Jan Freed - My Fair Gentleman

Cover Page

Excerpt Special Books by Special Writers The Book: My Fair Gentleman A contemporary, provocative and just plain funny story about changing your life—and other people’s. This is a book to be read and re read. A book to cherish. The Characters: Catherine Eliza Hamilton. A lady (actually, an engaged lady). A dedicated psychologist who’s in danger of being turned into “the perfect hostess.” Faultlessly polite, compulsively neat, she’s also (of all things) a pool hustler And a woman who takes risks… Joe Tucker. An ex-baseball player who’s looking for a new job—one that doesn’t entail modeling underwear. A single father who’s never quite picked up the knack of parenting. A man’s man—a woman’s sex object. And definitely not housebroken. The Author: Jan Freed first burst onto the Superromance scene in May 1995, and readers can’t stop talking about her! Her first novel— Too Many Bosses —is nominated for three Romantic Times awards, and she’s still getting fan letters about her second. The Texas Way. “Jan Freed…has a truly gifted light touch with characters who still manage to tug at the reader’s heart.” —Alexandra Thorn

About The Author ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jan Freed is proud to write in a genre that “presents a hopeful view of life without diminishing its hardships.” A huge fan of musical theater, Jan enjoyed creating her own Americanized and modernized version of My Fair Lady with the roles reversed. “In writing Catherine and Joe’s story, I realized that the strongest romantic partnerships are forged by a willingness to learn from each other, In other words, mutual respect.” Jan lives in Texas with her husband and two children. She loves to hear from readers and invites you to write her at P.O. Box 5009-572, Sugar Land, Texas, 77487.

Title Page My Fair Gentleman Jan Freed www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dedication With love and thanks to my parents, Alta and Vilbry White For giving me the confidence to try, a belief in “happily ever after” and a normal name

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Copyright

Special Books by Special Writers The Book:

My Fair Gentleman

A contemporary, provocative and just plain funny story about changing your life—and other people’s. This is a book to be read and re read. A book to cherish.

The Characters:

Catherine Eliza Hamilton. A lady (actually, an engaged lady). A dedicated psychologist who’s in danger of being turned into “the perfect hostess.” Faultlessly polite, compulsively neat, she’s also (of all things) a pool hustler And a woman who takes risks…

Joe Tucker. An ex-baseball player who’s looking for a new job—one that doesn’t entail modeling underwear. A single father who’s never quite picked up the knack of parenting. A man’s man—a woman’s sex object. And definitely not housebroken.

The Author:

Jan Freed first burst onto the Superromance scene in May 1995, and readers can’t stop talking about her! Her first novel— Too Many Bosses —is nominated for three Romantic Times awards, and she’s still getting fan letters about her second. The Texas Way.

“Jan Freed…has a truly gifted light touch with characters who still manage to tug at the reader’s heart.”

—Alexandra Thorn

Jan Freed is proud to write in a genre that “presents a hopeful view of life without diminishing its hardships.” A huge fan of musical theater, Jan enjoyed creating her own Americanized and modernized version of My Fair Lady with the roles reversed. “In writing Catherine and Joe’s story, I realized that the strongest romantic partnerships are forged by a willingness to learn from each other, In other words, mutual respect.”

Jan lives in Texas with her husband and two children. She loves to hear from readers and invites you to write her at P.O. Box 5009-572, Sugar Land, Texas, 77487.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

With love and thanks to my parents,

Alta and Vilbry White

For giving me the confidence to try,

a belief in “happily ever after”

and a normal name

CATHERINE ELIZA HAMILTON swallowed hard as the duck à I’orange sitting in her stomach threatened to take wing up her throat. If anyone had told her two hours ago she’d wind up in a dive like The Pig’s Gut, she would have choked on her cognac.

Glancing toward the adjacent bar stool, she noted her fiancé’s expression and mentally cringed. Carl was feeling particularly smug tonight. And why not? Driving from the posh Houston restaurant to this small industrial town had been a brilliant tactical move.

She should have set recruiting rules of course. Or at least tried to slant the odds in her favor. Instead, she’d let anger overcome a mind trained in the science of emotional processes. Some psychologist she was. No wonder Carl had seemed amused at dinner by the idea of her establishing a private counseling practice. She’d “counseled” herself into a situation Freud would have sold his id to analyze. Catherine sniffed in self-disgust.

Flat beer, acrid smoke and the smell of male bodies straight from a shift at the oil refinery made her wrinkle her nose. The noise was almost as bad. A country-and-western tune hissed and crackled from an ancient jukebox. Billiard balls clacked. Gruff voices cursed or whooped according to the shot.

Who would have thought Carl Wilson, heir to one of the oldest fortunes in Houston, would have known this hole-in-the-wall existed? Then again, who would have predicted he’d ask her out at all, much less propose marriage after only three months of dating? No one but his parents, that was for sure.

Carl had been disarmingly candid from the beginning. After two failed marriages with beautiful bim-bos, he had to choose a “suitable” wife and provide grandchildren soon, or be cut from his parents’ financial cord once and for all. So this time he’d looked deeper than superficial beauty. This time he’d bypassed lovelier candidates and chosen Catherine for what was in her heart.

Her blue blood.

A fair exchange, all things considered. She was thirty-two years old and both plainer and smarter than most men liked. She’d always longed to have children, and now she had a shot at starting both a family and a new career.

Impatience set her fingertips drumming on the bar. She wished Carl would hurry up and select a guinea pig. One beer-swilling, belly-scratching Cro-Magnon would do as well as another.

“Why not just take the shirt off my back!”

Catherine swiveled her bar stool toward the bellowing voice.

A dark-haired giant of a man whacked down his cue stick, grabbed the hem of his baseball jersey and jerked it over his head. Muscles rippled and stretched. A garish tattoo flashed on one arm.

“How ‘bout my pants, too? They should be worth a few bucks.” He reached for his belt and fumbled with the buckle.