Chapter Twenty-One

The undead were everywhere, and Nick couldn’t find Brooke.

Mace must have hired 90 percent of the village as extras for the big zombie wedding ball scene. Nick made his way through the zombies walking from the makeup trailers in the stable house driveway to the big house, where they stood on the edge of the set, which Mace had called a “no-go zone,” where only director, actors, camerapeople, and other must-haves were allowed. He was not and neither, it seemed, were the zombie hordes. Brooke, however, had managed to get past the invisible velvet rope.

One of the crew, a skinny guy in a black T-shirt and artfully torn jeans with—no lie—a newsboy cap was next to her, chatting her up. He was the kind of guy who only ordered craft beer made in small batches that had been flavored with the stolen acorns of woodland fairies and talked in condescending tones about the true righteousness of records played on his authentic gramophone. Nick wanted to crunch his nose to dust.

“Fancy meeting you here,” Daisy said, stopping to stand next to him.

Or at least he thought it was her. Gray skin, one eye hanging halfway down her cheek, and only a few blond wisps of hair covering her oozing head.

“Daisy?”

“In the undead flesh.”

“You look horrible.”

“Thank you.” She grinned up at him, showing off a mouth with only a handful of yellow teeth in it. “Check out Riley’s heart.”

He glanced over at the big man next to Daisy before his brain could warn him off. Riley’s face was pretty much the same, if grayer and slimier, but the real stomach turner was the hunk of skin and muscle missing from his chest that gave the perfect view of a putrid heart behind his exposed rib cage.

“The makeup folks really know what they’re doing.”

“It took forever, but how could we miss this?” Daisy slipped her hand into Riley’s. “Bowhaven’s never seen anything like it.”

Well, things sure had changed since he’d been village-napped.

“So who made the first move?” Nick asked, not bothering to hide the shit-eating grin he aimed at the big forest ranger.

Riley’s blush managed to give his makeup a pinkish hue. Daisy, on the other hand, just grinned.

“Me, of course,” she said. “Now the village has something else to talk about other than just wondering if you and Brooke are more than just heir and secretary.”

“They’re talking about that, huh?” As if magnetized, his gaze went back to Brooke inside the forbidden zone with the skinny guy who was standing way too close to the woman who’d been screaming Nick’s name as she came hard only a few hours ago.

Caveman tendencies? Possessive? Jealous? Him? Fucking A, yes he was.

“Take a breath there, John Wick,” Daisy said. “She’s just talking to him.”

Only half aware that there were other people in the world, he turned back to the diminutive zombie next to him so she could read his lips. “What?”

“Nothing,” Daisy said with a chuckle that ended when a hard look entered her eyes that gave him pause. “You know what happened with Reggie?”

That fucker? Oh yeah, he knew and wanted to squash him like a bug because of it. However, since she’d already called him out for being a me-Tarzan-you-Jane dipshit, he just said, “Yeah.”

“So know this.” She leaned forward, enough grit in her tone to make his blood chill in his veins. “No one will ever hurt her like that again.”

Subtle? Not in the least, but that wasn’t Daisy’s style. “I understand.”

“Good, because I like you, Nick Vane, but I love my sister.”

And there it was, the thing he couldn’t give Brooke, not now, not ever—that sense of permanence. He didn’t know jack shit about forever except that it was a lie. Everyone leaves, so why bother trying to pretend otherwise? Brooke believed that following the rules meant success, she believed right triumphed over wrong, she believed that forever wasn’t a fairy tale—even if she wouldn’t admit it to herself, let alone him. If she didn’t, she never would have been making all this effort to bring Bowhaven back to what it had been and push it toward what it could be. And he would be nothing but a sometimes visitor to that world. It was all he knew—that was all he could ever be—because he knew better than anyone else that forever was nothing but a cruel promise that wasn’t any more real than Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella.

The shrill squeak of feedback over a loudspeaker made him flinch before he could respond to Daisy’s threat.

“All zombies report to the great hall,” a woman in a baseball cap armed with a bullhorn said as she walked through the crowd of the undead.

Riley tapped Daisy’s shoulder and she stopped giving Nick the I-will-fuck-your-world glare to turn an adoring gaze onto her new boyfriend.

“We’ve got to go,” he said, once she was turned to him and could read his lips.

She nodded, and a huge smile broke out on her face. “Let’s go eat some brains.”

Riley laughed and they walked off together until they were a part of the undead horde streaming into Dallinger Park.

That left Nick alone to watch the controlled chaos that was a film shoot. It was a lot like baseball. Hours of boredom broken up by a flurry of activity, screams, and cursing. He scanned the area for Brooke, but she wasn’t with the skinny guy anymore. Not by the entrance to the big house. Not on his side of the do-not-cross line. After a few minutes, he finally spotted her deep in discussion with Mace. Her hand was on his forearm and their heads close together as they looked at a monitor showing what was going on inside the great hall.

He’d known Mace for his entire adult life and a good number of years before that. In all that time, he’d never wanted to strangle him. Of course, that was before he saw his oldest friend give Brooke the smile that usually led to a game of: Panties? What panties?

Every muscle in his body was strung tight as he watched them, willing himself not to give in to the urge to pound his friend into the ground. Then Mace turned his head toward Nick and shot him a nothing-going-on-between-you-huh? grin behind Brooke’s back. The asshole. He must have seen Nick approaching and decided to poke the bear. Nick flipped his friend off. Mace just shrugged and turned back toward the monitor Brooke was engrossed with, but this time letting some sunshine—if this country actually had some—between their bodies.

Shit. He needed to dial back this…whatever the fuck it was. He wasn’t the guy. He wasn’t just the one everyone left. He took off, too. He’d walked away from every girlfriend he’d ever had since he’d kissed Jenna Hoffman in sixth grade at the middle school dance. Staying wasn’t in his DNA. And he was leaving soon for Virginia anyway, to get his life in order for the six-month split between there and here.

Of course, that didn’t make him want to touch her any less, and that was the part that had him walking a thin line. He was the wrong man for her and he still wanted her anyway. Badly. More than he should.

“There you are,” Brooke said, a huge smile on her face as she crossed under the rope cordoning off the no-go zone and over to him. “I was wondering where you’d run off to.”

Standing close enough that the hum of electricity between them practically buzzed in his ears, she reached up and picked off invisible lint from his shirt as if she couldn’t help but touch him. Without thinking, he took her hand in his, the rightness of her fingers being intertwined with his setting off sparks of awareness and a lightning bolt of realization. He didn’t just want her. He was falling for her. And as she looked up at him, desire burning in her blue eyes as she parted her lips expectantly, he knew the last thing she needed in her life—even temporarily—was a man with his kind of baggage.

A better man would have walked away right then. Nick wasn’t a better man. Instead, he gave in to the urge to make Brooke his, dipped his head lower, and claimed her mouth in a kiss that promised everything he couldn’t deliver. He put everything he had into it, all the yearning and bittersweet wanting and tomorrows they couldn’t have. It wasn’t gentle or nice or teasing. It was delicious agony, and he never wanted it to end.

He never heard the other man approaching. It wasn’t until the flash went off and the man hollered “oi” that Nick realized the rest of the world still existed. Drugged on this kiss and denial, Nick broke away from Brooke enough to figure out what was going on. His gut sank.

The man was in a T-shirt and jeans, a press badge clipped to his shirt. “Never thought I’d catch Reggie’s uptight ex like this,” the man said. “Who’s the chap, Brooke? Is this to get back at Reggie? Still holding out hope he’ll come back now that he broke it off with the prime minister’s daughter?”

He took another couple of shots as Nick’s brain tried to catch up. As soon as it did, he leaped back from Brooke and reached for the photographer, but the other man slipped away, disappearing into a second wave of zombies milling around waiting for their time on camera.

“Oh no,” Brooke said, seeming to shrink into herself as he watched. “Please not again.”

…

Whoever was answering pleas that week wasn’t taking calls, though. The first photos had appeared online on soccer gossip sites that night and rehashed Brooke’s experience with that dickhead Reggie as if she hadn’t been hot enough to hold on to what they called a footballer. Nick had never read something so ridiculous in his entire life.

“They’re jerks,” he said, snapping closed her laptop that sat on the kitchen table in the stable house the next morning.

She took a drink of tea from her mug, then let out a long, weary sigh. “Why did this have to happen just when everyone was starting to look at me as if I had something to offer Bowhaven, as if I could be taken seriously?”

“I take you seriously.”

She snorted in a very un-Lady-Lemons-like way. “You just want to get in my knickers.”

“True.” He grinned. “But don’t worry, this will blow over and it’ll only be a blip compared to all you bring to this place. The people in Bowhaven know that.”

If only that had been the case. By the time Mace and the last movie people were packing up two days later, there were scummy little reporters and photographers everywhere in Bowhaven. Someone on the crew—Mace didn’t know who—had let it slip exactly who Brooke had been caught kissing. And that’s all it had taken for the photos and the speculation to move from the obscure soccer gossip sites to national news. Everyone wanted to get a piece of the American who was a rich inventor and would be the Earl of Englefield. The one he’d given to Mr. Darcy to shred in his doggie way had the headline “From American Love Child to English Earl.”

“Oh, not this twat again,” Riley muttered when a blowhard appeared on the TV in the fish and chip shop where the two were having lunch.

Just as the man started in on the absolute mockery having a child borne from a marriage that had been annulled as a legitimate member of the peerage, the forest ranger hit the mute button.

“Thanks,” Nick said.

Riley made a sort of grunting sound that he took as a “no problem,” and they went back to shoveling fish and vinegar-soaked french fries into their mouths. The fact that his mouth was filled with food was probably the only reason why his jaw didn’t drop when the earl walked in in full-on tweed outfit with a carved walking stick and a proud, disapproving upturn to his nose.

The earl looked around the mostly empty restaurant and finally settled on Nick. “I need a moment.”

“What is it?” he asked, sopping up some salt from the brown paper wrapper his fish and fries had come in.

“Can we go somewhere more private?” The earl fiddled with an eight-by-ten manila envelope tucked under one arm. “This information is of a delicate nature.”

Nick watched the closed captioning on the silent television. The douche nozzle in the bad suit had moved on to calling Nick’s mom a money-grubbing American hussy. “I’m not sure I have any delicate sensitivity left anymore.”

“It involves Ms. Chapman-Powell.”

That dragged his attention from the TV. “Go on.”

The earl pulled the envelope from under his arm. “And some pictures.”

“Have you been watching the news?” Nerves started to eat away at his stomach lining despite the bravado. “That kiss is already splashed all over the place.”

“There are…” The earl paused as if, for once, at a loss for words. “Other photos.”

When Nick didn’t say anything, Gramps gave Riley a look that would freeze lava and the forest ranger shrugged and moved to another table. The earl sat down and placed the envelope on the small circular table. Nick’s stomach developed six new ulcers in the span of a heartbeat. He didn’t want to open that envelope. Whatever was in there, it was bad. He picked up the envelope anyway and pulled out the contents.

…

Just when Brooke thought it couldn’t get worse, Nick had walked into the Fox, asked her out into the garden, and shown her naked photos of the two of them making love at the stable house taken the night before. She knew because her hair was up in the photos just like it had been last night. He’d fisted her ponytail and she’d almost come on the spot. Now someone else out there knew that moment that had belonged just to them.

The contents of her stomach curdled.

“How did he get these?” she asked, crumpling onto the wooden bench farthest away from the door leading into the pub and trying not to remember that the man who handed over the copies of the photos was her boss.

The earl had received the low-resolution copies as a courtesy from a media mogul who’d turned down the opportunity to publish the photos in the national newspaper he owned as a favor to the earl. Of course, there wasn’t a guarantee the other papers wouldn’t print them. If they made it past next week without her arse on the front page, she’d go into shock.

“Well, it was nice while it lasted,” she said, imagining all her grand ideas for Bowhaven flying away with the fast-moving clouds overhead. They’d never happen now. Not once people got an eyeful of these pictures.

The disaster that was her life post-Reggie was one thing. She’d been the victim. But this? She doubted they’d see it that way.

“What was nice?” Nick asked as he tore the printouts into tiny confetti pieces and swept them into the manila envelope.

“Being respected by the villagers.” Getting the opportunity to see some of her ideas for the village come to fruition. Meeting her parents’ eyes. Not having everyone in Yorkshire knowing what her O face looked like. He could take his pick. “Now I’ll just be the girl who shagged the earl’s heir.”

The envelope crumpled in his grip. “That’s not fair.”

“And we both know that life isn’t fair, so why fight it?” She knew better. The man got backslaps. The woman? She was just a slag. It wasn’t fair, and that just gutted her.

Nick paced the pub’s back garden like a caged animal, all angry intensity and pent-up energy. The air rippled around him, and for a second she couldn’t do more than stare at the man she’d fallen for. Hard. Before she knew it. Seeing him riled up like this on her behalf shoved away the last bit of the self-protective barrier around her heart because it was his. And with Nick by her side, she’d win over the town again. She wasn’t going to give up on it now.

Oblivious to the thoughts swirling around inside her head, Nick raked his fingers through his hair as he paced. “Why don’t you get out of Dodge? Go somewhere else for a while, ditch everything and everyone.”

Away. From everyone. The words stuck on repeat in her head. “You think I should run away. Again?”

He stopped in front of her and nodded with the conviction of a saint in church. “Just leave. Start over. Everyone does.”

“Even you?” The words scraped her throat as she said them.

It wasn’t like she hadn’t known he was going in a few months, but knowing and believing were two different things. Six months. That’s all he could give Bowhaven each year. Nothing more. No full-time commitment. She was a world-class git.

Nick didn’t say anything—he didn’t have to—and something inside her broke with such a clear finality, she swore she could hear the snap echoing in her ears.

…

Why wouldn’t she listen to him? All he wanted to do was protect her, minimize the eventual agony. People left. Friends moved away. His dad abandoned his family. His mom died, and if someone thought that wasn’t leaving, then they’d never been lost and alone and at the mercy of an overburdened governmental system. He couldn’t stop that loss from hitting Brooke square in the face, but he could help her get out in front of it. If you moved fast and kept moving, then no one could leave you first.

“I asked you a question, Nick,” she said, her voice strained and shaking. “Please offer me the common curtesy of an answer.”

God, he didn’t want to do this, but he didn’t have a choice. He had to be cruel to be kind. She’d hate him, but she’d be better off. He could live with that.

He forced his shoulders to relax, took on the lazy, bored posture he’d worn as armor for as long as he could remember. “Look, Brooke, I’m not the kind of guy you need. It’s not in my DNA to stick around. Just look at the people I come from. Everybody leaves, even me—especially me.”

The words were knives and they landed perfectly. Her blue eyes grew wide, then watery, and it took everything he had not to fall to his knees before her and lie—tell her he’d stay, that he’d never leave. But he would. That’s what the Vanes did, and no matter how much he wanted to deny it, he was a Vane through and through. So he forced himself to stay, not to give in an inch.

Then Brooke transformed in front of him. Her spine straightened. Her chin lifted. She blinked away the unshed tears. Taking in a deep breath, she raised a hand and smoothed her blond hair back. By the time she rose from her chair, Brooke had disappeared and Lady Lemons had taken her place.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “This is my home and I’ll win them back over. One can’t just give up and leave every time something gets hard.”

“Leaving isn’t giving in; it’s playing it smart. It’s self-preservation. It’s survival.” Alone was better than abandoned and unwanted. Always. “You can’t fool yourself thinking that the whole I’ll-walk-five-hundred-miles thing is real. It’s not. Everyone leaves, and they don’t come back, so why not get out of there first?”

She looked him dead in the eyes. “Because not all of us are thirty-two-year-old man children.”

“Is that what you think I am?”

One blond eyebrow went up. “That’s what you’re acting like.”

And that’s what he got for trying to help. Insults. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” The manila envelope a crumpled mess in his fist, he turned and started for the door leading into the pub so he could get away from this woman.

“Leaving so soon?” she asked, a mocking derision giving her words a sharp edge. “What a shock.”

He yanked the door open but paused before he walked through, pivoting so he could get a good look at the woman who’d actually made him want to stay even when he knew he couldn’t. “Ever think that this place isn’t worth fighting for?”

“No,” she said without the slightest hesitation. “That’s the thing about Bowhaven. It demands fighters, and if you’re not one, then maybe you should go.”

“That’s exactly what I’ve been telling you people since you first contacted me. I don’t belong here.”

He’d known it all along. This place. These people. They didn’t want him and he didn’t want to be here. Now it was time he took his own advice and got the hell out of here for good.