Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Teasing you with my Temptress!

I cannot believe how quickly June is zooming by! In less than three weeks my next book, TEMPTRESS IN TRAINING, will hit the shelves. Woo hoo! I'm so excited to introduce Sophie Darshaw to readers. At last!

Sophie is the poor, long lost cousin we heard about but never met in MISTRESS BY MISTAKE. In the opening chapters of DAMSEL IN DISGUISE she makes a brief appearance, but then mysteriously disappears. Finally now we can find out what the gal has been up to. And who she's been up to it with!

To tease you just a bit, here's a little excerpt:

“Lord Lindley, please,” she began, moving toward him, then stopping just out of arms reach. “You cannot take him. Not now.”
“You don’t know what he’s done, Miss Darshaw.”
“But I know what will happen if he does not see a doctor right away.”
“He’s wounded; nothing more. He’ll survive.”
“But the blood . . . please, have some compassion.”
She was so earnest it was all he could do to deny her. Her helpless, desperate eyes searched his. His resolve returned, however, as soon as he recalled another pair of helpless, desperate eyes that had begged him for rescue. Rescue he could not give. Those eyes had shut and never opened again and Lindley had finally caught the man responsible for it. Damn it, but Lindley couldn’t let himself be weak now. Four souls left in the cold ground of his family plot needed justice. They would get it.
“My compassion is buried with my family, back in Kent,” he informed her.
She must have recognized the icy reality of this on his face. She took a step backward, away from him. The glow from the lamp hanging near the doorway spilled out into the yard where they stood. The warm light played against the heavy shadows, making her eyes seem endlessly deep and her skin endlessly tempting. Emotion only allowed her to draw short, halting breaths. Her worn gown pulled against those unignorable curves. Hellfire, why couldn’t he forget just for these moments how beautiful the girl was?
“Maybe you can’t feel compassion, but surely you can feel something,” she said, swallowed, and gave the tiniest hint of a smile. “You are, after all, a man.”
Oh, he felt something, indeed. “My feelings are hardly your concern, Miss Darshaw. Go back inside and say farewell.”

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