Who’d have thunk it?

      Holly leaned against the inside of the door and sank to the floor. Monet and Seurat crawled all over her, jostling for attention. She absently scratched them while willing her pulse to slow.

      If anybody had told her uptight Eric Alden’s kisses held more sexual promise than the pages of the Kama Sutra, she’d have laughed. And darn it, she could not turn the page to see what the next chapter revealed.

      How unfair that when she finally met a guy who could singe the toes out of her panty hose, he was the one man she couldn’t have. Not only had she tried and failed to fit into Eric’s world, she’d promised Juliana after the auction that there was nothing sexual about buying her brother’s date package.

      Those melt-her-mascara kisses had made a liar out of her. Her body still hummed and her lips wouldn’t stop tingling, no matter how hard she bit them. If he’d been anybody but Eric, she would have invited him in for more than a nightcap, thereby breaking her born-again virgin vow. But she’d promised herself she wouldn’t settle for anything less than happily ever after next time. If such a thing existed. And she had her doubts. Waiting for a prince—a prince who didn’t need fixing or financial assistance—to love her and all her foibles hadn’t worked thus far. Better to do without a man altogether than be disappointed yet again.

      Holly shoved to her feet and dodged the dogs all the way to her kitchen. She’d have to do a better job of keeping her distance from Eric Alden. She sifted through the pile of magazines and junk mail that had piled up on the counter while she was finishing her current project until she found the bachelor auction brochure. She read over the eleven enchanted evenings promised in Eric’s date package to refresh her memory and groaned. “Talk about monotonousness. Jeez.”

      As long as he didn’t kiss her again, then his offering of meals at stuffy see-and-be-seen restaurants where even the wait staff had condescending attitudes would make ignoring the chemistry between them easy. Each date would be a reminder of the world she’d left behind—the world that had turned on her when she’d dared to sully her hands at manual labor.

      Juliana and Andrea were the only friends who’d stuck by Holly when she’d said to hell with being miserable doing what was expected of her, quit her job at the Caliber Club and moved to her grandparents’ farm. Being happy was more important than being accepted.

      Eric thrived in society with all its restrictions, expectations and conventions, but Holly was a debutante dropout who’d suffocated until she’d escaped. He was a banker who lived by the bottom line, and she was a bleeding heart who’d given away more than she could afford, a situation illustrated by her current predicament. One she needed to address ASAP.

      Despite the smoldering kisses, she and Eric couldn’t be a more mismatched pair—a fact she’d better not forget if he ever hit her with another one of those break-her-celibacy-vow kisses.