Bulldozing his way into sleepy Harborside, Jake laughs in the face of the local opposition, but is stopped in his tracks by fiery Italian Mariabella Santaro.
To protect the community that has treated her like a daughter and kept her secret, Mariabella will have to help Jake fall in love with the place--fast. For in Mariabella's stocking there aren't candy canes and chocolates--there's a diamond tiara and a plane ticket to the palace!
Nationally bestselling author Shirley Jump didn't have the willpower to diet nor the talent to master under-eye concealer, so she bowed out of a career in television and opted instead for a career where she could be paid to eat at her desk'writing.
She started out in journalism, selling her first article at the age of eleven and dreaming of being the next Jane Pauley. After writing 3000 articles and two non-fiction books, Shirley grew too dependent on her robe and fuzzy slippers, though, and decided a career as a freelance writer suited her better.
Then she got married. And had two kids.
Humor became the only thing that got her through the mashed potato flingfests and toilet paper decorating sprees. At first, seeking revenge on her children for their grocery store tantrums, she sold embarrassing essays about her children to anthologies such as Chicken Soup for the Working Woman's Soul and Chocolate for Women II. However, it wasn't enough to feed her growing addiction to writing funny.
So she turned to the world of romance novels, where messes are (usually) cleaned up before The End and no one is calling anyone a doodoo head. In the worlds Shirley gets to create and control, the children listen to their parents, the husbands always remember holidays and the housework is magically done by elves.
She sold her first book to Silhouette Romance in 2001. That novel, THE VIRGIN'S PROPOSAL, won the Booksellers' Best Award for Best Traditional Romance of 2003. Two of her subsequent books were finalists in the Golden Quill Awards and two others were finalists in the Madcap Awards for best romantic comedy. She is also a Reviewers' Choice Award winner.
Shirley has sold twenty-six novels and now writes stories for Harlequin/Silhouette and Kensington Books about love, family and food'the three most important things in her life (though, there are many days when the order is reversed), using that English degree everyone said would be so useless.
She found a way to combine all her favorite things in her recipes with her own romantic comedy series from Zebra Books, which launched in September 2004 with THE BRIDE WORE CHOCOLATE. The fourth, THE BACHELOR PREFERRED PASTRY, is a February 2006 release, followed by PRETTY BAD in February 2007. Her next Romances will be a linked duet of BACK TO MR. & MRS. and MARRIED BY MORNING in May and June 2007. She also writes for Harlequin NeXt.
Though she's thrilled to see her books in stores around the world, Shirley mostly writes because it gives her an excuse to avoid cleaning the toilets and helps feed her shoe habit.
