The Temptation of Rory Monahan

The Temptation of Rory Monahan
Elizabeth Bevarly

He was a man of books, all right, but Rory Monahan had no explanation for his new reaction to lovely librarian Miriam Thornbury. Something was suddenly different about her. He' d never noticed that her legs were so long… or her lips quite so full.Why, it was almost as if the sultry but sensible Miss Thornbury was trying to seduce him!Well, two could play at this game. After all, he was a scholar– it was time he figured out what was up with her. Even if it took all day– and all night.The things a man will do in the name of research…

“Are You All Right?” Rory Asked.

“Um, yes, I believe so,” Miriam replied, a bit breathless.

And there was something about her being a bit breathless, and something about the fact that Rory had been responsible for her breathlessness, that made his own breathing skip a few necessary stages.

“Was there something you wanted, Professor Monahan?”

Oh, he really wished she hadn’t phrased her question quite that way. Because Rory suddenly realized, too well, that there was indeed something he wanted. Something he wanted very badly.

And he wanted it specifically from Miss Miriam Thornbury….

Dear Reader,

Welcome to the world of Silhouette Desire, where you can indulge yourself every month with romances that can only be described as passionate, powerful and provocative!

The always fabulous Elizabeth Bevarly offers you May’s MAN OF THE MONTH, so get ready for The Temptation of Rory Monahan. Enjoy reading about a gorgeous professor who falls for a librarian busy reading up on how to catch a man!

The tantalizing Desire miniseries TEXAS CATTLEMAN’S CLUB: LONE STAR JEWELS concludes with Tycoon Warrior by Sheri WhiteFeather. A Native American ex-military man reunites with his estranged wife on a secret mission that renews their love.

Popular Peggy Moreland returns to Desire with a romance about a plain-Jane secretary who is in love with her Millionaire Boss. The hero-focused miniseries BACHELOR BATTALION by Maureen Child continues with Prince Charming in Dress Blues, who’s snowbound in a cabin with an unmarried woman about to give birth! Baby at His Door by Katherine Garbera features a small-town sheriff, a beautiful stranger and the bundle of love who unites them. And Sara Orwig writes a lovely tale about a couple entering a marriage of convenience in Cowboy’s Secret Child.

This month, Silhouette is proud to announce we’ve joined the national campaign “Get Caught Reading” in order to promote reading in the United States. So set a good example, and get caught reading all six of these exhilarating Desire titles!

Enjoy!

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

The Temptation of Rory Monahan

Elizabeth Bevarly

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

ELIZABETH BEVARLY

is an honors graduate of the University of Louisville and achieved her dream of writing full-time before she even turned thirty! At heart, she is also an avid voyager who once helped navigate a friend’s thirty-five-foot sailboat across the Bermuda Triangle. Her dream is to one day have her own sailboat, a beautifully renovated older-model forty-two-footer, and to enjoy the freedom and tranquillity seafaring can bring. Elizabeth likes to think she has a lot in common with the characters she creates, people who know love and life go hand in hand. And she’s getting some firsthand experience with motherhood, as well—she and her husband have a six-year-old son, Eli.

For all the wonderful librarians who made the library

a truly magical place for me when I was a kid.

And for all the ones who keep it magic for me as an adult.

Thank you all so much.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Epilogue

One

Miriam Thornbury was testing a new Internet filter for the computers in the Marigold Free Public Library when she came across hotwetbabes.com.

She experienced a momentary exhilaration in her triumph at, once again, foiling a filter system—score one for the anticensorship campaign—but alas, her victory was short-lived. Because in that second moment she saw what, precisely, the Web site claimed as its content.

And she began to think that maybe, just maybe, censorship might have its uses.

Oh, dear, she thought further, alarmed. What was the world coming to when librarians began to advocate such a thing as censorship? What on earth was she thinking?

Of course Miriam knew librarians who did, in fact, support censorship. Well, maybe she didn’t quite know any; not personally, at any rate. She was, after all, one of only two full-time librarians in all of Marigold, Indiana, and Douglas Amberson, the senior librarian, was as vehemently opposed to censorship as she was herself.

But she knew of colleagues like that out there in the world, few though they may be, fortunately. Librarians who thought they knew what was best for their patrons and therefore took it upon themselves to spare the poor, ignorant reading public the trouble of weeding through all the icky things in life, by doing the literary gardening—so to speak—themselves.

Worse, Miriam knew mayors like that. Mayors of towns like, oh, say…Marigold, Indiana, for example. Which was why she was sitting in her office at the library on a sunny July afternoon, trying to find an Internet filter that would effectively screen out things like, oh, say…hotwetbabes.com.

It was a task Miriam had undertaken with mixed feelings. Although she by no means approved of some sites on the Net, sites such as, oh, say…this one, she had a hard time submitting to anyone who deemed him—or herself so superior to the masses that he or she would presume to dictate what was suitable reading and viewing material for those masses. Anyone like, oh, say…Isabel Trent, Marigold’s mayor.

Miriam glanced down at the computer screen again and bit back a wince. Hotwetbabes.com, however, did rather give one pause. All those half-naked, glistening female bodies right there on the Internet, for anyone to stumble across. That couldn’t possibly be a good thing, could it? Especially since these particular half-naked, glistening female bodies were so inconsistent with what real women looked like, even wet.

Inescapably, Miriam glanced down at her own midsection, well hidden—and quite dry, thank you very much—beneath her standard librarian uniform of crisply ironed cotton blouse—in this case, white—over crisply ironed straight skirt—in this case, beige. Then, inevitably, she glanced back up at the screen. Not only was her midsection sadly lacking when compared to these women, but the rest of her suffered mightily, too.

Where the women on the computer screen had wildly billowing tresses—even wet, they billowed, she noted morosely—in hues of gold and copper and ebony, her own boring blond hair—dishwater, her mother had always called it—was clipped back at her nape with a simple barrette, performing no significant billowing to speak of. And instead of heavily lined, mascaraed eyes of exotic color, Miriam’s were gray and completely unadorned.