Having just been fired, Francesca has three immediate requirements: a coffee, an extremely calorific pastry and a new job. Stopping off at her favorite café, Giovanni's, she manages to pick up all three!
Working for darkly handsome Giovanni Mazetti is fantastic--except Fran discovers the job comes with a tantalizing caveat: pretending to be his adoring girlfriend! Soon their kisses start happening in private as well as in public, and although Fran knows it's all a game to Giovanni, she can't help wishing his feelings were for real....
Kate lives just outside Norwich in the east of England with her husband, small son and daughter and two mad spaniels.
She's always loved books and could read before she went to school. She always knew that she wanted to be a writer, and her parents bought her a proper typewriter for her sixth birthday. (She's still a six-finger typist, though...) Her first stories were all about ponies or outer space, but then she discovered Mills & Boon when she was 12 and decided this was what she wanted to do.
Following a degree in English, Kate started work as an accountant, and hated every second of it! All the clients asked why she wasn't working in PR-- so she went into marketing communications for the next 10 years. In between studying for two sets of professional exams, Kate continued to write short stories and novels. And her husband supported her every step of the way, even buying her first computer for her!
When Kate's son, Chris, was born in 1997, she decided to go freelance so she could spend time with her baby. She became a health journalist and copy editor but never lost her love of romance. When Kate was pregnant with her daughter, her husband suggested combining her two loves by writing medical romances. Kate started reading them and was instantly hooked. (She claims they were her craving when she was pregnant!)
At six weeks old, Chloe spent her first Christmas in the hospital with bronchiolitis. The only way Kate could cope was to pretend it was happening to someone else-- so she started writing A Baby of Her Own in longhand at Chloe's bedside. Her agent liked the first three chapters. So did Mills & Boon. The final manuscript was accepted on Chloe's first birthday, and published on Chloe's second birthday.
When she isn't writing medical romances or health articles, looking after the children or raising funds for Chris's school and cancer research, Kate enjoys relaxing with the family-- going to the beach, playing games, reading stories and watching films. She also loves cooking (but not the dieting that goes with it) and she reads a lot. She'd quite like to try rappelling, parascending and scuba diving, but as she's terribly clumsy, she thinks it's much safer to let her heroines do it for her...
You can email Kate at the following address: kate.hardy@btinternet.com.
