Blurb:
She needs his name. He needs her money. But can a rich New York socialite and a poor Irish immigrant find true love in the gilded age?
Betrayed by her fiancé and heart sick over her father’s death, Clarissa Burdick is further devastated when she learns she can’t inherit her father’s company—the company she loves—until she’s twenty-five or married. And Clarissa is neither. So she sets out to find a husband strong enough to protect her from her uncle’s thugs, too uneducated to run the company himself, and poor enough to marry a woman in name only. But Irish immigrant Devin Flannery is smarter than he seems and more educated than Clarissa expects. Her Wholesale Husband soon proves a greater risk to her heart than her company.
Excerpt:
“This is a serious proposal,” she insisted, gnawing her lip.
“Who are you codding?” He leaned forward, stretching his leg, ready to descend from the suffocating confinement of the hansom cab.
Again, she stayed him with a touch and again, his body reacted to the contact in a most unwanted way. He narrowed his eyes and pried her hand from his wrist.
“Surely, you’ve heard of marriages of convenience,” she insisted rather desperately as she rubbed her wrist. “Well, this is an honest proposal. If you come with me to Mr. Tate’s office, I can give you a copy of the contract outlining a proposed marriage agreement between us. If you don’t trust my word or that of my attorney’s, then you can find someone to read the documents to you before you sign them.”
She rubbed her wrist again. He considered apologizing for his rough handling but after her last comment, he thought better of it. Even after he’d confessed to some schooling, she still thought him too stupid to read.
Well, if she wanted a dumb Irishman, he’d give her one.
“Aye, lassie. I’ll not be taking yer word for it and that’s fer sure.”
“Then you’ll come with us?”
There must be something seriously wrong with me. But he’d play along, just to see how far Miss Burdick would take this dangerous game she played.
“Aye,” he all but snarled. “I’ll go with you to the lawyer’s office, but I ain’t signing nothing until someone I trust has a look at those papers.”
Miss Burdick’s luminous smile shone like the sun bursting through the clouds on a stormy day. Devin’s heart dropped to his stomach. Fiona would smile like that if he had the money to send her to that fancy boarding school.
Damn if he wasn’t actually considering her proposal.The book is available through the publisher at http://www.thewildrosepress.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=191&products_id=4651
Or from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Wholesale-Husband-Lilly-Gayle/dp/1601549768/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1317161945&sr=8-1
Or, you can come to Stovall's Gifts in Oxford, NC on Saturday October 1st where I'll be autographing copies of Wholesale Husband and Slightly Tarnished. Hope to see some new faces there!
Almost through reading! Amazing!
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