonight, the black gown clinging alluringly to her slender curves, her bare arms and shoulders deeply tanned, her hair a swathe of midnight-black waves falling to just below her shoulders, her make-up perfect; everything about her was as elegantly beautiful as the daughter of Maximilian Danvers should be.

She had dressed this way for the party that celebrated her engagement and forthcoming marriage to the man at her side who looked at her so disdainfully!

One last parting joke from her father, Daniel had said. Only there was nothing in the least funny about the two of them being forced to marry to maintain complete control over the airline her father had built up over the last twenty years, and in which Daniel Taggart had become a partner two years ago.

The illness that had been eating away at her father’s body for a year before his death six months ago had embittered him more than any of them had realised, the reading of his will revealing that Heather could only inherit her share of the company if she married Daniel Taggart, and that, should they fail to marry within one year after his death, his shares were to be sold on the open market to the highest bidder, except, he stipulated, to Daniel Taggart himself. He had also neatly taken care of Heather choosing the money over marriage to Daniel Taggart, by stating that any money made by the sale of the shares was to be given to numerous charities.

Heather felt as though he had physically slapped her from the grave as she sat in on the will-reading, knowing why he punished her, denying her the one thing he knew she wanted. Her father had hated her and had never lost an opportunity, within the privacy of their home, to let her know how he felt about her. Even in death he wasn’t going to let her forget that.

He had hated Daniel Taggart too, for coming along with the money he needed when the airline began to falter, had reluctantly made the other man his partner rather than lose his company completely. Now he was forcing Daniel to accept Heather as his wife or risk losing the control over the company that now meant so much to him. Daniel knew that if it came to selling the shares he could lose everything he had worked for since he had made the company a profitable one again. Her father had even hated him for that. Daniel Taggart was a man who had clawed his way up from his poor beginning to the point where he had the millions her father needed to keep his company running, and, according to Max—although Heather was inclined to mistrust the opinion because of his bitterness!—Daniel hadn’t always done it honestly.

Her father had treated the other man with grudging respect, never losing an opportunity to belittle him or make things uncomfortable for him. A final joke, Daniel called this last vindictiveness, only her father’s idea of a joke was to hurt someone, and this time he had hit out at the two people he most seemed to despise.

She had been nineteen when she had first met Daniel, and had found him attractive in an austere sort of way. But he had lost no time in letting her know that, at thirteen years his junior, he considered her too immature to even notice. Now, two years later, he was being forced to notice her, to take her as his wife. And his contempt was obvious.

‘I’ll cope,’ she rasped. ‘Will you?’

Grey eyes raked over her critically, and Heather’s breath caught in her throat at the beauty of those eyes; gun-metal grey ringed by black. Daniel was a man who possessed presence rather than surface handsomeness, his face harshly powerful, thick hair as black as her own styled to his ears and collar, dark brows jutting out over those beautiful eyes, his nose long and straight, his mouth a sculptured slash above a strongly square jaw. Tall and powerful, he had all the rugged grace of an athlete. And, as he claimed so derisively, none of the rough edges of his childhood had been smoothed, neither by his wealth nor his success.

He and her father had been as different as any two men could be, her father a product of the charmingly false society he had lived in all his life, Daniel bluntly honest to the point of rudeness. Of the two she preferred the latter, having been on the receiving end of her father’s charmingly laced barbs too often not to appreciate open hostility when she encountered it.

‘With you as my wife?’ Daniel derided scornfully. ‘No doubt I’ll survive.’

Her gaze didn’t falter as she met his challenge. Survive, would he? She wasn’t sure she would! For years she had been searching for the man whom she could love and one day proudly call husband, and now it seemed she was to have this cold stranger as that very important person in her life. She wasn’t naïve, she knew that not all marriages took place because the couple were in love; she had just never imagined hers would be a marriage of convenience.