LITMIR.BIZ

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windows that overlooked the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

      The sight of her, almost unreal with her long slim curves and pale loveliness, distracted him. By the time he’d thought to grab her, she was halfway across the room.

      Christopher shook his head to clear it, then forced himself up on an elbow to watch her snag her hose from where he’d draped them over the armoire after he’d savored the pleasure of peeling them off her shapely legs.

      “Really?” Here was an interesting turn of events. “Never?”

      “Never,” she shot back.

      Flipping her hair over her shoulder, she sent it flowing down her back, then scooped up her cocktail dress from a chair. The black beads caught a moonbeam, glinted in the darkness. Every perfunctory motion belied the repletion she’d just demonstrated in his arms.

      He recognized what was happening—Ellen was tossing up invisible walls and putting miles of distance between them.

      “Why don’t you ever spend the night with anyone, love?”

      Plucking her bra from where it had landed on the floor, she glanced up at him from beneath that incredible fall of hair and said, “Relationship rule number one—Senators’ daughters do not get caught sneaking out of anyone’s bed the morning after.”

      Christopher watched her sashay toward the bathroom, an awesome display of moon-glazed skin and lithe motion, before she disappeared inside. The door closed. The lock clicked with a note of finality that echoed through his bedroom. Through him.

      He sank back against the pillows, smiled. “Well, Ms. Talbot, damn good thing I’m not just anyone.”

      And he wasn’t. He was a man who knew what he wanted.

      Ellen.

      As Senator Talbot’s youngest daughter, she had to weigh consequences more carefully than a woman from a less visible family. He understood and respected her situation, which had meant easing into their relationship slowly. No problem. Ellen was definitely worth the wait. And three months of dating, and waiting, had only heightened the chemistry between them, had let them become acquainted through very imaginative foreplay.

      But Christopher was also a man who’d made a career of seeing possibilities where others saw dead ends, of turning impossibilities into successes. The solution to this problem was a no-brainer. Just like always, he’d meet a challenge with a challenge, play the odds, take the risks and get what he wanted.

      Ellen.

      When she emerged from the bathroom, completely dressed and coolly distant, he was ready.

      “Marry me.”

      She stopped short in the doorway, lifted her gaze, those fascinating eyes still glimmering with golden lights.

      “Marry me, love.”

      She blinked as though he must be some sort of mirage and she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Marry you?”

      “Yes.”

      She continued to stare, a frown slipping beneath her composure, the slightest crease between arched brows—a slip she’d never have made if not truly shocked by his proposal. “We’ve only been dating three months…we’ve only slept together once.”

      “I’m ready to peel off that dress and go for round two.”

      That seemed to wake her up again. “Christopher!”

      “We’re right together.” Covering the distance between them, he reached out to trace her lower lip, was pleased when she shivered in reply. “Do you doubt that after tonight?”

      For an instant, she looked as if the wind had been knocked out of her, but then she backed away so fast she stumbled. He reached out to steady her, but she shrugged him off.

      “You’re crazy. No one gets married after sleeping together once. That’s against all the rules.”

      He stared hard into those beautiful eyes, hoped she recognized how determined he was. “I’m not just anyone, love. And we need to establish right here and now that rules were meant to be broken.”

      1

      New Orleans—three months later

      CRADLING THE CELL PHONE between her shoulder and ear, Ellen Talbot hitched up the hem of her beaded cocktail dress—a dress she hadn’t worn since he’d stripped it off her the night they’d made love. Of course, that had also been the night she’d received his marriage proposal and ended their relationship.

      One very eventful evening.

      But as she’d left him two thousand miles away in New York, Ellen deemed it safe to wear the dress again. Protecting her hose from snagging the beaded fabric, she sank into a chair in the bar of the Château Royal, the historic hotel in New Orleans’s French Quarter that was hosting the annual romance writers’ convention.

      “Thanks for checking in with me.” She spoke into the receiver. “Have a safe trip home.”

      She said goodbye to her mother, disconnected and flipped her phone shut. It might be three in the morning in this time zone, but her mother was currently in Bosnia, where she’d just concluded a breakfast with the Goodwill delegates from several foreign countries. As her mother wasn’t only a loving parent who stayed in touch with all four of her grown children but a United States Senator, phone calls often came at odd hours.

      Ellen didn’t mind. She hadn’t been sleeping. Far from it, as she’d just broken free of a post-award ceremony party where both the winners and the nominees had gathered to celebrate. But now the party was over and, for the first time since she’d arrived in New Orleans, Ellen was practically alone. She checked to make sure her battery wasn’t running low, returned the phone to her purse and willed herself to relax.

      The muted glow of chandeliers sparked off the floor-to-ceiling windows that reflected the city beyond, shadowed by a black velvet night. Only a few guests still milled through the bar and the adjoining front lobby—stragglers from the award ceremony, she guessed by their formal wear. Ellen closed her eyes and let the calming hush filter through her. She could finally lose this smile that had been plastered on her face since she’d left her hotel room at 7:57 a.m. yesterday morning.

      Exhaling slowly, she allowed her smile to fade, felt the tightness in her cheeks begin to ease.

      Ah…

      As an editor for the Brant Publishing Group, a corporation that published mass-market romance novels, the thick single-title historicals that readers devoured, Ellen’s workdays didn’t usually involve the spotlight or never-ending smiles. Her days involved meetings with the editorial, marketing and art departments. When she wasn’t in meetings, she spent time on the telephone with any one of her thirty authors. Or reading through manuscripts that demanded her skill at recognizing story potential and writing pithy cover copy to entice readers into picking up a book from an already crowded shelf and buying it.

      But during these industry conventions, smiling was as fundamental as breathing, because Ellen was a hot commodity—a romance editor with buying power. She spent her days conducting appointments with eager writers, presenting publishing-related topics to rooms filled to capacity, and socializing with people she only recognized by their name tags.

      She preferred life out of the spotlight, so this moment alone was welcomed, would have been perfect if not for the thoughts of him that kept intruding on her overworked brain. She sighed. Maybe she shouldn’t have worn this dress, after all.

      Hindsight is twenty-twenty, her mother was fond of saying.

      Ellen heartily agreed. Had she had clearer vision about him, she’d have turned down his first invitation for a date and saved herself a lot of heartache.

      Marriage.

      Ellen had thought he’d been kidding. He hadn’t been, so he’d been history. At best, the man was a daredevil who lived

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