A Basket of Wishes is magical. Seriously, magic. There's this fairy, you see...
Well, I'll let you read for yourself.
Can love’s tender spell
melt the icy heart of a duke?
Jourdian
Amberville, the Duke of Heathcourte, is looking for the perfect bride. A
practical and staid companion who will fit into his perfectly ordered life and
never tempt him to fall in love. What he is not
looking for is a violet-eyed sprite who tumbles right out of the sky to knock
him off his horse.
Jourdian
doesn’t know that Splendor is an actual fairy princess seeking the human mate
she is destined to love. After they are forced to wed to avert a scandal,
Jourdian realizes his new wife is no ordinary duchess, but a tender-hearted
temptress who talks to animals and weeps diamond teardrops.
The delightful
chaos the mischievous beauty brings to his life threatens to make him lose not
only his temper…but his heart.
If
Jourdian is to keep Splendor, he must learn to surrender that heart to the
strongest, most dangerous magic of all—the magic of true love.
In
this morsel from A Basket of Wishes,
Jourdian Amberville, the Duke of Heathcourte has just been unseated from his
horse by a peculiar young woman who seemed to tumble right out of the sky…
Jourdian saw a burst of silver light, then a
flash of white before Magnus shied, bucked, and reared.
Unprepared for his horse’s sudden panic, Jourdian
fell off the frightened stallion and toppled to the cold ground. Pain surged
through his head; his thoughts swayed dizzily through his mind. He felt
displaced, as if he wasn’t really there but was only watching what was
happening from another place.
He shut his eyes.
Stars danced before him. Not unusual, considering
the hard fall he’d taken. But why did he think he smelled spring wildflowers?
The fresh fragrance was so real, it was almost as if he were lying amidst a bed
of the fragile blossoms.
May flowers in November? God, his fall must have
been worse than he’d realized.
He lay motionless, still watching stars twinkle. A
moment later, he felt as though something pressed against his chest. It didn’t
weigh much, but it was there, just like the scent of wildflowers that lingered
around him.
He opened his eyes and saw other eyes. Violet eyes,
and they gazed at him with a combination of curiosity and pleasure. Full of
sparkle and fringed with long, thick lashes, they were the sweetest, most
mesmerizing eyes Jourdian had ever beheld, and he felt powerless to look away
from them.
The owner of the pretty lavender eyes lay fully
upon him, and it wasn’t at all difficult to discern her sex. The only thing she
was wearing was the cloak of her copper hair, the alluring perfume of spring
wildflowers…
And stars. The tiny lights shimmered all over her.
She looked like an angel.
Disbelief slammed into him. “Am—am I dead?”
She shook her head.
An angel wouldn’t lie, Jourdian decided. He wasn’t
dead. Closing his eyes again, he strove for a plausible explanation.
Maybe he’d been knocked unconscious. Perhaps the
naked, sweetly scented girl was but a dream, a figment of his senseless state.
A real person wouldn’t go strolling through fields without clothes
on—especially on a chilly November day. A dream would also explain her slight
weight. After all, she was composed of nothing but his imagination and a myriad
of silver stars.
But he didn’t feel
asleep. Indeed, he was fully aware of every sight, scent, and sound around him.
What the bloody hell was happening to him?
He opened his eyes, looked at the girl, and again
saw the sparkles swirling around her. Either she was a fantasy or a
constellation had fallen from the sky into his arms. And since a fantasy was
more believable, Jourdian realized then that he was definitely in the throes of
a dream, the most realistic he’d ever experienced.
“Hello,” she said.
The fragile dream spoke, and Jourdian decided her
voice was softer than the stirring of a bird’s wing. Her breath wafted across
his chin, warm like a sunbeam, and her pale pink lips curved into a shy, lovely
smile that wrinkled her small nose in a most enchanting manner.
“Your scent is supremely pleasant,” she told him.
“’Tis the sort one might come upon while meandering through the woods in the
winter.”
Ordinarily, Jourdian would not have returned a
smile given him by a naked stranger lying on top of him, but since he was
obviously out cold he felt perfectly free to participate in and enjoy his dream
to the fullest. Not only did he smile back at her but he also lifted his hands
from the ground and gently clasped her tiny, bare waist.
She was warm and soft, and her scent of wildflowers
flowed through his senses like petals drifting on a gentle breeze.
“Oh,” Splendor whispered when he touched her.
Strength began to trickle through her limbs.
Gradually the energy she’d lost
during her chaotic flight across the meadow returned to her, and it was with
great relief that she realized she would not be forced to shrink to fairy size
to regain what little vigor she possessed.
She shifted, lifting her head from the Trinity’s
broad shoulder and trailing her fingers lightly across his temple. His pulse
thumped beneath the tips of her fingers. A strong and steady beat, it reminded
her anew of the power locked within his massive frame, and she understood then
that the strength she felt flowing through her was not her own, but his.
Excitement rushed through her. Her
great-grandfather and father had been right! Just being close to a human
bolstered a fairy’s vitality.
“You’ve wonderful eyes,” she told him, her gaze
locked with his. “There are some who believe rain has no color, but I will tell
you now that they are wrong. Rain is silver and iridescent, like the wing dust
of certain butterflies and moths. When you rub those wings, the dust glistens
on your fingertip. ’Tis a lovely thing to see. Your eyes are such a silver,
like rain and the glistening wing dust, and I do not think staring into them
for hour upon hour would be a difficult task.”
Jourdian thought about what she’d said. No woman
had ever commented on the color of his eyes before.
“And your lips…” Splendor said. “Full and soft and
slightly parted, and I have a glimpse of your teeth, which are as white as the
water lilies that float in the pond where I bathe. You have no hair on your
face. I am glad for that, for if you wore a beard I would nay have discovered
the mole on your right cheek. ’Tis a mark I find quite dashing.”
“You chatter,” he said, grinning.
“Aye. I cannot help it. I have tried to help it,
but there are so many, many things that occur to me that I fear I would burst
if I could not somehow release them. Sometimes, however, I am as quiet as the
flailing of a snowflake. Many believe me ill when I am so quiet, but I have
only been ill once in my life. A cat scratched me. He was a black cat with eyes
as green as poison. My skin is sensitive, and the cat scratch caused me such
torment that I took to my bed and did not rise for a full fortnight. The cat
would have eaten me alive, and I’m sure that there can be no death more
horrible. I do not like cats. Not at all. I am fond of hens and rabbits,
however, because they don’t chase me as cats do.”
“Rabbits,” he echoed, his mind spinning with all
the things she’d told him. “Cats chase you?”
“Aye, but rabbits and hens do not.”
He smiled again. He simply couldn’t help it. There
was something so sweet, so good about her. “Sprite,” he said softly, touching
one of her shimmering red curls.
She frowned slightly. Did he already know of her
Faerie origins? “Why do you call me so?”
“Sprite? You remind me of one.”
“You have seen sprites?”
He smiled indulgently. “No, but I’m sure they look
like you. Delicate. And shimmery, with impish smiles and whimsical ways about
them.”
He didn’t know what she was, she realized. Sprite was only a pet name. “I am
supremely certain,” she said, “that you are the most beautiful creature ever to
draw breath.” Her gaze caressing his face once more, she grinned at him.
And no power on earth could have kept Jourdian from
kissing that dreamy, dazzling smile. Drawn to her ethereal beauty and intrinsic
goodness, he gently pressed his lips to hers and knew he had never encountered
such sweetness. She tasted like warm honey—literally—as if she had just
partaken of the luscious substance and it yet clung to her lips.
“What—what is this you do?” Splendor whispered, her
mouth still touching his.
Jourdian ended the kiss and saw true bewilderment
floating within her luminous eyes. Well, she was only an illusion, he reminded
himself. A beautiful and innocent chimera who had no way of knowing what a kiss
was.
Far be it from him to allow her to end before he’d
tutored her in the art of sensuality.
“It’s called a kiss,
and we were kissing.”
She thought about that for a moment, but could make
no sense of it. “Why do you do it?”
“You didn’t like it?”
She looked at his lips again. “It didn’t repulse me
in the slightest.”
Her answer rankled. This was his fantasy, damn it all, and he would dream it the way he wanted,
with her writhing in his arms.
He clutched her slight shoulders and touched his
lips to hers once more. A low moan escaped him as he drove his tongue into her
mouth, seeking and finding more of her delectable sweetness.
Surprised though she was by his strange actions,
Splendor felt filled with such incredible strength that she was certain she
could fly around the world. At the very least she felt she could remain human
sized for several days without having to shrink.
“Now how do you feel?”
Jourdian asked smugly.
“Strong! Why, I have never been this strong! ’Tis
magnificent this kissing!”
Strong? Jourdian repeated
mentally. He’d rather hoped that his kiss would make her weak with desire.
Slowly, he slid his hands up the sides of her body,
then moved them over her chest. Her breasts barely filled his palms, but their
size didn’t disappoint him in the least, for they were two handfuls of
exquisite softness.
And the sudden stiffening of her rosy nipples
assured him he was making sensual progress. Gliding his hands downward again,
he moved her hips so that they fit into the cradle of his.
Splendor felt his loins pressing into her.
Confused, fascinated, and curious, she rotated her hips over the thick, turgid
feel of him. “You have become hard and hot, like sunbaked stone. And you grow
in size. The way you have changed… ’Tis as if by magic.”
“Magic?” He smiled. “No, sprite. It’s your beauty
that brings about such changes.”
His statement made her forget to take her next
breath.
“You say I’m beautiful,” she whispered. “That can
only mean that you have succumbed. You will now admit to your enchantment with
me.”
At her bold demand and imperious tone of voice Jourdian
raised a brow. No one but the queen and a dream would dare to speak to him
thus.
“I am waiting,” Splendor said.
He decided to indulge her. She was, after all, only
a fantasy. “Very well, I am enchanted, miss,” he complied, smoothing his hands
over the pale swells of her bottom. “Exceedingly so. But I hardly think that
being enchanted with a dream will serve much purpose other than allowing me a
small time of enjoyment before I wake up.”
Splendor raised her head from his shoulder, her
action spilling her thick hair over the side of his face. He thought her a
dream? Sweet everlasting, how was she to convince him she was real?
Delicious solved the problem for her. The graceful
swan descended from the sky, landed next to Jourdian’s head and, with one quick
motion bestowed a stinging peck upon His Grace’s ear.
“Bloody hell!” Jourdian shouted.
“One cannot feel pain in a dream, can one?”
Splendor asked, sliding her finger down the length of the great bird’s neck.
“This is Delicious. I’m sure he gave you a love bite when he nipped at your
ear, but I shall nay know for certain until I have a word with him later.”
Jourdian’s ear stung viciously, and it came to him
then that his head continued to throb, though only slightly now.
He felt pain.
This was not a dream! The naked girl was real, and
he’d touched her breasts and derrière. He, the duke of Heathcourte, had lain in
a field pawing a girl whose name he did not even know.
Meet Rebecca
Since
her debut novel was published, bestselling author Rebecca Paisley has become
known for creating her very own unique brand of magic on the page. She
decided early in her career to write the sort of books she wanted to read. Her
determination earned her a slot on the Publishers Weekly bestseller list and
the Romance Writer's of America Honor Roll. She's been a RITA finalist, won the
Romantic Times’ “Lifetime Achievement Award” and “Career Achievement Award,” a Reviewers’
Choice Award for “Historical Romance Fantasy” and a “Best Love and Laughter”
Award.
Rebecca
currently lives in North Carolina with her menagerie of beloved pets, still
believes in magic, and still relies on the “pixie voices in her head” to inspire
her as she works on a brand new book.
Follow her on Twitter: @Rebecca_Paisley
E.E.: What prompted you to write
A BASKET OF WISHES?
Rebecca: I have a fascination with
fantasy. Anything magical. I think that’s why I chose romance to write
as well. I have the precise sort of unbridled
imagination needed to write A BASKET OF WISHES.
There were no rules. No “That
could never happen. Please edit that
out.” Because everything COULD
happen. And it did. I had more fun with WISHES than anything else
I’ve ever written and am already working on another story very much like it.
E.E.: What is in your heroine’s
reticule?
Rebecca: Nothing. She’s naked for almost the whole book. Fairies don’t wear clothes, a shocking fact
that has the hero constantly trying to throw a robe or blanket on her.
E.E.: What is your favorite
fairy tale?
Rebecca: Cinderella. I think that story ribbons through every book
I’ve written. I realize women are
perfectly capable of saving themselves most of the time, but I will never stop
loving the thought of a powerful man rescuing a heroine who needs
rescuing. And, really, in all my books
the heroine rescues the hero too.
Also, I love the fairy tale in my own book, A BASKET OF WISHES. Splendor is a very innocent, yet outrageous fairy with an aversion to clothes. But her heart is the purest heart God ever gave to anyone. (Yes, God takes care of His fairies too.) Splendor’s hero, Jourdian, is a man who is sick to death of the wiles of the women who only want him for his fortune and the title of Duchess. Splendor captured me from the first word of the book until THE END. I miss her and still think about her all the time, which is why I want to write another magical book.
E.E.: What is your hero’s kryptonite? What brings him to his knees?
Rebecca: When the heroine gets her
feelings hurt. She doesn’t have to cry
(like I do because I have a mini geyser inside of me), but if he sees even a
tiny flash of hurt in her eyes - however fleeting - it will immediately make
him want to take every smidegeon of hurt away from her. And this is because my heroines are
strong-minded. The hero is used to her
strong will. So when he sees hurt on her
face, he knows whatever hurt her is really, really bad. Sometimes it’s the hero himself who has hurt
her. Sometimes it’s a mean secondary
character. Sometimes it’s a memory. But whatever it is, the hero cannot rest
until joy lights up her gaze once more.
And sometimes he struggles to make her hurt go away before he even likes
her!
E.E.: Who is your favorite cartoon character?
Rebecca: Ummm… Like TV cartoons? That would probably be Frieda. She was the girl with the naturally curly red
hair in the Charlie Brown cartoons. But
while she loved her red curly hair, I hated mine. I used to roll my hair with beer or coke cans
to make it sort of straight. I’d sleep
with the cans on, which meant my head was about 4 inches off the pillow. I’d have a raging headache in the morning,
but at least my hair was kind of a little bit straight when I went to
school. But then by 2nd period (around
10 a.m.) it was all the way curly again, wild and probably laughing at my pitiful
attempt to make it do what it didn’t want to do. Now I love my hair because I don’t have to do
anything to it. No permanents, no
rollers, no relaxing chemicals, nothing.
I just slap some leave-in conditioner on it, and it’s done. Of course, it is still wild and my head looks
like a red dandelion puff, but now I appreciate the hair God gave me.
E.E.: What sound do you love most?
Rebecca: When my children,
Paisley and Emo, tell me they love me.
After those sweet words… I think
my kitty’s purring and my dogs wagging their tails on the floor. I live near lots of horse pastures, and I
love to hear the horses neigh and whinny, and the sounds of their hooves
beating the ground when they run makes me feel so good. Non-alive sounds I love are beach waves,
rain, and the quiet nothing of snow.
E.E.: What feeds your creativity?
Rebecca: I like to watch unusual
people. I like accents and the stories
people tell about most anything. Old things fascinate me. Recently I went through a stage that had me
seeking very old chimneys. They were
usually in the woods, the houses they’d once been in long gone. I sat on or near those old chimneys. Old things tell stories if you allow them to
do so. I saw an old chimney one time that
had a very loose brick. It was almost
falling out, and I wondered why. Because
the rest of the chimney was very strong.
So why was that one precise brick about to fall out? My imagination did a jig, and ideas started
coming to me instantly. My creativity is
never satisfied with normal things. It
takes a normal thing and turns it into something quirky. I can’t write about normal things. I’ve tried, but just cannot do it.
E.E.: What book is up next?
Rebecca: I have several
started. One is a contemporary that I am
having a very hard time with. I don’t
think contemporary stories match with the way I think and feel. I have also begun an historical that deals
with a lot of animals and my feelings about those critters who are
unwanted. There is some magic in that
story that keeps my creativity happy. A
third book has to do with a piece of metal.
We see the piece of metal in very odd places throughout the course of
the book. That, too, allows my
imagination complete freedom with no fences.
Commenters can enter a drawing for a $25 Amazon gift card, awarded by Rebecca's publisher, Amber House Books.
What is your favorite fairy tale, and why?
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Maybe she saw something in this man that she recognized as rare. A part of him that was wise beyond his years. Attraction or defiance. It didn’t matter for Andrea. Not at this moment. She was totally enthralled by Pete’s kissing abilities. Something she hadn’t experienced in a long time, if ever.
