The Redemption of a Dissolute Earl by Julie Johnstone Page A

play his doxy. She could not be
drawn into his game and come out standing.
    Before she knew what he was about, he swept
her hair off her neck, her skin tingling where his fingers touched
her skin. “You’re wrong about everything, Char. The whiskey was
plenty strong, but I could never consume enough to forget what I’d
done to you.”
    Damn him. Hearing he had been plagued with
guilt made her heart squeeze with empathy. She refused to let him
off the hook or believe him.
    He traced his fingers down her cheekbone,
and she shivered with just how much she had missed his touch.
“There were no women, ever, not once, because none of them were
you.”
    “ Never?” Why was she even asking? As
if he would tell her otherwise. Yet he did sound earnest.
    He brushed a soft kiss across her lips. “I
swear it.”
    Her body responded with such jarring desire
it scared her. Was she so weak that she would forget how he had
betrayed her and hurt her simply because he gave her two admissions
and a vow? Intent on putting a safe distance between them, she
pulled away, but Drew gripped her tighter. “Please, Char. I deserve
your doubt. Hell, I deserve your anger, but I swear it’s always
been you I love. It will always be you I love.”
    His words swirled inside of her, coiling
around her heart like a snake and tempting her to bite of the apple
in the garden of his Eden. She squeezed her eyes shut, breathed
deeply, and willed her senses not to desert her. She was no Eve,
and Drew offered no garden, only the poison of rejection when he
hurt her again. She opened her eyes slowly and stared at him. “I
find that hard to believe. Now if you’ll excuse me?”
    She did not wait for his response. Sliding
past him, she scrambled out of the carriage and into the dark, cold
night. A blast of wind hit her in the face. If that didn’t cool her
desire nothing would. Shivering, she wrapped her arms around
herself as Drew’s boots clomped down the carriage steps behind her.
She didn’t want another confrontation. She started to walk away,
not entirely sure of where she was going or what she was doing.
    Drew caught her arm before she’d taken her
second step. She whirled on him, angry that he was hounding her
now, after she had finally come to peace with it all, and horribly
angry at herself for that small part of her that still thrilled at
his touch. “Let go, Drew. I don’t believe you could ever love me
enough to give up your allowance, and I have more important matters
to tend to.”
    “Such as?”
    “My coachman and my father,” she snapped.
Now there was the Drew she had remembered for the last year. The
self-indulged earl who had vowed he loved her then thrown her over
for fear of losing his money.
    “Char, I don’t doubt you have more important
things to think of than me, I just thought perhaps I could
help.”
    Why did have to go and say that? And look
wounded and self-sacrificing all at the same time. Now she felt
like a complete cad. “I fear my coachman has come to harm on the
road. We were on the way to Danby because I received a letter that
my father is very ill.” She clenched her jaw on the threatening
tears. “My coach broke down, and my coachman went in search of
help.”
    Drew released her arm and shrugged out of
his overcoat. He placed it on her shoulders and began to button it
up. She knew she should protest him putting his coat on her. It was
entirely too familiar, too much like something someone who really
cared for another would do. But it was cold. She pulled at the
folds of his coat, and sighed when his familiar manly smell filled
her senses.
    He put his arm around her waist and pulled
her to his side. “We’ll find your coachman immediately, and I’ll
take you personally to Danby. I’m on my way there myself.”
    “I don’t need you to take me.” It was one
thing to accept his overcoat in order to avoid freezing to death,
it was quite another to allow him to grip her, soften her, seduce
her once again. She