Spotlight & Giveaway: A Hidden Heir to Redeem Him by Dani Collins

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Dani Collins to HJ!

Hi Dani and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, A Hidden Heir to Redeem Him!

 
Hi Harlequin Junkies! Thanks for having me here today.HJ’s! I’m so excited to be back!
 

Please summarize the book a la Twitter style for the readers here:

Val plans to reject his father’s fortune only to learn it’s been left to…his #SecretBaby? In a deal with Val’s father, Kiara kept her daughter hidden. Everyone said Val was a bastard in every sense of the word, but he won’t allow his daughter to be one. He’s furious and never wanted kids, but insists on a #MarriageOfConvenience #HarlequinPresents
 

Please share the opening lines of this book:

VALENTINO CASALE HAD long ago hardened himself against useless things like feelings, but he found himself irritated by the congested streets of Athens.
Traffic was his driver’s problem, not his, but he shifted restlessly, acknowledging the real pea beneath his mattress. Returning to Greece grated on him. Being sent here as a child had always felt like a punishment and still did. And to be thrust into the space between his father’s money and his mother’s grappling for it? That was the equivalent of being thrown into a cage with a hungry tiger.

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• Val made his fortune as an underwear model
• It’s part of a duet with Beauty and Her One- Night Baby
• My working title for this duet was “Brothers Grim” because both heroes are so grumpy
• I wrote the scene where Kiara confronts Val’s mom, took it out because I thought it was extraneous, and my editor asked me to put it back in
• Even though Val is hard to love, he’s one of my favourite heroes

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

Kiara is an artist. The first time she sees Val, she’s struck by his beauty and begins to sketch him. Val still makes a good portion of his fortune in fashion. He appreciates artists and was immediately drawn in by Kiara’s work. That connection is one of my favourite parts of this book.
 

Using just 5 words, how would you describe Hero and Heroine’s love affair?

Hot secret betrayal forgiven soulmates.
 

The First Kiss…

She wanted that mouth on hers. Ached with three years’ worth of yearning to taste him again.
His mouth hardened with savage satisfaction right before he crashed it onto hers.
His lips arrived in one hot sweep that tasted of whiskey and triumph. He pressed and angled in a lazy, confident demand for full possession, taking her simmering desire to an explosive, rolling boil.
She rocked weakly into him, thrust into the depths of passion, the kind she’d only experienced once, and that time there’d been a gradual buildup to get here. The suddenness of pure want that speared into her made her light-headed. Maybe she wasn’t even breathing. She didn’t care. Thought abandoned her and she opened her mouth wider to welcome his ravaging. To deepen their kiss and greedily take everything he offered, slaking an arid thirst.
His arms closed around her, deliciously hard as he dragged her body into his, sending her mind spinning even more as he squeezed her against his strength. She wanted more. More heat. More sensations of firm muscle ironed to her front, strong hands molding her back, his sharp scent hitting her brain like a drug.
She ravenously thrust her fingers into the silky strands of his hair. Her other hand went around his neck as she lifted on tiptoe, trying to increase the pressure of their kiss to the point of pain, needing a more acute sensation to appease the depth of longing in her. Needing all of him. Faster.
His tongue sought hers and that wicked intrusion stole the air from her lungs and tightened every inch of her skin. Her nipples hurt and heat rushed so sharply into her loins she groaned at the ache.
With a growl, he slowly ran his big hands from her hips to beneath her butt cheeks and pulled her higher, almost off her feet so the steely shape of him, fully aroused, ground against her mound while his entire body strained tautly against hers.
She hung against him, drowning in sensations, only startled back to awareness when he blatantly sucked on her bottom lip, teeth raking the sensitive inner tissues as he released her and lifted his head.
Now she saw his eyes, narrowed in mockery, but with a feral light that called to her. Taunted but urged. Lie back. Open for me.
With her pulse hammering low and hard in the aching place between her thighs, she nearly did. Instead, she protectively folded her top lip over her bottom one, aware now of the tender sting his teeth had left there. Her muscles were weak, her skin sensitized, her libido well and truly returned from whatever maternity leave it had taken.
She dropped her hands to his chest and he very slowly eased his grip on her backside so she could settle onto her unsteady heels. She had to hold his forearms to keep herself upright, still breathless and dizzy. And mortified.
Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t want to have sex with me.
She couldn’t. Not now. She could fairly smell the grim satisfaction wafting off him and had no way to deny how she’d reacted. She was appalled to realize that if he hadn’t called a halt, she might have been on her way to another unexpected pregnancy.

Without revealing too much, what is your favorite scene in the book?

I have many favourites, but I love this one where Val begins to crack under his feelings for his daughter. He has just scolded her for going near the pool:

“You know you’re not allowed in the pool without a grown-up.” Kiara’s own heart was pounding. As far as she’d known, Aurelia still couldn’t reach the latch. She’d either grown in the past two days or the pool boy had been sloppy about closing it properly.
“I took my eyes off her for one second,” Val muttered as he came up to them, emanating umbrage.
Kiara tried to calm Aurelia, but it took effort to keep her agitation from her voice. “Listen, baby. Papà thought you were going to get hurt. He didn’t mean to scare you.” She sent him a pointed glance.
“That went both ways,” he retorted sharply.
“Fair enough, but maybe dial back the volume to an age-appropriate two. You scared me, yelling like that.”
His mouth flattened as he looked at Aurelia, who was keeping her face firmly turned from his, still bawling her heart out, tiny body quivering. Remorse creased his expression along with lingering concern. “My heart completely stopped.”
“Welcome to being a parent.”
He jolted at that and watched her continue rubbing Aurelia’s back as she wound down to sniffles.
“We’re working on our apology skills,” Kiara told Val and tucked her chin to address her daughter. “Would you like to tell Papà you’re sorry for giving him a fright?”
“No, Mummy.” She began to sob again, this time more pitifully.
“Aurelia, I’m sorry,” Val said quietly and sincerely. His hand came up as though he wanted to touch her, but he hesitated at the last second and let it drop back to his side. “I shouldn’t have yelled. I was afraid you were going to fall in the water. I may yell again if I’m afraid for you, but I’m not angry. I promise I will never, ever hurt you. Please don’t be afraid of me.”
Kiara was pretty sure Val had never apologized to anyone. Ever. She melted from the inside out, limbs going so weak she could barely hold on to her daughter.
“Do you have something you want to say to Papà?” She prodded Aurelia in a husky voice.
“I’m torry,” Aurelia said, lifting her heartbroken, tear-tracked face.
As naturally as if she’d been doing it from the moment she had arrived on this earth, she tipped out of Kiara’s arms and went to her father for a make-up cuddle.
He caught her with an audible inhale of surprise and then released a shaken exhale.
Kiara’s defenses crumbled to nothing then, as she watched the impact of Aurelia’s freely offered love hit Val like a meteorite. The glimmer of something flashed and shattered in his eyes before he closed them, yet he failed to hide his emotions as he cradled her tiny form against his chest. He hung his head over her, and his brow pulled with torment, as though he had indeed rescued Aurelia from the bottom of the pool.
Or she had rescued him.
Kiara pressed a hand to her chest, trying to keep her heart from breaking through her rib cage, while Aurelia let her head settle on Val’s shoulder and stuck two fingers in her mouth. Tears still stood on her cheeks as she blinked at her mother, but her trust in her father had been secured.

If your book was optioned for a movie, what scene would be absolutely crucial to include?

They have a showdown in her studio. It’s a turning point for them:

“Come on, bella. Let’s kiss and make up. I’ll make it worth your while,” he coaxed, stroking his thumbs across the backs of her hands, smiling at the way they trembled.
“Are we fighting? I thought this was our normal, where you blame me for your parents’ actions and I put your daughter’s needs ahead of my own.” She pulled her hands from his and opened the buttons she’d closed, voice quavering as she continued. “But if you want to have sex, by all means, let’s have sex. Why did I even engage in hand-to-hand combat with your mother if not to keep having sex with you?”
An anvil hit the pit of his gut. “If you don’t want to have sex—”
“I always want to have sex!” she cried, throwing down her coat. “But I need to paint, Val. I haven’t held a brush since before Niko died and it’s killing me!”

Readers should read this book …

If you love a big character arc from a hero who is very closed off and grouchy to a man you know will lay down his life for his wife and child.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have planned?

Please watch for the second book in this duet, Beauty and Her One-Night Baby. It releases next month and features Val’s half-brother, Javiero, who was recently attacked by a Jaguar.

I have two releases this fall, Confessions of an Italian Marriage and Innocent in the Sheikh’s Palace. I’ll be back to chat about both when they come out.

And I’m *very* excited to be starting a trilogy with my fellow Presents authors, Tara Pammi and Clare Connelly. More on that as things develop!

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: One signed print copy of both books in the Feuding Billionaire Brothers duet (A Hidden Heir to Redeem Him and Beauty and Her One-Night Baby.) Open anywhere in the world.

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: I wrote this book a year ago with no sense of where we would be today. I wouldn’t necessarily write such a hardened hero now. That makes me curious whether your reading tastes have changed since this all started?

 
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Excerpt from A Hidden Heir to Redeem Him:

“Do you want more children?”
“No.”
It was such a swift punch; she caught her breath.
He turned and frowned. “You do?”
She nodded jerkily. “I hated being an only child.”
“Siblings aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.”
“You were poisoned from an early age against one another.” She took a step forward, anxious to persuade. “Have you even given Javiero a chance lately?”
“No,” he scoffed. “And I won’t.”
She shook her head in bafflement while her heart felt pulled and strained between him and Aurelia, the past and the future, her own will and his.
“That sort of hatred is not what I want Aurelia to learn.”
His jaw tightened. “That is why I won’t have another one,” he shot back with a forceful point of his finger. “You’re already using her to manipulate me.”
“Into doing what?” she cried. “Reconciling with your brother? That’s between you and him. Do it or don’t. I don’t care. But my job as a parent is to teach Aurelia how to be a decent human being. To model behavior like kindness and forgiveness. If you’re only going to show her how to hate, then no. You don’t get to be her parent.”
A muscle in his cheek ticked.
Remorse gripped her. She felt as though she was kicking a dog for being a dog.
“Do you understand that being a father is more than giving her a name and a bedroom and three square meals?” she asked more gently. Maybe she even spoke with tendrils of pity because her life might have been a lonely struggle, but his had clearly been a Siberian wasteland.
“This isn’t an ultimatum, Val. It’s a choice. One you have to make. If you want me to marry you, you have to also want a relationship with Aurelia. You can’t let her form an emotional attachment that isn’t reciprocated. That’s cruel. You know that. She needs all the compassion and respect and affection you can pour over her. You’ll have to listen and compromise. That’s what was lacking between you and Niko, wasn’t it? That’s why you’re so bitter and malevolent. Do you really expect me to set her up to become just like you?”

Excerpts. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

She kept their child hidden…

Now the secret’s out!

Valentino Casale is outraged to find Kiara kept their daughter a secret from him for two years! Forever branded by his own illegitimacy, the hardened billionaire wants to do things differently…

Kiara could never regret the consequence of her one delicious night with Val. Even if he turned out to be every bit as coldhearted as their night was hot! Yet behind Val’s reputation is another man—revealed only in their passionate moments alone. Could she give that man a second chance?
Book Links: Amazon | B&N | iTunes | Goodreads |
 
 

Meet the Author:

Award-winning and USA Today Bestselling author Dani Collins thrives on giving readers emotional, compelling, heart-soaring romance with some laughter and heat thrown in, just like real life. Mostly she writes contemporary romance for Harlequin Presents and Tule’s Montana Born, but her backlist of nearly sixty books also includes self-published erotic romance, romantic comedy, and even an epic medieval fantasy. When she’s not writing—just kidding, she’s always writing. Social isolation is her normal.
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