Chapter 49

Jasmine nodded coolly to the secretary on the way out, easily stopping a passing taxi once she was outside to take her to the restaurant where she was lunching with her mother. No one looking at her could have guessed at the thoughts going through her beautiful head. She was going to have a book published! She, Jasmine Leclaire Templeton, had written a children's book good enough to be published! After years of feeling as if she were no more than Collins' wife and mother of their almost four year old son, she was at last able to claim she had done something without his help or influence since their marriage. Not that there would be much money in her writing, James Colnbrook had already warned her, but just to have some sort of independence, if only an intellectual one, was something to her. And she didn't need the money, she was married to a rich man, and still had money of her own. No, this feeling of accomplishment was what she needed, what she craved.

She'd gladly quit her