Free Twice the Temptation by Suzanne Enoch Page A

They turned onto the park’s main path, and he slowed the team of chestnut mares to a walk. “Did I interrupt Redmond’s visit earlier?” he asked in a hopefully offhand tone. Whatever her intentions regarding the earl or vice versa, he refused to be jealous of the old windbag. He did, however, want to know what was going on. And he’d already given himself permission to do anything necessary to disrupt it.
     
      “He came by to see whether I might be available for luncheon,” she returned, waving as they passed another carriage.
     
      “He actually is a suitor, then? Not just some very, very, very old friend of the family?”
     
      “He’s one-and-fifty. That’s not so very old.”
     
      “Not for dirt or some select bottles of wine,” he retorted. “As a suitor for a young lady not yet twenty, it isvery old. And that doesn’t even take into account the fact that he has barely half a wit.”
     
      “You’re jealous?” she asked, obvious surprise lifting her voice and her fine eyebrows.
     
      “I am curious,” he countered. “Is he your idea of a good catch, or your mother’s?”
     
      “I am not going to spend my luncheon debating the merits of the Earl of Redmond with you. At least he’s never knocked me off my feet.”
     
      “I knocked you down, but I never knocked you off your feet, Gilly. I don’t think any man ever has. And that is what you need.”
     
      She continued to scratch the kitten. “I assume you’re speaking metaphorically. And you’re wrong.”
     
      “You have been knocked off your feet, then? I doubt—”
     
      “I meant that that is not what I need. I am not some trembling, fainting miss. I know what I wish to have in my life, and I know who can provide it.”
     
      “And that person is Redmond?” he asked skeptically.
     
      “Yes.”
     
      “Then you’re wishing for the wrong things.”
     
      Turning away, she muttered something under her breath. The only word he could make out was “diamond.”
     
      “What was that?” he prompted.
     
      “I said, I should have worn the diamond. Let’s eat our luncheon and conclude this appointment, shall we?”
     
      Connoll stopped the curricle beneath a likely tree. Assoon as his tiger hopped to the ground and went to hold the horses, he tied off the ribbons and jumped down himself. Evangeline puzzled him—a young lady with wits, beauty, and money enough that she needn’t marry to provide for herself, didn’t pursue matrimony with the likes of the Earl of Redmond. And yet she was pursuing it, as much as the old earl was. Why?
     
      “Are you going to leave me up here?” she asked, handing Elektra to her maid and twisting on her perch to look down at him.
     
      Shaking himself, Connoll strode around to her side of the carriage. Putting his hands around her waist, he lifted her to the ground. The curricle momentarily sheltered them from the view of anyone in the park who might be passing by. With a slow breath he tilted her chin up and leaned beneath the brim of her bonnet to kiss her.
     
      The softoh of surprise her lips formed molded against his mouth. Even braced for a blow as he was, her feathery breath, the smooth, warm line of her jaw, lifted him inside until he couldn’t even feel the ground beneath his boots.
     
      She shoved at his shoulders. Breathing hard, Connoll took a reluctant step backward. “You can’t want that old m—”
     
      Gilly grabbed him again, the bonnet slipping back off her honey-colored hair as she pressed against him. Her arms wrapped fiercely around his shoulders, fingers digging into his back. He felt all of it, everywhere they touched, the tremble of her lips as she parted them for his questing tongue.
     
      He pressed her back against the wheel of the carriage, tilting her face up as he deepened the kiss. God, she tasted of…of warm sunshine, of ripe strawberries, ofsomething he couldn’t put a name to but that abruptly became vital