The Redemption of a Dissolute Earl by Julie Johnstone

muscle he possessed. “Where’s your illustrious husband?
Why did he leave you on your wedding night on the side of the road
without anyone in sight to protect you?”
    “Salisbury didn’t abandon me.” Charlotte
looked down at her hands. “He’s not my husband.”

    “ What?” Drew could hardly believe
he’d heard correctly.
    Charlotte’s gaze remained on her hands,
which were squeezed into two small fists on her lap. “I…I broke the
betrothal last night.”
    The block of ice that had been lodged in
Drew’s chest for the last year and doubled in size upon thinking
she was married melted with her words. He set the lamp beside him,
slid across the space separating them, hooked a finger under her
chin, and raised her face so he could see her eyes. “Because of
me?”
    She pushed his hand away. “Certainly
not.”
    Char’s lips twitched, displaying her
deception. She never had been a very good liar. It took all of
Drew’s will to contain his grin. “Then why?”
    “Simple,” she said. “I do not love him.”
    “Because you still love me,” he said
emphatically.
    “Ridiculous,” Char disagreed, but the denial
was weak, breathless.
    “Prove you don’t love me.” He splayed one
hand over the small of her back and slid the other up to cup the
delicate curve of her head. His body hummed with his need. Char’s
pink tongue darted out to lick her full lips.
    She stared at him for a moment, her green
gaze unblinking. Finally, she sighed. “Let me go,” she said
simply.
    He couldn’t, though a gentleman would. The
possibility of regaining Char changed all the rules. He was no
gentleman anymore. He was a man determined to win the woman he
loved no matter what he had to do. “I can’t.”
    She quirked an eyebrow. “Can’t or
won’t?”
    “Both.”
    “Drew, I’m no toy for you to pick up off the
shelf because you’re interested in playing with me again. I’ll not
let what happened between us ever happen again.”
    “I won’t either,” he promised. It was now or
never. He’d bare it all to her. Risk it all for her. “I love you.
I’ve loved you since that first afternoon we kissed at the meadow,
and I’ve never stopped. I’ve been a fool. I’ve been weak, and I’ve been drunk for a year. Now all I want to be is a
man you can love. I want to be your husband and for you to be my
wife.”
     

     
    Charlotte had dreamed of Drew saying those
words to her at least a thousand times. But the dream had been of
Drew declaring himself the day his father had demanded he break
their betrothal, or at least the next day when he came to his
senses. The dream had never, ever been one year later, after she
had endured hell trying to forget him. Why was he toying with her?
Why now? “What is it, Drew? Are you bored? Did the women in Paris
become dull? The drink too watered-down?”
    “You tracked me to Paris?”
    She stared at him, refusing to be
baited.
    “ You still care .”
    Oh, good grief . She couldn’t let him
think that. “I did not track you,” Charlotte insisted. And she
hadn’t. Not really. She’d overheard whispers and she had listened,
instead of turning away. She was human, after all.
    Drew grinned an infuriatingly handsome grin,
which took Charlotte instantly back to the first time she had seen
him on his return from Eaton―tall, muscled, and eyes twinkling with
merry mischief, all directed her way. She had been naïve. And her
father had sheltered her too much. One fall from a ladder followed
by one glorious smile from Drew―and the realization that he had
finally noticed her after all the years of her being the invisible
butler’s daughter―and Charlotte had not stood a chance. Her head
had been calm, but her heart raced right out of the gate and took
her senses with it.
    Drew’s face came so close to hers she could
see the blond, unshaven whiskers, the small white scar on the cleft
of his chin, the fine lines on the surface of his lips. She
swallowed her desire. She could not