Dangerous Lover (27 page)
The Foundation was clearly an example of God’s will, shining through.
Sister Mary Michael laid the envelope down on the desk before her, touching it with the tips of her fingers and said a prayer for the immortal soul of the sender, knowing that God’s grace shone particularly strong in him. The Shelter would have long since had to close its doors if it hadn’t been for her mysterious and generous benefactor.
Sister Mary Michael picked up a wooden letter opener that had been carved for her by one of her lost children, lost no more, now a second-year surgical resident in Boston, and slit the envelope open.
The checks had started out small. A thousand dollars, a couple of times a year, at first. As the years went by, the checks increased in size as her benefactor, bless his soul, grew wealthy.
The last check had been for thirty thousand dollars.
Smiling, Sister Mary Michael slid the check out and looked at the figures. Two thousand dollars. Well, maybe business hadn’t been…
No, she’d read it wrong. Twenty thousand—no. Sister Mary Michael caught her breath and blinked, staring at the words written in black ink in that familiar strong hand.
Twenty million dollars.
Many thanks to my agent, Ethan Ellenberg,
and to my editor, May Chen.
LISA MARIE RICE
is eternally thirty years old and will never age. She is tall and willowy and beautiful. Men drop at her feet like ripe pears. She has won every major book prize in the world. She is a black belt with advanced degrees in archaeology, nuclear physics and Tibetan literature. She is a concert pianist. Did I mention the Nobel?
Of course, Lisa Marie Rice is a virtual woman and exists only at the keyboard when writing erotic romance. She disappears when the monitor winks off.
Lisa Marie welcomes reader fan mail at
[email protected]
.
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Cover Photograph by Digital Vision/Getty Images
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author?s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DANGEROUS LOVER
. Copyright © 2007 by Lisa Marie Rice. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Microsoft Reader June 2007 ISBN 978-0-06-146777-6
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