Total pages in book: 16
Estimated words: 14872 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 74(@200wpm)___ 59(@250wpm)___ 50(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 14872 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 74(@200wpm)___ 59(@250wpm)___ 50(@300wpm)
Okay, in all fairness, on the few occasions that we’d been out together, he had shown exemplary manners.
And if I’m being totally honest, the truth is that when I get around him I forget all about his background and get caught up in his magnetism.
He does have a certain way about him that makes me feel like a dainty little porcelain doll. Like all the men who come into my orbit, he was obviously enamored of me, but unlike the others, he refused to let my charm sway him.
I just couldn’t live with that for the rest of my life. I wouldn’t mind feeling all that strength and animalistic power of his covering me just once, I’ve even dreamt about it, but the price was too high.
Chapter 2
How had my life come to this? Where had everything gone off the rails? I was just home after graduating from Loyola, after four years.
I had to go to school locally, because mama didn’t think it was right for a girl to go too far away from home, unless she was going off to get married.
It suited me just fine, once I got over my resentment of not being able to go up north somewhere, which is what I’d wanted to do.
At least this way I was still the belle of the ball. Everyone in New Orleans knew my family name and I was treated in the manner in which I was accustomed to.
I know that sounds pompous to some, but that’s just the way it is, it’s how I was raised. I have mama’s sense of entitlement as a gently bred southern belle, and daddy’s strong mindedness. All my life I’ve been given my way.
As the oldest child, I always got the best first, my little sister Melissa and younger brother Justin looked up to me, and I simply adored them. But I had been an only child for five whole years before Melissa came along, and those five years set a trend, if you know what I mean.
I’m not selfish, at least no one has ever accused me of such a thing. But I know what I want and heaven help anyone who tries to stand in my way.
Though most southern gentlemen preferred sons to daughters, my daddy wasn’t of that bent. He loved my brother who’d come along seven years after my birth yes, but I was the apple of his eye.
As he puts it, I’m the first of his body and nothing’s going to change that. He had a big hand in shaping the woman that I am today, so if mama wanted to blame someone for my bull-headedness, as she likes to call it, then she only had to look to her husband. My daddy loves showing me off; he always has, ever since I was a little bitty thing.
I can remember standing at his knee, while he was conducting business at his big old desk in his upstairs office, and he’d just be going on and on about how smart I was and everyone always said how beautiful I was, and how I was going to grow up to be a real stunner.
So how did this happen? I'm my daddy's little doll baby; he gives me everything I want. Always have, but on this one thing, the most important thing in my life, he's decided to leave it up to mama, and everybody knows mama has a few screws loose.
I don't even know where she found this family anyways. The Dubois family has been the leading family in these parts since the first settlers came here back in the early seventeen hundreds.
Now all of a sudden the Durants are supposed to be top dog. A more redneck, hillbilly bunch you'd never meet.
Daddy got into some trouble on account of the economy going bust, and I'm the newest commodity. Our shipping company needs new blood, which means money, and I'm being sold.
Well I'm taking myself off the market. I’m only twenty two years old; I’m in no way ready to tie myself to some man, and especially not one that hasn’t got the sense of a goat.
I never even met him before a couple of weeks ago. I knew of their existence of course, everybody does, because of their wealth, but I’d never had occasion to run into any of them since they lived on the other side of the Parish thank heavens.
He was handsome enough I guess, with his broad shoulders and strong looking arms. He wore his hair shorn short and his panther green eyes weren’t too bad either.
I guess neither was the fact that he moved like the cat he reminded me of. We’d had a few nice evenings together, and I’d been really beginning to fall for him there for a while.
But I wasn’t about to marry any man that told me what to do even before the ring was on my finger.