The Engagement Party. Barbara Boswell

out on the prairie in her sturdy pioneer clothes, weaving cloth and drawing water from the well and hitching the oxen to the plow. A hardy frontier type.”

      “My parents thought Biblical names would be proper and appropriate for us,” Hannah murmured. “My older sisters are Sarah and Deborah and my brother—”

      “Must be Noah?” The tip of his tongue tickled the sensitive skin of her throat.

      Hannah shifted against him. “Actually he’s Baylor Carleton Farley IV. When it came to their son, Farley tradition was considered even more proper and appropriate than the Bible.”

      Her head was spinning. His lips felt cool and firm yet soft against her skin. How would they feel against her mouth? Her eyes drifted shut and she stifled a moan.

      “Your name should conjure up an image that is sensuous and exotic,” Matthew said huskily. “Beautiful, like you are.” His caresses were growing bolder. One big hand slid down to audaciously knead the curve of her thigh. The other slipped under the thick curtain of her hair to curl around the nape of her neck. “If you were my creation, I’d call you Vanessa or Jacqueline, maybe Juliet or—”

      “What about Alexandra?” Hannah blurted out.

      Matthew went still. Then his fingers sank into her hair and he grasped a handful to pull her head back, forcing her to meet his gaze. He was not gentle. Hannah felt the pressure on the roots of her hair, but even more alarming was the hard, angry glitter in his onyx eyes. “What game to you think you’re playing, little girl?”

      Hannah berated herself as a prattling fool. The name had just slipped out in an unguarded moment, and no wonder. She was still burning with curiosity about why Alexandra Wyndham’s name happened to be written in Matthew’s copy of The First Families of South Carolina. During the shag contest, she’d moved as if on automatic pilot, her footwork independent of her mind, which was focused on Matthew Granger and his probable reason for being in Clover. Alexandra’s name seemed to be a major clue.

      Hannah stared at Matthew, wide-eyed.

      Had she given herself away? Did he now know for sure that she’d been snooping in his things? If he was here for nefarious purposes, he wouldn’t want anyone armed with evidence against him. Would he consider her decidedly sketchy knowledge to be evidence? Her pulse raced into overdrive.

      “I want an answer from you,” Matthew demanded, tightening his grip.

      Hannah was alarmed, but she’d never been a meekly passive type who allowed anyone to bully her. She wasn’t about to turn into one now, either, not even with Matthew the Possible Mobster holding her by the hair.

      “You’re the one playing games,” she said with a bravado she was far from feeling. “Consigning my perfectly respectable name to pioneer drudgery and renaming me Jacqueline or Vanessa. Well, I happen to have an opinion in the matter, too, and if I were to be renamed, I’m partial to the name Alexandra.”

      She decided she might as well go for broke. To pretend that she knew nothing of his aspirations concerning the Wyndham estate by initiating the subject of the Wyndhams herself. It was a form of reverse psychology, and at this point she had nothing to lose.

      “Alexandra is the name of one of the most attractive, elegant women in town. I think the name exudes class and style, just like she does.” Was this working? Hannah wondered nervously. Or was he planning where to stash her body before he pulled the heist. “I think Alexandra Wyndham must be close to fifty years old but she looks years younger,” she chatted on. “She has dark hair, and not even Jeannie Potts knows if she dyes it, but she must at her age, right? And of course, she has the Wyndham blue eyes. All the Wyndhams have these deep, vivid blue eyes. I don’t think there’s every been a brown-eyed Wyndham.”

      Her words swirled around Matthew’s head. She was talking about his mother! A maelstrom of emotion surged through him. His body was already charged and throbbing with unslaked desire for this maddening, enticing woman he held so close, and the unexpected information about the stranger who’d given birth to him unleashed the tight reins of his control. Talking wasn’t enough for him. He had to act.

      Hannah felt like a wind-up toy that had just wound down. “Well, I guess we’ve exhausted that subject, haven’t we?” She managed a shaky smile.

      Her faced burned under his steady stare, and his silence daunted her more than any threats he might have made. She saw sexual intent and something else, something she couldn’t identify, flaming in his eyes.

      Still holding her hair, he suddenly, firmly, cupped her chin with his other hand and took her mouth with his.

      It was a rough, wild kiss, his lips demanding, his tongue rapacious as it invaded her mouth, taking possession. Hannah was too shocked to protest, and then it was too late. She didn’t want to protest.

      A hot swell of excitement crashed through her, and she trembled from the force of the fast-building urgency. She was only vaguely aware that Matthew’s arms folded her deeply in his embrace, that her own arms had wound around his neck as her body surged against his.

      The kiss deepened and grew more intimate, more insistent. Pure raw pleasure flooded her. Her senses were filled with Matthew, with the feel and the scent and the taste of him. His hands stroked and caressed, learning the soft, warm curves of her body, smoothing over her back and then gliding around her ribs, where his fingers stopped maddeningly, tantalizingly just below the underside of her aching breasts.

      Hannah’s mind clouded. The music and the voices of the party guests receded into the hazy distance. She was aware only of Matthew and the strong mastery of his hands and his lips, of the intoxicating combination of hunger and pleasure he evoked in her.

      Lost in this delicious world of sensation, she obeyed all the sensuous, unspoken commands. When he finally lifted his mouth from hers to kiss the slender white curve of her neck, she tilted her head to give him greater access. As his hands slid slowly, seductively, over her hips to cup her bottom and lift her higher and harder against him, she settled herself, snuggling into the cradle of his thighs. She wanted to be as close as a woman could be to a man. To have him full and hard, deep inside her.

      “Hannah!” he groaned. Suddenly it struck him as having all the sexy, exotic appeal of Vanessa or Jacqueline because it was her name.

      He opened his mouth over hers again, luring her tongue into an erotic little duel. His whole body was taut and hard with a wild urgency, the force of which he had never before experienced. When was the last time that a flash of sparkling eyes had sent him reeling? When was the last time that a woman’s kiss had shattered his iron control?

      Never. This was the first time.

      The raging need she evoked drove him higher. Her spicy feminine scent drugged him, and the feel of her rounded softness yielding to his frame obliterated all thought but one. To take her. To make her his own.

      Hannah felt that virile power within him and sensed that his control was tentative at best. As was her own. She was dizzy with excitement, drunk on a passion she had never before experienced. She ached, she wanted...

      “Wow! When it comes to amour, those two make our guests of honor look like chaste kissin’ cousins!” The loud, rather drunken male voice was followed by some wolf whistles and clapping. It was a shocking intrusion into the private, passionate world where Hannah and Matthew had retreated. Confused, slightly disoriented, they broke apart to find themselves in the spotlight. Literally. Sean Fitzgerald was shining a flashlight on them as he kept up a running commentary. “Say, Abby and Ben, you ought to watch these two and take notes. You might pick up some useful tips for the honeymoon.”

      The crowd was laughing. Matthew blinked at the light. He draped his arm around Hannah’s waist and gazed down at her. She looked irresistibly sexy, her cheeks flushed, her raven hair tousled, her lips softly swollen from his kisses.

      She also looked mortified, her big gray eyes stricken. Matthew felt possessive and protective and positively enraged that the grinning jokester was embarrassing her.