Real Men Wear Plaid!. Rhonda Nelson

my cat, Fitzwilliam. Fitz for short.”

      He turned to her and grinned. “That attached to Mr. Darcy, are you?”

      She chewed the inside of her cheek. “He’s one of my favorite Austen heroes, although I have to say that Mr. Knightley is a contender as well.”

      He sighed dramatically and scratched his chest. “How are real men supposed to compete?”

      She chuckled. “They could begin by emulating,” she said.

      “Ah,” he breathed knowingly. “Thanks for the tip.”

      “Do you want to read the book?” she asked, her eyes twinkling with humor. “Perhaps brush up on your hero tactics?”

      “I thought I did an admirable job being a hero yesterday.”

      She chuckled again. “Had I needed rescuing it would have been heroic indeed. Since I didn’t, it was merely nice.”

      “Nice?” he repeated. “That was all?”

      “Nice is excellent,” she said.

      “But still not heroic?”

      She gave her head a lamentable shake and bit her lip. “Sorry, no.”

      His gaze tangled with hers. “Then I’ll just have to try harder.”

      “That’s the spirit,” she said, giving a little rah-rah gesture.

      Laughing softly, he pilfered through her bag and extracted the last three items. A little sewing kit, a package of prawn-flavored crisps and a folded letter.

      The letter instantly piqued his curiosity, but opening it felt a little too invasive. Gemma frowned when she saw it. “Let me have that, please,” she said.

      “You don’t recognize it?”

      “I recognize the handwriting on the outside, but don’t know how it got there.”

      He dutifully handed it over and she quickly scanned its contents, blushing a deep red when she was finished.

      “Something wrong?” he asked, concerned.

      “No,” she told him, her voice curiously strangled. “It’s a note from Jeffrey. He must have snuck it into my bag before he left yesterday. I don’t know how I missed it last night,” she remarked, quickly folding it back up and stowing it in her pocket.

      “I hope that he apologized at least,” Ewan said, wondering very much what had put that particular shade of red in her cheeks.

      “He did.”

      “Did he offer any excuse?”

      “Mmm-hmm.”

      When she didn’t elaborate, he held up the crisps. “You like these?” he asked skeptically.

      She grimaced. “Of course not. They sound terrible. They’re proof. No one would have believed me if I’d just told them about them.”

      He smiled. “So you bought them?”

      “Yes. As proof. I don’t have a dictionary in that bag, otherwise I would give it to you.”

      “Oh, I understand the word,” he said, laughing. “I’m just having a hard time comprehending the reason behind it.” He sighed and shook his head, felt something in his chest lighten and ripple like a single pebble against a pond’s surface. “You’re an interesting woman, Gemma Wentworth.”

      “Thank you. I think.”

      He smiled at her, reached forward and loosened a strand of hair that had gotten stuck to her lower lip. “It’s a compliment. Much better to be interesting than boring and predictable.”

      She smiled. “No one has ever accused me of being either of those things.”

      And he imagined no one ever would. She was a breath of fresh air, smart and pretty, clever and irreverent and sexy as hell. He knew that she couldn’t be perfect—perfect people didn’t exist and if they did he suspected they’d be boring—but she was about as perfect for him as a girl could get. Ewan stilled, jolted.

      Now there was a frightening thought if there ever was one.