by: Jane Holland
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Release Date: August 22, 2023
Publisher: Harlequin Presents
From reunion to wearing his ring!
When Rafael offers to hand over the orphanage if Sabrina becomes his convenient bride, she scoffs! She’s still healing from the heartbreak of their last passionate encounter, and marrying him will test her every limit. But as long-buried secrets are unveiled Sabrina has no choice but to trust him…
I’m feeling fine, thank you!
Congratulations on your first Harlequin Presents release, Her Convenient Vow to the Billionaire. What can readers expect from it?
Thank you! Keywords for my debut Harlequin Presents would be ‘intensity, passion, glamour, and surprise’. I love surprising readers with secrets and concealed information, so expect the unexpected…
“Expect the unexpected.” That sounds really intriguing. Tell me about your characters Sabrina and Rafael.
Sabrina was orphaned and left with facial scars when her mother died in a car crash on the small Greek island where she was born. Left terminally shy and traumatised, she grew up at an orphanage there under the protection of her friend Rafael, whose drug dealer father murdered his mother before killing himself. Until an English billionaire adopted Sabrina, and she left Rafael behind for a glamorous, privileged, jet-setting lifestyle, that is. Determined to prove himself her equal, Rafe has since worked all the hours to educate and better himself, and is now a billionaire in his own right. He’s bought the old orphanage and intends to demolish it, along with those bad memories of his childhood. But the strong new Sabrina, no longer shy, her scars erased by plastic surgery, is equally intent on stopping him. To her, that orphanage is the place where her dreams came true…
Her Convenient Vow to the Billionaire sounds like a really good story. But I sense there are a lot of emotional scenes. As a writer, how do you handle writing the emotional scenes?
I grew up in a family of highly creative and emotional people, where extremes of forceful self-expression were an everyday occurrence. This left me with a deep understanding of all the passion that can be exposed when social norms don’t apply or fail to inhibit people. So I guess wild extremes of behaviour are what particularly interest me as a writer. One thing I can’t stand is an overly polite or restrained scene where nobody is kicking off (unless it’s all going on internally, which can be great fun). I also write psychological thrillers, which can reach similar emotional heights to romance, so it’s something I naturally gravitate towards as a storyteller. Though pacing is very important, to avoid losing control of your characters or the plot. However much your hero and heroine may be losing it, it’s vital to keep your prose cool and under control while you turn up the heat…
There are several tropes within this story. Which trope is your favorite and why?
This story combines the trope of friends to lovers with a marriage of convenience. I’m not hugely into tropes myself, preferring to think of each relationship as a unique story. But I know many readers love tropes and use them to find and explore their favorite scenarios. So I would say a marriage of convenience is the trope that appeals most to me in Sabrina and Rafael’s story. It owes something to the marvellous ‘comedy of manners’ you get in Jane Austen romances, where the hero and heroine appear calm and restrained on the surface, while seething with passion and unspoken emotion under their polite smiles!
What was your favorite part of Her Convenient Vow to the Billionaire to write and why?
I loved their first tempestuous reunion – they had one amazing night together five years ago, and then cut off all contact for reasons that only become clear later in the story – where Sabrina, who was so smoothly confident that she could face speaking to him again, suddenly cracks and runs… She’s so overwhelmed by Rafael’s physical presence back in her life, she actually hides from him in a broom closet, and is then horribly embarrassed when he finds her. It’s a huge emotional hit, but comic with it, and I love that in stories, where the drama can be fierce and dark, yet the reader can have a little chuckle too.
Can you tell me about one of your favorite scenes from the book, and why is it a favorite?
There’s a reversal later in the story where Rafael can’t face the emotions Sabrina is stirring up from his own traumatic childhood and also cracks. I can’t give too much away, as that would be a spoiler, but the scene made me cry when writing it, and I hope it will make my readers enjoy a little weep too – in a good way, of course.
Just my opinion…Getting notified that you're going to be a Harlequin author has to be beyond amazing. When you got that phone call or email what was the first thing you did?
I actually can’t recall, but it probably had something to do with cake! I have a feeling I instantly texted my husband, who was at work, to let him know. He knows how long I’ve been submitting to Harlequin Mills and Boon – over thirty-five years! – so he could appreciate what a special moment it was for me. Plus, my late mum was a Mills and Boon romance queen back in the day, writing as Charlotte Lamb, so that made things even more emotional, thinking about how proud she would have been.
What can readers look forward to from you next?
I’m working on my second Harlequin romance, much of it set in Paris, with a story that revolves around an innocent dressmaker and a jet-setting playboy… A wonderful excuse to research the glamorous world of fashion shows and modelling!
Jane, thank you so much for taking the time to answer some questions for me.
Thank you for interviewing me!
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