Now, in One Dangerous Desire, readers will get to meet May afresh. She's spent over a year in England and is enjoying the independence she's found in London. She's even beginning to doubt whether her initial goal of finding an aristocratic husband is all that it's cracked up to be.
But when she's offered a wager, pitting her against Rex, Leighton, the man who broke her heart years ago in New York, May can't resist. How can she win the wager? By being the first of the two of them to marry an English aristocrat.
Rex Leighton has remade himself as a successful entrepreneur in England, but he wants to find a way into the top echelons of London society. Finding an aristocratic bride seems the key—until he meets May again. He may have left his checkered past behind him in New York, but he's never forgotten the hold she had on his heart.
Here's an excerpt...
A man she’d relegated to her dreams had crashed
in and collided with her Thursday afternoon. Impossibly, he stood before her. The man she kept confined in her heart and
mind. The same man, and yet so changed. He was no longer the poor shop clerk
she’d pined for, impossibly yearned for year after year until she’d almost
forgotten how to yearn for anything else. The eyes were the same mercurial brew
of gold and azure, and all the angles of his face still aligned with irritating
perfection, set off by a divot in the center of his chin. That gleaming dark
hair she’d once sifted through her fingers shone like rich mahogany in the
afternoon light.
But his gaze was remote, impassive, as if a pane
of murky glass separated them. She was the one stuck on a curio cabinet shelf,
and he was coolly examining her from the other side. His clothes were those of
a prosperous gentleman, not the outdated and oft-mended single suit owned by
Reginald Cross. Worst was the arrogant tilt of his chin. The Reg of her
memories had only ever looked at her with admiration and pleasure, what she
imagined in her silly youthful way was love. No one had ever made her feel as
important with a single glance.
He wasn’t the same man. Couldn’t be. The duke
called him Leighton, not Cross. A striking resemblance. Nothing more.
May reminded herself to breathe and stepped
forward to be introduced to the polished gentleman who could not be the shop
boy who’d broken her heart in New York City.
Mr. Leighton took two steps forward, and her
momentary grasp on composure faltered. Reg.
His scent, the firm line of his mouth, the large, elegant hand extended toward
her—they belonged to Reginald Cross. Smarter, wealthier, older, and with an
abundance of confidence his younger self had lacked, but still a man she’d once
known. The only man she’d ever loved.
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