Spotlight & Giveaway: Nine Months After That Night by Melanie Milburne

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Melanie Milburne to HJ!

Hi Melanie and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Nine Months After That Night (Weddings Worth Billions Book 2)!

 
Hello!
 

To start off, can you please tell us a little bit about this book?:

This is a secret baby with a twist – neither the hero or the heroine have any idea they are expecting a baby!
 

Please share your favorite lines or quote(s) from this book:

After Jack and Harper’s one-night stand nine months ago, she inadvertently left one of her earrings in his hotel room. This is the moment she gets it back.
“It doesn’t mean we can’t be great parents or a well-functioning couple,’ Jack said, and, reaching into his trouser pocket, took out Harper’s earring. ‘By the way, I have something of yours you left behind the last time we met.’
Harper looked at the earring for a brief moment, then took it from his open palm and put it next to her phone and purse on the table next to the hospital bed. ‘Yes, well, I have something of yours too.’ She passed the baby back to him with a wry twist of her mouth. ‘Your baby.’

What inspired this book?

When my husband was doing his medical/surgical training many years ago, a young woman presented in the ED with severe abdominal pain. She had no idea she was pregnant and in labour. It fascinated me that you could get so far along in a pregnancy without knowing anything about it but apparently it is not as uncommon as you might think.

How did you ‘get to know’ your main characters? Did they ever surprise you?

I got to know Harper because she was in book one of my Wedding Worth Billions trilogy- this is book two. I knew she was a straight-talking person who was career focussed and had no intention of settling down herself, even though she was a wedding photographer. Jack surprised me by being funnier than I had planned his to be. But don’t most women love a man with a sense of humour?

What was your favorite scene to write?

I loved writing the delivery scene. Both Jack and Harper are so unprepared for what is happening and yet they rise to the occasion with overwhelming love for their surprise baby.

What was the most difficult scene to write?

I usually find back-end scenes hard to write but this book was not hard in that I had a clear sense of how things were going to play out. That is the joy of writing a trilogy- a lot of planning takes place. Not that I always stick to the plan, but still.

Would you say this book showcases your writing style or is it a departure for you?

It is true to my writing style but I have a book coming out next year that will be in first person. I hope you enjoy it!

What do you want people to take away from reading this book?

I would like people to reflect on how life can throw things in our way that no amount of preparation can ever help us handle them. It’s not what happens to you but how you handle it that matters.

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

I am working on my 96th book and it is taking far longer than any other book I’ve written. Argh! I have book three of this trilogy out in January- Forbidden Until Their Snowbound Night. That was a fun book to write!

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: A signed copy of book one -Cinderella’s Invitation to Greece and book two- Nine Months After That Night.

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: What surprise have you experienced in your life that you were totally unprepared for?

 
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Excerpt from Nine Months After That Night (Weddings Worth Billions Book 2):

HARPER LAY ON the hospital gurney in a sweat-soaked panic. Was she going to die? The niggling pain in her back that had started three days ago was getting worse. It was spreading to her abdomen—tight, rigid bands that made it hard for her to breathe. Was it endometriosis? Or…or cancer? She was only twenty-seven—how could she die of cancer? She had so much left to do. Her career was taking off. She had a book deal featuring her photographs—photographs she had yet to take in Paris in six weeks’ time. This was definitely the wrong time to contract a terminal illness.
The pain gradually subsided like a retreating tide and Harper flopped back on the pillow and let out a shuddering breath. But she knew it would be back. The time intervals between the spasms were shrinking.
Only a junior doctor had examined her so far and he had seemed a little baffled by Harper’s symptoms. The doctor took a blood sample for Pathology and told Harper the more senior emergency doctor would be back with the results, as soon as they came through.
Harper closed her eyes and tried to meditate while she waited for the results of the test. Not that meditation had ever been her forte. Her one and only visit to a health spa retreat had made her feel antsy and agitated the whole time, while everyone else was chanting and cleansing and rebalancing their chakras. Her chakras were obviously beyond repair. As for her mind? It was hardly ever still, which she put down to her turbulent childhood. All that time in foster care had made her hypervigilant. Every noise, every sound, every footfall and she was wide awake and alert.
A and E was busy with the usual dramas of a Saturday night. Harper could hear the noise of someone coughing a couple of cubicles away. Not a simple virus cough but one that hinted at some sort of hideous lung disease like emphysema or cancer.
Cancer.
Why could she not stop thinking about the C word?
A man was shouting in another cubicle about wanting more morphine. Harper wondered if he was suffering from the same disease. Maybe the Swan women weren’t destined to live beyond thirty. Her mother had died young, so too her grandmother.
Another band of pain tightened around her abdomen like an iron cable. Sweat poured like tears from her hairline, her teeth were gritted together so hard she was sure she was going to crack every one of her molars. But hey, if she was going to die, what would it matter if every tooth fell out?
I don’t want to die!
It was a scream inside her brain, as if a panic button had been pressed in her head, a piercing siren of distress only she could hear.
The curtain was swished aside and a more senior emergency doctor came in. She placed a hand on Harper’s wrist, her expression grave. ‘Is your partner waiting outside?’
‘I don’t have a partner.’
‘Oh, well, your next of kin? Your mother?’
‘My mother died when I was eight.’ Harper could say it without any trace of emotion but it had taken years of practice. Years of concealing her true feelings behind a mask of indifference. Years of blocking the vision of finding her mother lying lifeless on the floor of their cramped bedsit when she came home from school on that fateful day. Later than she should have come home. If she hadn’t stopped on the walk home to play with a stray kitten…
‘A sibling?’
‘I’m an only child.’ Which, strictly speaking wasn’t quite true. Harper had several half-siblings she had never met because her father hadn’t wanted his dirty little secret—her, his secret love child—to be revealed to his wife and family. ‘Love child’ was a bit of a stretch. Her father hadn’t loved Harper’s mother. He had used her to break his marital boredom and then left her when she got pregnant.
‘Harper…’ The female doctor’s voice was gentle, as if she was preparing to deliver shocking news.
‘It’s okay, Dr Praneesh,’ Harper said with a grim smile. ‘You can be straight with me. It’s cancer, isn’t it?’
Dr Praneesh frowned. ‘No, you don’t have cancer.’ She moistened her lips and continued, ‘It’s a different type of growth—you’re pregnant.’
Harper rapid-blinked. Her heart knocked against her ribcage with the force of a punch. ‘I—I can’t possibly be pregnant.’ Was she having some sort of hallucination? A bad dream? How could she be pregnant and not know? And more to the point—not show? Sure, she wasn’t the slimmest woman on the planet but she could distinguish a baby bump.
‘When was the last time you had intercourse?’
‘Erm…months ago.’
‘Nine months?’
Harper did the mental arithmetic, a worm of worry wriggling through her mind. Her stomach swooped and dipped and dived. Her one-night stand with Jack Livingstone. How could she be pregnant to a playboy? It was her worst nightmare. How could she tell him? How could she rock up to him carrying a full-term baby in her arms? How could she be having Jack’s baby? Anyone’s baby? She hadn’t planned on having kids. She wasn’t the maternal type. She was a career woman. She had no room in her life for a baby. She hadn’t even held a baby since she was a kid. ‘Yes, but that’s ridiculous. I—I’ve had a period every month since.’ She looked down at her slightly rounded abdomen just as the pain began again. ‘Oh, God, here it comes again.’ She gripped the doctor’s hand so hard Dr Praneesh winced.
‘You’re in labour, Harper. It seems you’ve had a cryptic pregnancy. It’s not as rare as you’d think. One in two thousand five hundred pregnancies in the UK, which is about three hundred a year. You can still have a light period each month and not have any other symptoms of pregnancy, or at least none that you notice, especially if the placenta is in the front of the abdomen, as it lessens the sensations of the foetus kicking and moving. I’ll have to examine you to see how close you are to delivering.’
‘Delivering…’ Harper swallowed a lump of dread. ‘You mean, I’m having a baby? Now?’ Her panicked shriek rivalled the volume of Morphine Man in cubicle six.
‘Your contractions are ten minutes apart, so it won’t be long now. From what you told the triage nurse, you’ve been in non-active labour a couple of days. I’ll do an ultrasound to check the baby’s development, and the sex if you’d like to know, and then do an internal examination. Would you like to call a friend or the baby’s father to be with you?’
Harper gulped. Her two best friends and business partners were out of town—Ruby had only days ago got engaged to Lucas Rothwell and was spending the weekend with him in the Lake District. And Aerin was visiting her parents in Buckinghamshire for their thirty-sixth wedding anniversary. God only knew where Jack Livingstone would be—no doubt in bed with his latest hook-up in one of his plush hotels. But she had to tell him, right? He was the father and he had to be given the choice to be present at the baby’s birth, not to mention the choice to be a part of his child’s life.
Like her own father, he could always say no.
Jack was poring over some bookwork in his London penthouse at his boutique flagship hotel when his phone buzzed on his desk. He glanced at it and gave a slow smile when he saw who was calling him at this late hour on a Saturday night. Maybe the elusive Harper Swan had changed her mind and decided to see him again and collect the earring he still had in his possession. ‘Hello there.’
He could hear her heavy breathing on the end of the line. ‘Jack, there’s no easy way to tell you this…but I’m in hospital and—’
Jack sat bolt upright in his chair, something in his chest flapping like a wind-whipped sail. ‘Are you all right? What’s wrong? Have you had an accident?’
‘Kind of…’ Harper gave an audible swallow. ‘I’d like to explain in person…if that’s okay? Are you in London right now?’
‘I am.’ He pushed back his chair and reached for his jacket and sports car keys. ‘Which hospital are you in?’
‘St Agnes’s. I’m still in A and E but—’
‘I’ll be there in a few minutes.’ Jack ended the call and then opened the second drawer in his desk. He took out the earring she had left behind after their one-night stand and slipped it into his pocket. At least now he would be able to give it to her in person.
Jack wasn’t a fan of hospitals but something about Harper’s call had set his nerves on edge. She had mentioned some sort of accident. A minor prang? A bump on the head? She must have a concussion if she’d changed her mind about seeing him. She had ignored his calls for months and, while he’d been disappointed, he hadn’t let it get to him. He wasn’t the type of man to get hung up on a woman. He had enjoyed their one night together and had hoped for a fling with her but she hadn’t seemed interested in a follow-up. Harper had been so adamant about not seeing him again she had refused to collect her earring. He knew he could have posted it or dropped it off at her office but he had kept it. He couldn’t explain why other than every time he looked at it, it reminded him of their explosive night of bed-wrecking, spine-tingling, mind-scrambling sex.
Jack also couldn’t explain why he hadn’t had a hook-up with anyone since. It was out of character for him to leave it so long but he’d been busy acquiring another property for development in Yorkshire. He hadn’t wanted any distractions while he secured the Rothwell Park deal. Turning the ancient estate into one of his boutique hotels was a dream he had harboured for months and now it was coming to fruition. Not that reliving every second of that night of passion with Harper wasn’t a distraction in itself. He had found it near impossible to get her out of his mind. Was it because she had walked away without begging for a follow-up date like every other woman he’d met? The challenge of winning Harper over was like a background thrum in his blood. He tried to ignore the niggling sense of failing at a goal he had set himself. A box that hadn’t been ticked to his satisfaction. Not that he viewed any woman as a prize or trophy he could win, but because something about Harper got to him in a way no other woman ever had.
Once he arrived at the hospital, Jack was led by a nurse to the A and E cubicle Harper was in. ‘Here she is.’ The nurse gave a briskly efficient smile. ‘We’re waiting on an orderly to collect her. He shouldn’t be too long now.’
Harper was lying on the hospital gurney on her side, her features pinched and white and racked with pain. Sweat poured down her face and in one of her hands she had a blue stress ball that she was squeezing so hard it was bulging in between her fingers like a squashed plum. But then a flood of colour entered her cheeks. ‘Jack…’ Her voice was a strangled whisper, her grey-green eyes not quite willing to meet his. ‘I’m so sorry…’
Jack took her other hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. ‘Hey, you. What’s going on?’
‘I don’t know how to tell you this…’ She bit her lip…

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

In this dramatic baby story from USA TODAY bestselling author Melanie Milburne, her encounter with the billionaire was unforgettable…as are the consequences!

A surprise arrival…

…leads to an explosive reunion!

Billionaire hotelier Jack Livingstone is blindsided when he hears from the elusive woman he spent one mind-blowing night with nine months ago: Harper Swan is in the hospital—and she’s having his baby!

Jack soon discovers Harper is just as shocked as he is by the new arrival. And seeing her again brings the memory of their passion flooding back! Jack doesn’t believe in love or commitment—yet he’s determined to give his daughter the perfect upbringing he missed out on. A marriage proposal would secure that. But only if Harper accepts…

From Harlequin Presents: Escape to exotic locations where passion knows no bounds.

Read all the Weddings Worth Billions books:

Book 1: Cinderella’s Invitation to Greece
Book 2: Nine Months After That Night
Book 3: Forbidden Until Their Snowbound Night

Book Links: Amazon |
 
 

Meet the Author:

Melanie Milburne writes modern romance stories for Harlequin Mills and Boon. Her love affair with romance novels began when she read her first romance at the age of seventeen and it inspired a dream to one day become a romance author. With over 95 books in print and several industry awards and nominations for her work, Melanie enjoys crafting contemporary romance stories from her home in Hobart in beautiful Tasmania, where she lives with her husband and fur family of two dogs and two cats.
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