Chapter Fifteen

Nick woke up hard and alone—or at least that was his assumption when he reached toward where his hard cock had tented his boxers imagining it was Brooke’s sweet, warm mouth moving closer.

“Please refrain from gratifying yourself in my company.” The earl’s voice cut through every thread of early-morning lust.

Nick’s eyes snapped open at the same time as he reached for the comforter tangled around his thighs. The old man stood at the end of the bed, a scowl on his face. Nick yanked the comforter up to his neck like a maiden in a pirate movie.

“What in the hell are you doing in here?” he asked, feeling every bit like a teenager getting caught jacking off into a sock.

The earl picked an invisible piece of lint from his tweed jacket. “Informing you that you’re late.”

His brain moved quick, but not first thing in the morning and definitely not with his grandfather looking at him like he was a box of rocks. “For what?”

The old man let out a sigh. “Two members of the village council have arrived to discuss market day.”

None of this made sense. “So?”

“As my heir, you’ll be my representative in the negotiations.”

Like that made anything any clearer. “Negotiations?”

“Has Ms. Chapman-Powell not taught you anything? The stalls on the high street must pay a fee to the estate for the privilege of selling their goods on the portion of the street that I own,” he said slowly, as if talking to a particularly difficult child. “You are going to determine the amount and ensure that it is paid.”

“Or what, I break their legs?” Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” his grandfather scoffed. “Now get yourself sorted and downstairs.”

With that, the old man strode out of the room, leaving Nick alone at last, trying to figure out how he’d gone from his original mission of telling the earl to fuck off to spending half the year here and being a part of market day negotiations. He got dressed in jeans and one of the few button-up shirts he owned. Everything had gone sideways the moment he set eyes on Lady Lemons in the airport. He should have stuck with the airline attendant. Hell, he should have turned around and gotten right back on the plane. Instead, here he was for a six-month stay in a country that saw five days of sunshine a year.

He was sitting on the bed and putting on his shoes when Brooke knocked. How did he know it was her? Because that little buzz of something that zipped through his subconsciousness whenever he was around her had started humming. Plus the knock came from the door connecting their rooms. It didn’t take a genius with his IQ to figure it out.

“Come in,” he called out as he tied his shoes.

He kept his eyes on the job at hand until a pair of black heels came into view. Following the long line of her legs, he let his gaze move up slowly over the knee-length black skirt and sensible white blouse, wishing like hell he had a pair of those glasses sold in the back of the old comic books that let you see under a woman’s clothes. He’d more than seen her in the moonlight last night, but the urge to see her naked in the sunshine streaming in through his windows had his brain taking a vacation.

“How’s the head?” she asked, the cool, clipped tones of her voice betrayed by the heat in her cheeks.

Head? Which head? Her gaze wasn’t on the part of him growing heavy at the sound of her voice, so he had to figure she meant his noggin. “I’ll live.”

“Good.” Her hand moved toward the small knot near his hairline but stopped halfway there. Then she took a step back away from him that made it feel like there was a mile of space between them.

“Do you know what market day is?” she asked, all back to business except for the way that she was looking at him.

Since stripping back down and then getting her naked wasn’t an option at the moment, he went with her line of questioning. “No frickin’ clue.”

“Villagers set up stands along the high street and sell artisanal products, food, flowers, and those sorts of things.”

The light bulb went off. “So it’s a farmer’s market, but how does the estate own the village street?”

“That’s just the way it is. The market day negotiations are tricky,” she said, her expression grim. Lady Lemons might be in control right now, but she was worried. There was no missing that. “The parking spots along the village’s high street are part of each earl’s inheritance. The shopkeepers own the buildings; the earl owns the street. Market days are crucial to the village economy, so vendors rent the parking spots to set up their stalls. The estate needs the funds, but the vendors don’t have a lot of money. You have to find the sweet spot.”

“I suppose you know where that is.” God knew he’d found her sweet spot and wanted to dive right back in there now.

That wasn’t to be, though. Instead, she fished a piece of paper out of the folder in her left hand and gave it to him. “I made some notes.”

He looked over the numbers she’d jotted down and did a quick mental conversion from British pounds to U.S. dollars. It all looked relatively reasonable, considering he had no clue what he was doing.

“This is not what I came here for,” he grumbled mostly to himself as he refolded the fee recommendations and shoved the paper into his pants pocket, then stood up.

“No,” Brooke agreed, reaching up and straightening his collar that he’d sworn was already on point. “But it’s what Dallinger Park and Bowhaven need you for.”

“And what about you?” Standing this close to her, he got a whiff of the summer sunshine she wore as perfume—or maybe it was just her. “What do you need?”

Her hands smoothed down his shirt as if she couldn’t help herself, and then she stepped back, clasping her hands together close to her stomach. “To make these negotiations a success for everyone.”

Whatever her reasoning, he didn’t doubt that’s what she wanted, but there was no way it was all she needed. He’d had an inkling about the sweet spice that lay under her tart Lady Lemons exterior, but last night had shown him just how much more there was to her. Now all he wanted—needed—was to see her let go like that again. If he was another man, he’d wonder if this could be the start of something here, but he knew better. He’d been conditioned since birth to know that the only way to survive in this world was to not give a shit about it, because all the world wanted was to break a person in half. The key to happiness was to get what you could before the only option was to cut and run, or before he looked up to find himself alone again.

Still, the words poured out of his mouth. “I’ll make the market day negotiations work on one condition.”

She tugged her bottom lip between her teeth, giving him a distrusting look. “What’s that?”

Yeah. Great question. You probably should have thought of that before you opened your piehole, Vane. His gaze fell on the ideas he’d scratched down into his notebook yesterday about the anxiety dog collar. “You help me out with a little problem I’m working on. An invention.”

In full Lady Lemons mode, she lifted an eyebrow. “I don’t see how I can help with that.”

“I need distraction, something that will keep the left side of my brain busy so I can work out the problem with my right side.” And considering he’d have to really think to figure out the square root of eighty-one, he was plenty distracted by the woman in front of him looking at him like he was a little bit unhinged and a whole lotta dangerous. “Show me the side of Bowhaven that makes you want to help the place so badly that you’d put up with the Earl of Snarl and the village snark.”

“You want a tour?” she asked, her blue eyes wide with surprise but her tone guarded.

“No, I want to see Bowhaven from a local’s perspective.” He wanted to unravel whatever the draw was pulling Lady Lemons back to the middle of nowhere Yorkshire when she could go where the people appreciated her, tart temperament and all.

She crossed her arms over her belly. “Fine, but it has to be in public.”

“Why’s that, Lady Lemons?” he asked, taking a step closer to her but stopping just shy of touching her. Not that it mattered. The woman had a way of imprinting herself on his fingertips. “Who don’t you trust in private? Me? Or you?”

She swallowed, the move drawing his attention to her creamy throat, the one he’d kissed and licked last night until he nearly lost his damn mind listening to her little cries of pleasure. That was all it took to make his cock start to thicken against his thigh. Fuck. Last night shouldn’t have happened. Not because it wasn’t good, but because it was. So. Very. Good.

“We shan’t repeat last night,” she declared as her pulse danced against her throat.

“Why?” He could think of a billion reasons in a heartbeat, but none of them mattered when he was close enough to dip his head down and kiss her silky skin, feel her nipples harden under his touch, and hear her cries for more.

“It will complicate things.” She looked up at him, her pink tongue wetting her lips.

He could have nutted right there, watching her do that. Instead, he put his hands palms flat against the wall on either side of her, hoping the substitution of hard wall for soft skin would dim the urge to touch her. Her eyelids lowered as the tension tightened between them like a rubber band that was about to break and snap them both hard enough to leave a mark.

“Good thing I don’t believe in complications,” he said, his voice a low rumble he barely recognized. “Only easy solutions.”

“Are you saying I’m easy?” Fire sparked in her eyes.

“No one would ever be foolish enough to call Lady Lemons easy.”

“Good.” She cocked her chin up a few degrees, giving him a look that said everything had been decided—and he would have believed her, except for the desire still swirling in her eyes and the husky breathiness of her words. “Because last night needs to be an anomaly.”

It was an anomaly all right, just not in the way she was thinking. She’d gotten under his skin and he couldn’t figure out why. Probably it was because of the fish-out-of-water situation he found himself in as the lone American in a small English village. Of course, he’d be drawn to whomever was a lifeline of normalcy.

The puzzle of Brooke Chapman-Powell partially solved, he pivoted and took one arm away from the wall so she could walk away. “Of course, whatever you want.”

The tiniest bit of indecision flickered across her face. He’d lay odds, it was one of the few times in her life that Brooke wasn’t exactly sure of her next move. He could appreciate how uncomfortable that was, but he’d still use it to his advantage.

He wasn’t going to be satisfied with just one night spent naked with her—and judging by her reaction to him, neither was she. The easiest way to find satisfaction—for them both—was to let this attraction run its course just like all attractions did. He couldn’t imagine a reason why it would be any different with Brooke—life had taught him that things always ended the same, with him alone.

“Text me with where you want to meet later,” he said, walking toward the door, not letting himself look back at the flush-cheeked, uptight Lady Lemons who’d reveled in his bed last night—if he did, he wasn’t sure he’d even make it downstairs for the market day negotiations, and then his grandfather would show up and get a more shocking view than he had this morning.

…

All the usual suspects were gathered inside the Quick Fox that night and a nice, low hum of family togetherness permeated the place when Brooke walked through the door. As usual, the tension pulling her shoulders tight ebbed out the minute she crossed the threshold—well, at least 99 percent of it. The remaining one percent was due to a particular American who her imagination had conjured up in every window and hall in Dallinger Park all day, even though she hadn’t actually set eyes on him even once. The man was a distraction without even being around. Last night had been a mistake. Huge. One that wouldn’t—couldn’t—happen again. She was a woman with a strategy, a course of action, and the determination to save her village. Shagging the earl’s heir didn’t factor into that, no matter how toe-curling good it had been or how badly she wanted to do it again.

Walking past Karen and Harry Styron sitting at a table with Ed Ambrose and a couple of the old-timers telling stories about Bowhaven’s glory days before the factory closed down, Brooke headed straight toward where Daisy stood at the end of the bar, a book opened in front of her. Their dad set a pint of ale down in front of her with a wink and then ambled off to no doubt continue talking pigeons with Daniel Winter, who sat at the opposite end of the bar with a pint of stout and his usual hangdog expression. Daniel was a taciturn Yorkshire man through and through. If he’d just won the National Lottery, he’d say he was “fair t’middlin’.”

“How goes it with the hot heir?” Daisy asked, watching the mirror for her sister’s response.

Brooke would have thought it was dim enough in the pub that her heated cheeks wouldn’t have shown. She’d thought wrong.

“Oh!” Daisy exclaimed, her eyes going round as a smile curled her lips upward. “You shagged him.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Brooke took a long drink of her ale because she’d always been a horrible liar

“Stop fibbing.” Daisy slammed her book closed and leaned closer. “Tell me everything.”

A very sanitized confession was on Brooke’s lips, but movement on her sister’s other side caught her eye.

“Everything about what?” Riley asked, managing to make his large, muscular frame fit in the sliver of space between the wall and Daisy.

“She—”

“Daisy!” Brooke called out, her face hot enough to burst into flame.

“Spoilsport.” Daisy winked at her—the same teasing one their father always gave them—and turned to the guy so obviously into her that it hurt to look at him sometimes.

Not that Daisy ever noticed. Usually, her sister never missed a thing—before or after her hearing loss—but when it came to Riley McCann, she was daft as a brush. She watched the pair of them talk for a few minutes while Dad pulled the taps for another round. Once the pints were delivered, Riley left an ale in front of Daisy and took the rest back to his table where his mates were waiting, deep in discussion about an upcoming match.

After watching Riley sit down, Daisy turned her attention back to Brooke and gave her a knowing shake of the head. “He’s one of my best friends, but I wouldn’t have told him about you shagging the American.”

Skipping over the what that she wouldn’t have told Riley, Brooke went straight for the part that would distract her sister in her attempts to get more details about last night. “Riley wants to be more than just friends.”

Her sister rolled her eyes. “Now who’s being ridiculous?”

“Have you not seen the way he looks at you?” She knew the answer, of course, because Daisy hadn’t noticed. Ever.

“I’m deaf, not blind; I know he feels sorry for me,” Daisy said with a practiced nonchalance that almost broke Brooke’s heart in two because she’d always assumed her sister hadn’t noticed, not that she’d totally misinterpreted. “I hate it, but I can’t change it so…” The words trailed off as Daisy stared into the amber liquid in her glass.

And, for once, Brooke didn’t have a single word to utter about the situation, because for a woman who thought she had the answer to everything, she had no clue what to do about this development.

Just as she was contemplating whilst sipping her ale, the pub door opened and the man she’d been failing to not think about all day swaggered in like a modern-day John Wayne, minus the spurs. She stood a little straighter, lifted her chin, and ignored him. Well, as much as she could, since Daisy was kind enough to offer a step-by-step whispered description of his path through the pub. By the time he stopped next to her and rested one of his corded forearms on the gleaming bar, her heart was ready to break free from her chest.

“Evening, ladies,” he said in that sexy American accent of his. “What are we discussing?”

Daisy opened her mouth, a glint in her eye that spelled trouble and sent a lightning bolt of panic straight through Brooke.

“Riley McCann,” Brooke said, getting the words out before her sister could contradict her. “Daisy thinks he feels sorry for her.”

Nick snorted and looked directly at Daisy in the mirror behind the bar. “More like Riley McCann’s sorry he’s not in Daisy’s pants.”

“Nick!” Brooke said, cringing as she realized her mistake at once. One should not be calling the earl’s heir by his first name. As subtly as possible, she glanced around to make sure no one had overheard his declaration.

No such luck. Bruce Anderson was frozen with his pint halfway to his mouth, one eyebrow cocked high and a snarky little grin on his face—and he used a hearing aid. That meant most of the others probably caught it as well, but not Riley, who was in the back corner of the pub with his mates. How long would it take for Nick’s declaration to get to him, and how twisted would it be by the time it did? Considering the way the village gossiped, the answer to that query was quickly and a lot.

Nick leaned in close, his lips almost touching the curve of her ear. “I do love the way you say my name, especially when…”

Whatever else he would have said died on his frankly very kissable lips as her dad crossed over to their end of the bar and took Nick’s cider order. He filled it while giving a quizzical look to her and Daisy before heading back over to Daniel to talk pigeon coops and race timers. The three of them sipped their drinks in silence until Daisy scooted as close as possible to Brooke, in the process pushing Brooke so that she was pressed up against Nick’s warm body.

After giving the patrons a quick look in the mirror, Daisy gave her full attention to Nick and dropped her voice to as much of a whisper as possible, “Do you really think so? About Riley, I mean.”

“As someone with lifetime experience of being a guy and judging by the way he tried to break my fingers when we shook hands the other day?” Nick set down his cider and pivoted his body so he faced Daisy directly, the move making it so Brooke’s side fit perfectly against him, one hand dropped to her hip and her breath caught. “Oh yeah.”

The urge to melt back against him had her on the verge, but she caught herself in time. If every eye in the pub wasn’t on them at the moment, she’d have inched Daisy over enough to put some breathing room between her body and Nick’s. His lips did a quick curl upward—as if he knew exactly what she was doing—but he let his fingers fall from her hip, the move as casual and smooth as if he’d never been touching her. If only it felt that way. Instead, the one spot on her hip became the one spot on her body that she felt the most.

“No way,” Daisy said, staring into her beer. “He totally would have made a move.”

“Like buying you a beer?” Nick asked.

“Oh, that’s just tradition,” Daisy countered. “We buy rounds here; no one gets just one beer for themselves.”

Her sister moved in closer again, but this time, Brooke took the chicken’s way out and stepped back from the bar instead of letting herself end up snuggled up close to Nick again. Nick. She needed to stop thinking of him that way. Mr. Vane, who was off-limits because her job was too important. The earl’s posh heir wasn’t for a publican’s daughter like her. The man who made her see neon stars last night—twice. Bloody hell. She all but stomped over to Daisy’s other side, needing a buffer between her and the man who encouraged the lustful little demon on her shoulder—okay, between her legs.

“Uh-huh,” Nick said, still facing Daisy, but his hot gaze was on Brooke. “And the way he always makes sure you get a seat with the best view of the mirror, so you don’t miss anything?”

Daisy’s head snapped up. “You’ve only met him once; how could you know if he even did that?”

Nick’s attention dropped to Daisy, all the heat gone. “But he does, doesn’t he?”

Instead of answering, Daisy finished off her pint, setting the now empty glass down on the rubber mat near the taps. Brooke hadn’t seen the confused, slightly lost look on her sister’s face since she’d woken up in hospital unable to hear. Sometimes the earth moved under one’s feet like that. Could be a big thing or something that seems small at the time but, in the end, the effect was the same, because all of a sudden nothing was as it had been.

Taking pity on her sister, Brooke handed over her half-filled pint. “You might as well admit it. Nick’s right.”

“So what do I do about it?” Daisy asked.

“Don’t look at me.” Nick shrugged. “I’m just an observant dude, not the Merry Matchmaker.”

Rolling her eyes at Nick over Daisy’s head, Brooke shook her head and then asked, “What do you want to do about it?”

Her sister looked up from her ale. “I don’t know.”

Right, then. Okay. That made things a wee bit more complicated. “Then let it play out; you don’t need to rush into anything.”

Daisy worried her bottom lip and glanced back over her shoulder at where Riley sat, his big laugh booming in the club as he raised his glass in a toast. “So you think this is just something new for him?”

“Define new.”

“The past fortnight?” her sister asked hopefully.

Nick choked on his cider at Daisy’s question in his obvious attempt not to laugh out loud. Glaring at the big prat over her sister’s head, she sent him a silent plea to shut up already. Then she snagged her pint away from her sister and took a long guzzle.

“A bit longer than that,” she said, setting the empty glass down.

“How long?” Daisy asked.

Now, this took some considering. When had the forest ranger started acting differently around Daisy? It was before she’d gotten sick. He’d visited her several times a week when she was in hospital. Brooke went back further. He’d been none too happy about her leaving Yorkshire for university. Before that? Realization lit up her memory like a torch on the moors on a moonless night.

“Do you remember when Riley punched out Dale Gover for calling you a slag?”

Daisy blinked several times in surprise. “In year nine?”

Brooke nodded. That had been the first time she’d noticed how Riley looked at her sister. That had been years before Daisy had lost her hearing, so that should settle any thoughts her sister might have about Riley just pitying her.

Daisy stared at her for a few more seconds before turning back toward the mirror and the view of Riley it provided. She and Nick followed suit, all of them in companionable silence to give her sister time to adjust to the shock of what she really should have seen years ago. How people could be so clueless about the world around them she had no idea—especially when it was someone as smart and usually observant as her sister. Together they watched as Riley waved off one of his mates, stood up, and made his way over to where the three of them stood at one end of the bar.

“Fancy another round?” Riley asked.

For once, Daisy looked flustered. “Actually, I think this one’s mine.”

“I couldn’t have you buying me mates’ pints.” He tucked a stray hair behind her ear. “I’ve got you.”

Daisy’s throat bobbed as she gulped, and instead of saying anything, she just nodded. Riley smiled down at her and went about the business of catching their dad’s eye, not an easy task, since business had picked up since they’d walked in.

Smiling to herself, Brooke didn’t mean to look over at Nick, but her gaze went there anyway. He held up his half-filled cider glass in toast and nodded her way.

A happy flutter exploded in her stomach, a dangerous sense of giddiness that she could get used to if she wasn’t careful. It was nice to have someone take her side in a debate for once. Comforting, really. And more than a little thrilling.

It had been a long time since she’d experienced that. The last time, in fact, had been back in Manchester, and that had ended beyond badly. So while she wanted nothing more than to tell him all that, she bit back the words and instead gave him a curt nod and turned away from Nick…Mr. Vane…the earl’s heir…the one leaving in a few months, if he’d even stay as long as he promised. In other words, Mr. Not For the Likes of Her.