Romancing the Victorians: Release Day for One Dangerous Desire!

I am SO excited for the release of One Dangerous Desire, the third book in my Accidental Heirs series from Avon Impulse. American heiress May Sedgwick, my heroine, appeared as a secondary character in the first book, One Scandalous Kiss, when she found a match with that book's hero less than appealing.

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 His clothes were those of a prosperous gentleman, not the outdated and oft-mended single suit owned by Reginald Cross.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.