The second time, it had been nearly dawn, the sky outside that perfect charcoal that came right before light. He’d been asleep, and it had been Lilah’s turn to wake him with lips and hands, to follow his wicked, wonderful instructions until they were both sated.
This time, it was morning, and he could have left.
But he’d stayed.
She should have been unnerved by the realization, but she wasn’t. In fact, as she stretched in the beam of warm sunlight and catalogued the lingering effects of the night before—a tight muscle here, a delicious twinge there—she was filled with an undeniable thrill.
Minutes later, having pulled on a pair of soft yoga pants, a tank top and a cardigan, brushed her teeth, and ensured she looked properly, artfully mussed, she made her way down the ancient creaky staircase to the kitchen of the cottage. Hesitating in the doorway, she watched him, tall and broad and . . . freshly washed. Wearing different clothes than the night before.
He stood at the scarred wooden counter next to the stove, chopping something that he had to have found wherever he’d found his new clothes, because last she’d checked, the cottage refrigerator contained a bottle of rosé, a carton of milk, half a wedge of Stilton, three Cornish pasties and an apple—none of which was producing that delicious smell.
“I’ve heard about these English fairies,” she said, moving into the room. “Bringing clean clothes and eggs”—she peeked around him—“and thyme?”
“I had to feed Atlas,” he said, setting the knife down and looking to her. “I thought you might be hungry. I kept you up late.”
And like that, the air in the room shifted, the memories of the night before between them, full of pleasure. “I am hungry,” she said, not meaning for it to come out quite so soft. Quite so wanting.
But it did, and his gaze heated, and she wondered what he’d do if she suggested they table breakfast and head back up for round four.
“Lilah Rose,” he said, the words a delicious rumble. “I have plans for this morning and if you keep looking at me like that, you’re going to ruin them.”
She inhaled at the words—direct and perfect, like this was normal, every-day-after-ordinary-sex breakfast and not extremely not normal, morning-after-excellent-first-time-sex breakfast—and smiled, coming closer. “Would we say ruin?”
He reached for her then, one big hand grabbing the waistband of her tank top, fisting the fabric and pulling her close for a kiss that should have been a normal daytime kiss and was instead extremely not normal and incredibly sexy, his tongue stroking deep, sliding against hers until she sighed and went loose in his arms. Only once she was clinging to him did he release her. “Pour yourself a coffee and wait for breakfast like a good girl.”
Unf.
She did as she was told, telling herself that responding so thoroughly to being called good girl was offset by the fact that she was absolutely going to sexually objectify this wildly handsome man while he cooked her breakfast.
She tucked one leg beneath her and sat down on the wide bench on the far side of the large oak table where she’d set up shop earlier in the week, her laptop and equipment on one end, and watched him work, moving two saucepans around the ancient Aga and navigating the kitchen, finding everything he needed without pause.
“You know this house well,” she observed. He did pause then, his shoulders stiffening just barely, just for a moment—so quick that you’d have to be incredibly skilled at reading people to notice.
She waited through the hesitation—a lesson learned in years of training. Hesitations revealed truth. Don’t blink, or you’ll miss the shot.
“I lived here for a bit.” Her brows shot up, but she bit her tongue, staring at his broad, hunched shoulders. She was rewarded for her patience when he added, “When my marriage was falling apart. I didn’t want to be in London, and I didn’t want to be at the main house. So I stayed here.”
Lilah looked down at the table then, at the map of the grain, crossed with scars and dings and divots, and her thumb traced the edge of a knot in the oak, imagining him here, nursing a broken heart.
They’d both come here to mend wounds.
They’d both come here to start fresh.
“Well,” she said, finally, returning her attention to his back, “I think you should have stayed for the stove, honestly. I’m in love with that stove. If I were a thief, that’s what I’d take.”
“This cooker weighs at least a tonne and was installed before you were born, Ms. Rose; you’d need a team to nick it.” He laughed, grabbing two plates from a shelf nearby and turning one perfect omelet and then another onto them before he collected napkins and forks and approached the table.
She took a moment to admire his lean hips where his dark Henley met the waistband of his worn chinos. “Why do you think I’m making friends with a very strong farmhand?”
He set the plate in front of her. “Mushrooms, herbs and goat’s cheese. Eggs fresh today from the girls. How’s that for farmhand?”
She blinked. “You collected eggs this morning?”
He shrugged, taking the chair across the table. “It was on the way.”
She wasn’t sure it was, but she wasn’t about to turn down a home-cooked meal. She lifted a fork and took a bite. “Max, this is delicious.”
“It’s nothing.” He dipped his head, that blush spreading across his cheeks again. If Lilah had more than this vacation from reality with him, she’d make it her personal goal to summon that blush once a day.
“It’s not nothing. I should know. I’ve been living in Airbnbs for eighteen months.” She waited for him to look at her. “Thank you.”
He didn’t look away then. Instead, he replied with absolute honesty, “Thank you, Lilah Rose.”
And it was Lilah’s turn to blush.
He watched her for a long moment, and she could see the pleasure in his gaze. She wanted to preen beneath it until he cleared his throat. “So, you’ve seen the world.”
“Not nearly the whole of it, but a lot more than most.”
“And what was that like?”
She looked to her gear at the end of the table. “At first? Terrifying.”
He waited patiently.
She took another bite of the omelet, using the time to find her answer. “When I left New York—” She paused, not quite knowing how to tell him the truth without telling him the truth. “Well, I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to take pictures again. I sold my studio and packed my gear and left with my passport and a list of old friends from art school who I thought I might be able to beg a couch from here and there.”
“And?”
“And about four months in, I was in India and a friend told me a story about a woman who lived nearby, who was changing the world.”
“How?”
“Organic fertilizer. Devi drove me to a farm in Andhra Pradesh and introduced me to Aarti Rao, one of the preeminent minds in sustainable farming. She’s developed a natural treatment to protect seeds and young plants from fungus that can devastate crops and livelihoods on small farms across India.”
His brows rose. “This sounds a long way from the red carpet.”
She grinned. “I know a lot about cow urine now.”
“Fascinating stuff. Would you like a job here?”
She shook her head. “Too late. Dr. Rao is on the board of Common Harvest, an NGO in support of sustainable farming—”
He nodded. “I know it. Salterton Farms is a member.”
“Well then you know that Common Harvest is always looking for ways to elevate sustainable farming. To make it . . . ”
“Cool?” he supplied, his tone indicating that he found it anything but.
Lilah laughed. “Don’t be so quick to doubt. People love the idea of sustainability. Farm-to-table is everywhere, farmers markets are having an absolute renaissance, there are Instagram accounts devoted to celebrity farmers all over the world.”
Max couldn’t hide his surprise. “Why?”
She pointed a fork at him. “Do not underestimate the appeal of a beautiful person holding a piglet!”
His brows shot together. “A piglet!”
“Maybe you and Mabel should team up,” she suggested, trying to keep a straight face.
He grimaced at the suggestion. “I’m not sure either of our dispositions would suit.”
“Fair.” She laughed. “But the truth is, the world is getting bigger and bigger, and people are feeling more and more disconnected, and so we are all thinking more about what it means to be closer to the things that keep us . . . ” She searched for the word. Found it. “Happy.”
“And farms make you happy?”
This one could.
She bit back the reply and pointed to the omelet on her plate. “How much of this came from here?”
“All of it.”
“And you too, so farms make me very happy today.”
He smiled, small and satisfied, and she resisted the urge to swipe the plates to the floor, crawl across the table and kiss that satisfaction from his lips. He was proud of his work, and that was something she understood.
“So. You’re to make farming cool.”
He didn’t know that not long ago Lilah Rose could have made anything cool—even cow urine.
“That’s the job,” she said. “Aarti lobbied hard for Common Harvest to hire me, and when I told them what I wanted to do, they agreed. I drove back out to her lab and took pictures of her. And then I traveled the world, taking pictures of a dozen other people in their labs and on their boats and farms and with their beehives.”
“And was that terrifying?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No. That was incredible. Exhausting and challenging and weird at times . . . but really incredible.”
And it had been. She’d found her feet again, camera in hand, taking portraits of interesting people. Which was what she’d loved doing in the first place.
“Where are the photos now?”
“They’ll be shown at the Common Harvest gala in London. Next week.”
A pause, and then, “The end of the journey.”
All those months traveling, taking pictures, trying so hard to rebuild herself and forge a new path back . . . She nodded. “Nine days. And then back to the world.”
And maybe, just maybe, back to her life.
“And will they do it? Make farming cool?”
If he’d asked her that question two years ago, she would have answered, categorically, yes. Two years ago, Lilah had been on top of the world, the most in-demand photographer around. She’d been able to choose her clients, name her price, and set her standards. She’d been in the perfect place—old enough to no longer be a wunderkind, young enough to have a lifetime of opportunity ahead of her.
And then, in an instant, the walls of her carefully constructed palace came tumbling down.
Frustration flared, along with self-doubt and disappointment, all emotions that she’d learned never to show. But she wanted to show it. Here, in this place, with this man who had no tie to the world of wealth, privilege, glamour and high society that had made her famous. He didn’t care that she was famous. And there was freedom in that.
Space for honesty.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But if anyone can make it cool, it’s me.”
“A lifetime of practice.”
“I’ve made a lot of people cool.”
“Would I have seen your pictures?”
She was good at her job, and wasn’t ashamed of it. “Probably.”
Max watched her for a long moment, long enough that she wondered if she’d said something wrong. “Show me.”
Her stomach flipped. “Show you what?”
“Show me what Lilah Rose can do.”
She almost didn’t. But it had been so long since someone had seen her work and judged her on its merit, and not on the stories they’d heard—the lies they’d been told.
That, and she wanted him to see them.
She reached for her laptop, opening and unlocking it, pulling up a search window and turning it to him. “There’s excellent Wi-Fi out here.”
“The sheep riot if they don’t have it,” he deadpanned, setting his fingers to the keyboard and typing her name.
She tried to stay still. Tried to pretend she didn’t have to see the results of his search. But she was only human, after all, and he was about to stare into her soul, so what was a girl to do?
She got up and went around the table, doing her best not to grab the computer and curate the images he saw. Show him the ones she knew were best. Instead, she pressed herself back to the heavy wooden chopping block at the center of the kitchen, and watched over his shoulder as he scrolled.
Scroll scroll pause.
Scroll scroll pause . . . on an image that had been cropped by some website and now looked absolutely awful.
Lilah bit her tongue, willing him to keep going, and when he did, she watched his strong fingers work the trackpad on the laptop, and her attention fell to the Breguet chronograph on his wrist, recognition coming with no small amount of surprise. She’d photographed enough celebrities styled to the teeth to know that the watch easily ran twenty thousand dollars. Apparently there were some perks to working for a duke.
“I’ve seen some of these before,” he said.
She didn’t know what to say to that, and she didn’t want small talk about the work. She wanted to know what he thought of it. So Lilah held her tongue and watched his face.
“I know this woman,” he said, pointing to a stark black-and-white portrait—a woman standing alone outside the marriage bureau at City Hall in Little Rock, Arkansas, a proud glint in her dark eyes.
“VM Mathers,” she clarified. The author of Self Love, a book that had spoken to every woman who had ever been with the wrong person and vowed to seize her own happiness. “I took that one a few months after the book came out.”
He nodded, recognizing the name. “What’s she like?”
Lilah smiled. “Not what you’d expect from a self-help juggernaut. Badass. She took me to the best barbecue of my life immediately after I got that shot.”
It was the last shoot Lilah had done before the one that had ruined her.
“And this one . . . Ian Hale—why do I know this one?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “You don’t seem like the kind of person who subscribes to lifestyle magazines.” She took a step forward, not trusting herself to get close enough to take over his browsing. “That was my first Bonfire cover. I was sick to my stomach showing up for it—I wanted to do something different than shirtless-action-hero-leaning-on-a-rusted-out-car.” She paused, then added, “Celebrities often have their own ideas of how they want to be photographed, and they’re usually pretty banal and terrible. I knew there was a better-than-even chance he would hear my ideas and storm out.”
“And did he?” The words were low and gruff, like he might hunt Ian Hale down if he had been rude to Lilah. She shouldn’t like that, but she did. “No. He was great.”
Max had enlarged the photo—the cover. A flawless shot. One that revealed more of Ian Hale than any of the dozens of covers he’d been on before or since. She was proud of that one.
Max grunted his reply and for a heartbeat Lilah wondered at the sound—was it possible he was jealous?
“And this one—I remember this picture of the American president.”
Half the newspapers in the world had run it on Inauguration Day—the president of the United States, head bowed, framed against nothing but blue sky. “I remember every second of that day. The first woman president, and she wanted me to take the portrait.” She shook her head, still in awe. “A thousand other photographers to choose from, and there I was.”
“Not a thousand. None like you,” he said, softly, drawing her attention.
She met his eyes. “No,” she said, the word as much an agreement as it was a reminder to herself. Of who she’d been then. Of who she might still be. “None like me.”
“You love it.”
I do. She loved the excitement and the people and the knowledge that she could capture a moment that would show everything and only because she was astute enough to see everything first.
She loved it, and she wanted it back.
Looking at the screen—her entire past laid out in a mosaic of thumbnails—she was consumed with emotion. She’d worked so hard. She’d done everything right. She’d done magnificent work.
And now . . .
“Nine days,” she said, softly.
“Not long,” he replied.
Nine days, and she was on a train to London. Away from this place that had somehow already begun to feel like more than a holiday.
Away from this man—his whiskey-colored eyes and his rugged face and his beautiful mouth, set in a firm line that might have been disappointment if she let herself think about it. But she didn’t want to think about disappointing him—this man who had impossibly begun to feel like more than a holiday himself.
He closed the laptop and stood, turning to face her. “More than one night though.”
Her heart began to pound. “We passed the one-night mark when you went and collected fresh eggs, I think.”
He didn’t laugh at the joke, instead closing the distance between them. “How many more will you give me?”
She swallowed at the direct question, her lips falling open in surprise. “You don’t mess around.”
“You leave in nine days, Lilah. I don’t have time to mess around.” His hands came to cup her face, tilting her up to him. “Nine days, and you go back to your world. To the glitz and the glamour and the parties and the pictures.”
She was losing herself in him. In the deep brown of his eyes. In the rumble of his voice that made her forget what it was she was so desperate to get back to. “Yes.”
“Nine days,” he repeated, stealing her lips in a soft, lush kiss. “I want them.”
Yes.
He was kissing her again, hot and lingering. “Give them to me.” She opened her eyes to find him watching her. “Let me spend the days making you laugh and the nights making you come.”
This man was absolutely a marauder. “Yes.”
With a growl, he walked her back to a clean section of the counter and lifted her up to sit on it, his hands already divesting her of her clothes. Not that she was complaining.
Naughty Brits: An Anthology Page 6