Commitment-phobic Sam Carson has only dated model-gorgeous women. But one stolen kiss from a plain-Jane schoolteacher and he's hell-bent on stripping away her floral dresses and teaching her the art of being bad. If only her good-girl ways didn't make him want to be a better man . . . Ally Giordano is at the end of her rope. Her beloved grandmother actually believes that she's living in her favorite romance novel in Regency England and Ally doesn't have the heart to set her straight. But now Granny Donny's last wish is for a retreat to the country and Ally can't refuse her...until she demands that Sam accompany them. And though his smiles turn her knees into jelly, Ally knows better than to trust a playboy...and she definitely knows better than to try to change one. Or does she?
Release date:
August 1, 2009
Publisher:
Grand Central Publishing
Print pages:
320
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The duke made his way out of Hyde Park with his usual loose-limbed, easy gait. The evening was excellent for walking despite
the heat of early-summer London. Ahead waited his luxuriously appointed town house, a snifter of brandy, and not a woman in
sight to scold him. In a word, perfection.
—From The Dulcet Duke
Manhattan; June 24, 2009
Sam Carson strolled out of Central Park, a long blade of grass between his teeth. What a rush that meeting had been, selling
the client on his riskiest campaign, then dinner at Daniel with champagne corks flying and the ad agency brass begging him
to sign on for the long haul. As if he would ever commit to an agency when his day rate was so bloody—
Veronica.
He pulled the grass from his teeth and stuffed it into his pocket. The spirited version of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow”
he had been humming petered out into a single flat note of dread.
Across the street, Veronica paced in front of his building, looking pissed enough to vault the six lanes of streaming traffic
in a ferocious leap, plant one of her red stiletto heels in his chest, and then fling him under the tires of the nearest SUV,
after first, naturally, retrieving her Jimmy Choo.
Did he deserve punishment? He had told her from day one he wasn’t the marrying kind. A pang of something that might have been pain sprang up, but he shook
it off. I told her not to expect more of me than good times and fun. Maybe a really nice birthday gift if the timing was right.
He scowled. It had been up until now such a successful, lovely summer’s evening.
He considered his options. Talking to her. Again. About how it was over. Again.
SUV tires crushing his skull sounded more appealing. Veronica was a lot of things. A subdued, rational conversationalist wasn’t
one of them.
On to plan B: Retire to Boule’s Pub to argue about Premier League soccer with Angelo, the Italian bartender, until the danger
had passed. With a pint of warm Guinness. Or two. Because Veronica notwithstanding, he’d had a very top-notch, lucrative day.
He looked around. Every cab was taken. There wasn’t a bus in sight. He had ten more seconds at most before Veronica spotted
him.
Nine, eight, seven…
On six, a horse and carriage trotted smartly out of Central Park, turned onto Central Park West, and stopped in front of him
for a red light. A wrinkled, gray-haired speck of a woman in an elaborate gown in the back of the open carriage cried down
to him, “A marquis walking! How charmingly odd!”
Not as charmingly odd as a costumed grandma in a carriage on a sweltering June evening at West Seventy-second and the park,
but this was no time to quibble. Sam’s life had always been a precarious balance of creativity, luck, and strange circumstance,
and he recognized this hatter-mad and/or drunk doddering woman for what she was at once: plan C.
He bowed deeply to the dowager and said, “Marquis? You are mistaken, madam. I am a duke. Duke Whatthe-hell.” Then he added
for good measure, “The third.”
The opposing light turned yellow. He couldn’t see Veronica, but he was sure her heels were clicking his death march on the
opposite sidewalk.
“Ah! A duke!” The old woman gazed down at him adoringly. “But a duke walking? Do climb in! I’m on my way to see my granddaughter.” Her accent was British, but just muddled enough for Sam to guess it
was part of the act.
The opposing light clicked red.
Sam vaulted into the rig just as his light turned green. The horse pulled forward, incongruous and regal in the stream of
yellow taxis and commuters. It was messy business, leaving a woman who, somehow, despite his up-front declarations of perpetual
bachelorhood, had gotten the wrong idea.
He ought to be better at it by now.
He glanced back. Veronica stared down the avenue in the wrong direction. His doorman, Clive, however, had seen the whole affair
and shot Sam a crisp salute.
Sam leaned back against the leather seat, bathed in triumph, even though he knew his escape was temporary. He found the blade
of grass in his pocket and planted it back between his teeth. “To whom do I owe the pleasure?” he asked the costumed woman
beside him. She was delicate, practically see-through, with soft, unfocused pale blue eyes. Her pink lace gown was high-waisted
with puff sleeves, spot-on for the dresses in the endless Jane Austen movies he’d been dragged to by excited, weeping dates
whose names he had long forgotten, if he’d even bothered to learn their names in the first place. Gad, those movies. Besides
the torture of having to see his native England on-screen (he shuddered just to think about it), the movies were too close
to his own life for comfort. He preferred The Terminator.
“I am Lady Donatella,” the old woman said, her voice clear and steady. “But since you will marry my granddaughter, you can
call me Granny Donny.”
Marry? Bollocks. The word chilled his heart.
He had almost been looking forward to finding out Lady Donatella’s story. Now he’d have to jump out at the first red light
and bid the sweet, unhinged woman a hasty farewell.
Except that the blue of the old woman’s eyes was so pure, her lips so well drawn. That she was a gentlewoman and as such required
the escort of a duke was obvious, and he rose to the occasion with a sense of duty his up-bringing demanded, despite the sense
of foreboding that was spreading from his frozen heart to ice his veins.
Ally Giordano was leaving New York City. She had waited exactly as long as she had promised herself she’d wait—ten years.
Time was up. Her parents hadn’t come back, and now it was time to move on.
In the last two weeks, she had sold her parents’ left-behind possessions, from her father’s dusty brown over-coat still hanging
in the front closet to her mother’s three jewelry boxes that had been crammed under the bed. What she couldn’t sell, she’d
given away.
The bittersweet, empty feeling of all this discarding was offset by the stunning success she’d had in planning her move, as
if it was meant to be. She had found a ridiculously sunny, cheap studio in the Noe Valley section of San Francisco. A miracle,
she was told. Then, to her utter surprise, another miracle. She’d gotten her dream job as a tenth-grade English teacher at
the Ludington Charter School. It was the chance of a lifetime to teach at one of the most progressive, successful high schools
in the country.
There was nothing to tie her to New York now but her beloved grandmother, who luckily was still ferocious and tenacious at
eighty-four, perfectly capable of fending for herself and perfectly rich enough to jump on a plane to the coast to visit Ally
whenever she pleased. In fact, Granny Donny had urged Ally to get out while the getting was good. She knew better than anyone
how badly Ally needed to leave the past behind. “Go. Have fun. Get laid,” Granny Donny had said when the move to San Francisco
was set. She had patted Ally’s hand, not taking her eyes from the mah-jongg table in her stately living room at the Plaza
Hotel where she kept an elaborate apartment. The gray- and blue-haired mah-jongg ladies had nodded their agreement, Mrs. Ludith
using the opportunity to slip a tile into the sleeve of her green cashmere cardigan.
That was two weeks ago. Ally had been so busy getting ready to go, she hadn’t seen her grandmother since. She knew she was
avoiding saying good-bye. She hated goodbyes. She’d do it tomorrow. And she wouldn’t cry.
As Ally sealed the last box with packing tape, her apartment mate, June, glided into Ally’s bedroom. June had just come home
from her three-hour afternoon work-out with her dance company and was eating a mouse-size dinner of rice and greens, if pecking
at a bowl with chop-sticks could be considered eating.
June was gorgeous, smart, and happy. Her fiancé, William Cho, was moving in as soon as Ally moved out in three days.
Ally wasn’t wild about Will. She thought he was a little on the cold side. It was June’s enormous, extended family just over
the bridge in Nutley, New Jersey, that made Ally jealous with longing. Just seeing the leftover dumplings from their family
feasts in the fridge sometimes brought tears to Ally’s eyes.
June flopped down onto a ratty red armchair Ally was leaving behind. Her muscular legs swung rhythmically over the armrest.
She sniffed suspiciously at the grains of rice. Maybe she could smell which ones contained an extra fraction of a calorie.
June was edgier than usual this month because her dance troupe, the Mephistopheles Project, was deciding which ten dancers would go on tour to Europe this summer and which ten would be left behind. June was never
the stay-at-home one, so Ally couldn’t take her roomie’s nerves seriously. Everything always worked out for June. She was
that kind of person. But Ally liked her anyway.
“See you didn’t manage to get dressed today,” June said, motioning to Ally’s pajamas. “How’s the head?”
“Is it still there? It feels like I packed it by mistake.” Being a Person Who Didn’t Drink, Ally was still suffering from
drinking three beers at her good-bye/birthday party the night before. She had never been a partier.
Or a smoker.
Or a drug user. Or a gambler. Or a sex kitten…
Hell, she wasn’t even a jaywalker, which in New York City meant her ethical standards were just a smidge higher than, say,
cloistered nuns circa 1602. Ally had never met a rule she didn’t follow.
“Cutting loose before you move from an apartment you’ve lived in your whole life is allowed, you know.” June chewed each grain
of rice like it was a mouthful. Ally was going to miss the way her roommate ate, or rather, didn’t eat. She was going to miss
a lot about her. But Will’s clothes were already in the drawers; his Mets poster was newly hung on the kitchen wall where
Ally’s Monet print had been. They were all ready to move on.
A rap at the front door startled both women out of their individual reveries. They lived in what their landlord Tony called
a “garden” apartment, despite the lack of anything even remotely resembling a garden. What it really meant was that their
door, shadowed under the grand stairs that led to the three aboveground apartments in their converted brownstone, opened directly
onto 113th Street, and any nut who wanted to knock on it could.
But it wasn’t the nuts that frightened Ally.
She braced herself for the dreaded hope that rose within her whenever there was an unexpected knock: They came back for me.
June’s face got serious. “Hey, it’s Ma and Pa,” June said, just like she always said when someone knocked unexpectedly or
the phone rang in the middle of the night or Ally just got that look on her face for no reason beyond a sense that her parents were near.
“Think they bought me a lousy T-shirt?” Ally asked. My parents got wicked into debt from their gambling problem, then went on the run, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.
June had been through this a million times with Ally. The two of them said the exact same thing every single time, and every
single time, those few dumb words grounded Ally. My fantasy about my parents returning is ridiculous. I am twenty-four years old. Twenty-five at 8:42 p.m. tomorrow. I don’t
need them and I don’t care. Especially now. I am leaving.
Ally could hug her friend for understanding how much it helped to state her ridiculous fantasies out loud so that she could
hear how idiotic they were. “Why am I leaving you again?” Ally asked.
“So Will and I can have loud, wild sex without worrying about the schoolteacher in the next room.” June softened her voice.
“You okay?”
“Not a twinge of hope for the impossible,” Ally lied. There was a twinge of hope. But just that. Totally manageable. “Let
the wild sex begin.” Another knock at the door, this time harder. “If that’s Will, I’ll go out and see a movie.”
“Please. I’m much too tired to let the wild sex begin tonight. Plus, you and me only have three more nights together, so if
it’s Will, I’m kicking him out. He can cope for a few nights without me. That’s what Internet porn is for.” June floated to
the living room.
Last chance, Mom and Dad. After I turn twenty-five tomorrow, I’m gone for you forever. It had been an arbitrary date—ten years since their running off and leaving Ally with her grandmother—but Ally was determined
to stand by it. It was a childish test, she knew, but still, they had failed. Of course, Ally had been a ball of ridiculous,
irrational emotion these last few days, wondering if they’d come through and show up at the last minute, as if they could
sense her made-up time limit from wherever they were—a cosmic pull, an invisible thread that connected parents to daughter.
She’d read about things like that. Like most things she read about families, though, it seemed to be bull.
June rose onto her toes to peer through the peephole. “Granny Donny!” she cried. She threw open the door, and in bustled Ally’s
granny Donatella. “What a lovely surprise.”
Granny Donny launched herself into June’s arms. For an instant, Ally thought she had seen a horse out on the street, but it
was hard to tell, as the space over her grandmother’s shoulder became filled with a tall man who entered the apartment behind
her.
Tall beautiful man. He had a long piece of grass gone to seed sticking out of his mouth. He was beautifully and expensively dressed, yet somehow,
remarkably askew.
Ally tried not to stare.
Which, despite the man’s stunning beauty, wasn’t hard, as Ally had just fully registered that Granny Donny was wearing a ball
gown.
Of another century.
And it was pink.
“Granny Donny, how are you?” Ally asked her eccentric grandmother, not at all sure that she wanted to know.
Rakes, rogues, ne’er-do-wells—Princess Alexandra despised them all. Unfortunately, the only thing more insufferable than a
man of low morals was a man of high morals. This was why she spent inordinate amounts of time with her horse, a mare.
—From The Dulcet Duke
Ally, dear, may I present to you the Duke of—” Granny Donny paused, confusion clouding her usually radiant face.
The man bowed. “I am the Duke of Midfield. Duke Whatthehell,” he said. “At your service.”
Ally’s stomach lurched. The man, her grandmother’s ball gown, and the confused look on her grandmother’s face all signified
the same thing: trouble. Ally tried to still the panic building inside her. What was going on here? Eccentric as her grandmother
usually was, this felt different. It felt serious.
It felt sickening.
The man rose from his bow and Ally exhaled the breath that had caught in her throat. His black hair was a disheveled mess,
sticking up in points here and there, as if a personal wind had been blowing it around unmercifully all afternoon. His black
suit was ridiculously well cut, but cockeyed and open. His yellow silk tie was loose and half undone. The wind again. The
guy was a walking tornado of invisible forces.
Hormones. Ally knew the type well from teaching high school. Only usually the type wasn’t a grown-up.
But this was no time to be mesmerized by a beautiful man. She focused on her grandmother.
Oh, hell.
Granny Donny leaned in to kiss Ally’s cheek. She smelled old-fashioned, like lavender water. Ally had been hoping she would
smell of rum, and that this was just a drunken escapade. No such luck. “I’ve brought you a husband,” she whispered.
Ally looked at the stunning man. His eyes were riveted on June’s chest. “Not such a good one,” she whispered back.
“It’s your job to fix that, dear.” Granny Donny gave her a shove toward the man.
Ally stumbled into him. He caught and righted her with an ease that said, No worries. I’m used to women careening into me, willy-nilly, all day long. She didn’t make a dent in his concentration on June, who was leading a shaky Granny Donny to the couch.
Whatever was going on, the timing was lousy. Not now, Grandma. I’m leaving. I can’t stay. Remember my deadline? But no matter how hard she thought it, she knew her plans were about to get thrown out the window. There was no one else
to take care of her grandmother if something . . .
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