“My wife needs no assistance from me in forming her opinions,” he had told critics sardonically. “She is more capable and professional than most men of my acquaintance.” He encouraged Amanda to enjoy her newfound notoriety, which had made her the most sought-after guest at every fashionable London supper-party. Her “clever mind” and “original wit” were universally praised in the highest literary and political circles.
“I am being trotted out like a trick pony,” Amanda had once complained to Jack after a gathering, during which her every utterance had been given scrupulous attention. “Why is it so difficult for people to believe that someone who wears a dress could also have a brain?”
“No one likes a woman to be too clever,” Jack had replied, smiling at her annoyance. “We men like to maintain our appearance of superiority.”
“Then why aren’t you threatened by a woman’s intelligence?” she asked with a little scowl.
“Because I know how to keep you in your place,” he replied with a maddening grin, and reared back, laughing, as she leaped on him to exact revenge.
Smiling at the memory, Amanda listened while Jack spun a tale of dragons and rainbows and magic spells, until Edward finally went to sleep in his lap. Carefully, Jack laid the boy’s slumbering form on the linens that covered the grass.
Amanda pretended not to notice as her husband settled by her side.
“Put that away,” he commanded, nuzzling his face into her loose hair.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I have a demanding employer who complains when the Review is past its deadline.”
“You know how to make him stop complaining.”
“I don’t have time for that now,” Amanda said primly. “Let me work, if you please.” But she did not protest when she felt his arms slide around her. His mouth pressed against the side of her neck, sending a shot of pleasure down to her toes.
“Do you have any idea how much I desire you?” He curved his fingers over the shape of her stomach, where their second child moved gently inside her. His hand wandered along her leg to her ankle and insinuated beneath her skirts. The sheaf of papers fell from her hands, fluttering to the grass.
“Jack,” she said breathlessly, leaning back against him, “not in front of Edward.”
“He’s sleeping.”
Amanda turned in his arms and applied her mouth to his, giving him a slow, tantalizing kiss. “You’ll have to wait until tonight,” she said when their lips parted. “Really, Jack, you are incorrigible. We’ve been married for four years. You should have tired of me by now like any normal respectable husband would have.”
“Well, there is your problem,” he said reasonably, his fingers playing behind her knee. “I’ve never been respectable. I’m a scoundrel, remember?”
Smiling, Amanda lowered herself to the warm grass and tugged him over her, until his shoulders blocked out the dappled sunlight that pierced through the rustling screen of leaves overhead. “Fortunately I have found that it is far more entertaining to be married to a scoundrel than a gentleman.”
Jack smiled, but the mischievous sparkle in his blue eyes was supplanted by a reflective glow. “If you could go back and change things…” he murmured, stroking the loose curls back from her face.
“Not for all the riches in the world,” Amanda replied, turning her face to kiss his gentle fingertips. “I have everything that I ever dared to dream about.”
“Then dream some more,” he whispered, just before his mouth closed over hers.
About the Author
Lisa Kleypas is the author of seventeen historical romance novels that have been published in twelve languages. In 1985, she was named Miss Massachusetts and competed in the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City. After graduating from Wellesley College with a political science degree, she published her first novel at age twenty-one. Her books have appeared on bestseller lists, including those of The New York Times, USA Today, Publishers Weekly. Lisa is married and has two children.
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Other Books by Lisa Kleypas
BECAUSE YOU’RE MINE
DREAMING OF YOU
LADY SOPHIA’S LOVER
MIDNIGHT ANGEL
ONLY IN YOUR ARMS
ONLY WITH YOUR LOVE
PRINCE OF DREAMS
SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME
SOMEWHERE I’LL FIND YOU
STRANGER IN MY ARMS
SUDDENLY YOU
THEN CAME YOU
WHEN STRANGERS MARRY
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
SUDDENLY YOU. Copyright © 2001 by Lisa Kleypas. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © MARCH 2003 ISBN: 9780061793097
Version 07272012
First Avon Books paperback printing: June 2001
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