Chapter Sixteen

Brooke had ditched him. Again. For the past three days—ever since they’d enlightened Daisy about Riley’s Texas-size crush on her—Brooke had been avoiding him like he was a big, cold glass of sweet tea and she was diabetic. Sure, he probably deserved it for putting his hand on her hip, but he’d given in to temptation when it arose, curious about if his body would react to her in the daylight the way it had the night before. Oh boy had it. He’d spent the last few days with various tour guides from the village showing him around Bowhaven and the moors and nights grinding his molars to powder in an effort to give her the space it seemed she wanted.

However, when the note came to meet her at her father’s pigeon loft in the family’s backyard—which she’d called a garden—he thought he’d been forgiven. Wrong. He’d shown up at the house a few blocks from the Quick Fox to find Mr. and Mrs. Chapman-Powell but no Brooke.

He glanced over at Phillip Chapman-Powell standing next to what looked like an upscale shed that had to be around six feet wide and six feet high with screened-in mini sunrooms attached to the windows. A little weird but nothing unusual for a backyard—except for the soft cooing coming from inside it. That would definitely stand out in his neck of the woods.

“So you fancy pigeons?” Phillip asked.

Wait. Had Brooke’s dad just asked him if he liked birds? That was just…wrong. He had to be misunderstanding, but the British reality shows he’d been watching late at night while stopping himself from knocking on the door connecting his room to Brooke’s all used the term “fancy” as in wanting to bone someone.

“I’m not sure I’m translating that question correctly,” he said.

Phillip took a second to clean his glasses and rephrased, “Are you a pigeon fancier? Do you want to race pigeons? Brooke said you were interested in finding out more about it.”

Oh. Thank. God. “Uh. Maybe.”

He must have sounded about as convincing as he felt because Phillip gave him an assessing look that reminded Nick a lot of a certain blond Englishwoman who went by the name Lady Lemons.

Finally, Phillip shook his head and headed over to the loft, stopping when his hand was on the doorknob. “Is she trying to keep you at the big house or scare you off?”

Now wasn’t that the big question. “I think keep me, but I’m not sure this week. She’s been avoiding me.”

“That’s my lass. Keep us on our toes, that one does.” Phillip’s face nearly split in two with the size of his proud smile. “Now, come meet my pigeons.”

Two hours later, he’d met all twenty-five Racing Homer pigeons who were, just like Brooke had said, all named after Harry Potter characters—except for Cecil (“And really there should have been a Cecil in Harry Potter,” Phillip had told him. “Good name, that one.”)—and was sitting in the family room drinking tea and watching a BBC documentary explaining the ins and outs of pigeon racing, from the tiny rubber rings that go around the pigeon’s legs to the use of electronic timers to track the birds as they make their way from the liberation sites back to their home loft—a distance that can be hundreds of miles. He should have been bored out of his mind, but he wasn’t. Thanks to Phillip’s enthusiasm for the sport and his own never-ending curiosity, he’d gotten sucked in and found himself asking questions about everything from how they get the birds to the liberation point (a special pigeon semitruck-looking vehicle) to the dangers to the birds (falcons and hawks were pigeon enemy number one) to the keys to loft designing (make sure you have enough room was the main rule). When the documentary switched gears and went from the macro world of pigeon racing to the micro, he was surprised to see a seventies version of Phillip in his prime with a pigeon in his hands and a pretty blonde next to him.

“My two favorite birds,” Phillip said with a chuckle at his own joke.

Not that he had any firsthand experience, but it seemed the U.S. hadn’t cornered the market on dad jokes. “So you grew up racing pigeons?”

“Oh yes.” Phillip muted the TV and sat back in his overstuffed recliner stationed in front of a bookcase filled with miniature porcelain pigeons.

“Did Brooke or Daisy take it up?” He tried to picture either of the women talking to the pigeons in the soft, calm manner Phillip had out in the loft and the image of the kinetic duo slowing down enough for that wouldn’t come.

Phillip shook his head. “Not for lack of trying on my part. Although Brooke is determined to make Bowhaven home to a pigeon race. She thinks it will help the local chippy, B&Bs, and the pub, of course.”

It made sense to him, but this was a new environment, so more information was needed. “What do you think?”

Phillip took off his perfectly clean glasses and used the hem of his shirt to clean them before putting them back on. “That Brooke has a million great ideas, but only one way to share them with people.”

“Beating them over the head with them.” The woman would be pushy for a New Yorker, let alone a small village in England.

The older man nodded. “That’s about the sum of it.”

“Has she always been so determined?” he asked, his insatiable curiosity too strong to stuff back down.

Phillip stared at the TV screen, now showing a toddler-size towheaded girl who had to be Brooke running around the twentysomething-year-old version of himself as he stood in front of a pigeon loft. “She was always a lass with a plan, but ever since she came back from Manchester, she’s been more”—he paused as if looking for the right word in the ceiling—”forceful.”

“What happened in Manchester?” It wasn’t idle wondering. His gut had tightened at the concern in Brooke’s father’s tone.

Phillip glanced down at him, blinking as if he’d forgotten he was there, before a neutral smile slid into place. “Oh, look at me prattling on when I know it’s the pigeons you’re interested in. Did you have any other questions about my birds?”

Not even close to sated but knowing he wasn’t going to get any more clues to the riddle of Lady Lemons today, Nick shook his head. “I think I’ve taken up enough of your time already.”

“Always glad to help the future earl,” he said, standing up.

Nick followed suit. “Don’t you think that’s weird?”

“That I’m glad to help or that you’ll be the earl someday?” The teasing glint in the other man’s eyes said he knew exactly what Nick was asking.

“The last part. I’m not exactly sure what anyone expected for the earl’s heir.”

Phillip laughed and made his way to the door that led out to the little foyer room at the front of the house. “Where would the fun in that be if life always happened the way one thought it would?”

But that’s exactly what Nick had spent his entire adult life doing—making sure with each of his inventions that things happened the way they should. Predictability. Ease of use. No surprises. That’s what he liked. That’s why he’d picked the lake house out in the middle of Virginia where life rolled along the country road undisturbed right up until that first letter from Lady Lemons had arrived and changed everything—but only for six months a year. At least that’s what he was telling himself despite the little voice in the back of his head telling him to guess again.

…

Cadbury cured everything. Well, almost everything. As Brooke sat on her bed and popped another Dinky Deckers into her mouth, letting the milk chocolate melt on her tongue and leaving the crispy cereal and soft nougat, she searched her brain for a solution the earl would accept to the financial enemy marching its army up to Dallinger Park’s door. The situation was worse than she’d realized.

At the earl’s behest, she’d spent the past three days creating spreadsheets of assets—from paintings to books to the wine in the cellar—and researching what similar items had sold for at recent auctions. If the old earl was willing to part with family heirlooms as so many other of the landed gentry had been forced to do to pay for the upkeep of their legacies, then things were dire indeed. And blast it all, she had exactly zero ideas for how to help in the quick time frame that was obviously needed.

Closing her eyes, she allowed her head to fall back against the headboard with a thunk and let out a frustrated and long groan.

“You okay there, Lemons?” Nick’s voice carried through the closed door.

Double shit.

“I’m fine,” she said, pulling up the duvet over her sleeping tank and shorts, as if he could see her through the door, because God knew she was picturing him right now.

“Then maybe you can explain something for me.”

Abandoning her chocolate on the bedside table, she scooted down her bed so she sat with her back propped against one of the bedposts, taking the duvet with her. “What’s that?”

“Why are there naked people on a regular basic cable channel?”

Of all the things that Nick could have asked about, that was pretty much the last one she’d expected. Scratch that. She never would have thought up that one, full stop. “What are you talking about?”

“This dating show,” he said, his voice low and rumbly, as he was obviously trying to work out what was happening on his telly. “There are three cocks on my screen and they’re not pixelated out.”

Brooke giggled and fought against the temptation of sneaking over to her door to see the shocked expression on his puritan American face. “Why would they be?”

“Did you hear me say they were cocks, as in penises not roosters?” he asked. “And this woman is telling everyone what she thinks about the cocks. She actually said one was too big and another was on the pencil-looking side. Is this what women think about dicks?”

Oh, the poor man. His mind had been blown by Naked Attraction. “Why so uptight?”

“Really, Lady Lemons?” he asked with a chuckle. “You’re calling me uptight?”

Okay, that one hit close to the cottage. “Nudity isn’t such a big deal here.”

“This country is so flippin’ weird.”

Wait. What? No. That wasn’t going unchallenged. “Uh-huh, this coming from a man who lives in a country where there are drive-through liquor stores.”

“Very handy when you’re on your way to tailgate.”

She’d had to look that up once after a reference in a Buzzfeed article. The whole idea of standing around in a parking lot before a university American football game was odd, to put it lightly. “That’s also bizarre.”

“Says the woman who lives in a country where there’re un-pixilated cocks on regular TV.”

She laughed, some of the anxiety seeping out of her knotted muscles at the banter. “There’ll be tits soon, too.”

Something plastic—the remote?—clunked when it hit the floor. “What?”

“The person picking their date ends up naked, too.” She was sure there was a better way to describe the reality dating show, but her brain wasn’t coming up with one at the moment.

“On national TV,” he said, his voice sounding closer to the door.

She nodded, as if he could see her. “Exactly.”

“So why don’t you come out here and watch this with me and tell me what’s driving you nuts and making you so tense that you started banging your head on the wall.” Oh yeah, definitely closer and deeper and hotter than he should be.

“I’m not tense.” Hello, Fibber McFibberpants.

“You can’t lie to me,” he said with a snort. “I figure out puzzles for a living.”

She couldn’t look away from the doorknob, half hoping and half dreading that it would start to turn. God. She was in trouble. “I thought you invented things.”

“Same thing. I figure out ways to make things easier for people.”

“What if what’s making me mental is you?” Okay, that was truer than it was false, but it wasn’t her place to tell tales about the state of Dallinger Park’s finances.

He chuckled. “Not gonna buy it, since you’ve been avoiding me for days.”

“You noticed that, did you now?” Chicken? Her? Oh yeah. She was the girl who ran from Manchester with her tail tucked between her legs in the dead of night to avoid the reporters and the photographers who’d set up across from her flat.

Nick rapped softly on the door. “Can I come in?”

Hello, temptation, it’s me, Brooke. “Letting you in isn’t a good idea.”

“Probably not.”

That he agreed didn’t make her want to open the door any less—which was exactly why she stayed on the bed with her back pressed to the post and the duvet clutched to her chest, her body going melty like a Dinky Deckers left out in the sun. The silence stretched, filling the room with expectations that couldn’t be met. Not for a woman like her with a man like him.

Still, she stared at the door, practically willing it to open on its own. “Good night, Mr. Vane.”

“Say it.”

It wasn’t a request. It was a demand that set off a warm, liquid wave of desire through her, and she didn’t have to ask what he meant.

“Nick.”

“God, I love the sound of my name on your lips.”

She brushed her fingertips along her lips because they buzzed as if she’d just kissed him, and despite the nearly overwhelming urge to open the connecting door, she made her way back up to her pillows at the head of the bed and lay down, knowing her dreams would be far from restful tonight.