Monday, April 30, 2018

Open Book - A Proposal To Secure His Vengeance

Today we are opening the book pages of A Proposal To Secure His Vengeance by multi-talented author, Kate Walker. Kate is sharing the inside scoop on her contemporary romance, and between the pages of this sensual story you’ll find revenge, a Mediterranean hero, reunited lovers, an Ireland setting, and first loves.

A Proposal To Secure His Vengeance was published in February 2018 by Harlequin Presents. “I didn’t come up with the title,” Kate said. “My own original title was Claimed By The Corsican - the hero, Raoul is from Corsica, but the Harlequin editors didn’t like that – so they created A Proposal To Secure His Vengeance. I’m not sure if I like it,” Kate added. “But people seem to be buying the book so I hope it works!”

Kate always wanted to set a novel in Ireland. “My parents were born in Ireland,” she said. “Some years ago my husband and I visited the National Stud and I always wanted to set a story involving the beautiful horses bred there. My editor had asked for a duet of two linked stories, and I had a moment of inspiration. I don’t know where it came from! The duet title could be ‘The Scandalous O’Sullivan Sisters’ – then obviously I had to create the lives and those ‘scandal’ for the two sisters - Imogen and Ciara. In A Proposal to Secure His Vengeance Imogen is about to marry her best friend when her first love, Raoul, comes back to make sure the wedding never happens. That leaves her younger sister Ciara – and the would-be groom Adnan who are the hero and heroine in the second book that I’m working on now.”

A Proposal To Secure His Vengeance is about two lovers who broke up in bitter circumstances and now that Imogen thinks she can move on, she finds that her first love Raoul – the man she had a holiday romance with a couple of years before – has come back to find her. He believes she turned her back on him and got rid of his baby that she was carrying.

The story takes place in rural Ireland. A horse-breeding stud in County Kildare. “The setting is very green, very idyllic, and beautiful – far away from the nearest town,” Kate explained. “My heroine Imogen lives with her father on the Blacklands Stud which was once very successful with lots of race winners bred there but now it’s fallen on hard times and is so much less successful and becoming rather rundown and in need of repair.”

In A Proposal To Secure His Vengeance you’ll meet, the hero, Raoul Cardini, born and brought up on the island of Corsica where he made a fortune farming and exporting olive oil but he also breeds the special ‘Corsican’ horses that are native to the island. “He has been badly burned romantically before with a woman who only wanted him because she he was so wealthy and successful,” Kate said. “So he hides his real situation from Imogen when he first meets her and this leads to misunderstandings and problems that drive them apart.”

You’ll also get to know, the heroine, Imogen O’Sullivan. Her parents split up when she was very young with her mother taking her younger sister away with her when she left. Imogen met Raoul when she was on holiday in Corsica and fell passionately in love, but he believed she was only after his money. “She conceived his baby but before she could let him know that she was pregnant she lost the baby and so never said anything,” Kate explained. “Her father has a drinking problem as a result and so the Blacklands Stud has fallen on hard times and is going downhill fast.” When Imogen’s friend Adnan - whose family own another more successful stud offers a marriage of convenience, she accepts in order to help restore the family fortunes and keeps her father safe from jail for debt.

“Raoul and Imogen both want family security and love,” Kate said. “Raoul believes that Imogen destroyed his chance of being a father - and Imogen is fighting to keep her family safe, with a roof over their head and keep her father from prosecuting for the bad business deals he’s committed himself to.” 

Additional characters are Imogen’s younger sister, Ciara, who has just come back to Ireland to start to get to know her sister, and to help arrange the marriage that is coming up. As well, Adnan is the son of the Al Makthabi family who own a much larger and much more successful stud nearby. “For his own reasons, (he once was deeply in love with a girl he wanted to marry but she died tragically) he has suggested that he and Imogen have a marriage of convenience.” Imogen and Ciara’s father also plays an important part. “He is irresponsible, self-indulgent, drinks too much, and makes unwise decisions,” Kate said.

A Proposal To Secure His Vengeance is about family and how far people will go for the people they love most. “And it’s about learning to trust and open up to people,” Kate said. “So that, most important, the real key element - they can love each other as they really are. A Proposal To Secure His Vengeance is a classic ‘second chances’ story. About two people who were too unsure of each other when they met to tell the truth about themselves. So now they have taken the wrong turning on the road of life and they need to find their way back to each other.”

A Proposal To Secure His Vengeance is not exactly a series, but part one of a duo of linked books. “The second book, which I’m working on now,” Kate said, “is the story of Imogen’s younger sister Ciara and the man that Imogen was supposed to have married, Adnan Al Makthabi. Now that Adnan is no longer going to marry her sister, Ciara hopes she can admit she loves him. But then she realises that Adnan is the proud grandson of a powerful desert sheikh and when he takes her to the desert kingdom of Rhastaan she sees a very different side to him.”

Check out Kate’s previous books, A Question of Honour and Destined for The Desert King, also set in this kingdom, and the heroes were related to Adnan.

To learn more about Kate and her books, visit:
http://www.kate-walker.com
http://kate-walker.blogspot.co.uk/
https://www.facebook.com/AuthorKateWalker/

Let’s take a closer look at A Proposal To Secure His Vengeance. 
Raoul Cardini will have his revenge! 

His preferred method? Ruthless, irresistible seduction! 

Imogen O’Sullivan is horrified when charismatic tycoon Raoul breaks up her engagement and makes her his own convenient bride! She once surrendered everything to Raoul—body, heart and soul. But as he stalks back into her life it’s clear he has punishment in mind—not just passion! Can Imogen resist Raoul’s potent brand of delicious vengeance? 

https://www.amazon.com/Proposal-Secure-Vengeance-Harlequin-Presents/dp/1335419136/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1522091596&sr=8-1&keywords=Kate+walker&dpID=51IhmfBXkUL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch
https://www.harlequin.com/shop/books/9781488083136_a-proposal-to-secure-his-vengeance.html

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