Today it’s my turn on the blog tour for The Highlander’s Unexpected Bride. I’m sharing an extract from the book with thanks to Rachel Gilbey at Rachel’s Random Resources for inviting me on the tour and to the publisher for providing the extract.

Blurb:

Is the wife the Highlander seeks

…already by his side?

Back from battle, Hamilton of Clan Graham makes a bet with his brother: to find a wife by summer’s end! The Scottish warrior enlists his childhood friend Beileag to help him woo the perfect woman. But, like he has, Beileag has changed whilst he’s been away—and she intrigues him as never before… His focus should be on winning a bride. So why is Beileag all he can think about?

Extract:

This is the moment in the story where the heroine, Beileag, requests from the hero (her friend), Hamilton, how she can know if a man is interested enough to kiss her.

‘What is it like…before a kiss?’

His lashes fluttered and for a moment he broke eye contact, but he didn’t step away and his hands stayed around hers. Although, in truth, she swore she felt a tremble there, but she didn’t know if it was he or she who had done it.

‘As a friend, eh?’ he said.

‘Always,’ she repeated.

‘There’s a look,’ he said. ‘The first thing I…a man does…is notice a woman.’

Something as simple as this? Maybe Hamilton was correct and she did hide too much.

‘What would that look like?’

Another smirk to his lips. ‘A bit like this.’

‘Like what?’ she said. ‘You’re staring at me.’

‘True,’ he said. ‘How about now?’

She took in every handsome feature he had and even some she’d probably never noticed before, like the way the tips of his ears poked out from the wave of his curls.

But it didn’t feel as though he was wanting to kiss her. Maybe she was broken.

Hamilton huffed and released her hands. ‘This may be more difficult because we’re friends.’

They were friends and he didn’t have those anticipating a kiss feelings for her.

Fool that she was, wanting something that she truly couldn’t have. She brushed her hands down her skirt. ‘We can return now. It was nice what you did. I’ll pay more attention when men announce they want to kiss me.’

Hamilton huffed. ‘Now there’s a challenge to any man’s pride if there ever was one. Are you making a bet with me, Beileag?’

She wasn’t trying to.

‘Let me try this.’ Hamilton put his hand on his hips and looked down at the ground. She watched him breathe and toe the dirt a few times. There was nothing about his demeanour to warn her when he looked back at her.

He did the same as he’d always done, looked up through his lashes, his head tilted to the side. But this time, he barely blinked, or maybe that was her, and his eyes didn’t simply stare into hers, but skimmed over her features, the tangled strands of her hair, her non-existent hips and down to her boots and back up again, but twice as slow and meandering.

By the time his hazel-brown eyes met hers, they seemed darker. And darker yet as they locked on to hers.

With that look the roiling warmth was a sharp stab of heat right down her centre and she needed to part her lips.

‘Oh,’ she said.

Then words escaped her completely when Hamilton’s mouth curved at the corner as if he was pleased with her response. On a rough exhale, Hamilton ran his hand through his hair and eased up on the way he stood. ‘That’s the look you should be looking for.’

If that was the look she was looking for to see if a man was interested in her, she was ill fated.

Because no man could look at her the way Hamilton just now pretended to. She knew that with utter certainty because no man was Hamilton.

So how could they affect her as he always did and how could any other man’s lashes be so ridiculously long as to both hide and reveal the mysteriousness of his thoughts?

She had an answer from him, but it wasn’t the answer she wanted, or at least not all of it.

‘No,’ she said. ‘That won’t do.’

Hamilton blinked. ‘What won’t do?’

She couldn’t explain. Taking the only step between them, she placed her hand on his cheek. She wasn’t certain what she was searching for, only aware that she searched. She’d wanted the anticipation of a kiss and the look he’d given her was part of that.

It wasn’t enough.

Hamilton started at her touch, but held still. Given whatever freedom he allowed her, she traced his features with her fingertips. He wasn’t some new broken branch for her to twist and look at under bright sunlight.

He was Hamilton, her friend, a man, but that curious thrill of finding a sturdy branch for a new project was what she was feeling. She couldn’t explain it as anything else.

For years she’d acknowledged, always to herself, that he was the more handsome of the twins. It was his smile; one he hid from her now as she traced along his jaw and ran a curl between her fingers. It was as thick and soft as she ever thought it would be.

‘Beileag,’ Hamilton roughly whispered, a crackle of emotion in the two syllables.

There was nothing left of any intentions. Hamilton’s every thought, every feeling, was about Beileag of Clan Graham and her seduction of him.

Because that’s what had happened. He’d been seduced and all the more so because he knew she hadn’t done it with any intent. It was just her.

Unexpected Beileag! How could he know she was like this? That she felt like this?

Every brush and flutter of her fingers against his jaw, temple, his chin, he felt elsewhere. The tightening low in his groin, heat at the tips of his ears. The ragged breath he managed to do between each light caress. One after the other, no rhythm. No possibility to guess where her fingertips would brush or why.

He’d closed his eyes to ease the sensation, but it only made it worse. He became all too aware of his body’s reactions, the roaring of blood rushing through him, the slight stuttering pant of the woman before him, the brushing of their clothing, the shifting of her feet against the dirt.

His own widened stance, preparing him for whatever else she might want to assuage her curiosity with.

Until the air surrounding them thickened with tension, tightening everything inside him until he was half-suffocated with want, until he didn’t think he could breathe without her lips against his own.

Until he broke.

***

The Highlander’s Unexpected Bride is available from Amazon.

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