The Husband List by Janet Evanovich, Dorien Kelly Page B

might never know when that might come in handy.”
    “As soon as she marries her almost duke,” Jack said.
    Caroline stopped and looked back at him. “I’d be careful with that talk of marriage if I were you, Jack. You could be the first to fall.”
    “What are you talking about?” he asked.
    “How do you feel about a winter wedding?”
    “I feel that it has nothing to do with me.”
    “Maybe we should bet on who marries first,” Caroline said.
    “Heiresses do not gamble.”
    Caroline laughed. “Who told you that?”
    Flora released Caroline’s arm. “Well, here we are, almost back at the cottage.” She feigned a yawn. “I’ve had a long day. Jack, may I trust you to see Caroline safely back to the Longhornes’?”
    “Of course, but let me walk you to your door,” he said.
    “I doubt I’ll be waylaid by thieves and brigands between here and there. I’ll leave you two to do your arguing … or your courting … all on your own.”
    Courting? If this was courting, Jack would be a bachelor for life.

 
    EIGHT
    Caroline floated on a wave of excitement as intoxicating as her favorite champagne. She had knocked tough Jack off-balance again, and she’d accomplished that only a few times in her life. She breathed in the sweet night air—and her happiness—as Jack watched Flora make her way to her summer cottage.
    Caroline might not fully understand the friendship those two shared, but she appreciated Jack’s loyalty toward Flora. And even his protectiveness, though Caroline had never met a woman more capable of guiding her own affairs—likely even literally—than Mrs. Willoughby.
    Flora slipped inside The Reefs. Now it was just the two of them.
    Caroline said the first thing that came to mind. “Have you missed me, Jack?”
    He stood silent for a moment. “It’s been less than two days since we last saw each other.”
    “True, but that doesn’t answer the question I asked.”
    He held out his arm. “Let’s get you back to Villa Blanca before you’re caught wandering in the night by your hawk of a mother.”
    She took his arm and nearly shivered at the contact. Perhaps she’d been too hasty this morning when thinking she preferred chilly marble nudes over warm, flesh-and-sinew men. Or at least this particular man. But if she continued to think of Jack in such terms, she would knock herself off-balance.
    “I was not wandering,” she said firmly. “I was taking an invigorating walk. And you still have not answered my question. Have you missed me?”
    He laughed. “You should be a lawyer. You’re relentless.”
    “I will consider that a compliment.”
    “It was meant as one, though I’d rather see that relentlessness turned on someone other than me.”
    “But I can only share it with you. I would frighten others.”
    “You sound as though you enjoy that thought,” he said.
    The humor in his voice made her smile.
    “I do. Very much,” she replied as they headed back to the pathway that threaded along the coastline toward Villa Blanca. “You have no idea how wonderful it is to be myself … not to have to remember that a well-behaved heiress must not possess a contentious bone in her body. Or that a well-behaved heiress must always defer to the gentleman. His preferences must become hers.”
    “What are your preferences?”
    Other than when it came to her choice of sugar or not at a tea, she couldn’t recall having been asked that question. Caroline considered her list.
    “French champagne, Greek philosophers, and American men. And I am not alone in the preference for American men,” she added.
    “Meaning?”
    “I had a most informative morning with Harriet Vandermeulen. It seems she has you scheduled as the groom in a December wedding.”
    His pace did not falter. “Me?”
    “Yes, you. And as you know, Harriet can be quite relentless, too.”
    “She’ll have to be more than relentless. It will take a gun aimed at me to get me to the altar.”
    “I would not discount the