Badly Done, Emma Lee

Maybe it won’t work out. But maybe seeing if it does will be the best adventure ever!

It is finally Saturday morning. Knightley will be here any minute to give me a proper lesson on the right way to drive on the wrong side of the road. I am, I believe, dressed appropriately for the occasion in black skinny jeans, black cashmere sweater over a white blouse, charcoal wool blazer, and Gucci riding boots. I have braided my hair into a loose fishtail braid and am debating on whether to add a supercute herringbone flat cap I found in my aunt’s dresser when I think I hear a car pulling up the drive. My stomach tenses.

I look in the mirror and immediately recognize the signs—ridiculous smile, flushed cheeks, eyes reflecting excitement and terror.

Lawd have mercy! I have a crush on Knightley Nickerson, y’all. Just a teensy-tiny crush. He dropped me off in front of the cottage six days and eleven hours ago. Since then, I have only thought about him a few dozen times (per hour). I might have thought about him more often if I had not been so busy. I met with Miss Isabella three whole afternoons to work on our Weddings at Welldon scheme. I have had lunch with Deidre in her candy shop, met with Vicar Parsons about hosting a church-sponsored singles mixer, helped the Swinbrooks walk their puppies around the village, helped Mrs. Waites wash and set her hair, and met Bingley for Pilates in the Park.

I even visited with William Curtis. In an effort to strengthen our neighborly bonds, I invited him to Wood House for tea and cucumber sandwiches made with cucumbers picked from Hayley’s garden (her stock boy called in sick, so I helped unload a truck full of fresh produce grown on her farm and she gave me bags of fruits and veggies to say thanks). It turns out, William is not as kooky as I first thought. He is an excellent conversationalist, once you make it past his dire warnings about environmental and ingestible hazards. I learned he attended medical school but realized medicine was not for him (medical practice, that is). When he discovered his fiancée (I know! William Curtis was engaged! How does a germophobe even date—what with all the touching and macking?) was having an affair with his physiology professor, he switched to chemistry and pharmaceutical studies.

The sound of the front door knocker striking wood echoes down the hall and a wave of sick rises in my throat. I think I am going to be physically ill. I can’t spend the next three hours in a teeny-tiny car with Knightley Nickerson—not after the previous week. What should I do? What should I do?

I sit on the commode and take a deep breath. I could send him a text and say I ate one of Harriet’s Nutella muffins and now I think I have the Zika virus. Wait! Don’t you contract Zika from a bite by an infected mosquito?

I could tell him I have a rare form of Tourette syndrome that causes me to kiss people randomly and spontaneously. Yes! That might work. Then we could go on as if I hadn’t molested him in my aunt’s garden. We could continue our big-brother/little-sister relationship, but with sexual chemistry.

Ew. Now that just sounds creepy.

I could climb out the bathroom window and catch the next bus to Heathrow. An eight-hour flight to JFK, quick hop in a puddle jumper to Charleston, and my stint as the Great Gloucestershire Matchmaker is nothing more than an impetuous youthful liaison, an indiscretion.

No. I cannot leave Northam. I promised Deidre I would read the first draft of her Queen Victoria child-rearing manual. I am meeting Johnny Amor in London next week. I must find Miss Isabella a Russian tycoon with forty million pounds in the bank and a little salt-and-pepper at the temples. I have people to meet and matches to make. And the girls are coming over tonight for our first ever makeup and mayhem (I am still working on the name of what is sure to become a regular event).

I stand up, spritz the air with Viva La Juicy, and twirl in a little circle. The knocking has stopped. I assume Knightley is sitting in his car or on the front step, so I am surprised when I step out of the bathroom and find him standing in the hallway. Dominating the hallway, really. His broad shoulders practically touching the walls, his head bent to avoid hitting the low ceiling.

“Knightley!”

“Emma Lee!”

The Viva La Juicy–scented air feels heavy and still, like it does back home before a hurricane. We stare at each other, and I wonder if this is what the romance novelists mean when they write about sexual tension, this terrifying feeling of being trapped in a mighty storm, your body humming with unspent electrical charges, the world around you growing darker by the second, fading away.

“Oh, bloody hell,” he mutters.

I have one flickering moment of clarity, the calm before the storm, and then Knightley is pulling me into his arms, kissing me with a frantic, fevered kind of passion. It happens fast—like lightning bolting across a night sky—mesmerizing, breathtaking, the sort of kissing that leaves a body awestruck or devastated.

This is not a Disney kiss.

We continue kissing, sliding our hands over each other’s bodies in a frenzied rush, until Knightley pulls away and draws a jagged breath.

We stare at each other, two survivors surveying the wreckage, wondering if they made it through the eye. I am not gonna lie, y’all, I would give my Kappa Kappa Gamma key to know if the look in Knightley’s eye is regret. Is he trying to think of a plausible excuse for kissing me?

I expect him to say he is suffering from a rare form of Tourette syndrome or a Nutella-induced brain tumor, but the fictitious excuse never comes.

Instead, he smiles and reaches for my flat cap.

He lifts my cap off my head and sends it flying down the hallway with a flick of his tanned wrist. Then he unbuttons his shirt one button at a time until he is standing in the hallway as barechested as the day the good Lord made him. He lifts me into his arms and carries me to the closest bedroom.

What happens next would never make it past the Disney censors and leaves me thinking, Flynn Rider? Flynn Rider who?

* * *

“You are a natural at this,” Knightley says.

“You don’t think I am going too slow?”

“Slow is good, especially when you are just starting out.”

I shift the car into a lower gear and follow the traffic through Stowe-on-the-Wold. After we—you know—Knightley suggested we drive to Stowe-on-the-Wold for their annual cheese and chocolate festival. He said it would give me a good chance to practice driving and expose me to local cuisine.

Knightley directs me to a parking lot and I pull into a free space, engaging the parking brake and switching off the engine.

“Well?”

“A little more experience mastering the roundabouts and you will be ready for the next Wales Rally.”

“Get out,” I say, thumping him on the arm. “Be serious.”

“I am serious,” he says, tucking a flyaway behind my ear. “I would let you drive me anywhere, Miss Maxwell.”

“Thank you, Mr. Nickerson.” I put my keys in my pocket. “I will remember that if I decide to start a motorsport and need a navigator.”

He laughs.

“Now, didn’t you say something about lunch?”

We wander through the stalls, buying bottles of locally made cider, a jar of tomato chutney, pork pies, a loaf of Shepherd’s Bread sprinkled with Cornish sea salt, a carton of juicy raspberries, and two different types of cheese: Double Gloucester, a hard, nutty cheese flecked with bits of onion and chives, and Wigmore, a creamy cheese that melts on the tongue. Knightley purchases two boxes of chocolate truffles filled with sweetened elderberry jelly—one for me and one for Miss Isabella. Then, we drive to a field between Nether Westcote and Little Slaughter and have a late lunch on a tarp we found in the back of my aunt’s car.

Knightley picks a bunch of wild daffodils and presents them to me with a slight, Jane Austen–worthy bow, before dropping down on the tarp and popping a raspberry in his mouth.

We munch on soft bread and hard cheese and he tells me about his life in London, the long days spent managing a major publishing house, the after-hours press parties, book launches, and charitable events.

“What about after work?”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you do for fun? What do you do to unwind?”

He brushes the crumbs from his lap and then lays back on the tarp, closing his eyes and turning his gorgeous face to the sun. Sweet Jesus, but he is handsome.

“I do not relax when I am in London.” He takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. “I jog in the park every morning to keep fit. Once a week, I meet my mates at the club for a session.”

“The club?”

“The Thames Rowing Club.” He makes a rowing motion with his arms. “Did you think I meant dancing?”

“Yes.”

He drops his arms, chuckling.

“Do you like to dance?”

He grabs my arm and pulls me on top of him, my head resting on his muscular chest. I listen to his heartbeat and try not to shiver as he runs his fingers through my hair.

“I would like to dance with you.”

“I am serious.”

“Do you want me to like dancing, Emma Lee?”

I am a cheerleader. I love motion of any sort, especially dancing. I can’t imagine dating a man who didn’t like to dance.

“Yes.”

“Then, yes, I love dancing.”

“I don’t believe you,” I say, laughing.

“Are you questioning my veracity, Miss Maxwell?” he says, his lips grazing my forehead.

“I believe I am, Mr. Nickerson.”

“Well then,” he says, sitting up. “There is nothing for it. You force me to prove myself to you.”

He grabs his iPhone and stands up. I watch him tap his phone screen, waiting, and a second later, the computerized xylophone beats of Ed Sheeran’s latest love ballad begin playing. The same love ballad I use for my ringtone.

He grins and holds out his hand.

“Here?” I look at the nearby road, the cars puttering by on their way to Stowe-on-the-Wold. “Now?”

“Here. Now.”