New excerpt from 'Wylde at Heart'

“You haven’t changed, John. Always running away when situations became tough. Even now. I did wrong to believe more of you.”

“That was always your problem, wasn’t it, Anne? You never believed in me at all.”

“You never gave me reason to.” At his growl, she let her mouth break into a gaping hole making hollow sounds. “So, thank you, on behalf of the Fernsby Ladies Literati, for your kind and generous donation.” She paused, letting her eyes rake over him one final time. She wanted to unglove her hand and hold it out to him, to have his angry hot lips graze her bare knuckles. One last touch to brand his name into her bones. But she also longed to slap him. Hard. To hear her hand crack sharp against his arrogant stubbled cheek. To have it hurt him red stinging sore, to leaving him feeling, but for a moment, some of her pain.

Instead she nodded, turned, and crossed the hall to the door his manservant held open.

“See you in another twenty years,” John said, his tone full of boredom.

His stick tapped on the tiled hall, and she turned at the doorway determined to have the last word.

But all utterance died.

Two young women waited halfway on the stairs, holding their arms out to him, crimson and indigo dresses falling off their shoulders, dishevelled hair, smiles wide, inviting him up in lewd whispers. He stretched out his arms to them, then leaned forward to get his foot balanced on the stair, his vest rising against his white shirt, as if already undressing.