Margaret Mayo, Guest Blogger :: From Surrender to the Millionaire to today!

From Surrender to the Millionaire to today!

by Margaret Mayo

I’m pleased and honoured that Surrender to the Millionaire was chosen to be a part of this blogger bundle because it happens to be one of my favourite books. I guess that all of my books are my favourites at the time of writing, but when I look back on them some stick in my memory better than others.

Surrender to the Millionaire is one of them. Kristie, my heroine, is a wedding planner. I was inspired by someone I know saying that a friend of hers was a wedding planner and that she travelled far and wide to all sorts of exotic locations, and met all sorts of interesting people. A perfect job for a heroine, I thought. Kristie also has a five year old son whom she adopted when his mother, her sister died.

And my hero – Radford – is the child’s father – although when the story starts he does not know that. Kristie has been asked to organise his sister’s wedding. He is a man Kristie hates from the bottom of her heart – before she has even met him – which means we’re off to a flying start.

To give you a taster here is the prologue to the story:

‘Tarah’s dead? She can’t be!’ Kristie refused to accept the news. ‘Of course I’ll come. Straight away.’ And, as she hurtled her car down the motorway to London, she hoped and prayed that it wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. Not her darling sister. She had such a zest for life. There was no way in this world that it could have been snuffed out at such a young age.

Twenty-five – it was the beginning of life. Their parents had died, both of them, in an avalanche when they were skiing in Norway. They’d been in their fifties and even then it had been hard to accept. But Tarah, her dearest sister. ‘No, no, no!’

Her keening voice filled the car and she shook her head. She had to stay calm while she drove, and somehow she managed to convince herself that it was all a mistake, that it wasn’t her sister who had died; it was someone else.

At the hospital she couldn’t fool herself any longer.

‘We did our best,’ said the surgeon sorrowfully, ‘but it wasn’t enough. The only consolation is that her baby is OK.’

But Kristie didn’t care about the baby. It was her sister she mourned.

‘Do you want to see him?’

She shook her head. Why couldn’t the baby have died and not Tarah? Why was life so unfair? Tears poured down her cheeks.

‘I think you should.’

‘Whatever you say.’ Still in shock Kristie allowed herself to be led away from her sister’s bedside to the nursery. Baby Broderick lay fast asleep, a sweet little angel dressed in blue. And he looked so much like Tarah that a fresh flood of tears erupted. When they asked whether she would be taking the baby she couldn’t find it in her heart to refuse. It wasn’t his fault that he’d been left motherless – and fatherless!

Kristie had sympathised with Tarah when she had phoned to tell her that Radford had dumped her. But when, a week or two later, she told her that she was pregnant but wasn’t going to tell him because he’d always said that he didn’t like children and didn’t want a family, she had been furious.

‘You can’t do that,’ she’d said. ‘He’s the father; he’s responsible. You can’t bring the child up on your own, not without financial help. He owes you that at least.’

But Tarah had been adamant, and now Tarah was dead. And all because of this man. Kristie had never met him and she didn’t want to meet him, because she knew that if she did she would kill him.

She had adopted Jake and made him her own and although it had been a struggle, trying to make a living as a single parent, she had managed.