Julie Kistler - Scandal

Jordan reached out one finger to touch his soft bottom lip. Yep. He was still there, tangible and 3-D. “Wow.”

“Do I know you?” he asked.

He narrowed his eyes, boldly surveying her from top to bottom, making her feel warm under his intent gaze. And more turned on than ever. She didn’t feel free and saucy anymore in her miniskirt and camisole. Instead with her skirt scrunched up and covering almost nothing, Jordan felt indecent, naked, exposed.

“I thought—” He broke off and then started again, pulling his eyes away from her body to focus on her face. “You seem very familiar to me. But surely I’d remember if we’d met before.”

“Only in my dreams,” she said without thinking. The vivid memory of the lovemaking in those dreams was making her heart beat fast. She smiled. “You don’t know how glad I am to finally meet you, Nick.”

Closing her eyes, she tangled her arms around his neck. She held on tight, enjoying the feel of his arousal, so amazingly right . She’d been with him many times in her fantasies. All the things she associated with Nick came flooding back. Comfort, belonging, destiny…

And sex. Oh, yeah.

Dear Reader,

When I was asked to be part of the PERFECT TIMING miniseries for the Harlequin Blaze line, I was eager to jump in. I have always loved time travel. There’s something romantic and exciting about characters leaving their old world behind and leaping into somewhere dangerous and different.

It didn’t take me long to choose turn-of-the-century Chicago, with the lovely White City of the 1893 Columbian Exposition and World’s Fair as a backdrop.

Like my heroine Jordan, I studied history, with “Scandalous Women” such as Catherine the Great and Marie Antoinette showing up in my favorite classes. I love the idea of someone like Jordan—perfectly normal in her own time, longing to rock a few more boats than she really does—hitting Victorian times with a bang!

I tossed Jordan into the White City alongside Nick Tempest, who is himself chafing to break free of the restrictions of wealth and privilege of his time, and upped the ante by sticking them both under a shockingly beautiful marble arch carved with sexually charged images. For Nick and Jordan, the arch’s erotic powers are impossible to resist.

Scandal, sex, art and romance…Sounds like the stuff history is made of!

Happy reading!

Julie Kistler

Julie Kistler is well-known for her fast-paced romantic comedies for the Harlequin Temptation and Harlequin Duets lines. Now she’s excited to be writing for Harlequin Blaze—and flirting with the past in Scandal , part of the PERFECT TIMING time-travel miniseries. “I love a challenge,” this former RITA ®Award nominee exclaims with a grin. Julie and her husband live in Illinois. Check out Julie’s Web site at www.juliekistler.com.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

How to Be a Scandalous Woman, Rule 1:

Throw out the rules.

J ORDAN A LBRIGHT’S OFFICE DOOR creaked open. “Professor Albright? Can I ask you something?”

Without even looking up from her laptop, Jordan said automatically, “No, Catherine the Great did not have sex with a horse. And, no, Marie Antoinette was not a ‘major ho-bag,’ as somebody put it last week.” She smiled as she glanced at the young woman hovering in the doorway. “Anything else you want to know, you’ll have to come to class. And I’m not Professor Albright. Just Jordan, okay?”

But the student lingered, shifting her weight to her other platform sandal. “How did you know what I was going to ask?”

Jordan tried to be patient. “It’s not hard. I’m only teaching one class this semester. Scandalous Women 101. Everybody wants to know the same thing.”

“And you’re sure Catherine the Great never, you know, did it with a horse?” the girl persisted.

“Yes, I’m sure.” With that, Jordan turned her attention back to the display on her computer screen, trying not to be frustrated by this latest in a series of interruptions.

“Thanks, Professor Albright.” The student ducked into the hallway, already moving on.

“Come to class, okay?” Jordan called out after her. This time she didn’t bother to correct the “professor” thing. At twenty-six she was only a few years older than some of her students, so she kind of enjoyed being called “professor” every now and again, even if she hadn’t really achieved that status yet. Nope. Just a lowly grad student. A lowly grad student working desperately to get her PhD sooner rather than later.

Jordan heard footsteps patter down the wood floor of the hallway as the student departed.

Thank goodness. Now if only she could concentrate long enough to figure out a decent ending to the damn dissertation that had been plaguing her for the better part of four years.

Ending. Right. She wiggled in her wooden chair, twisted her long, dark hair into a loose knot, stared down into her laptop screen, and tried to focus. Focus.

Methodically, she scanned the outline that formed the spine of her project, which centered on one particular scandalous woman. She’d begun with her subject’s childhood and family life, moved on to her education and an important trip to Europe, and then dealt with her artistic influences and the effects of wealth and privilege on her development.

She had everything in order, everything perfect, step by step, up to the point that Isabella Tempest, notorious sculptress and the subject of this blasted, never-ending dissertation, had vanished from the pages of history. It was what made Isabella so fascinating and yet so frustrating, all at the same time.

Jordan frowned. The story of a talented artist who’d created the work of a lifetime—a magnificent marble arch brimming with erotic nudes—and then up and disappeared should’ve been the perfect topic for someone involved in the study of scandalous women. It should’ve been a piece of cake. But how could she fully analyze Isabella’s place in history without knowing what had happened to her after the big whoop-de-doo that ended her career in June of 1893?

There had to be something she’d overlooked. Jordan tried to put herself in the right frame of mind to puzzle it out. “Okay, so it’s June 1893,” she mused. She pulled up a picture on her laptop, a wide shot of the Columbian Exposition and World’s Fair in Chicago. “The White City is open for business.”

It was called the White City because of the magnificent, bright white buildings built just for the fair, all gleaming under a dazzling display of electric lights. Famous politicians, dukes and princesses, the cream of society, artists, writers and inventors, citizens from far-off lands including belly dancers, gondoliers and a tribe of alleged cannibals, as well as regular Joes off Chicago’s mean streets, had all come together to see the wonders of the new age and celebrate the 200th anniversary of Columbus “discovering” America. Buffalo Bill, Susan B. Anthony, Teddy Roosevelt, Thomas Edison…Anybody who was anybody was there. With Isabella Tempest right in the middle of it, kicking up a huge scandal.