Miracles

And all he could find was i

This was her first time.

She had not done any of this before.

He wanted her despite that. No, he realized with disbelief, he wanted her three times more because of that. She was there for the taking, she had asked him to do this, had even volunteered to pay him to do this. And still he hesitated. Taking her chin between his thumb and forefinger, he forced her to meet his gaze. In a voice that was devoid of anything except reassuring neutrality, Nicki asked, "Are you absolutely certain you want to be here… to do this?"

Julia

"You're completely certain?"

She nodded, and Nicki did what he'd been longing to do all along. Except that as he bent his head, he had the disquieting thought that he wasn't merely despoiling a virgin, he was destroying an angel. He seized her mouth with violent tenderness, forcing her to respond and then pushing her harder until she was moaning in his arms and his hands were clamping her to him, then moving forward, sliding up to cup her trembling breasts.

"No!" She broke free with such sudde

She shook her head wildly, and Nicki stared at her in frowning disbelief. One moment she'd been kissing him back, her arms twined sweetly behind his neck, her body molding instinctively to his. The next, she was ru

Straight into Valerie, and another woman who was raving about her daughter being abducted and demanding a search of the house for her. As if in a dream, a nightmare, he saw the woman who had accosted him in the park wrap her arms protectively around the girl who had been his a moment before.

Only the older woman was different now. She wasn't groveling about what a pleasure it was to meet him, she was looking at him with triumphant hostility all over her face, saying, "After I have put my daughter to bed and summoned my husband, we will discuss this privately!"

Nine

"JULIANNA?" Her mother's normal speaking voice sounded like a screech. Julia

No questions, no recriminations.

Curled up in a tight ball of misery against the door of the coach, Julia

"No dear, that wouldn't be at all pleasant."

Julia

"We aren't going home."

"Where are we going?"

"We're going right… here," her mother said, leaning to the side and searching for something with narrowed eyes that widened suddenly with delight.

Julia

And the expression on his dark, saturnine face was a thousand times more glacial, more contemptuous, than any she had seen in the park.

"Why are we here?" Julia

"To attend your wedding to Nicholas DuVille."

"My what?! But why?"

"Why is he marrying you?" her mama said dryly as she opened the door. "Because he has no choice. He is a gentleman, after all. He knew the rules, and he broke them. Our hostess and two servants saw you ru

"I don't want this!" Julia

"I didn't want this!" Julia

"Where are we going?" she cried.

"To your new home," he said with scathing sarcasm. "Your new home," he clarified.

Ten

Humming a Yuletide melody as she sat before the dressing table in her bedchamber, Julia

In the three months since her husband had unceremoniously deposited her in front of this picturesque little country house a few hours after her wedding, and then driven off, she had not seen or heard from Nicholas DuVille. Even so, every detail of that hideous day was burned into her mind with such vivid clarity that it could still make her stomach knot with shame.

It had been an obscene parody of a real wedding, an eminently suitable ending for something that had begun at a masquerade. Far from condemning Julia

Julia

Julia

In the coach, on the way here, Julia

In the months since she had been dumped here like a piece of unwanted baggage, Julia

He was punishing her, Julia