Royal Bastard

by Avery Flynn

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Why?”

  “Because that’s how it’s properly done.” Really, what other explanation did he need? Not everything needed to be taken apart and examined. Some things just were. “When it comes to handling the cutlery, your fork should be held in your left hand.” She picked up the fork next to the place set out for the earl so she could demonstrate. “And the knife in your right. You keep the fork tongs pointed down and push the food onto the back of it with your knife, as opposed to scooping it up as if you were eating with a shovel.”

  “That’s very specific.”

  “We’re English—good table manners are essential.” Good Lord, when had she started to sound so much like her mother?

  Looking a bit like a man solving a puzzle, Nick swapped the hand he was holding his fork with and picked up his knife before cutting a single bite-size piece from his tomato. “What else is deemed essential?”

  Now that was a good question. She wasn’t a peer, but both of her parents had drilled the importance of good manners into her and her sister from the day they were old enough to talk.

  “Courteousness—saying please and thank you, forming an orderly queue, and always being punctual. Not being overly familiar with people—kisses and hugs hello are reserved for close friends only, no personal questions should be asked, and handshakes are always preferred.”

  “My mama would have broken the no-kissing-and-hugging rule. That woman never met a stranger in her life,” he said, a genuine smile erasing the cautious seriousness with which he’d taken to the task of eating. “She would have been totally down with the table-manners part, though. She was a fiend about those.”

  “No elbows on the table growing up?”

  He chuckled. “Only if I wanted to get the look. You know the look?”

  “I believe that look from a mother is universal,” she said, the commonality between them helping to loosen some of the tension that had seeped into her shoulders since the earl had revealed all that was on the line if she failed.

  “I remember one time—” His gaze shifted toward the dining room door, and he stopped talking, his look darkening. “Never mind. No personal chitchat, right? You English like it cold and formal.” He shoved his chair from the table and got up. “I’m going for a walk.”

  Confusion had her scrambling to figure out what had just changed. “We’ve only begun.”

  He didn’t even pause to answer, “Later.”

  Then he walked out into the manicured gardens without ever looking back. Getting up, she glanced toward the dining room door behind her. The earl stood there, an unreadable expression on his face.

  “Sir—”

  That was as far as she got before he, too, walked away, disappearing down the hallway.

  The two men may not have set eyes on each other before Nick had arrived, but they obviously shared a stubborn streak as wide as the English Channel. That was just going to do wonders when it came to accomplishing her mission.

  “How bloody lovely,” she muttered in the empty room.

  …

  Two days later, Nick was getting antsy trapped inside his DNA donor’s family estate in the middle of rainy (and chilly despite it being August) England. He couldn’t take another moment under the watchful gaze of Earl Powder Wig’s portrait as he got lessons from Brooke about the Vanes of Dallinger Park. The only thing that made it even slightly bearable was that his teacher was hot—if he was into tightly wound women who droned on and on about family responsibility and the duty he had to Bowhaven that she’d been hammering home since his breakfast of black pudding, beans, and slightly runny eggs. Strangely enough, his dick was completely into it, which explained why he couldn’t get to sleep with her on the other side of that damn door without jerking off last night like a teenager.

  Standing in front of the large fireplace bracketed on both sides by floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, Brooke paused long enough in her lecture to give him the full Lady Lemons icy glare that only made his dick twitch before continuing with local geography facts. Lucky for him, the information went in one ear and out the other while he put his brain to better use trying to determine what kind of panties she was wearing under today’s knee-length skirt. He couldn’t see panty lines and God knew he’d looked every time she turned around—what could he say, red-blooded American man with a pulse and a working dick here—but she didn’t seem the kind to go thong or commando. Lady Lemons liked to keep her stuff wrapped up tight. Granny panties? He pictured her in black satin that fully covered the curve of her ass and went all the way up to her belly button. His dick grew heavy, and he couldn’t argue with the smaller head’s logic because Brooke would make even granny panties look hot.

  “Mr. Vane,” she said with a snotty little sigh that kinda turned him on more.

  He needed to get out of here before he lost his mind during what was already turning into the longest week of his life. Shoving a hand through his hair, he bolted up from the uncomfortable chair he was sitting in.

  “I can’t do it,” he said, striding across what he would have called a big-ass living room but Brooke called the hall to the windows overlooking the stone patio that ran the length of the mansion. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “But I was just getting to the part about the moors.”

  “Those moors.” He looked out at the hills covered in purple heather visible from the windows.

  “Exactly.”

  He opened the french doors leading out onto the patio. “Let’s go take a closer look.”

  She picked up a book that was one of many stacked on a table. “But I have the tenth earl’s diaries about his grouse-hunting exploits right here.”

  “What are grouse?”

  “Birds.” She flipped through the book to a specific page and then turned it around and held it open so he could see the sketch of a small bird that the tenth earl must have drawn.

  It was a good drawing, but he couldn’t take being trapped inside this stuffy house any longer. “And there’s still grouse out there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then let’s go have a look at the grouse survivors’ progeny.” He crossed over and plucked the book from her hand and slid it back on the shelf to the right of the fireplace. “Come on. I’ve been a good boy. Let’s go on a field trip.”

  She smoothed back a hair that had had the gall to slip from her ponytail and let out a sigh. “Fine.”

  Twenty minutes later, they were bouncing around in the seats of the Range Rover that managed to hit every rut and pothole in the bumpy dirt road winding through the hilly moors. Finally, she pulled off and parked on top of the hill and killed the engine.

  “Something, isn’t it?” she asked.

  It was. The clear blue sky went on for miles with only a few white cotton ball clouds dotting the view. One direction it was all purple hills, and the other showed more hills bordered by a strip of sandy beach and then the North Sea beyond. It wasn’t the lake view from his back porch outside of Salvation, but it was fucking beautiful just the same.

  “How much of this is part of Dallinger?”

  “Everything you can see.” She opened the door and got out. “Come on, Mr. Field Trip. Let’s go look at butts.”

  He’d never gotten out of a car so fast in his life. But, despite that little tease that had raised his hopes and other things, it turned out that the butts she meant were actually fortified five-foot holes in the ground that hunters would stand in to wait for the grouse that were being pushed out of the underbrush by drivers and dogs. As he and Brooke clomped through the bush-like heather that went almost up to his knees, she explained how a grouse shoot worked.

  “So,” he said, looking at her and trying not to be distracted by the way she looked out there in the rare sunshine with the breeze whipping free long lashes of her hair. “There are drivers who start out a mile away and walk through th
e moors rousting the grouse by stomping through the heather and beating it with sticks so the birds fly into the air, and people actually pay to shoot them.”

  She nodded, tucking a windblown strand of blond hair behind her ear. “Yes.”

  He turned that over in his mind as they approached a butt. She took the three steps down into the trench big enough for two that put them almost at eye level with the ground. Looking out onto the hillside, he tried to imagine a group of drivers and their playful dogs marching through the heather, moving the grouse forward as shooters with rifles took aim at the birds in flight. For a guy who’d gone hunting once—and spent most of that time freezing his balls off in a deer stand in the trees—it was hard to wrap his brain around. At least that’s what he was telling himself to account for his current distracted state that had nothing to do with the gorgeous blonde standing with her face tilted toward the sky, her eyes closed, and a look on her face of total and complete bliss. It had to be how she’d look after a long night of infinite orgasms.

  Where in the hell did that thought come from, Vane?

  Sure, he had his nighttime fantasies, but that’s all they were. Playing those kind of games with someone dead-set on getting him to do the exact opposite of what he wanted to do wasn’t an option—no matter how much his dick protested, and boy did it ever.

  Desperate to pull his thoughts back onto safer ground, he said the first thing that popped into his head that wasn’t X-rated. “And no one thinks grouse shooting like this is weird?”

  Brooke tugged her bottom lip between her teeth and looked out onto the moor before answering his question. “Well, there are some who oppose it, but the shoot helps manage the grouse population and it helps employ people in Bowhaven who act as the drivers—something that is desperately needed after the chemical factory shut down. Those pounds have helped people put food in their kids’ bellies. Plus, the grouse are sold to local restaurants. There’s an entire much-needed economic life cycle out here on the moors.”

  Dragging his gaze away from her, Nick took in the view and spotted what had to be the top of the now-closed chemical factory a ways off. Other than that, the only thing he could see was the village of Bowhaven tucked into the side of a hill, more purple heather and the sea. She’d spent the past forty-eight hours telling him about the area and the Vanes, but it hadn’t really sunk in until now. This situation wasn’t a game for her, the earl, or the people of Bowhaven. It wasn’t just a chance for him to tell the earl to fuck off. That sucked. It didn’t change his mind about leaving, but maybe there was something he could put in place, some plan to change things before he did hit the road.

  “There doesn’t seem to be many opportunities out here.” Fishing for ideas? Him? Hey, whenever working a problem, the smart move was always to go to those closest first.

  “There will be.” The blissed-out look on her face was gone by the time she leveled a tart glare at him. “I’ve been talking to the earl and the village council about all the things they could do to draw in money.”

  There was no missing the defensiveness in her tone.

  “And are they listening?” His money was on no.

  Her lips twisted as she straightened her shoulders and headed toward the steps leading out of the butt. “They will—especially once I’m voted onto the village council.”

  There it was, that spark of something he couldn’t figure out that tugged at his curiosity and made him want to know more. “Why are you here in Bowhaven?”

  The question stopped her in her tracks, one foot on the bottom step, and she turned back to look at him. “It’s my home.”

  “But you don’t have to stay here,” he pushed. “You could go to Manchester or London.”

  Her jaw stiffened. “This is my home.”

  Nope. He wasn’t buying it. “Why do I get the feeling there’s more than that? What are you hiding?”

  “Not a thing.”

  But before she turned away from him, he caught a glimpse of regret, and he couldn’t let it go. What could he say? His curiosity had made him millions and he’d grown accustomed to having it satisfied.

  “You’re dead-set on helping this place, but the people around here don’t seem all that receptive to you or your ideas—no offense. So why do you do it? Why put yourself on the line for this place? What are you hiding, Lady Lemons?”

  The telltale blush creeped up the back of her neck, visible under her high ponytail. “I think it’s time we got back.”

  Brooke took the next step out of the butt, but her foot slipped on the stone and she began to tumble back. She let out a surprised squawk and twisted in an effort to stop her fall. Nick didn’t think, didn’t hesitate; he wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her close. In that moment, everything went still. It definitely wasn’t the first time he’d held a woman like this with her curves tight against him, his hand dangerously close to her ass. He wouldn’t have made anything of it if he hadn’t looked down at Brooke’s face. Her bright-blue eyes were hooded as she looked up at him, and the soft hum of sexual attraction that had buzzed between them turned into a sonic blast that he felt right down to his toes. He couldn’t look away. Especially not when her perfect pink lips parted and the softest sigh escaped—the kind that dared a man to make a bold move, probably a stupid one, too. He didn’t mean to give in, to lower his face, but sometimes when the pieces all clicked together, there was nothing else to do but go along with it.

  He got within a hairbreadth of heaven when Brooke disappeared and Lady Lemons returned. The snap-crackle-pop returned to her gaze and she firmly pushed back on his chest.

  “Thank you, Mr. Vane. I’m fine now,” she said, sounding a little more breathy than she normally did.

  Letting her go at this moment was a travesty, but his mama had raised him better than to take advantage, so he let his hands drop from the dip of her waist and took a step back. Still, he couldn’t help but call her on the attraction pulling them together even as they stood a foot apart. “Are you sure?”

  “Always.”

  And with that, she was Lady Lemons once again as she strode up the steps, walked out onto the moors, and made her way back to the nearby Range Rover.

  Nick watched her navigate the bushy heather, his brain trying to unravel the riddle that was Brooke Chapman-Powell, ever confident that he’d figure it out. He always did.

  Chapter Ten

  Nick’s body clock was still messed up. It was close to midnight and he was wide-eyed and about to go out of his mind. Now, some people might think this was because of jet lag and the woman sleeping on the other side of that connecting door. They’d be 100 percent right. Brooke Chapman-Powell was a woman who made him wonder.

  Scooting over to the edge of his bed, he craned his neck to get his ears as close to the connecting door as possible. No whistle snore. He didn’t need a mirror to see the smile that had curled his lips at that fact.

  “Are you awake?” he asked, knowing full well she was.

  “Dead to the world,” came her answer.

  Yep. That was the tartness that had snagged his attention from the first letter she’d sent on behalf of his grandfather.

  “Liar,” he said with a chuckle. “You weren’t snoring.”

  “You know, it’s not very polite to keep bringing that up.”

  If she had sounded even the least little bit annoyed, he would have apologized, but she didn’t. “I like your snore.”

  She let out a squawk of protest. “No one likes listening to other people snore.”

  “It’s like white noise. It helps me fall asleep.” He half thought about the options for a snore machine but tossed it into the dust heap of bad ideas that lived somewhere in the back of his mind.

  “So are you saying that I’m keeping you up?” she asked.

  He relaxed back against his overstuffed pillows and closed his eyes, picturing her cuddled up i
n her bed on the other side of that damn door he was really beginning to hate. “In a way.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I’m trying to untangle your riddle.” She was sweet and sour like that candy that always made his mouth pucker but he couldn’t stop eating.

  “I am far from a mystery.”

  Now that was a bald-faced lie. He had so many questions, so he started with the one that he’d wondered about the longest. “You just like working for an uptight jerk?”

  There was a pause. “It’s not the only thing I want to do.”

  The fact that she hadn’t disputed his description of the earl was telling. “What else is on your list?”

  “Village council.”

  She’d mentioned that before, but it still didn’t make sense in his head. She didn’t seem like a power-hungry politician. “You want to go into politics?”

  “No. I want to make a difference in Bowhaven,” she said. “However, it’s such a small place that the people who run usually aren’t opposed.”

  There was nothing quite like small-town politics. He could understand that. Back home, there was an informal agreement that was much the same. “So you’re waiting for an invite to run.”

  “That’s about the sum of it.”

  “Why haven’t you gotten an invitation? Is it because you work for the earl?” He could see that. It wasn’t like the old man went out of his way to make things easy for other people.

  “No. It’s because I…” Brooke’s voice faltered. “It’s because people think I’m pushy.”

  That wasn’t what she’d been about to say, but he wouldn’t press her on it, not tonight. “You are pushy,” he said, teasing her. “That’s the only reason I’m here.”

  “You simply needed some extra convincing and so do they.”

  “How are you going to manage that?”

  “Keep coming up with revitalization ideas.”

  “You never give up, do you, Lady Lemons?”

  “I can’t claim that.”

  The catch in her voice had him sitting up straighter in bed, leaning over so he was closer to the door. He was about to open his mouth to ask if she was all right when he thought better of it. What had she taught him the other day? Personal inquiries should be kept to a minimum. Asking why she was getting choked up definitely counted as that kind of question—but he couldn’t let the conversation end there.