The first meeting on WIP Wednesday

This crucial scene in a romance novel is sometimes called the meet cute. Received wisdom is that it needs to happen early in the book, perhaps on the first page. Myself, I’ve never been good at Rules, so I’ve written books where the meet cute is delayed — in one case, until the middle of the book. (But I did have an alternative hero as a stand-in for the first half.)

This week, I’m inviting authors to give me their meet cute, that first meeting when sparks fly. Mine is from House of Thorns, which is coming out as part of the Scarsdale Publishing Marriages of Inconvenience line, and which I’m currently editing. Does it count as a meet cute if the heroine is unconscious?

The intruder stealing his roses had lovely ankles.

Bear Gavenor paused at the corner of the house, the better to enjoy the sight. The scraping of wood on stone had drawn him from the warmth of the kitchen, where the only fire in this overgrown cottage kept the unseasonable chill at bay. He placed each foot carefully and silently—not from stealth but from long habit. The woman perched precariously on the rickety ladder seemed oblivious to his presence.

Or, his sour experiences in London suggested, she knew full well, and her display was for his benefit. Certainly, the sight was having an effect. Her skirt rose as she stretched, showing worn but neat walking boots. Her inadequate jacket molded to curves that dried his mouth. Wind plastered her skirts to lower curves that had him hardening in an instant, visions of plunder screaming into his mind.

It had been too long since his last willing widow.

Disgust at his own weakness as much as irritation at the invasion of his privacy, fueled Bear’s full-throated roar. “Who the hell are you, and what are you doing with my roses?”

She jerked around, then cried out as the rung she stood on snapped free of the upright. Bear lunged toward her as the ladder slid sideways. One upright caught on the tangle of rose branches and the other continued its descent. The woman threw out both hands but the branch she grasped snapped free and — before Bear could throw himself under her — she crashed onto the ground.

If the fall was deliberate — which would not surprise him after some of the things women had done to attract his attention — she had made too good a job of it. She lay still and white in a crumpled heap, her head lying on a corner of a flagstone in the path. He dropped to one knee beside her and slipped a hand into the rich hair. His fingers came away bloody.

As he ran his hands swiftly over the rest of her body, checking for anything that seemed twisted out of shape or that hurt enough to rouse her, a large drop of rain splashed onto his neck, followed by a spattering of more and then a deluge. He cursed as he lifted the woman and ran into the house through the garden doors that opened from the room he’d chosen for his study.

She was a bare handful, lighter than she should have been for her height, though well-endowed in all the right places. He set her on the sofa and straightened. He needed a doctor, but didn’t want to leave her while he fetched one. If the small village nearby even had a doctor.

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