Chapter Nine

Brooke cracked an eye open and tried to figure out where in the hell she was. She took a fuzzy, half-blind-without-her-contacts-or-glasses look around. The navy and cream canopy above her was mostly in focus. Sun streaming in through leaded-glass bay windows was a little blurrier. Still trying to work out where she was as her brain slowly came back online, a solid knocking behind her almost sent her jumping out of her pajamas, taking her consciousness from white noise to high-definition in an instant.

She whirled around in Nick’s huge canopy bed so she faced the door connecting their rooms.

“You awake?” His muffled voice came through the door.

She snatched the duvet and yanked it up to her chin. “Don’t come in.”

“Give me a little credit.” She didn’t have to see Nick to know he’d rolled his eyes at her. “I’m not a total perv.”

Okay, maybe that had just been her. The dreams she’d had last night. Heat flamed against her cheeks. Thank God she couldn’t be held accountable for her subconsciousness. Unless she’d made noise? Her heart clanged against her ribs. Please not that. “What made you think I might be awake?”

“You stopped snoring.”

Her pulse slowed and she released a pent-up breath. Then she processed what he’d said. “I don’t snore.”

“Think again, Lady Lemons.” He chuckled. “You have an adorable sigh-whistle-snore thing.”

She opened her mouth to argue but realized half a second later that she did, in fact, snore. Usually only when she was stressed, which was almost always of course, but that didn’t mean he should have heard it. Embarrassment threatened to sizzle the skin off her cheeks, negating her ability to come up with anything to say in response.

“And not to push you out of bed or anything,” he continued from his side of the closed door. “But we’ve got to swap rooms back. I can’t imagine it would do to have someone find you in my bed.”

Shit! How had she not thought of that? The man discombobulated her. The doorknob turned.

“I’m not decent,” she said, jumping up from the bed and sprinting over to the door to hold it shut. Before she got there, though, the handle stopped and went back to its original position. She let out a relieved breath.

“So how do you want to do this?” he asked.

She scooped up her clothes and hurried over to the door so she’d be in position to scoot into her room as soon as he came in. Her pajamas covered everything, but that didn’t mean she wanted him to know what she wore to sleep.

“You can come in.”

He opened the door and, of course, he was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt while she was in a worn tank and shorts. Unlike her, his hair wasn’t going every which way but how it should. Not to mention he didn’t look like his brain was still a fuzzy, tea-free mess. No, his gaze was sharp and focused totally on her. She clutched her bundle of clothes a little closer to her chest.

“What time is it?” And why was she asking when what she needed was to just get her arse into her room?

He turned one of his wrists, highlighting the muscles of his forearm. “Six thirty.”

“And you’ve been up for hours, haven’t you?” Yes. Focus on that and not the muscles in his forearm. Anything but that.

“I don’t usually sleep a lot.”

It was a perfectly normal thing to say. There was nothing cheeky in his words, and yet her pulse picked up and she forgot how to breathe for a second. Snap out of it, Brooke. He’s the earl’s heir. She was the earl’s secretary. She’d overstepped her station before and been slapped down. It wasn’t a mistake she was going to ever make again.

“We have work to do.”

The easygoing amusement evaporated from his face. “Time for Earl School, huh?”

She stepped forward, brushing past him on her way through the door. “You did agree to give it your every effort.”

“That’s not exactly what I said.” He let out a grumpy sigh that reminded her almost exactly of the old earl.

“But it should have been what you said, so I sorted that for you,” she said, taking another step into her room but keeping her focus on him. “You’re welcome.”

And on that triumphant correction, she shut the door between their rooms with a speedy flick of her wrist before he could get more than a glance of her in her threadbare tank top and sleep shorts.

Mentally congratulating herself, she turned and prepped herself for the attack of the allergies that never came. Instead of highlighting all the dust floating in the air, the sun streaming in from the windows landed on newly uncovered dust-free furniture. The bed had been made. Even the window that had been stuck closed as long as she’d been working at Dallinger Park was open to let in the sound of birds chirping. It was as if in the middle of the night, an entire cleaning crew had attacked her temporary room. But no one had. It was too early for Kate the housekeeper to have made it to the big house, let alone to have done this. That left only one person. She turned and marched to the door, not quite believing what logic dictated.

Keeping herself behind the door, she opened it enough to peek her head out. “Did you do this?”

Nick picked up yesterday’s copy of the Financial Times that was lying on the coffee table. “Do what?”

“Tidy up my room.”

He shrugged his broad shoulders and adjusted the newspaper so she couldn’t see his face below his unlined forehead. “I was bored.”

Uh-huh. And cleaning her room was the first thing an heir to an earldom would do to cure that? Not in her experience—not even for someone who wasn’t about to be the lord of the land.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice soft as she tried to work out the puzzle that was Nick Vane, self-proclaimed lazy git.

He shook the paper out but didn’t emerge from behind it. “Remember that later when you admit defeat on this whole earl thing.”

She shut the door, a smile playing on her lips. Yeah. He wasn’t going to get off the hook that easily. She was going to win that bet and then Bowhaven—and everyone who lived there—would benefit, even if they never realized exactly who was behind it or why. That part didn’t matter to her. She’d learned the hard way that the spotlight wasn’t for her.

…

Dallinger Park’s dining room, with its many windows overlooking the manicured garden and the french doors opening out onto the stone walkway that led to a small fountain surrounded by a riot of white roses, was one of Brooke’s favorite rooms in the house. The table for sixteen, which was currently set for two, had been in the Vane family for generations.

When she’d emerged from her room—dressed, thank you very much—she made her way down the stairwell decorated with stag heads and stuffed grouse to the dining room currently bathed in sunlight. The earl was nowhere in sight, but Nick was in one of the chairs, his honey-brown hair sticking up here and there as if he’d rammed his fingers through it, and he was staring at the full Yorkshire breakfast before him with a mix of curiosity and horror.

She cleared her throat to alert him to her presence and strode in, stopping at the edge of the table. “This is the perfect way to begin your lessons.”

Few things marked one as an outsider as effectively as how one ate a meal—especially among the upper crust. Imagine the horror of his fellow earls-to-be if Nick nibbled from the cheese plate at the beginning of a luncheon instead of during the cheese course. They’d be aghast. And for some reason, that image made the corner of her mouth curl up. Thank God she had the wherewithal to smother it immediately.

“What is this?” Using the tip of his knife, he nudged the circle of black pudding nestled between the fried bread and beans. “And why are there pork and beans for breakfast?”

Closing her eyes, she forced herself to remember the lemon-clean scent of her bedroom and the way the duvet had been one smooth line without a wrinkle in sight. He was goading her on purpose. He had to be. There was no other explanation for why he would be so kind one second and such a pain in the arse the next. Well, he could try to provoke a reaction, but she wasn’t going to give in. To borrow a saying from the earl, if Churchill didn’t give in, neither would she.

“Black pudding and beans is a Yorkshire tradition.”

He continued to jab at it. “What’s it made of?”

All right. She loved black pudding, but even her stomach rebelled a little when she remembered the ingredients. A Canadian pen pal she’d had in primary school had once compared it to hot dogs—they were delicious as long as one didn’t think about what went into making them. “You don’t want to know—just enjoy it.”

Nick looked up at her, a lazy smile playing on his lips. As easygoing as it was, though, it didn’t match the serious, contemplative look in his eyes. Someone wasn’t as disengaged as he wanted everyone to believe. Interesting. Brooke filed that bit of information away to ponder later.

“No,” he said, attention back on the black pudding as he used the side of his fork to cut off a piece. “I really do. What’s in it?”

“It’s a delicious mix of pork blood, pork fat, and oatmeal.” Ugh. Just saying the words kind of ruined it.

“Sounds delicious,” he said with a hearty slathering of sarcasm and then stabbed the piece with his fork and lifted it up in the air, studying it from all angles.

The annoyed sigh escaped before she could stop it. This man would try the patience of a doting grandmother with her only grandchild. “Just try it.”

After giving it another look, he popped it in his mouth and left it there for a second before starting to chew. Gaze directed up at the ceiling as if he was noting all the flavor layers, he took his time to finish the single bite. Finally. Did the man have to examine everything?

Wonder what it would be like to be the one on the receiving end of all that attention?

Oh my God! Where had that come from? Cheeks burning, she dropped her gaze down to the tips of her very sensible loafers.

“It’s pretty salty,” Nick said, drawing her attention back to him. “But I like it.”

“Our country can rest well at last.” She managed—just barely—not to roll her eyes as she said it.

He pointed his fork at a place set for the earl. “Are you going to join me?”

Like that could even be considered in good form. She was an employee, not a member of the family. “The earl will be here soon.”

“There are fourteen more seats.” He laid his fork down on the side of his plate and shot her an imploring look. “Eating while being stared at is just weird. Sit. Please.”

She shouldn’t. It wasn’t right. But she sat down anyway. Something in that “please” hit her right in the feels.

Nick dug in to his breakfast, scarfing down the dry-cured English bacon, pork sausages, eggs, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, and fried bread. He wasn’t making a mess of it, but he set his fork down between bites and cut up his entire sausage in one go—not like an English earl at all. That just would not do.

“Time for your first lesson,” she said. “When it comes to meals, you need to hold your fork at all times and only cut one bite at a time.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Why?”

“Because that’s how it’s properly done.” Really, what other explanation did he need? Not everything needed to be taken apart and examined. Some things just were. “When it comes to handling the cutlery, your fork should be held in your left hand.” She picked up the fork next to the place set out for the earl so she could demonstrate. “And the knife in your right. You keep the fork tongs pointed down and push the food onto the back of it with your knife, as opposed to scooping it up as if you were eating with a shovel.”

“That’s very specific.”

“We’re English—good table manners are essential.” Good Lord, when had she started to sound so much like her mother?

Looking a bit like a man solving a puzzle, Nick swapped the hand he was holding his fork with and picked up his knife before cutting a single bite-size piece from his tomato. “What else is deemed essential?”

Now that was a good question. She wasn’t a peer, but both of her parents had drilled the importance of good manners into her and her sister from the day they were old enough to talk.

“Courteousness—saying please and thank you, forming an orderly queue, and always being punctual. Not being overly familiar with people—kisses and hugs hello are reserved for close friends only, no personal questions should be asked, and handshakes are always preferred.”

“My mama would have broken the no-kissing-and-hugging rule. That woman never met a stranger in her life,” he said, a genuine smile erasing the cautious seriousness with which he’d taken to the task of eating. “She would have been totally down with the table-manners part, though. She was a fiend about those.”

“No elbows on the table growing up?”

He chuckled. “Only if I wanted to get the look. You know the look?”

“I believe that look from a mother is universal,” she said, the commonality between them helping to loosen some of the tension that had seeped into her shoulders since the earl had revealed all that was on the line if she failed.

“I remember one time—” His gaze shifted toward the dining room door, and he stopped talking, his look darkening. “Never mind. No personal chitchat, right? You English like it cold and formal.” He shoved his chair from the table and got up. “I’m going for a walk.”

Confusion had her scrambling to figure out what had just changed. “We’ve only begun.”

He didn’t even pause to answer, “Later.”

Then he walked out into the manicured gardens without ever looking back. Getting up, she glanced toward the dining room door behind her. The earl stood there, an unreadable expression on his face.

“Sir—”

That was as far as she got before he, too, walked away, disappearing down the hallway.

The two men may not have set eyes on each other before Nick had arrived, but they obviously shared a stubborn streak as wide as the English Channel. That was just going to do wonders when it came to accomplishing her mission.

“How bloody lovely,” she muttered in the empty room.

…

Two days later, Nick was getting antsy trapped inside his DNA donor’s family estate in the middle of rainy (and chilly despite it being August) England. He couldn’t take another moment under the watchful gaze of Earl Powder Wig’s portrait as he got lessons from Brooke about the Vanes of Dallinger Park. The only thing that made it even slightly bearable was that his teacher was hot—if he was into tightly wound women who droned on and on about family responsibility and the duty he had to Bowhaven that she’d been hammering home since his breakfast of black pudding, beans, and slightly runny eggs. Strangely enough, his dick was completely into it, which explained why he couldn’t get to sleep with her on the other side of that damn door without jerking off last night like a teenager.

Standing in front of the large fireplace bracketed on both sides by floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, Brooke paused long enough in her lecture to give him the full Lady Lemons icy glare that only made his dick twitch before continuing with local geography facts. Lucky for him, the information went in one ear and out the other while he put his brain to better use trying to determine what kind of panties she was wearing under today’s knee-length skirt. He couldn’t see panty lines and God knew he’d looked every time she turned around—what could he say, red-blooded American man with a pulse and a working dick here—but she didn’t seem the kind to go thong or commando. Lady Lemons liked to keep her stuff wrapped up tight. Granny panties? He pictured her in black satin that fully covered the curve of her ass and went all the way up to her belly button. His dick grew heavy, and he couldn’t argue with the smaller head’s logic because Brooke would make even granny panties look hot.

“Mr. Vane,” she said with a snotty little sigh that kinda turned him on more.

He needed to get out of here before he lost his mind during what was already turning into the longest week of his life. Shoving a hand through his hair, he bolted up from the uncomfortable chair he was sitting in.

“I can’t do it,” he said, striding across what he would have called a big-ass living room but Brooke called the hall to the windows overlooking the stone patio that ran the length of the mansion. “Let’s get out of here.”

“But I was just getting to the part about the moors.”

“Those moors.” He looked out at the hills covered in purple heather visible from the windows.

“Exactly.”

He opened the french doors leading out onto the patio. “Let’s go take a closer look.”

She picked up a book that was one of many stacked on a table. “But I have the tenth earl’s diaries about his grouse-hunting exploits right here.”

“What are grouse?”

“Birds.” She flipped through the book to a specific page and then turned it around and held it open so he could see the sketch of a small bird that the tenth earl must have drawn.

It was a good drawing, but he couldn’t take being trapped inside this stuffy house any longer. “And there’s still grouse out there?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s go have a look at the grouse survivors’ progeny.” He crossed over and plucked the book from her hand and slid it back on the shelf to the right of the fireplace. “Come on. I’ve been a good boy. Let’s go on a field trip.”

She smoothed back a hair that had had the gall to slip from her ponytail and let out a sigh. “Fine.”

Twenty minutes later, they were bouncing around in the seats of the Range Rover that managed to hit every rut and pothole in the bumpy dirt road winding through the hilly moors. Finally, she pulled off and parked on top of the hill and killed the engine.

“Something, isn’t it?” she asked.

It was. The clear blue sky went on for miles with only a few white cotton ball clouds dotting the view. One direction it was all purple hills, and the other showed more hills bordered by a strip of sandy beach and then the North Sea beyond. It wasn’t the lake view from his back porch outside of Salvation, but it was fucking beautiful just the same.

“How much of this is part of Dallinger?”

“Everything you can see.” She opened the door and got out. “Come on, Mr. Field Trip. Let’s go look at butts.”

He’d never gotten out of a car so fast in his life. But, despite that little tease that had raised his hopes and other things, it turned out that the butts she meant were actually fortified five-foot holes in the ground that hunters would stand in to wait for the grouse that were being pushed out of the underbrush by drivers and dogs. As he and Brooke clomped through the bush-like heather that went almost up to his knees, she explained how a grouse shoot worked.

“So,” he said, looking at her and trying not to be distracted by the way she looked out there in the rare sunshine with the breeze whipping free long lashes of her hair. “There are drivers who start out a mile away and walk through the moors rousting the grouse by stomping through the heather and beating it with sticks so the birds fly into the air, and people actually pay to shoot them.”

She nodded, tucking a windblown strand of blond hair behind her ear. “Yes.”

He turned that over in his mind as they approached a butt. She took the three steps down into the trench big enough for two that put them almost at eye level with the ground. Looking out onto the hillside, he tried to imagine a group of drivers and their playful dogs marching through the heather, moving the grouse forward as shooters with rifles took aim at the birds in flight. For a guy who’d gone hunting once—and spent most of that time freezing his balls off in a deer stand in the trees—it was hard to wrap his brain around. At least that’s what he was telling himself to account for his current distracted state that had nothing to do with the gorgeous blonde standing with her face tilted toward the sky, her eyes closed, and a look on her face of total and complete bliss. It had to be how she’d look after a long night of infinite orgasms.

Where in the hell did that thought come from, Vane?

Sure, he had his nighttime fantasies, but that’s all they were. Playing those kind of games with someone dead-set on getting him to do the exact opposite of what he wanted to do wasn’t an option—no matter how much his dick protested, and boy did it ever.

Desperate to pull his thoughts back onto safer ground, he said the first thing that popped into his head that wasn’t X-rated. “And no one thinks grouse shooting like this is weird?”

Brooke tugged her bottom lip between her teeth and looked out onto the moor before answering his question. “Well, there are some who oppose it, but the shoot helps manage the grouse population and it helps employ people in Bowhaven who act as the drivers—something that is desperately needed after the chemical factory shut down. Those pounds have helped people put food in their kids’ bellies. Plus, the grouse are sold to local restaurants. There’s an entire much-needed economic life cycle out here on the moors.”

Dragging his gaze away from her, Nick took in the view and spotted what had to be the top of the now-closed chemical factory a ways off. Other than that, the only thing he could see was the village of Bowhaven tucked into the side of a hill, more purple heather and the sea. She’d spent the past forty-eight hours telling him about the area and the Vanes, but it hadn’t really sunk in until now. This situation wasn’t a game for her, the earl, or the people of Bowhaven. It wasn’t just a chance for him to tell the earl to fuck off. That sucked. It didn’t change his mind about leaving, but maybe there was something he could put in place, some plan to change things before he did hit the road.

“There doesn’t seem to be many opportunities out here.” Fishing for ideas? Him? Hey, whenever working a problem, the smart move was always to go to those closest first.

“There will be.” The blissed-out look on her face was gone by the time she leveled a tart glare at him. “I’ve been talking to the earl and the village council about all the things they could do to draw in money.”

There was no missing the defensiveness in her tone.

“And are they listening?” His money was on no.

Her lips twisted as she straightened her shoulders and headed toward the steps leading out of the butt. “They will—especially once I’m voted onto the village council.”

There it was, that spark of something he couldn’t figure out that tugged at his curiosity and made him want to know more. “Why are you here in Bowhaven?”

The question stopped her in her tracks, one foot on the bottom step, and she turned back to look at him. “It’s my home.”

“But you don’t have to stay here,” he pushed. “You could go to Manchester or London.”

Her jaw stiffened. “This is my home.”

Nope. He wasn’t buying it. “Why do I get the feeling there’s more than that? What are you hiding?”

“Not a thing.”

But before she turned away from him, he caught a glimpse of regret, and he couldn’t let it go. What could he say? His curiosity had made him millions and he’d grown accustomed to having it satisfied.

“You’re dead-set on helping this place, but the people around here don’t seem all that receptive to you or your ideas—no offense. So why do you do it? Why put yourself on the line for this place? What are you hiding, Lady Lemons?”

The telltale blush creeped up the back of her neck, visible under her high ponytail. “I think it’s time we got back.”

Brooke took the next step out of the butt, but her foot slipped on the stone and she began to tumble back. She let out a surprised squawk and twisted in an effort to stop her fall. Nick didn’t think, didn’t hesitate; he wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her close. In that moment, everything went still. It definitely wasn’t the first time he’d held a woman like this with her curves tight against him, his hand dangerously close to her ass. He wouldn’t have made anything of it if he hadn’t looked down at Brooke’s face. Her bright-blue eyes were hooded as she looked up at him, and the soft hum of sexual attraction that had buzzed between them turned into a sonic blast that he felt right down to his toes. He couldn’t look away. Especially not when her perfect pink lips parted and the softest sigh escaped—the kind that dared a man to make a bold move, probably a stupid one, too. He didn’t mean to give in, to lower his face, but sometimes when the pieces all clicked together, there was nothing else to do but go along with it.

He got within a hairbreadth of heaven when Brooke disappeared and Lady Lemons returned. The snap-crackle-pop returned to her gaze and she firmly pushed back on his chest.

“Thank you, Mr. Vane. I’m fine now,” she said, sounding a little more breathy than she normally did.

Letting her go at this moment was a travesty, but his mama had raised him better than to take advantage, so he let his hands drop from the dip of her waist and took a step back. Still, he couldn’t help but call her on the attraction pulling them together even as they stood a foot apart. “Are you sure?”

“Always.”

And with that, she was Lady Lemons once again as she strode up the steps, walked out onto the moors, and made her way back to the nearby Range Rover.

Nick watched her navigate the bushy heather, his brain trying to unravel the riddle that was Brooke Chapman-Powell, ever confident that he’d figure it out. He always did.