Free The Husband List by Janet Evanovich, Dorien Kelly Page B

Caroline Maxwell, a mistake he would not make again.
    While Helen and Amelia giggled with their girlfriends, Caroline sat at a small, round courtside table with Harriet. Both had watched Jack, Harriet with maidenly yearning and Caroline as though she were planning her next great adventure. Jack hoped it involved more stolen kisses.
    Match done, Charles and he now sat with Caroline and Harriet, all drinking tall glasses of water fancied up with slender lemon slices. Jack downed his and wished for a beer … or three. He remained thirsty and possibly in need of some numbing.
    “Papa has promised to build me a home on Fifth Avenue as a wedding gift,” Harriet said to him.
    “How nice for you,” Jack replied, hiding a smile at her lack of subtlety about as poorly as Caroline was concealing her restlessness.
    She opened the small watch pinned to a bejeweled ribbon at her waist and awkwardly looked down at it. Her build wasn’t nearly flat enough to make that an easy viewing.
    “It’s nearing eleven,” he said to her.
    She rose. “Then it’s time for my sisters and I to be on our way.”
    She glanced where the twins had last been sitting, but the cluster of girls had moved on.
    Caroline sighed. “And to think they’re supposed to be watching me.”
    Harriet and Charles looked confused, but Jack laughed.
    “I’d best go round them up,” Caroline said before giving the Vandermeulens a cheery good-bye and moving on.
    Seizing the opportunity, Jack rose, too. After he’d accepted a dinner engagement for tomorrow with Harriet’s family, he jogged up to Caroline.
    “Are you always going to bolt from Harriet like a spooked horse?” she asked as he pulled even with her.
    “I prefer to think of it as a strategic retreat,” he replied. “Harriet is a sweet girl, if relentless. I don’t want to hurt her feelings, but even if I were entertaining thoughts of marriage, she’s not my type.”
    “In what way? She’s rich enough,” Caroline said as they walked into a grove of sturdy elms to the far side of the Casino’s tennis courts.
    He’d promised to be honest with her, so honest he’d be. “I can’t imagine her in my bed, night after night and year after year.”
    Caroline stopped. “She’s the ideal of all that’s beautiful. I’m not educated regarding lovemaking, but I’m sure you could bear up long enough to create an heir or two.”
    Jack shrugged. “It’s not all about beauty. It’s about wanting, too.”
    He looked at her more closely. His bluntness hadn’t rattled her. She’d tipped up her head to watch him. Her gaze was level, as was her voice. Harriet would no doubt have collapsed in a heap of ruffles and lace at a conversation such as this.
    “If you have that luxury, I suppose,” Caroline said. “As you’ve pointed out to me, I don’t.”
    “Luckily, I do,” he replied.
    “Am I your type, Jack?”
    He hesitated. Honesty was only going to bring heartache.
    “No,” he said.
    Caroline looked as though she were absorbing a blow.
    “And yet you more or less offered to kiss me today,” she pointed out.
    “Better me than someone who will take advantage of you,” he replied.
    She laughed. “That’s nearly noble of you.”
    “Isn’t it?”
    She moved a step closer, and he looked around to see if they were being watched. They weren’t.
    “But you made that dangerous promise, Jack. Be honest with me. Am I your type?”
    “I have my rules,” Jack replied, trying out some of his Da’s sidestepping.
    “And what do those rules include?”
    “Not destroying my friendship with your brother.”
    “I don’t plan to tell Eddie that I kissed you.” She smiled again. “Or that you want to kiss me. And you do, even if you won’t admit it. There’s no other reason you would have said what you did in front of Flora.”
    She might be an innocent, but she was no fool.
    The sea breeze pushed at the brim of her hat. “So kiss me, Jack.”
    The Casino grounds were a dangerous place for such