He sucked his lips in an attempt not to laugh. "Aren't you Spanish?" She raised one arm in a salute. "Viva la Queen Isabella!" "I see. Then why are you speaking with a French accent?

He stepped toward her, and her heart just ached from it. His face was so handsome, and so dear, and so perfectly wonderfully familiar. She knew the slope of his cheeks, and the exact shade of his eys, brownish near the iris, melting into green at the edge. And his mouth-she knew that mouth, the look of it, the feel of it. She knew his smile, and she knew his frown, and she knew- she knew far to much.

She tried to remind herself that beauty was only skin deep, but that didn't offer any helpful excuses when she was berating herself for never knowing what to say to people. There was nothing more depressing than an ugly girl with no personality.

Stirlings of old had been so damned besotted with their newfound earldom that they couldn't think to put any other name on anything...It was a wonder he didn't drink Kilmartin Tea and sit on a Kilmartin-style chair. In fact, he probably would be doing just that if his grandmother had found a way to manage it without actually taking the family into trade.

Happy endings are all I can do. I wouldn't know how to write anything else.

As his hands moved to his trousers, he saw that she was pulling the bedsheets over her. "Don't," he said, barely recognizing his own voice. Her eyes met his, and he said, "I'll be your blanket".

There were only so many ways a man‟s heart could break, and he had a feeling his couldn‟t survive another puncture.