Southern Charmer (Charleston Heat 1)

The heirs of opposing families stoke an ancient feud by falling in love.England, 1813

Castle West, NorthumberlandEven in a ballroom full of dark haired, broad-shouldered warriors, Gunnar Danes, Earl of Garrick, stood out. He was enormous, made even more so by the thick leather pauldrons that covered his shoulders, the metal plackart stretched across his breast. It was only a costume, but on him it looked thrillingly real.

He wore his long hair in a knot on the crown of his head, emphasizing the sharp lines of his cheekbones. Lines that gleamed in the honey-hued light of the room. The stubble of a careless beard—redder than his hair—caught the light, too. A prickly fuzz.

And his eyes—they were a striking shade of hazel, more green than brown.

They were on her.

Her, Catherine Woodville. Spinster. The daughter of his great enemy and all that. Their families had been at each other’s throats for generations.

Reason number one hundred and eighty nine why sneaking into the Dane family’s annual Michaelmas ball was a bad idea.

But here she was, dressed in a borrowed gown and mask, meeting eyes with the one man on Earth she needed to stay away from.

This Romeo was much, much different from the thirteen-year-old lovesick Italian in Shakespeare’s play. Indeed, Gunnar Danes was the kind of rough-hewn, medieval-warrior handsome that made Cate dizzy. She grasped the edge of the refreshment table, readying herself for the onslaught as he approached her from across the crowded ballroom…Chapter TenEliI make a quick pit stop on my way to work the next morning.

Rainbow Row Books, the city’s oldest and most famous indie book store, is housed in a tiny Charleston single that, thanks to the great earthquake of 1889, is leaning precariously to one side. There’s no way you could stand up on its second story porch; it’s slanted at such an angle you’d slide right off and land on your ass in the parking lot below.

Its kooky exterior gives way to an equally kooky, light-filled first floor that is packed to the rafters with books and rescue cats.

Charlotte, a Siamese cat who’s missing a leg, is the first to greet me, rubbing up against my calf. Alice, Beverly, Ernest, and George are next. In the space of half a minute my jeans are covered in cat hair and my tennis shoes are practically vibrating from all the purring going on.

Making a silent pussy joke, I grin.

“Elijah!” Louise, the owner, quickly closes her book behind the register at the back of the shop. Dipping her head, she looks at me above the cloudy lenses of her reading glasses. “I’m always happy to see you, handsome, but that Vonnegut you ordered still hasn’t come in.”

Careful not to step on any stray tails or paws, I make my way back to Louise and press a kiss onto the papery skin of her cheek.

“I’m actually not here for Vonnegut,” I say. “I’m here because I need your help.”

Louise straightens in mock seriousness. “Talk to me, chef.”

“I want you to give me a crash course in romance.”

“Romance?” Louise blinks. “As in, romantic love, or…?”

“Romance novels,” I say, laughing. “I’d like to focus on historical romance, but I’ll take anything you can give me.”

Using her first finger to push up her glasses, she peers at me, her eyes wide and owlish through the lenses. “Wouldn’t have pegged you for a romance reader.”

“Because of the Vonnegut?”

“Because of your penis,” Louise says. She slides off her stool. “World would be a better place if more men read romance. Come on, handsome. I’m sorry to say we don’t keep much of it in stock. We’ve just never had that reader base, and so much of that market has gone digital in the last few years.”

Louise is right. Her romance section is pitifully small. It’s the bottom two rows on a rickety metal bookshelf. Many of the paperbacks are so old their pages are yellowing.

I wonder what Olivia would have to say about this. She was so contained the other morning at breakfast, and then again at yoga. But when she talked about romance, it was like a dam burst. Her eyes lit up and her cheeks flushed pink and she laughed, really laughed, the kind that came from her belly.

She was so goddamn gorgeous in that moment I’d had to grip my cocktail, hard, to keep from reaching for her. Kissing that pretty mouth of hers. Which would’ve been a bad idea on many levels. Most important, I didn’t have her permission. I also don’t know her story. Well—the story about her romantic life, anyway. Maybe she has a boyfriend.

Maybe she doesn’t. But even so, maybe she’s not interested in a kiss for whatever reason.

This all started out as innocent curiosity about the beautiful stranger who showed up in my kitchen, hungry and tired and holding something in.