First Kiss Friday with Jude Knight
So happy you can join us for another First Kiss Friday. Today I have my dear friend Jude Knight as my guest who has an excerpt from her newest release A Gift to the Heart . We hope you enjoy this first kiss scene. Take it away, Jude, and happy reading, my lovelies!
This excerpt is from A Gift to the Heart. The book has two heroes, brothers, and two heroines, sisters. In this excerpt, the older of the two brothers has nerved himself up to propose, and his beloved has told him all the reasons why he could not possibly want her.
Excerpt:
Every conversation with Livy seemed to become a tennis match. “I want you as my wife, Livy. Nothing you have said dissuades me.”
“Why?” his darling demanded. “Why me? I am old, contentious, not particularly pretty, and used goods.”
That sparked his anger, partly at her for believing such nonsense, but mostly at those who had eroded her confidence in herself. He wished he had Drake’s silver tongue, but he would have to rely on the plain unvarnished truth, since that was all he could command.
“Why? Because I found myself face to face with you on Misrule Night, and you were magnificent. Powerful. Confident. Lovely as the night. An armful of a woman who was physically a match for an overgrown gowk like me, but also a woman of character I could spend my life striving to deserve. Since then, I have come to know you, and found that all of those things are true. You say old, I say just the right age for me. You say contentious, I say challenging and interesting. I know you will require me to be the best version of myself, and will support me as I try.”
He was reaching her. A smile was dawning, and her silver eyes were intent on his.
“You say not particularly pretty, my darling, and there, I must take issue with you. To me, you are indescribably lovely. I love how you look. I could spend hours worshipping every inch of your body, and I hope one day soon to have the right to do so. As for ‘used goods’, I beg you never refer to yourself that way again. What happened to you long before I knew you only matters to me because it hurt you. On the other hand, it meant you remained single, and I can only see that as a gift to my heart, for here we are at last. Together. Are we together, my love?”
“Am I?” she demanded. “You have said you love how I look, but do you love me?”
“Gowk!” Bane called himself, thumping his own thigh. “I have not said, have I? Not in those precise and precious words. I love you, Olivia Wintergreen. Thoughts of you consume my mind and haunt my dreams. My heart belongs to you. Everything I am and everything I have is at your feet. Will you pick it up, my love?”
She said nothing and his heart sank. “You don’t have to answer now,” he assured her. “If you do not love me, and think you can never love me, allow our betrothal to stand until the gossipmongers find something else to care about, and then you can go your way, and I will at least have been of service to you. Or, if you care a little, let me use our fake betrothal to court you. Give me, give us a chance.”
“No need,” said Livy, and he thought she meant to dismiss him immediately, and wanted to howl, but in the next moment she elevated him from hell to heaven in a few words. “I think I began to fall in love with you that night, when you came alone to face us all, for the sake of your brother. And then we met at the inn, and when I scolded you, you turned it back on me with a quip on your lips and a smile in your eyes. Let us not bother with a long betrothal, Bane. Let us marry and begin our lives together. I am yours if you are mine.”
Bane lowered the cup of the umbrella so that their heads would be hidden from anyone who was out in the rain at this unfashionable hour, and bent, but only slightly, to present his lips. After a moment’s hesitation, his brave lady stood on tiptoe and pressed her mouth against his.
Either she had not been kissed enough to master the skill, or she had been kissed by idiots with no idea of how to treat a woman. Bane lost himself in the glory of her mouth, relishing her wordless sounds of pleasure. If not for the need to hold the umbrella and the hinderance of their coats, he might—he would—have taken things much further than his lady was ready for. Thank goodness for the rain.
Even so, he walked her back to her home with his mind in a whirl, and she, to his secret joy, seemed even more dazed than he. He was going to be wed! And he could not have been happier.
A Gift to the HeartWhen Cilla Wintergreen supports her sister’s plans to punish the man who ruined their friend, she helps in a miscarriage of justice, for they catch the wrong man. But no harm is done, except to her imagination. She cannot forget the sight of their victim, half naked, his torso shining in the candle light. Just as well she is unlikely to meet him again. Until she does.
When Drake Sanderson is mistaken for his licentious older brother Colin, he readily forgives the women who captured him. After all, they release him when they realize he isn’t Colin. But the event changes his life, for one of those women captures his heart, and he won’t give up until she agrees to be his wife or marries another.
When Livy Wintergreen tries to take revenge on a cruel seducer, and catches the wrong man, she puts in train a series of events she could not have imagined. For she had long thought she was too old, too contentious, and too independent to find a man to love her.
When Bane Sanderson rescues his brother from female revelers out for retribution, he did not expect their queen to consume his heart and mind, until courting her seems the only sensible course of action. If she is not put off by his scars, his irregular birth will disgust her. But he must try.
Buy Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FTFYXNXB
Meet JudeJude always wanted to be a novelist. She started in her teens, but life kept getting in the way. Years passed, and with them dozens of unfinished manuscripts. The fear grew. What if she tried, failed, and lost the dream forever? The years since 2014 have brought 17 novels, 16 novella, 6 volumes of short stories, a number of awards, and hundreds of positive reviews. The dream is alive.
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