Chapter Nineteen

Brooke skipped the fish and chips shop the next day to avoid the line of people spilling out the door. It wasn’t just there, though. People were everywhere in the shops, on the footpaths. The flash of light in the window of the Bits and Bobs bookstore caught her attention next. Taking care to peek in between villagers crowding around the big window, she spotted a man and a woman signing autographs and smiling for photos with locals. The man looked familiar and there was no mistaking the woman. She’d been in a dozen rom-coms that Brooke had curled up with during the past few winters.

She had no idea how the two managed to stand it. All the camera phones and crowds were giving her flashbacks. Of course, unlike her, these two weren’t the center of attention because it was the most humiliating time of their lives. Skin getting itchy from the awful claustrophobic anxiety climbing up every single nerve in her body, she hustled past to the Fox next door.

Per usual, just walking through the door smoothed out her janky breathing and settled her shoulders down a few inches.

“Aye up, Brooke,” her mum and dad said nearly in union from their spots behind the bar.

The others in the pub looked up from their pints and said their hellos—which passed as an overwhelmingly effusive welcome for Yorkshire—as she made her way over to her parents, who were both standing behind the bar beaming at her.

“What’s going on?” she asked as her mum handed her a cuppa.

“You’ve been the talk of the village,” her dad said before heading down to refill Bruce Ackerman’s pint.

“Oh, great.” Being at the center of the teatime chatter was not what she’d been hoping to get out of this. She owed Bowhaven, and all she wanted to do was repay that debt.

Her mum leaned forward, pride gleaming in her eyes. “No one can stop talking about the movie and the fact that Nick said it was you who helped him talk the earl into agreeing to let them film at Dallinger Park.”

There went the butterflies at the mention of his name. “Mr. Vane,” she said automatically.

“Oh, there you go with that. Fine. That’s what Mr. Vane said,” her mum added. “Brian Kaye asked me this morning if you were still interested in running for village council. He said Alma Fistlegate is stepping away.”

The village council? They wanted her to run? She figured she’d be fighting tooth and nail for years before she actually got on the council, and now they weren’t just going to listen to her, they wanted her to run? The news had her speechless.

“Brian,” her mum said, calling out to the man sitting at a table nearby. “I was just telling our Brooke how you’d mentioned an upcoming opening on the council.”

The older man stood up and carried his pint over to the bar, giving Brooke the friendliest look he’d ever shot her in the two years she’d been insistently sharing her ideas with him.

“Aye up, Brooke,” he said. “There’s not much power in the position; the county council is in charge of most things, but you’ll have a voice and help the village. So can I put you down as a yes?”

Would she say yes? In a bloody heartbeat. “Of course.”

It took Brooke a second to put a name on the floaty feeling making her lungs tight. Determined accomplishment. That’s what it was. She’d crossed a line and was going to do whatever it took to make sure she never went back to being the village joke again.

…

The moors looked like a live-action Instagram filter. Even for as much as Nick didn’t want to be standing hunched over in a hunting butt with Gramps waiting for the grouse to come bursting out from the heather-covered hills, he didn’t have a choice. He had dark-green ear protection on his head, but with one ear uncovered until the shooting started.

Gramps turned to him in the small stone-lined space. “We need to talk about Ms. Chapman-Powell.”

Yep. He definitely should have left ear protection over both ears. “Why?”

“Because your dalliance isn’t going unnoticed,” he said. “The villagers are talking.”

Great. That was exactly how to not get Brooke back into his bed. He’d fucked this whole thing up. “How is that any business of yours?”

“I’m your grandfather.” The earl straightened his tweed vest that went with his tweed pants that ended under his knees.

It was like looking at a fancy English rich-guy cosplayer. Really, a group of them, because the others in the hunting party were dressed in similar outfits. Meanwhile, he was in jeans and a dark-green fleece. In August. Thank you, winds off the North Sea.

“The question remains, why do you care?” he asked.

The earl kept his gaze on the horizon, but there was no missing the way he flinched at Nick’s words. “Your father was a complicated man.”

“He was a rich asshole who got what he wanted and left without a second thought.” About Nick’s mama. About him. About anything but himself.

The earl whirled around in the small space, the vein in his temple throbbing. “Is that what you think?”

“It’s what I know.” Not that his mama had ever spelled it out that way, but Nick had put the letters together all on his own.

“There’s more to the story than you realize,” the earl said, his voice as hard as the stone lining the hunting butt. “But this isn’t the place for that discussion.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Nick shot back, his own temper flaring. “I know the only reason I’m here is because you didn’t have any other choice. We’re not family. Not really.”

If he didn’t know any better, he’d call the look that crossed the earl’s face hurt, but he did know better. This was the same man who’d arranged for his mama to lose the man she loved for reasons Nick never understood and for him to be a bastard without a father but a title that didn’t mean shit to him. The earl opened his mouth, but before any words could come out, shots blasted through the air as the grouse took flight.

…

Dallinger Park was total chaos. Between the movie crew setting up lights and cameras and a million other things Brooke couldn’t put a name to, the earl giving the whole process a dismissive glare before retreating to the east wing, and the villagers hanging around to see if they’d get chosen to be an extra in the big zombie wedding ball scene, it was a madhouse. Crowds didn’t normally bother her, but the huge crush of people inside the great hall, the noise, and the number wandering outside the doors leading to the formal garden had her twitchy.

Nick was near Queen Victoria’s fireplace talking to his mate Mace. The two had an easy give-and-take between them with lots of laughter and manly shoulder punching for emphasis. Watching the byplay between the two men was like getting to see another side to Nick. For someone who presented himself to the world as if he was all laid-back charm, she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to him than he was letting on. Really, if he was as lazy as he tried to appear, would he have fixed Mr. Darcy’s kennel (Megan had told half the village about it once and the other half of the village twice), Paul’s fish fryer, and the flue for the fireplace he stood in front of right now, giving her an amazing view of his muscular arms as he gestured while talking with Mace?

As if he could hear her question without her even uttering a word, he turned and looked at her and then started walking directly for her, sending a lightning bolt of awareness right through her.

Nick didn’t bother to stop when he got close, just slid his palm across the small of her back and started walking them both toward the french doors. “Let’s get out of here.”

“We can’t leave.” No matter how lovely that sounded.

“What good is being the heir to an earldom if I can’t throw my weight around and get us out of this mess?” He didn’t stop their forward progress out the doors and to her little car, where he held open the driver’s side door. “Come on. Take me away from all of this before Mace talks me into being a one-eyed zombie with a drooling problem.”

She didn’t have any plan in mind when she turned the keys in the ignition—she just drove, trying to ignore the way his masculine, woodsy scent filled the car, reminding her of how her pillows had smelled of him after they’d swapped rooms the first night. She’d sniffed that pillow a lot—too much for a grown woman to ever admit out loud.

They ended up at the Bowhaven Forest, which almost smelled as good as Nick—calling Dr. Freud. Serious hikers mostly left it alone, but there was a tree-lined path dotted with huge hand-carved wooden foxes, frogs, bats, and owls that didn’t require hiking boots. That’s where she took Nick, hoping the beauty of the walk could keep her distracted enough that she didn’t give in to the growing urge to pull him behind a tree and have an outdoorsy repeat of the other night. If the path had been deserted, she might have, but as it was, they talked about his inventions and her plans to run for village council as they walked past the families with kids on the rough-hewn wooden swings and the couples on blankets taking in the last warm days of the season. It was nice being here with him, almost like they were just a girl and a guy, not the earl’s heir and the earl’s secretary. Looking up at the sunrays peeking through the branches, she realized that this was about as relaxed and happy as she’d been outside of her family’s pub since Reggie. It was almost as if that part of her life had never happened. God, wouldn’t that be a dream.

Someone at a picnic table had brought Bluetooth speakers and was playing one of the older songs that her parents had danced around to in the kitchen. Like Pavlov’s dog, she was singing the da-da-da-das along with the band until the music faded away.

“I love that song,” she said, unable to keep the grin off her face as they stopped in front of a giant carved wooden sheep, complete with intricately carved wool.

“Are you kidding?” Nick asked, shaking his head. “It’s the worst. Like anyone would actually walk five hundred miles for someone else.”

“It’s nice to think that someone would, though.” That someone would always have to be on your side, dependable, solid. She knew what the opposite of that was like and couldn’t help but hold out hope that she’d find it.

“Lady Lemons,” he said, brushing a strand of hair that had escaped her ponytail behind her ear, sending her pulse skyrocketing. “Are you a closet romantic?”

“Not anymore.” At least not that she’d ever admit.

He looked down at her with enough heat and hunger in his brown eyes to make her knees weak, her mouth dry, and her panties damp. When all she should be doing was running the hell away from him, all she wanted in the world was to have him lean down and kiss her until the rest of the world disappeared. God, what this man did to her wasn’t fair. She really needed to watch herself or she was going to fall—and fall hard—for the last man in the world she should want. And that was the exact moment when she realized it was too late. She already was falling for him—probably had started before he’d even landed at the airport with those emails and texts she’d read a million times.

“Fuck me,” she hissed under her breath.

Nick arched an eyebrow, but he didn’t kiss her. Instead, he took a step back and inhaled a shaky breath. “We should get back.”

“You’re right,” she agreed, trying desperately to remember who she was (publican’s daughter), who he was (earl’s heir), and that anything between them wasn’t meant to be because life wasn’t a fairy tale and women like her didn’t end up with men like him.

…

“Surly” didn’t begin to cover the black mood Nick had been stuck in since yesterday’s walk in the woods with Brooke. When she’d looked up at him with that expression on her face like she thought there was something more to him than just a good fuck and that she was down for it, he’d been about three seconds from giving in, from dipping his head and kissing her so that he blasted away every last thought she’d ever had about any other man in the world but him. He didn’t just want to fuck her—he wanted to claim her, and that wasn’t him. He wasn’t that guy. In that way, he really was his father’s son.

“The clock’s ticking on this place,” said Karen, yanking Nick back to the task at hand. She was one of the local electricians Paul had recommended when Nick went to find out how Webster had done with the voice recordings—shitty, it turned out. “This wiring has got to be fixed, and it’s not going to be cheap.”

Of course it did and of course it wasn’t. “What happens if it isn’t?”

Karen didn’t utter a word, but the horrified grimace on her face said it all.

“Are we talking no lights or a fire hazard?”

“The latter,” Karen said. “Maybe not for years. Maybe sooner. No way to tell.”

Fucking A. This was not what he needed. He could afford to get it fixed, several times over, but getting the earl to agree to the work that would mean a lot of holes in a lot of walls was going to be like punching himself in the face repeatedly for months. Every time he’d brought it up, the old man had glared and said he was earl and would decide what was to be done.

He no sooner had the thought than the earl came steaming right at them. Karen, her sense of self-preservation obviously well honed, didn’t bother to stick around. She just gathered her stuff and got out of there faster than a race car on the last lap.

The earl took one look at Karen’s retreating form and launched into a verbal attack. “Whatever it is, absolutely not.”

Christ on a cracker. He was not in the mood for this bullshit. “The electrical needs to be updated.”

“I’ve told you repeatedly, it’s fine.” The old man narrowed his eyes and crossed his arms over his thin chest, daring Nick to argue.

It was all so unbelievable—no, wait, totally predictable. “Why do you have to stick your heels in the dirt about everything?”

“Don’t be impertinent.” The earl waved a hand dismissively in the air.

“You’re right,” Nick said, actually feeling the moment when the last thread holding his temper in check snapped. “I shouldn’t give a rat’s ass about this place. God knows no one who ever lived here gave a rat’s ass about me.”

“That’s not true,” the older man said, his face ashen. “Your father—”

“Left.” The single word landed like a punch that hit both of them.

His grandfather winced. “He couldn’t stay.”

And they both knew why.

Lost to the fury only an abandoned child can feel, Nick said, “Because. Of. You.”

Temper snapped in the old man’s eyes, and he straightened to almost Nick’s height, staring his progeny in the eyes. “Because he had responsibilities.”

To an old pile of rocks that was more important than Nick’s mama or him? Good to know, not that he didn’t anyway. “You know what? You’re right. The electrical in this dump doesn’t need to be updated.”

Without waiting for the old man to utter another word of bullshit, Nick strode out of Dallinger Park, powered by a visceral anger that had spent too many years swirling under the surface. The old fury, it hadn’t ever gone away. It probably never would. The gravel drive crunched under his boots as he crossed to the stable house, a single light shining from a window. He stormed in through the front door and slammed it behind him.

Brooke stood in the hallway, light from the kitchen outlining her form and casting her blond hair in an ethereal halo.

“Nick,” she said, her voice soft and unsure. “Are you okay?”

No, he wasn’t. Not even close. He was across the room before he knew it, every part of him aching to lose itself in her, in the sweet oblivion of her silky skin, her breathy moans, and the tight grip of her orgasm as she came all over him. He needed to feel her, to touch her, to make her want him. Still, he kept his hands at his sides, knowing that touching her, even once, would break the resolve he was holding on to with the last ounce of his tenuous self-control.

“Say the word and I’ll leave you alone. I won’t ever bother you again. We’ll just be friends,” he said, hating every single syllable coming out of his mouth. “Say it. Tell me you don’t want me the way I want you.”