Forbidden Pleasures Read Online Free PDF Page B

IV. Emily had gone to the wedding with her grandmothers, and Carter had insisted on having pictures taken of them all together. It was only when she was older and wiser that Emily understood that the now Senator Carter Phelps IV wanted no skeletons in his wife’s closet when he one day ran for public office. Still and all, Carter was a decent guy, Emily thought, and on the rare occasions she saw her half sister and brother she was always made to feel welcome by the Phelps clan.
    And then when she was almost fourteen her father had married, and his bighearted Irish-American wife wanted Emily to come and live with them. Her grandmothers had put a stop to that, and Joe’s wife had gone on to have three sons in five years. There wasn’t a holiday or family occasion that her stepmother hadn’t included her and her grandmothers, or tried to. Emily actually felt far more comfortable with her father’s down-to-earth family than with her mother’s elegant political one.
    Stepping inside her house she heaved a sigh of relief. There was no way she would ever be a city girl, Emily thought. It was good to be home. She had a lot to think about, and a guest room to air out and prepare. Walking into the kitchen she found a note from her housekeeper, Essie: Meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and corn in the microwave. Do two minutes on high. See you tomorrow. Emily smiled and, kicking off the elegant little shoes she had worn into town, pressed the appropriate buttons and waited for her dinner to get hot as she set herself a place at the kitchen table and poured a glass of wine. It had been an interesting day. And it looked like the days ahead were going to continue to be interesting. But she was going to survive this sea change in her life. She was!

CHAPTER TWO

    “ M y dear girl, I care not a fig what you think. I look like I look,” Justin Trahern, the Duke of Malincourt, said to his creator, romance novelist Emilie Shann.
    “You cannot look like Michael Devlin,” Emily said stubbornly.
    “You have imagined me this way,” he told her, and, whirling about, he gazed at himself in the mirror. “Read what you have written. I am quite handsome, and most satisfied with myself. Your last hero wasn’t half the man I am.” He brushed an imaginary speck of dust from the silken sleeve of his plum-colored coat.
    “Oh, go to the devil!” Emily said irritably. “If you insist on looking like him then do so. And what was wrong with the Earl of Throttlesby?”
    “Much too fair for a man, I fear. And his chin was just a trifle weak, dear girl,” the duke replied. Then, looking directly at her, he said, “I want my defiant duchess to look like you, dear girl. I do have a weakness for fair women, especially those with a touch of red in their hair, like yours.” He grinned wickedly at her as he leaned casually against the mantel of his library fireplace.
    “Oh, be quiet,” Emily said, “and let me think, Trahern.” She looked closely at him, considering that he appeared far different from her other heroes. He was more masculine, a bit rougher, and definitely more dangerous, if that look in his green eyes was to be believed—and she suspected it was. He looked like a man who had wild sex. She shifted herself in the big wingback chair. Her heroines had never looked anything like Emily Shanski, but somehow the idea of being the defiant duchess to Justin Trahern’s duke was extremely tempting. “I have to write a more sexually explicit book,” she said.
    “Huzzah! Huzzah!” he answered her with a chuckle. And then he grew serious. “How experienced are you, dear girl? I want to delight you, but not shock you. A lady’s sensibilities must be taken into consideration, y’know.”
    “What does my experience have to do with anything, Trahern?” she demanded to know. She had used the Channel for several years now to create her books so that she might see what she was writing before she wrote it. It allowed her to work more quickly, but