Just One Kiss Read Free Page A

was very well funded and unattached.  He enjoyed her company.  All things considered, Edward thought he ought as well to marry her as not.
     
    Happily, William agreed. Miss Winston and her companion were summoned from London to meet the family and announce the engagement. Edward was content to pass the days before her arrival engaged in sport with his old friend Anthony Hargreaves . Then he met Daphne again.
     
    She was standing in the stables. Clad in black, she initially escaped his notice, but as soon as he caught of a glimpse of her shining hair and lush curves his eyes refused to look anywhere else. They skimmed hungrily over her form, trying to make sense of the transformation in the girl that he had known since childhood, when she liked to tag along on outings that he and Anthony made.  She was almost six years younger, and he had never thought of her as anything more than a puppy that liked to follow in their wake, but the skinny, grubby little girl who had chased him in the fields had blossomed into a young woman, and an incredibly fetching one at that.  Considering the fact that he was practically engaged he hadn’t permitted himself the temptation of speaking more than the barest pleasantries during their brief encounter.  Edward had watched her, though, and had been shaken to the core when he discovered that she was watching back.
     
     
    Daphne didn’t know it, and he planned never to let her know it, but she’d thrown him off kilter from the first time that he’d laid eyes on her again, and his discomfort grew as the days stretched out. Miss Winston lingered in town, attending parties, selecting her trousseau and closing up her house.  Edward spent more and more time with Anthony Hargreaves and, consequently, his sister.
     
    Edward didn’t deny that he enjoyed spending time with the girl. She was intelligent and full of life. He was flattered by the hungry way that she hung on his words and laughed at his jokes and he paid attention to her in return. Maybe he had asked her for too many dances or offered his arm for too many strolls in the park, but he had never intentionally led her on.  Daphne ought to have known better -- but her conduct suggested otherwise. Try as he might, Edward had never been able to block the memories of that fateful morning from his mind. 
     
    It began as an ordinary day. Edward awoke a bit later than usual and rang for breakfast in his room. He had not yet summoned his valet and was still sitting in his shirtsleeves, still trying to shake away the after effects of dreams when Daphne burst into his room and closed the door behind her.
       
    Sitting there in his room, half-clad, he half thought he had imagined her or that she was the lingering fragment of one of his dreams.  Edward was so stunned by her arrival that he barely heard the words she said.  Daphne was rambling on about love and he had made a tongue-tied reply, but then she had kissed him, and he had known that she was real.
     
    Edward had his share of experience with women at college, but when Daphne’s lips brushed his own, he felt as if he’d never been kissed before.  He had never felt skin so alive and humming, or lips that molded so perfectly to his own.  He had enough presence of mind to keep his hands to himself, but Daphne’s fingers raked up and down his back, leaving ten searing furrows in their wake.  Still half asleep and half-believing, it had been tempting to follow her lead. 
     
    Fate intervened.
     
    Edward and Anthony planned to meet at Meriden for some shooting that morning, but Edward was running late, and his friend became impatient. Long years of familiarity with the family meant that Hargreaves didn’t wait downstairs in the hall -- with disastrous results.
     
    “What the hell are you doing with my sister?”
     
    The seconds that followed that question, angrily bellowed in Anthony Hargr eave s ’s voice, were the longest of Edward’s life.  The pleasure of the embrace