"A handsome businessman discovers why GENTLEMEN PREFER BRUNETTES (4) when he meets an adorable chef at a book signing and strikes a bargain to exchange his help on a camping trip for her cooking. Liz Fielding pens a colorful tale with witty dialogue, charming characters and a playful premise"

The bachelor, the blonde and the brunette!

 here are two things Nick Jefferson can’t resist;  a challenge and a blonde!  So when the latest platinum-haired woman to cross his path challenges him to cook her a romantic dinner, what else can he do but accept?  Unfortunately Nick could burn water.  Which is where chef Cassie Cornwell comes in.

Cassie is not Nick’s type.  For one thing she’s a brunette.  For another she’s the only woman ever to turn Nick down … reluctantly.  Her first marriage has made her wary of sweet-talking playboys, but even she has to admit to being disappointed that Nick only wants her to prepare a seduction feast rather than to share one.  Unless, of course, Cassie can persuade him that blondes aren’t necessarily more fun…

CASSANDRA Cornwell had a problem.  Or rather she had three of them, all male.  Added to that, she was suffering from writer's cramp, smile fatigue and a serious lack of caffeine. 

She looked up, hoping to catch Beth's eye, but her friend was too busy flinging herself into the arms of a man who had just walked through the door to notice her plight.   

'Nick, darling!' 

Beth's squeal of pleasure turned every head in the shop and Cassie paused mid-signature as "Nick darling" bent from his considerable height to kiss Beth's cheek. 

The movement sent a thick cowlick of hair the colour of clear dark honey sliding over a broad, tanned forehead.  'Beth, you look gorgeous.'  His voice was honey too - warm honey, running with butter over thick crunchy toast.  'I don't know why I ever let you get away.' 

The squeal of pleasure, Cassie decided, had been thoroughly justified.  The man was sex on a pair of very long legs, with a smile that fanned around a pair of dark eyes that she could tell, even from this distance, would make any woman feel beautiful, desired.  The kind of man any girl would be a fool to take seriously.    

Beth clearly knew that.  'There were just too many distractions, I guess,' she said, laughing.  'Let's see.  There was Janine Grey ...  Georgia Thompson ...  Caroline Clifford,' she ticked off the names on her fingers, 'and rumour had it that Diana Morgan ...' 

'Enough, Beth!  Enough!'  "Nick darling" held his hands up in mock surrender.  'I've never denied it.  I just have this incurable weakness for tall blondes.'

'Tall, beautiful, willowy blondes,' Beth said, somewhat pointedly, as he hugged her own full curves.  'It's a weakness that will get you into big trouble one of these days.'

'Is that a promise?'

'You are appalling, Nick.  When are you going to grow up?'

His grin was an admission that Beth was right.  But he wasn't contrite, far from it.  'Never, I hope.  How's Harry?' 

'Harry, bless him, is content with a tubby redhead.  Long may it continue.'

'Not tubby, Beth.  Deliciously curvaceous,' Nick murmured. 

Beth snorted.  Cassandra felt like snorting too.  You could have too much honey.  'You'll never change.  But mark my words, some woman will steal that playboy heart of yours one of these days.  Just when you're least expecting it.'

'Common gossip has it that I don't have a heart to steal, Beth.'

'I know, but who listens to common gossip?'  She linked her arm through his and gave it a squeeze.  'Is this a social call, darling, or are you buying?'

'I'm looking for a present for Helen, it's her birthday next week and I saw you had a celebrity book signing ...' 

Nick Jefferson glanced across at the table piled high with books and found himself being soaked up by a pair of butterscotch eyes, eyes that were regarding him with the kind of look more usually bestowed upon a naughty puppy.  Exasperated and trying very hard to be firm.  But not quite making it. 

Any sensible puppy worth a chocolate button would simply roll over and offer his tummy to be tickled.  Nick wasn't a puppy so he contented himself with crossing the shop for a closer look. 

He'd been on his way into the office when he'd noticed the poster announcing that Cassandra Cornwell, celebrated television cook, would be signing copies of her new book that day between eleven and twelve o'clock. He'd sent his secretary down at eleven, but she'd come back saying the place was mobbed and she'd go back later.  But later she'd been rushing to get out some figures for him. 

He could have called Beth and asked him to have a signed copy put by for him, but it occurred to him that if she was that busy it wouldn't be kind to drag her away to take a phone call when he was just a few floors above her.  So he'd come himself.  He was rather glad he had.

If he'd thought about Cassandra Cornwell he might have expected some middle-aged matron with red cheeks, greying hair and a slightly bossy manner.  But she was none of those things.  She had clear translucent skin, thick glossy brows, eyes that smiled even when they were trying not to and dark, lustrous hair that was escaping her attempts to pin it tidily away from her face. 

And she had the sweetest mouth.  Like her eyes, it seemed to smile all by itself and he had this disconcerting urge to kiss it, certain that it would taste exactly like the strawberries he'd stolen from his mother's kitchen garden as a boy.    

'... and you know how she loves to cook,' he finished, slowly. 

'I'm not sure that I'd want a cookery book for my birthday,' Beth was saying, as she followed him across the store.  'But heck, I'm not above parting a customer from his money, especially one as well-endowed with the stuff as you.  Cassie, do you know Nick Jefferson?'  Behind his back she silently pointed upwards at the office block rising above them, indicating that he that Jefferson.    

She tried to keep a straight face as Beth continued her pantomime, pointing at her wedding ring and shaking her head and then doing a melodramatic death scene which Cassie took to mean that he was the kind of man a girl would die for. 

Apparently sensing something was going on behind his back Nick began to turn but Cassie swiftly stuck out her hand and said, 'No, we haven't met.' 

'Why?' he said, enfolding - there was no other word that described the way her took her hand, Cassie decided, he enfolded it, very tenderly in his own.  His long, cool fingers seemed to reach up to her wrist, their tips resting lightly against a pulse that was fluttering in a quite ridiculous way.  'If you live in Melchester -'

She blinked at the casual ease with which he flirted.  'It's a big place, Mr Jefferson.'  And she avoided the social circuit.

'Nick,' he urged.

'Nick, this is Cassandra Cornwell, a woman whose pastry could break your heart.  She catered my wedding, met a television researcher my brother was dating at the time and the rest is history.'

He glanced back at Beth, now fully recovered from her dramatic rendition of Nick Jefferson's bachelor status and leaning against the cash desk.  'History?'

'Television history.  Cassie has the biggest television ratings for a cookery programme in the history of broadcasting.  Woman watch her programmes to learn how to cook the way their mothers used to.  Men watch her television programmes and drool.'  She gave Nick a thoughtful look.  'It may be her sticky toffee pudding that attracts them, but somehow I don't think so.'

'No, I don't think so either.' 

'She's just come back to Melchester to live.'

'Lucky Melchester.'  Despite the fact that she was at least six inches short of his gold standard and, like Beth, her figure leaned towards cuddly rather than super-model slender, Cassandra Cornwell, he decided, was exactly the kind of woman a man might fantasize about finding in his kitchen at the end of a hard day at the office.  Warm, comforting, homely.  Someone to massage your neck and put a drink in your hand to keep you happy until she served a meal fit for the gods.  In short, the kind of girl a man would marry just to keep her all to himself.  Not his type at all, in fact.  Except for those lips.  

From the book GENTLEMEN PREFER...BRUNETTES by Liz Fielding
ISBN 978-0373174072
Imprint: Romance TM
(R) & TM are trademarks of the publisher