Stolen Kisses

Stolen Kisses is a 1992 romance novel by Sarah Hawkes, under the penname Sally Falcon, published by Meteor Publishing Corporation as part of its short-lived Kismet line of romance novels. She had previously published the book Southern Hospitality, which features members of the Planchet family who reappear in Stolen Kisses.

The book opens with thirty-eight-year-old Jessica Marie (Jessie) DeLord, co-owner of a corporate design firm (Aesthetics, Ltd.), meeting sportscaster Trevor Planchet, “one of Little Rock’s most eligible bachelors,” at a costume party Jessie was attending with Connor MacMurray, a divorce attorney with the demeanor of a “Young Republican recruiter.” She experiences an innate attraction to Trevor, despite also being repulsed by his forward manner, which includes kissing her unasked. Jessie meets him again when she and business partner Gina Caryle present their design for the new offices of Planchet Enterprises, which happens to be led by Trevor’s father, T. L.

Trevor later shows up at Jessie’s workplace to apologize for his previous behavior and takes her for lunch at a café near the Old State House. Jessie remains resistant to his charms, however, and so he arranges for someone from the Quapaw Quarter Association (QQA) to contract with Jessie’s firm for the redecoration of his house while he is out of town, to ready it for one of the association’s regular tours of homes. Later reacting to the deception, she says to Trevor, “You may think you’re God’s gift to women, but you’re the last man I would want for a husband and to father my baby.”

However, she continues working on his house. He says, “I’ll try to keep to the agreement” to interact professionally, “but I won’t promise that I’ll always keep my hands to myself.” Little Rock being a tight-knit community, she encounters him while out on a date at Robinson Auditorium. Gina secretly gives Trevor a list Jessie had made of desirable qualities in a husband, and Jessie ends up being invited by the Planchet family on a camping expedition.

On the trip, she warms to Trevor, and when back in Little Rock she goes out to dinner with him—which ends up being his sister’s rehearsal dinner, as she and fiancé Logan (the two became a couple in Southern Hospitality) have decided to get married quickly. Jessie then attends the wedding as Trevor’s date. Realizing that she loves him, she seduces him after he takes her home. As a surprise, he arranges, within a few days, for his family and her entire family to be present for a surprise wedding on the day of the QQA home tour. An epilogue finds both couples with young children of their own.

For additional information:
Falcon, Sally. Stolen Kisses. Bensalem, PA: Meteor Publishing Company, 1992.

Standridge, Ron. “Books of Love.” Arkansas Times, November 26, 1992, pp. 24–25.

Staff of the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas