With my second book for Presents, I knew I wanted to incorporate another of my favorite themes into the story. I love a good reunion romance, I love a tortured hero, and secret babies always pluck at my heartstrings. As a mother, I’ve always found it difficult to maintain the delicate balance between my children’s safety and their need to experience life’s ups and downs firsthand. When does my need to protect them trump their desire to try new things? And how do I recognize when my own fears might be curtailing my children’s exposure to experiences that could make them better, stronger, and more well-rounded individuals in their own right?

Motherhood is tough. So is rejection and self-doubt. Combine the three, layer in a bit of financial worry, and ONCE TOUCHED, NEVER FORGOTTEN is born.  Writing a heroine who truly believes she’s not worthy of love made writing this story a very challenging and interesting journey. Usually, I find it more realistic to have the man putting up all the walls against intimacy. Who hasn’t known (and maybe even fallen for) an unattainable man at some point in her life? It’s always such a thrill to dismantle those walls he’s so stubbornly hidden behind, and Stephen definitely has a few walls that need to be broken down!

With this book, though, it’s the damaged heroine Colette who resists marriage and emotional intimacy the most. As the child of a loveless union and the reason for her parent’s “shotgun wedding,” Colette knew the pain of not being loved by an embittered, resentful father. When she learns she’s pregnant by the playboy she’d sworn not to love, a playboy she’s confident will react to the news just as her own father did, she packs her bags and leaves. Protecting her child from a father’s rejection is more important than any relationship she and Stephen might cobble together, and building a family out of their “no-strings-attached” affair is a risk she knows better than to take.

Fast forward five years, and Colette’s beautiful little girl is an outspoken, gregarious child who loves princesses and is very interested in having a daddy. Make Stephen the new owner of the New York hotel where Colette works as a pastry chef, and the sparks are bound to fly. Stephen hasn’t quite forgiven Colette for leaving him, and Colette is desperate to keep him from finding out about their daughter. Fortunately, life has other plans for the two of them. Watching Colette and Stephen bond over the daughter they both adore and witnessing the healing power of love as they learn to trust one another was truly an experience I’m thrilled to share!

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The secret baby theme is enduringly popular in romance stories and I particularly love writing books where a child is involved. Well — now that my six offspring are pretty well grown up I have to get my baby fix another way, and the bonus is that I don’t have the sleepless nights!

But as ever, a standard plot theme becomes a unique story and is brought to life by the characters. In HIS UNKNOWN HEIR, I wanted to understand why a woman could keep a baby hidden from his father. It is such an extreme thing to do and unless she was totally heartless, she would have to have very good reasons for her actions. Lauren Maitland is certainly not heartless, but she made a crucial mistake when she fell in love with Ramon Velaquez. She knew that the wealthy head of Velaquez Conglomerates was a notorious playboy, and her job as a corporate lawyer meant that Lauren had her feet fixed firmly on the ground. The chemistry between them burned white-hot from the moment they met and she was confident that she could enjoy a brief fling with Ramon and walk away unscathed. But although her head understood the rules, her heart followed its own agenda!

An unplanned pregnancy forced Lauren to confront the truth about her relationship with Ramon.  He made it clear that she could never be more than his mistress and revealed that he was a Spanish duque, who was duty-bound to marry a highborn Spanish woman and provide an heir for his illustrious family.

Lauren could not bear that idea that Ramon might not deem her baby good enough to be the Velaquez heir. Scarred by her own childhood when her father who she had adored had abandoned her, she reasoned it would be better for her baby to have no father at all than an uninterested father who believed that his child was unworthy of the Velaquez name, and so she ended her affair with Ramon without revealing that she was carrying his baby.

Two years later Lauren is struggling to juggle being a single mother to adorable baby Mateo with her demanding career. When Ramon walks back into her life she is terrified he will discover her secret, yet she is swamped with guilt that she has kept his son from him. But apart from being even more devastatingly sexy, Ramon hasn’t changed. One day he will choose a member of the Spanish aristocracy to be his bride and give him a blue-bloodied heir, but for now he wants the beautiful English lawyer who has haunted his thoughts for far too long back in his bed.

The discovery that Lauren is a mother comes as a huge shock to Ramon, but an even greater shock is the realisation that he is the child’s father. He is furious that she kept his son from him and scathing of her excuse that she had believed he would not want Mateo as his heir. The moment Ramon saw his son he felt fiercely possessive and protective of him and didn’t give a damn that the baby might not be deemed of noble Spanish blood. Matty deserves to grow up in the loving care of both his parents – and so marriage to Lauren is the only answer. But can Ramon ever forgive her for cheating him out of the first year of his son’s life, and can Lauren ever learn to trust Ramon? They both love their son, but how do they feel about each other?

I think forgiveness can only come with understanding, and for Ramon, learning about Lauren’s past and how she had felt let down and unloved by her father was a turning point in their relationship.

Sometimes, as in Lauren’s case, people do things for what they believe are the right reasons but later realise that they had acted wrongly. Have you ever acted in a way that you ultimately regretted? Or has someone done something to you, which you found hard to forgive?

(Personally I bitterly regret eating my son’s chocolate bar and then lying and saying I don’t know what happened to it. I’m not sure he’ll forgive me, or understand that I need chocolate!)

Best wishes,

Chantelle

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Have you ever returned to a place you’ve once been or lived and been surprised by the sudden force of your memories? It might be a certain smell, such as cut grass or the ocean, but something relatively small can bring you back to the last time you were there–how you felt, what you thought. It might not seem to make sense at first; I once felt a sudden plunging of nerves during the playing of a hymn, and was perplexed until I realized it was the hymn my sister walked down the aisle to–and I was her maid of honor.

In The Sandoval Baby, my heroine Freya Clark returns to Spain as nanny to the hero’s son Max after having spent a gap year there ten years before. Her year in Spain holds some incredibly painful memories, and when Freya first steps on Spanish soil they  all come rushing back–and affect how she reacts to her lethally attractive boss, Rafe Sandoval. As Rafe and Freya navigate this new relationship, they both have to learn to deal with their memories, and finally let them go.

I’ve recently had a similar experience to Freya–just a few weeks ago I moved back to England after eight years of living in the States. I first moved to England fourteen years ago, a week after I got married. In both cases I came to England on a ship; first with my husband, and this time with him and our four children. Both on the ship and after we’d docked I found myself experiencing a variety of emotions as I remembered things I’d forgotten about how I felt fourteen years ago–the excitement of our adventure, the bittersweetness of leaving friends and family so soon after our wedding. Even though circumstances are rather different this time round, it was hard not to feel as if I were in some kind of odd time warp, for the memories of our first trip were so sharp and clear.

We’ve only been here a few weeks, but already we’re all settling into this new kind of life–very different from our previous existence in the center of New York City! I thought I’d share some photos of our rural life with you:

Our new puppy

Our garden

The sea right near our home

Lane to the children’s school

Has a place, a smell or sound, ever triggered a poignant memory for you?

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For everyone who has written to ask me what happened to Théo St. Raphaël, the tycoon who stole (something) from the hero in last month’s Reckless Night in Rio, I’m happy to tell you that Théo’s own story is out now in the US, Canada and the UK!

The Count’s Secret Child is a short, passionate novella, released in North America as a 2-in-1 Presents under the title The Secret Baby Scandal. (My good friend Kate Hewitt wrote the other story!)

In the UK, it’s out in the new M&B anthology Blackmail & Secrets, which includes Kate’s story AND a bonus novella from Lucy Gordon.

Innocent, kind-hearted Carrie Powell was working as a waitress when she first met dark, handsome French count Théo St. Raphaël. He swept her off her feet and into his bed – then coldly discarded her, ignoring her frantic telephone calls when she tried to share some important news a month later.

Now, a year after their affair, he has finally sent for her. Against his will, he cannot stop craving her sweetly passionate embrace. Angrily, he sends his bodyguard to fetch her to his castle, intending to seduce her into becoming his mistress for as long as he desires. He’s shocked when she brings something with her that he never even knew existed: their three-month-old baby!

It was really fun to create their story, and seeing someone as arrogant as Théo get his comeuppance at the hands of Carrie, who loved him once but now really, really hates him. (And who can blame her?) At the end of Reckless Night in Rio, Théo had been flying high. But in The Count’s Secret Child, Carrie brings him to his knees, and shows him how much he has to lose unless he learns to open his heart.

I loved setting the novella in Provence. (Just thinking about all those croissants makes me drool…although it doesn’t help that I’m distracted at the moment by being on a diet!) And it was so fun to share a Presents 2-in-1 with my great friend, Kate Hewitt!

And along the way, I fell in love with these characters too much to let them go. Look for Théo and Carrie to appear again in the story of Théo’s shy, plain housekeeper – A Night of Living Dangerously – out in February!

All my best,

Jennie

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Sitting here at my desk (which is littered with half-drunk cups of cold tea, drifts of post-it notes bearing messages that must have meant something once, a number of hair elastics, a broken nail file and a significant quantity of biscuit crumbs) wearing my most… ahem… comfortable jeans and the t-shirt I slept in, I’d be the first to admit I’m not exactly romance heroine material. I don’t have the right underwear for one thing. And I couldn’t ever be whisked off on an exotic, romantic adventure without sorting out school uniform for the week and making complicated arrangements for the swimming lesson run.

Sadly, being a mum doesn’t just change your body and give you stretchmarks, it changes you as a person – no matter how ardently you’ve promised your friends beforehand that it won’t. Your priorities shift. The appeal of a night doing tequila shots and dancing with your shoes off until the small hours is limited when you know you’ll be woken up by someone demanding you read ‘Going on a Bear Hunt’ at 6am. You find yourself listening to The Wiggles in the car (and singing along). What you want for yourself suddenly becomes of secondary importance to what’s best for your child.

That’s the situation the heroine of my June release The Secret She Can’t Hide finds herself in. For three years Kate Edwards has devoted her entire life to her son, without thinking twice about it. There’s no time for romance, or even for a night out with friends, but she doesn’t really mind. She adores Alexander – he’s her whole world and she’d do anything for him… anything… Until a friend presents her with the opportunity to contact his elusive father again, and she has to confront the thing that scares her the most. Letting go. Loosening her fierce grip on her son, and on her own rigid self-control.

The idea of ‘writing what you know’ is hardly original, but usually I prefer to create heroines who have lives that are pretty far-removed from (and therefore a lot more exciting than) mine! However, in over-anxious mother Kate I really was able to write about stuff that felt very close to home – like my hideous habit of anticipating disaster around every corner, the secret urge I have to rearrange the entire world to divert my children away from anything remotely risky, the guilt I (and mothers the whole world over) always feel when their little ones get hurt or fall ill (‘I knew I should have stopped them from going on the trampoline/made them eat more fruit…’). In the end poor Kate discovers that even though you go to great lengths to keep them safe, you can’t protect them from everything. And that a safe and risk-free life isn’t necessarily a happy or healthy one. It’s a lesson I’m trying to take on board too!

What part of yourself would make an interesting character trait for a Presents heroine? Your fiery temper? Inability to say ‘no’ to friends? A secret need to prove yourself at work? Please share! (although if it’s your handspan waist and endless legs I’m not sure I want to know…!)

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A secret she didn’t want to keep….

A burden he didn’t want to share…

I love writing stories about secrets. There is so much tension when you know something the hero or heroine doesn’t and you’re just waiting on the edge of your seat for them to find out.

A theme that I have revisited a few times now is The Secret Baby Plot. But times have changed and so have readers’ expectations. While in the past keeping a hero’s child a secret from him worked quite well, these days readers like to have a very good reason why the heroine would not or could not tell him of the existence of or expectation of a child.

The rich and powerful Sabbatini family is full of secrets. That’s why I had to write three books so I could deal with each one!

The first book in my Sabbatini Brothers Trilogy is: The Unclaimed Baby (released in UK/ Australia as Scandal: Unclaimed Love Child) and was nominated as Most Popular Category/Series Romance by The Australian Readers Association.  Interestingly, my book that won the award in 2009 was another secret baby plot: The Marciano Love Child.

Luca Sabbatini is the middle brother and he has a secret he will do anything to keep out of the press. Not even his family knows about the health burden he carries. And he has certainly not told Bronte Bennett, the beautiful ballet student he has been seeing.

Facing the prospect of do-or-die brain surgery, Luca comes to the decision he must end his relationship with Bronte. He gives her no explanation. He just cuts her from his life. He blocks all contact. He wants to have a clean break so she can move on with her life.

Two years on from his surgery Luca steps back into Bronte’s life. When Luca makes it clear he wants to resume his affair with her she is furious. Where was he when she needed him most? Bronte desperately tried to contact him soon after their break up but she couldn’t get through no matter what she did. So she finally gave up in anger and frustration and resigned herself to being a single mother.

But now he is back she knows she needs to tell him about little Ella and is working up the courage to do so when he finds out via someone else. It wasn’t quite the way she wanted it to happen!  It was a secret she had never intended to keep.

The thing I really liked about Luca Sabbatini is that he loved Bronte too much to tie her to him if things were to go badly for him during the surgery.  He made the ultimate sacrifice for her but it takes her a while to realize it.

This is what the Mills and Boon reviewer who gave Unclaimed Baby a 5*:

Just perfect and stunning! It is so apparent that Luca Sabbatini loves Bronte from the very beginning! His character is so well delineated that it is no wonder that eventually Bronte has to give in to his charm! Again their banter and short sentences are powerful indeed to sustain the interest of the reader. It is very entertaining and so true to romance!

Luca has to learn to trust Bronte enough with the truth of what happened to him and how it changed him. He also has to learn (along with his brothers Giorgio and Nic) that true and lasting love can truly overcome any obstacle.

I hope you enjoy Luca and Bronte’s story, and watch out for more secrets in Book Two: One Night Heir and Book Three: The Wedding Charade.

Warmest wishes,

Melanie Milburne

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The hero in this book came to me fully formed in another book – Bride in a Gilded Cage. (Very considerate of him!) In that book I had a scene after Rafael and Isobel get married when Rico Christofides, a well known Greek Tycoon appears. He is Rafael’s half-brother and so is also half-Argentinean.

He makes a provocative comment about how he’s not going to be so easily tied down in matrimony. There is a beautiful predatory woman hovering on the scene, desperate to get his attention. How could I ignore him after that introduction?!

I hadn’t set out to create a brother for Rafael, Rico just sort of…appeared. And he made sense. I was able to use him to give Isobel another perspective on Rafael. Also we find out some information about Rafael and Rico’s cruel treatment at the hands of their father, so Rico already had an interesting backstory.

I found myself wondering about Rico and I loved thinking up his story, and also creating the woman who could be his equal.

When he meets Gypsy and they share one passionate night together, she touches something within him that he’s never shared with another woman, but then she disappears and he doesn’t even know her name. When she turns up again a couple of years later, he can’t believe it. He’d almost come to believe that he’d dreamt her up. But she does exist and she’s harbouring a secret: his baby daughter, Lola.

This was my first secret baby story. I’d shied away from doing one before now because I wanted to make sure that I’d have a really good reason for the heroine to keep her baby a secret, and hopefully when you read the story you’ll agree!

Do you have a favourite secret baby themed book? Do you like it as a theme or do you think it’s overused/outdated?

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What memories stay with you longest? Happy times or traumatic? Major events or tiny snippets of everyday life, made special for some reason? How much do we recall because an event happened that way or because we’ve been told it did?

When I started writing Carys and Alessandro’s story (Forgotten Mistress, Secret Love-Child) these became vital questions. I was writing a ‘secret baby’ story, where the hero becomes aware that he’s a father. But, by the time I started writing I knew Alessandro so well: proud and driven, distrustful of love yet honorable enough never to abandon a child, I realised there must be an incredibly strong reason for him to have acted the way he did. In this case the answer was memory loss.

My challenge was to ensure Alessandro’s lost memory wasn’t just a convenient feature of the plot, but the most inconvenient thing that could have happened to everyone involved. This is where the author’s mean streak comes in. Soon I found Alessandro, far from lacking memory, was dogged by it, especially recollections of pain and abandonment. His coolly authoritative air cloaks not a man who doesn’t feel, but a man who felt too much and prefers not to be hurt again.

Yet no matter how hard Alessandro tries to recall what happened in the vital gap in his life, he can’t force the memories. They’re tantalisingly elusive. There’s the taste of ripe summer cherries, when he sees a stranger’s mouth and senses instantly that they’ve known each other, and kissed, before. There’s a sight memory of long, glossy hair spread across a snow-white pillow. And there are other memories that evoke emotions he can do without.

Meanwhile Carys has no trouble conjuring recollections of the past, but she’s spent years trying to forget. Her memories are mixed – of times she was so ecstatically happy she now believes them to be false, and of more recent pain.

One of the things I particularly enjoyed about Carys and Alessandro was that they weren’t simply on a quest to remember or reconstruct the past. Their love story is about starting anew and discovering whether they can build a solid relationship no matter what the past contains or leaves blank. If you want to find out how they fare, Forgotten Mistress, Secret Love-Child is an April Presents Extra release.

What memories do you treasure? Are your strongest recollections those you share with others, or are they of purely private moments? And what triggers them? Is it the sight of someone from you once knew, or a familiar scent or sound?

Annie is running a contest on her website until April 11. Prizes include a signed copy of Forgotten Mistress, Secret Love-Child and more! Click here for more information on how to enter.

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by Kate Hewitt, author of The Sheikh’s Love-Child

When I was asked to write one of the books in the new International Billionaires series, I was delighted. Unlike some of my illustrious counterparts, I don’t know the first thing about rugby–the sport featuring in some way in each book–so I did quite a bit of research, and have fellow authors India Grey and Abby Green to thank for helping me with many of the details!

The hero of The Sheikh’s Love-Child, Khaled, is the heir to a desert island kingdom, Biryal, and a star rugby player. Before the story starts, his career is ruined by a serious knee injury. He leaves rugby, England, and most importantly,  his lover, Lucy Banks.

Now four years later, Lucy, a sport physiotherapist, is coming to Biryal–and to Khaled–to tell him about the son he never knew he had.

This is the basic premise of the book, and it was given to me by my editor. While it certainly interested me, it also presented a challenge, and that was to make this story my own. The big question in my mind is why would Khaled leave his lover without  explaining or even saying goodbye? How could that kind of act not only be justified, but forgiven?

Presents’ heroes are often found doing what seems cruel or unforgivable, whether it’s an act of revenge, a forced marriage, or even a bit of blackmail.  These actions only work in a story if  they are justified and honorable in the heroes’ own minds–and of course, eventually, the readers’!

So in the case of Khaled I really had to think about what would make him feel leaving Lucy in such an abrupt manner was the right thing to do. I thought about what might have happened to a man to make him feel leaving his lover was the best thing not just for him, but also for her. Khaled’s history–especially living with his invalid mother–has a lot to do with why he chose to leave rather than burden Lucy with his injury, although he isn’t able to explain this to her until later in the story.

Of course, while thinking about why Khaled would walk away, I also had to consider how Lucy felt about him leaving-and why she would be willing to come back to tell him about their son. What could bring her to a point, four years after they last saw each other, to want to see Khaled again? And how she would react when he makes another decision for the two of them–that he is going to be involved in his son’s life?

Working with an already-developed premise feels a bit to me like working backwards; I’m given the characters’ actions and then have to develop personal histories to explain and support their behavior. Usually I work the other way round, developing characters and then breathing life into their story. Still, it’s a challenge I enjoyed, just as I hope you enjoy Khaled and Lucy’s story.

What would, in your opinion, ever justify walking away from someone you loved? And if you were the one being left behind, what would you be able to forgive?

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I’m very excited to have The Spaniard’s Marriage Bargain out on the shelves in the US this month. I can’t remember exactly where the idea sprang from originally, but I know that I was thinking something along the lines of: what would be one of the most unforgivable things a woman/mother could do? For me, it would definitely be to walk away from her baby, or child.

Men seem to get away with doing that a lot easier than women in many cases, but for a woman to turn her back on her baby? It’s extremely hard to forgive, after all, women are all hardwired to be the nurturers aren’t they?

Well, of course we all know it’s never as black and white as that.

In my story it’s a very grey area. My heroine did the unthinkable; she walked away from her newborn baby and left him with his father. But now, two years later she’s back and wants to get to know her son.

The reason she did this thing is revealed in the book, but in the beginning, it’s not something that she finds easy to talk about. Especially when she has to deal with her husband’s understandable mistrust, anger and antipathy.

I liked the idea of turning things around a bit. It seems to me that the Alpha male hero gets hard done by in many of the secret baby plots when he has no idea he’s fathered a child until much later. I love secret baby stories so I thought it might be interesting to have the hero be the one who has had to take care of his child, and then deal with his wife coming back on the scene, making him feel threatened that she’s going to try and take his child away from him.

Of course the hero, Isandro is furious when Rowan turns up again. He thinks she’s been off living a hedonistic life, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. He doesn’t trust her an inch, and especially not with his son. But, he can’t deny her right to see their son, and so takes her back to his home in Spain where he can keep an eye on her, and try to figure out the best way forward.

Little by little he sees that she is genuine about wanting to get to know Zac, and things aren’t adding up. Why did she leave two years ago? Where was she all this time? And why, when their marriage was just a marriage of convenience, is Isandro finding it harder and harder to deny the passion he feels for her?

I hope I do justice to all these questions in the story, I know that not many can forgive a heroine for walking away from her baby, but when you read Rowan’s story and her reasons for leaving, you might be able to forgive her, as Isandro does…

I’d love to know from the other authors out there — what would be your favourite well loved theme that you’d like to mess around with and spin on its head? (Is it obvious I’m looking for ideas for my next book?!!)

Rowan had been Isandro Salazar’s bride of convenience. But knowing that the Spanish billionaire would never love her as she loved him, her choice was to make her unborn child her priority and then, once he was born, make her dark journey by herself….

But in Isandro’s eyes, Rowan’s decision rendered her a gold digger who had committed the worst possible crime. However, he couldn’t stop her seeing her baby son—or deny that the passion between them was as raw and intense as ever….