Chapter Seven

When at a loss for what to do next, Brooke went to the one place that always brought everything into focus: the Quick Fox. She lived in the pub—well, upstairs from it, but it was more than that. She’d polished the intricately carved wood bar for a few quid as her first job and pulled pints before moving into the back room to help tackle the books.

When the air turned crisp, there’d be a fire crackling in the fireplace tucked into the far wall. The smell of burning wood mixed with the latest village gossip was her favorite. It eased the tension in her shoulders and made her think anything was possible. And that was something she needed right about now, because not only had she just accepted a mission impossible that turned her stomach—making a stubborn American into an English earl—but she couldn’t find the irritating man in question.

The road to the village had been empty of tall, broad men with more muscles than good sense. Same with the forest walkway and the few shops she’d popped into during her search. Oh, everyone had seen the disappearing soon-to-be earl, but no one knew where he was currently.

That just gives you time to formulate a scheme for what to do to him. She jolted to a stop near the Quick Fox. WITH not TO. She would definitely not be doing anything to just-call-me Nick Vane, she promised herself as she began walking again. No matter how much she wanted to know if each of his eight abs was as well-defined as they’d appeared in pictures or if the earl’s private investigator fancied himself a Photoshop expert.

She pulled open the Fox’s solid wood door and walked inside. Her father was behind the bar using the same ratty towel to mop up a spill despite the new microfiber ones she’d gotten him that were more absorbent. Her mum was nowhere to be seen, which meant it must be Village Heritage Committee meeting day. Daisy stood at the end of the bar, oblivious as usual to the undimmed hope in Riley McCann’s gaze as he sat next to her. No matter how many times she’d pointed out to her sister that the rugged forest ranger had a crush on her, Daisy insisted they were just friends.

A smattering of villagers sat at the tables scattered in the cozy space. A few glanced up at her as she walked in, but beyond one or two lifted chins in greeting, no one said hello. That was okay, though. They weren’t demonstrative, but they’d been there for her before and she’d be there for them now. One way or another, she’d figure out how to make things work out.

The light from the beer garden courtyard behind the pub filtered in through the open door that led to the enclosed area that always caught the last bit of sun each day. A cheer sounded through the doorway. No doubt, there was a game going on in the beer garden as everyone enjoyed a pint or two.

Brooke’s shoulders didn’t relax in centimeters. A sense of ease just whooshed through her all at once. These were her people. This was home.

“If it isn’t my little poppet,” her dad called out with his usual greeting.

“I’m almost as tall as you, Dad,” she answered, her usual response as she stopped on the opposite side of Daisy’s from Riley, signing a quick hello to her sister, who returned the greeting with a hello.

Her dad pushed his glasses up his long nose and grinned back at her. “Doesn’t matter—you’ll always be my little one.”

“So how are things today?” The pub’s business had fallen off since the factory closed down and villagers had to travel fifteen kilometers to the next village for work.

He took off his glasses and started to clean them with the torn corner of the bar towel. It was her dad’s biggest tell—a sure sign that business hadn’t picked up.

“Life can’t be all beer and Skittles,” he said with a wink before putting his glasses back on.

“Have you tried out any of the changes I outlined the other month? I know you’re used to how things go now, but if you just implemented a few changes—”

“You still want me to add more wines and have a tasting night?”

“It’s a growth industry.” She’d included the studies to back it up.

Her dad twisted the towel in his hands, dropping his gaze. “That may be the case in Manchester, but this is Bowhaven.”

Glancing around the pub and seeing every person with a pint in their hands, she couldn’t really argue that point. “Well, what about hiring a waitress so Mum could add to the menu and draw in more customers?”

“That would be an investment, and we’ve been managing just fine for years.” What went unsaid was that no Yorkshireman ever wanted to part with a handful of pounds unless he was forced—and no one could force her dad to do anything, even if he was about the most soft-spoken man on the planet.

Despite the frustration encircling her lungs and squeezing them tight, she pressed on. “And the suggestion that you branch out and sponsor some events to get the pub name out there?”

He fiddled with the wire rims of his glasses. “No time for that, poppet.”

The familiar flush of annoyance burned her cheeks. No time or no will? Every suggestion she offered up was gently ignored. If she couldn’t get her parents to listen to her ideas, what hope did she have that the village council would ever make a move to draw in some tourist pounds?

“Dad, I explained—”

“He knows, Lady Lemons,” Daisy said. “Give him time to consider or add to your idea instead of pushing so hard all the time.”

Her back stiffened. Not just at the interruption but at that dratted nickname. The American had obviously talked to her sister, who may have lost her hearing thanks to a bad case of bacterial meningitis, but the girl—woman, really—hadn’t lost a step when it came to listening in on others’ conversations thanks to her lip-reading skills and the huge mirror that spanned the length of the bar.

Brooke turned to face Daisy. “Lady Lemons?”

“Yep.” Her sister nodded. “That’s what Nick called you.”

Nick? That familiarity only led to trouble. “You mean Mr. Vane?”

“He doesn’t like being called that.”

A glowering Riley tapped Daisy on the shoulder, drawing her attention, before saying, “And how would you know this?”

A pink blush tinted Daisy’s cheeks. “I gave him a lift.”

And that explained how he’d disappeared so quickly from the road to the village. “And where is he now?” Brooke asked.

“In the beer garden playing Jenga with Megan and the others,” Daisy said.

Megan Page? The woman with the psychotic dog? Great. That was just the type of impression Bowhaven needed to make on the future Earl of Englefield. Bloody hell. Could this day get any worse?

“He’s a hot one,” Daisy said, a teasing glint in her blue eyes, the ones that matched the shade of Brooke’s own. “I wouldn’t kick him out of bed for leaving crumbled scones in the sheets.”

On Daisy’s other side, Riley, his jaw clamped unnaturally tight, suddenly grew very interested in the dark depths of his pint.

“Daisy!” Brooke exclaimed even as the mental picture of a shirtless Nick Vane in a bed of rumpled sheets crashed into her otherwise business-only brain. “You can’t say that about him.”

“Why not?”

“He’s going to be the next earl,” she said in a harsh whisper—not that the entire pub wasn’t listening in on this exchange.

A quick look around confirmed just that. Only their dad at the other end of the bar seemed to not be hanging on every word.

“He’s also a man,” Daisy said, her voice carrying over the buzz of the other patrons’ chatter leaking in from the beer garden. “A very good-looking one.”

“He’s not just a man, he’s my bother,” Brooke grumbled.

“How’s that?” Riley asked after tapping the top of Daisy’s hand so she wouldn’t miss his question.

Then they both turned expectantly to Brooke. Bloody hell. Why did she have to open her mouth in the first place? There was no avoiding it now. Daisy was undefeatable when it came to getting the information she wanted. Sighing, Brooke traced the Quick Fox logo carved into the bar before giving in to the inevitable.

“Because I’ve been tasked with teaching him how to become a proper earl.”

But first she had to convince the aggravating man to stay. Not that anyone else needed to know that. Why add to their worries?

“And what do you know about becoming an earl?” Riley blurted out with a laugh. “You’re a publican’s daughter.”

“Yeah,” Daisy echoed after Riley repeated his words while she was looking at him. “But she’s as rigid as one of the toffs.”

“And bossy.” This from one of the regulars at a table nearby.

The bloke’s mate piped up. “And a know-it-all.”

Some days, she wondered why she didn’t just march out of the village and never look back. Okay, so she had a lot of ideas to improve Bowhaven and everything in it. Ideas that she wasn’t shy about sharing with others. Repeatedly if necessary. Did that make her wrong? No. She didn’t mean to rub people the wrong way; it just sort of happened. It always had. She’d get them to see her way one of these days, and when she finally did, wouldn’t they look at her differently when she came in the pub. They’d greet her the way they did Megan “Everybody Loves Me and My Psycho Dog” Page: with warm smiles and a hearty hello. Until then, she’d keep pushing away at it until she mowed them down with her brilliance and they’d realize that there was more to her than being the pushy Chapman-Powell sister.

“I have some good ideas,” she said, watching as her dad, who always seemed to know when his eldest was feeling down, started back toward their end of the bar.

“That you won’t ever stop shoving down our throats,” Daisy retorted.

Riley brushed Daisy’s hand so she turned and then said, “Like that idea for a regional pigeon racers festival.”

Annoyance bubbled in her chest like a fizzy drink. “Which was a brilliant idea.”

“Of course it was, poppet,” her dad said as he moved down. “Just not one anyone wanted to take on.”

She looked around at the people she loved most in all the world, who were looking somewhere else, obviously not wanting to add anything to her dad’s sweetly worded pronouncement. Okay. Fine. She had a new project to deal with anyway. One that was out in the beer garden playing with little wooden blocks instead of grasping ahold of his destiny—and that of Bowhaven’s—with both his big, strong hands. Not that she’d been ogling. That just wasn’t done, even if Daisy wasn’t entirely wrong about the idea of not kicking him out of bed if there were scone crumbs in the bedsheets.

…

Nick rubbed the back of his neck after eavesdropping on that exchange and tried to work out what in the world was going on here. These were the people Lady Lemons cared so much about that she was willing to get all wound up about him giving the earl the old heave-ho?

It didn’t make sense.

If anyone gave him even a partial side-eye, he was gone before they’d had time to blink. That’s what happened when a person had years of learning from shitty personal experience that they now put into action. Yet here she was, facing down a group of people who may love her but sure as hell didn’t believe in her. Instead of telling them to fuck off, she just screwed up her mouth and stared them down.

His plan had been to waste as much time as possible at the pub’s beer garden, figure out who he could hit up for a ride to the airport, and then get the hell out of Bowhaven. His feet declared an audible, though, and he was headed for the bar before his brain even had a chance to catch up.

“What in the world is this pigeon racing you’re talking about? Is that a euphemism? Weird British slang for car racing?” he asked as he bellied up to the bar close to Brooke before anyone could say anything else.

She startled like a tabby cat suddenly confronted with a demon-possessed lawn mower. Her hand went to the dip at the base of her throat. What was that called? He had no clue but was inspired to find out as long as he got to do some up-close-and-tactile research.

“How does someone your size move so quietly?” she asked.

“Years as an international spy. I can kill a man with only my thumb.” He flexed the digit for effect.

She rolled her eyes. “You watch too many movies.”

“And you still haven’t told me what pigeon racing is.”

There went that twist to her lips again. “It’s a difficult concept to grasp, I know, but I’ll use the small words. It’s pigeons. That race.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and slammed her mouth shut as soon as the words were out of her mouth, as if she couldn’t believe that she’d said something so snarky in the first place. Yep, the fact that when they were together, the filter between her quick-witted brain and that tempting mouth of hers shrank to almost nothing was definitely his favorite thing about this godforsaken island. Oh, Lady Lemons, I like it when you forget yourself. She opened her mouth, no doubt to say something that had to do with a sir, and he jumped in before she could.

“You know,” he said, “we think of those as sky rats where I’m from.”

“Don’t let Phillip hear you say that,” the burly man on the other side of Daisy said and nodded at Nick. “Riley McCann, local forest ranger.”

The men shook hands, Riley squeezing Nick’s knuckles together in a viselike grip. Raising an eyebrow, Nick slid his gaze to Daisy. There was the squeeze again. He made the same glance toward Brooke. Nothing. Ahh. He gave the territorial guy a subtle chin nod that translated to “Gotcha, no worries” without having to say a thing.

“Nick Vane, general lounge about.”

He rested his forearms on the bar and pivoted to get a good look at Brooke. There was no missing that she would not be thwarted. Lady Lemons was gearing up to say something. The straight set to her shoulders and the way she was shredding her bottom lip between her teeth totally gave her away.

“I shouldn’t have said that to you or used that tone of voice,” she said, her voice thick with self-incrimination. “I’m sorry, Mr. Vane.”

“What shouldn’t you have said?” Really, it could be a million things with her. That smart mouth of hers always seemed to be warring with her quick brain.

“About the pigeon racing,” she said, glancing at the bartender making his way over to their end of the bar.

Okay, maybe it was the jet leg making his head fuzzy, but he wasn’t following. “That’s not what pigeon racing is?” he teased.

Two matching pink splotches appeared on her cheeks. “It is, but—”

“Oh, you’re interested in pigeon racing?” the bartender interrupted as he rubbed his hands together in barely controlled glee. “Phillip Chapman-Powell, Daisy and Brooke’s dad. Welcome to Bowhaven. I can show you my racers if you’d fancy a look.”

Yeah, he could see the family resemblance. All three Chapman-Powells had the same bright-blue eyes and blond hair the color of butter spread on homemade biscuits.

“I don’t know if I’ll be here long enough to get a look around. I’m trying to head back home as soon as possible.” With any luck, he wouldn’t be.

“Not that talk again,” said Daisy, who must have been following the conversation by watching everyone’s lips in the mirror behind the bar. “You’ve been village-napped, remember?”

“What?” Brooke’s eyes got even larger than her sister’s.

Riley grumbled something Nick’s Virginia ears couldn’t catch on to and Phillip just shook his head as he took off his already spotless glasses and began to clean them with the bar towel. For her part, Daisy—bold as brass—just jutted up her chin.

“According to your baby sister here,” Nick said, “I can’t leave even if I wanted to—which I do.”

“I didn’t say that exactly,” Daisy said.

“Darn close to it,” he replied with a chuckle.

She shrugged. “I’m English; we’re eccentric.”

“No, we’re n-not,” Brooke sputtered. “We’re stalwart and steady.”

Yeah. That little disagreement probably explained the sisters’ obviously loving but totally opposite personalities, judging by the look to the heavens their dad just did.

“Can’t you be both Monty Python and the whole Keep Calm thing?” he asked.

“You wouldn’t understand; you’re American,” Brooke said dismissively before she slapped her hand over her mouth, then sighed and lowered it. “I’m sorry. Again.”

“Why do you keep apologizing for things that are true? I am American, but if you talk slowly again, I might be able to follow along when you explain why in the world everyone wants me to stay.”

Brooke clasped her hands together, squeezing hard enough that her knuckles on one hand turned white. “You’re the earl’s heir whether you want to be or not, and I’ve been tasked with teaching you how to be a proper earl. And the way to do that is not by acting improperly myself.”

How he managed not to burst out laughing, he wasn’t sure. “That’s not going to happen. I’m not going to be the next earl.”

He’d be back out on his lake within forty-eight hours figuring out how to fix the nervous doggie collar and prototyping an escape-proof kennel that would leave the Houdini Three Thousand in the dust where it belonged. What could he say, he ground a few millimeters off his molars every time he saw shoddy workmanship. He was lazy about a lot, but not that.

“Why not?” Brooke asked, yanking him away from thoughts of home and work, his two favorite things.

“Because like you said”—he held up a finger—”I’m an American.” He held up a second finger. “And we both agree that I’m not earl material.”

“What I think doesn’t matter.”

“But it’s true, though, isn’t it, Lady Lemons?”

Her eyes narrowed at the nickname, but it seemed she wouldn’t be distracted by a little teasing even if it got a giggle from Daisy and a concerned look from Phillip. “It’s not true. You are earl material.”

“Really?” He leaned in closer and invaded her personal bubble that happened to smell like the tease of lilacs in the spring.

“Well, you will be.” An unspoken dare burned in her blue eyes, turning them a darker hue, as she refused to give in—or even to retreat from his advance. “There’s too much riding on you becoming a success for me to allow you to fail.”

Allow him to fail? As if she could will him into submission. Lots had tried. No one had succeeded.

“Just because the earl says so?” he asked, keeping his tone neutral so he wouldn’t give away the excitement starting to tweak that part of him that loved to prove everyone wrong. “Is that why you’d take me on as your own special project?”

He didn’t want to, but—damn it—his blood was warming to the idea of the challenge and, if he acknowledged the voice of his mama in his head, helping out the village, which obviously needed his help whether the inhabitants realized it or not. Why Lady Lemons hadn’t spilled all, he had no idea, but it was one more riddle involving her that he needed to unravel. Or maybe it was being this close to this woman after so many nights of wondering about her during all the email and text exchanges. She didn’t quit easily, and he admired that, identified with it.

“The why doesn’t matter,” she said with prim dismissal.

“Darling, the why always matters.” His fingers itched to reach out to her to see if the jump in the pulse point on her neck was from annoyance or something more. It was such an out-of-the-blue feeling that he almost glanced down at his hand to see what was going on, but he couldn’t look away from Brooke. There was something about the way she looked all full of spit and vinegar that made him wonder what she’d be like when she was fired up in different circumstances—the kind that didn’t require clothes and, in fact, strongly discouraged them. And damn his curiosity, but it had to be sated. That was the only explanation for what came out of his mouth next. “I’ll tell you what—I’ll prove it to you.”

Now it was her turn to ask for clarification. “What do you mean?”

“You do your best to teach me to be an earl, and I’ll do my best to show you that I’m not made for that line of work. I won’t sandbag your efforts, but I’m not going to go along with anything just because you say so.” It was a dare of a bet that gave him more than a little wiggle room, not that he’d need it, because there was no way he’d ever lose. “You’ll have to stay in that drafty pile of rocks with me. I’m not getting trapped alone with that man.” Sure, Dallinger Park was huge, but the last thing he wanted was to get stuck alone with Charles Vane, Earl of Englefield, and his twisted-up notions of familial duty. Nick held out his hand to Brooke. “Bet on it?”

She looked down at his outstretched hand with a mix of excitement and disbelief clear on her face. “This is ridiculous. As it is, the earl limits the parts of the house that are open because of the immense cost of running a house this size,” she said in a tense whisper that didn’t go beyond the two of them. “The only option for my sleeping quarters was the room that connected to the one the limited staff has made up for you.”

His pulse picked up when she mentioned being next door to him. He wasn’t proud of that fact, but he was honest with himself about it. That he’d keep that reaction in check wasn’t even a question.

“Anyway,” she continued in a ferocious whisper. “I’m the earl’s personal secretary, not a miracle worker or a sacrificial lamb to be put between the two of you.”

“Those sound like excuses to me, Lady Lemons.” Not realizing until that moment that they were standing so close together that if either of them took a deep breath, they’d be touching. The realization sent him into some sort of hyperawareness mode as he took in the flush to her pale skin, the spark in her blue eyes, and sensual curve to her bottom lip that she kept tugging between her teeth. “Do we have a bet or not?”

In the few moments that she glared at him and considered his offer, he swore everyone in the pub—including the two old guys sitting at a table nearby—was holding their breath waiting for her answer. They weren’t the only ones. His lungs were squeezed tight. What in the hell had he been thinking? This wasn’t the plan. The plan was to flip off the Earl of Jerkwads and go back home. This was obviously jet leg–induced insanity with a dash of lust thrown in for good measure.

Finally, Brooke reached out and shook his hand, her long fingers sending a jolt of hello hotness straight to his totally-down-with-it cock. “You have yourself a wager.”

One he was going to win. “You’ve got a week.”

That’s all it would take to show her and the rest of Bowhaven that he wasn’t the earl they were looking for. One way or another, he’d Jedi Master mind trick that fact into a reality neither the village nor Brooke could ignore.