Excerpt of Judge Not by Denise Gwen

Mirabelle looked up into a pair of bright green eyes with a wince. Oh, Lord, now she’d have to make polite chit-chat for the second time today. Only this time, she also had to deal with the sudden tumble of her belly and the way her pulse quickened beneath his grass-green gaze. Not what she’d prepared for at all.

He grinned. “That’s quite a line, isn’t it?”

Stumbling to recover, she nodded. “Yes, indeed, it is.”

Low and resonating, his chuckle thrummed through her, soothing down her nerves. Unable to resist the beckoning of his warm smile, she gave in to a light laugh, and a little of the tension hovering in the air dissipated.

“I don’t recall if I introduced myself to you in the taxicab, but I’m Kevin Porter.” He reached across the table to shake her hand.

With some difficulty due to the crutches she’d propped up against the right side of the table, she extended her hand. “Mirabelle Levange.”

Clumsily, he half-grabbed her fingers and squeezed them. Poor man. A successful businessman, as he no doubt was, he must have been expecting a full-palmed handshake. Instead, here she sat, twit of the world, offering him a limp, flaccid hand. Thoroughly shameful. Didn’t people judge others by the firmness and quality of their handshakes? Didn’t it mean something awful, terrible even, when a person couldn’t give another human being a full-bodied handshake? A flush crept into her cheeks. Good grief, could this get any worse?