His Black Sheep Bride (Aristocratic Grooms 1)

Tamara grimaced. “And your father never remarried.”

“There was no need to. He had his heir.”

Tamara tilted her head. “You seem to bear no ill will toward your mother.”

He gave a brief nod. “I eventually understood my parents’ complete incompatibility. My mother was twelve years younger than my father and a rich American debutante impressed by a title. After I was born, she began to long for a jet-set life, while my father was busy with his properties and his newspapers, and remained attached to the traditions set by generations before him.”

“But she wed again, obviously,” Tamara remarked.

“Once she’d tired of being a divorcée, she married Peter, a widowed Wall Street investment banker.” Sawyer’s lips twisted ironically. “She then unexpectedly found herself pregnant again at forty-one.”

“It’s quite a story,” Tamara commented.

“There were unexpected benefits from the divorce for me,” he said. “If it wasn’t for my mother, I would never have received my business degree in the States after finishing up at Cambridge. Her contacts, and those of my stepfather before he died, proved invaluable for expanding my business in New York and beyond.”

“You’re practically American.”

“A dual British and American citizen by birth,” he confirmed, though he understood Tamara to be joking about his temperament and disposition rather than his nationality. “You have a lot of curiosity.” Tamara flushed.

“Care to compare notes?” he prompted, smoothing his fingers down her arm in a light caress.

She focused on the movement, and he said innocently, “We’re in view of the tennis court.”

She hesitated, but then said finally, “My parents divorced when I was seven. I left for New York with my mother. But surely you know that part.”

He nodded. He remembered hearing of Viscount Kincaid’s divorce when it had occurred.

Tamara’s lips lifted with dry humor. “Unlike you, I wasn’t the male heir, so I could be spared. My father made two more attempts at marriage and obtaining an heir, but I think he finally gave up.”

“I’m surprised he stopped at two more,” Sawyer commented with gentle humor.

Tamara lifted her shoulder. “You’d have to ask him why, though I believe three ex-wives and the attendant children began to constitute enough of a burden.”

Sawyer chuckled, but then queried softly, “Is that what you were? A burden?”

She looked at him with that amazing crystal-green gaze. “I was never called it, but my father and I don’t see eye-to-eye on many issues.”

“As the Countess of Melton, you have a title that takes precedence over that of your father’s, you know,” he pointed out sportingly.

She gave a brief laugh. “I hardly care.”

“And yet, here you are enjoying country living, and married to me, fulfilling paternal expectations.”

“Only for the short term,” she protested.

His eyes crinkled. “Then we should make the most of the time we have.”

He tugged her down to him, and caught by surprise, she fell against him.

“What are you doing?” she said breathlessly.

“Tut-tut,” he admonished. “We’re in full view of the tennis court.”

“You do make your antecedents proud,” she retorted on a half laugh. “Such capacity for trickery…such an unerring sense of duplicity…”

“Mmm,” he agreed. “You forgot ‘such a skill for seizing the moment.’”

Then his mouth came down on hers.

Tamara studied the partially finished necklace.

Diamonds and emeralds. She’d pressed her suppliers in the Diamond District until she’d found what she was looking for for Sawyer’s commission.

Sawyer was helping her business by giving her a large and lucrative order for jewels…for another woman.

At the thought, Tamara felt a twist in her stomach.

From her seat at her workbench, Tamara looked out the loft window of her former and current place of business and thought about picnicking with Sawyer by the pond.

She and Sawyer had left his Gloucestershire estate for his town house in New York two days ago, the day after their picnic on the grounds of Gantswood Hall.

Remarkably, she’d managed to stay out of his bed. She’d moved into the bedroom adjoining his at the town house, and there she’d stayed.

There hadn’t been an attempt at seduction since their idyll by the duck pond.

Of course, the picnic had been all for show—for the benefit of her father and other guests—but the kiss hadn’t been.

Tamara touched her fingers to her lips. Sawyer had kissed her thoroughly, as usual making her body hum, and she’d sunk deeper and deeper into their embrace. When she’d finally looked up, it had been to notice they had attracted the attention of their family at the tennis court and of three ducks from the nearby pond.

She’d half expected Sawyer to make an appearance in her bedroom on their last night at Gantswood Hall, but though she’d tossed restlessly until the early hours, he hadn’t appeared.

He’d surprised her. Again.

Was he bent on being unpredictable?

Not another novelty shag.

She almost laughed at the thought that Sawyer could have been her novelty shag. Certainly, aristocratic media moguls weren’t her type. She’d steered clear of Sawyer for years.

But then she’d enjoyed her stay at Gantswood Hall more than she expected. She’d enjoyed Sawyer more than she’d expected, especially now that she’d allowed herself to really talk to him.

They were alike in ways she’d just discovered and previously hadn’t permitted herself to admit. They were both the offspring of trans-Atlantic marriages that had ended badly. And they were both connected to two different worlds. She’d been charmed by Gantswood Hall, while Sawyer, she allowed herself to acknowledge, was a New Yorker in his own way. He had a business to run—a very twenty-first century one that wasn’t just newspapers and television and radio, but online social networking sites, as well.

And then, on top of it all, she’d been stunned to discover the daredevil that lurked inside the serious and proper aristocratic. His adventures dodging bullets had surprised—no, shocked her. Her own claim to being unconventional—a bit bohemian and with slightly flamboyant fashion sense—just seemed…insignificant in comparison.

And, of course, Sawyer attracted her sexually as no man ever had.