Nights In White Satin

Nights In White Satin
Jule McBride

Bridget Benning has been on more bad dates than any woman in New York–thanks to the family wedding curse. Why, she's even applied to list her dating disasters in the Guinness Book of World Records! Luckily she has one man she can count on–best buddy Dermott Brandt.He always has a strong, sexy shoulder to cry on. He's even willing to help her break the crazy curse by snooping around the family home, which is supposedly haunted.Neither expect to end up in bed together, but they can't deny their long-simmering attraction. Can friends who become lovers deal with the changes? More important, will the wedding curse kill any chances of a stroll down the aisle?

“I want to sleep with you,” Bridget murmured

Words were forming before Dermott thought them through. If the truth be told, he’d waited just as many years to speak them as he’d waited to have her beneath him in bed. “You’re not going to play with my emotions, Bridge. Not now. Not at this stage of the game.”

She looked crushed, her face falling. “Game?” she managed to say. “Its just sex….”

He couldn’t believe how hot she looked for it, either, as she offered the half lift of a bare shoulder that seemed so silky, smooth and delicious that his mouth watered. “Aren’t you even curious?” she asked.

That was the problem. He had been for years. He’d dropped plenty of hints about them winding up between the sheets. Now he tried to look unaffected, even though he was painfully aroused. “You’re the one who always said no.”

“That was then.”

He leaned closer. Her breath was on his cheek, his lips and in his hair. “And this is now?”

Nodding, she whispered, “Just sex.”

But they both knew it was more than that.

Dear Reader,

Manhattan aside, the American rural South is my favorite place to write about. No one can ignore the pull of the environment—the slow, sexy drawls of Southern men, the mysterious woods thick with ancient, moss-hung cypress trees, the ambling quality of life, not to mention the lure of so much living history.

So welcome to the second installment of BIG APPLE BRIDES! I hope you’ll have a blast with middle sister Bridget Benning as she joins her buddy Dermott and flies off to battle ghosts on a plantation, determined to end the wedding curse holding her back!

In May 2005 watch for I Thee Bed…, the last book in the BIG APPLE BRIDES miniseries.

Writing romance for the past decade has been a great delight of my life, as has reading so many upbeat love stories designed to lift our spirits, feed our souls, make us laugh and nurture our faith in the lighter side of life—love!

Happy reading!

Jule McBride

Nights in White Satin

Jule McBride

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

Contents

Prologue (#u57176f0f-249c-581f-8e94-8c7ecc7228fe)

Chapter 1 (#u36d8620f-2281-5f70-918b-d3e960526f33)

Chapter 2 (#u88262401-9813-535f-afa2-cef612881f6c)

Chapter 3 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 4 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Prologue

Big Swamp, Florida,

a dark stormy February night in the late 1860s…

“HURRY, Miss Marissa! We must run!”

“Don’t you tell me what to do, Lavinia,” returned Miss Marissa Jennings in a hushed, terrified drawl as thick as cold molasses. She cast the Creole housekeeper a furious look, her green eyes glistening with tears, then she glanced around the parlor of her fiancé’s plantation, her pale fingers clutching the skirt of the wedding dress she’d waited so long to wear, her mind barely able to process that she might not marry Forrest tonight as planned. Surely, he and Reverend George were on their way, she thought, her fingers tightening around the gown’s white satin. Lifting the hem above her ankles, she exposed a pair of white slippers, preparing to do as Lavinia had said—run! The gorgeous cluster of diamonds Forrest had given her sparkled when she glanced down. It seemed centuries ago that she’d been given the ring, centuries since her slippers had been hand-beaded by her mama, long before the war drew near and they’d all blissfully envisioned the Jenningses and Hartleys gathering at Hartley House for the wedding.

“Hurry!” Lavinia urged as lightning flashed, her voice scarcely audible over cannonballs, rifle fire and the shouts of looting Yankees as they circled nearer, some on foot, some whipping neighing horses into a frenzy. “We’ve got to hide in the swamp!”

“We can’t go out there, Lavinia!” The gale-force wind would sweep them from their feet, killing them before any Yankees could. “What if Forrest comes?”

“He’ll find us.”

Another lie. A deafening boom sounded, and a flash of fire lit the sky in bright white light that threw the parlor into bas relief. For a second, Marissa could see Lavinia clearly—a small-boned woman who wore her hair plaited in tidy rows—before they were plunged into near-darkness again. Only a lit taper in the housekeeper’s hand illuminated the fear in her eyes, the flickering, wind-tossed flame tinting her skin with a red glow like that which burned beyond the windows.

Marissa’s eyes blurred with tears, her heart beating in terror for her groom. Surely he was on his way! She’d sooner die than leave this home they were to share! How could she abandon things her beloved Forrest had worked so hard to attain? How could she let all this beauty be pawed by crass, looting Yankees?

“We should have gone weeks ago, Miss Marissa!” assured Lavinia, pushing Marissa toward a doorway. Tears splashed Marissa’s cheeks, falling as hard as the rain against the windowpanes as she cast a last glance around the parlor—taking in a chandelier Forrest had brought from Paris, then a pedestal table and a fireplace hewn from unpolished jagged pieces of local quarry rock. Forrest had been so precise when decorating the room, especially regarding how she should pose for her portrait and where it should hang, the key to their secret hiding place. The portrait had been removed now, but she could still see marks indicating its position.

“The chandelier!” she protested, her heart wrenching. Forrest had called it their mistletoe. Oh, how they’d kissed beneath it, holding each other and shuddering with need, wanting to consummate their passion, but reined in by the desperation of restraint, knowing it would be well worth the wait. She and Lavinia had tugged on the heavy light fixture, hoping to hide it, although it wouldn’t fit beneath the upstairs floorboards where they’d put the jewelry—all but the ring still on Marissa’s finger. The chandelier seemed to have grown a mind of its own, though, as if it had decided it wasn’t leaving Hartley House; it had taken root in a medallion of ceiling molding, as immobile as cypress trees and salt marshes.

Her heart aching, Marissa sucked in a sharp breath. She and Lavinia had been hiding here, cut off from civilization for what felt like eternity, the field hands long gone, and now Marissa realized she’d been a fool, waiting for Forrest to come back from the war. And yet he’d returned. Just a week ago, she’d seen him for the first time in two years. Appearing like a vision from one of Lavinia’s prophetic dreams, he’d been far off, coming down the shell-covered driveway in the heat of a Florida February afternoon. It was long after the morning dew had burned off and the sun had risen high in the sky, looking wavelike as it shimmered on the driveway. Forrest had appeared, without warning, wounded but still walking, using his rifle as a crutch.

Marissa had fainted dead away, but Lavinia had run for the salts, and Marissa had awakened to find her own true love peppering her cheeks with kisses. Of course, Forrest had wanted to turn around and head for the war again, but he’d suffered a gunshot wound and his leg needed tending. Even worse, he’d said the Yankees were coming.

Oh, she’d wanted nothing more than to nurse her well-loved warrior. As he’d rested this week, she’d sat beside him, staring at the man she intended to wake beside every day of her life and whose babies would soon be growing inside her. They’d decided to marry before his return to the front and spend at least one passionate night. And then she and Lavinia would travel to Marissa’s sister’s house two counties away. It never occurred to them that the Yankees would get this far, nearly to the front door of Hartley House. Come tomorrow, Forrest was to have joined the few men left in town to march north. But Forrest was dead. He had to be. No one could survive what was happening now.

“Follow me,” Lavinia commanded, turning on her heel and heading through the parlor, toward a back door.

Marissa had frozen in place. Forrest’s ring! She couldn’t wear it into the swamp. Now she wished she’d let Lavinia hide it under the floorboards with the rest of the jewelry. There wasn’t time to go back upstairs, though. Her eyes darted around the parlor—taking in the pedestal table, the space where her portrait had hung and the mantle. She’d hide the ring in her and Forrest’s special place, she thought, her heart pounding when she knelt, her heavy white skirts cushioning her knees as she twisted the ring from her finger. Oh, please, be safe here, she thought, slipping the ring into the hiding place. Then she wrenched as Lavinia’s voice sounded again. “Hurry!”