Today on First Kiss Friday, it is my pleasure to bring back Caroline Warfield and the first kiss scene from her latest release The Renegade Wife. I just loved this book and I hope you’ll enjoy the following excerpt. Happy reading!
The Renegade Wife: Children of Empire Series Book 1
The First Kiss
We. The word hung between them. She couldn’t look away. They stood for a long time in the narrow hallway before he closed the space between them. He moved so gradually that she didn’t realize it until his mouth was inches from hers, his warmth surrounded her, and his eyes searched hers. She couldn’t say if those eyes searched for permission; she couldn’t think at all. There was only awareness: of the man, of his warmth, of his bedroom door feet away.
The kiss came gently, a touch, a caress. She let herself feel it, starved for tenderness, and she breathed in his scent—pine and wood smoke. Her hands slid up his rough shirt, around his neck, and into the hair that hung to his collar.
Long fingers cupped her head then, splaying into her hair, and he deepened the kiss softly, gently without force. She opened gladly.
When he began to unbutton her dress she stiffened and put her hands on his chest to push him away. Perhaps it was the sensation of cold. Perhaps it was the intrusion. Perhaps reason simply asserted itself. Meggy didn’t know what brought her to her senses. She had forgotten much for a few moments, but one fact came to her clearly.
“I’m married, Rand! Fergus may be a poor excuse for a human being, but he’s still my husband. Nothing changes that.”
She almost wept when he responded immediately, respectful and concerned. He stood back, but he reached out a hand to caress her cheek.
“I’m sorry, Meggy. You deserve better.”
About The Renegade Wife
Upper Canada 1832
Betrayed by his cousin and the woman he loved, Rand Wheatly fled England, his dreams of a loving family shattered. He clings to his solitude in an isolated cabin in Upper Canada. Returning from a business trip to find a widow and two children squatting in his house, he flies into a rage. He wants her gone, but her children are sick and injured, and his heart is not as hard as he likes to pretend.
Meggy Blair harbors a secret, and she’ll do whatever it takes to keep her children safe. She’d hopes to hide with her Ojibwa grandmother, if she can find the woman and her people. She doesn’t expect to find shelter with a quiet, solitary man, a man who lowers his defensive walls enough to let Meggy and her children in.
Their idyllic interlude is shattered when Meggy’s brutal husband appears to claim his children. She isn’t a widow, but a wife, a woman who betrayed the man she was supposed to love, just as Rand’s sweetheart betrayed him. He soon discovers why Meggy is on the run, but time is running out. To save them all, Rand must return to England and his family to face his demons.
The Series: Children of Empire
Raised with all the privilege of the English aristocracy, forged on the edges of the British Empire, men and woman of the early Victorian age seek their own destiny and make their mark on history. The heroes and heroines of Caroline’s Dangerous Series overcame challenges even after their happy ending. Their children seek their own happiness in distant lands in Children of Empire.
The book may be read for free on Kindle Unlimited or purchased at Amazon.
About the Author
Award winning author Caroline Warfield has been many things: traveler, librarian, poet, raiser of children, bird watcher, Internet and Web services manager, conference speaker, indexer, tech writer, genealogist—even a nun. She reckons she is on at least her third act, happily working in an office surrounded by windows while she lets her characters lead her to adventures in England and the far-flung corners of the British Empire. She nudges them to explore the riskiest territory of all, the human heart.
Visit Caroline’s Website and Blog
Meet Caroline on Facebook
Follow Caroline on Twitter
Email Caroline directly warfieldcaro@gmail.com
Subscribe to Caroline’s newsletter
Renegade Wife Pinterest Board
Caroline’s Other Books
Dangerous Works, a novella prequel to both Children of Empire and the Dangerous Series (and in which Rand first appears) is available for free at:
Barnes&Noble | Kobo | Amazon | Smashwords