by Avery Flynn
“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.
Chapter Seventeen
The incessant buzzing of his phone in the pitch-dark of three in the morning woke Nick from a dream that had his cock aching. Smacking a palm against the nightstand while keeping his eyes closed, he finally made contact and managed to get a look at the caller ID as he swiped his thumb across the screen and answered the call.
“Mace, do you have any idea what time it is?”
“Oh shit,” his friend said with a groan. “I didn’t think about the time difference. It’s eight at night here in L.A. Did I wake you up?”
Nick cracked his eyes open and surveyed the large bed, empty except for him. “It’s three in the morning. What do you think?”
“If I didn’t wake you up, then I interrupted something fun, but I promise I wouldn’t have called so late if it wasn’t an emergency.”
The fact that Mace was willing to use the E-word meant something. He’d known Mace since they both walked into a new group home with less than six months to go in their state-sponsored supervised life. Wiry with a smart mouth and a quick brain, the other man had made enemies quickly, but unlike his enemies had expected, he hadn’t been easy to knock down. The guy was a stone-cold scrapper, so if he needed help, then it was an all-hands-on-deck moment.
Nick sat up, eyes open, totally awake, and flipped on the lamp on the bedside table. “What’s up?”
“You know how I was hoping to come visit while we were shooting Zombie Fried?”
“Please tell me this is leading somewhere.” Because even in the midst of a crisis, Mace could go on a tangent. There was a reason why he never brought up the fact that he hated fried pickles to him.
“Didn’t you tell me that you were at Dallinger Park in Yorkshire?” Mason asked.
“Yeah.”
“Well,” Mace continued. “I’m looking at some photos online right now and it’s perfect for what we need.”
Even his high-powered brain was too tired to try to work this one out. “You’re gonna have to use more words, Mace.”
The other man laughed, the self-deprecating sound confirmation that as usual, his mouth and mind were running a hundred miles an hour in different directions. “We had a shoot scheduled at a manor house in the Yorkshire Dales in a week, but the deal fell through. If I don’t find a replacement spot ASAP, the director is going to have a shit fit and fire my ass because we’re scheduled to start the shoot with the manor house sequence and we’re leaving for England in two days.”
Nick didn’t understand the hierarchy of who was who on a movie shoot or what exactly happened on them, but fired was fired no matter what line of business someone was in, and it sucked.
“And you want to do the shoot here?” he asked, confirming what he already knew Mace had been leading up to.
“You got it.”
Damn. What was it with this fucking place? Everyone wanted the pile of rocks but him.
“Gramps is going to be hard to convince.” Now, that was the understatement of the century.
“Tell him this film has the budget to persuade him.”
Nick’s gaze snapped over to the door separating his room from Brooke’s. This was just the kind of opportunity she was always telling the earl and the villagers about. It was his favorite kind of win-win. Happy Mace. Happy Brooke. Pissed-off Gramps. Did it get any better than that?
“How long and how much for the shoot?” he asked, a plan about how to make this happen already forming in his head.
“A few days and lots of zeroes,” Mason said. “We need to shoot the big zombie wedding ball scene there.”
The bizarre words pierced the whirr of activity in his head. “Do I even want to know?”
“Probably not.” Mace laughed. “One more thing, everyone will need to stay close by because the hours are killer long. Is there any place for that?”
“The village has a B&B and I’m sure I can find other accommodations, too.” Who wouldn’t want to make a quick buck by offering up their house in the village for a couple of days?
“Tell them we’ll need people to act as extras, too. We lost our extras when we lost the location.”
“I’m not making any promises.” Even though if the people of Bowhaven could come together to village-nap him, surely they would be up for slapping on some zombie makeup. “Shoot me the details ASAP.”
“Thank fucking God,” Mason said with a relieved sigh. “Just let me know as soon as you can.”
After hanging up, Nick lay back in bed and closed his eyes, but sleep didn’t come. Of course it didn’t. That would have made his life easy, and that wasn’t in the cards tonight—or any night since this craziness had started. Life in Salvation and his pre-England days had never seemed so far away. What was close? The woman who’d been avoiding him. The one who he couldn’t stop thinking about. She’d want to know about this opportunity, and if anyone could help him convince the earl to say yes, it was her. As soon as he thought it, he was up out of bed and had his hand on the doorknob. It wasn’t an excuse to see her. He had a reason. A real reason that had nothing to do with the happy way his dick twitched in anticipation.
He cracked open the door and looked into the darkened room. “Hey, are you up?”
“I am now,” she said, her voice sleep roughened and sexy as hell.
Stop thinking about how sexy she is, Vane. He wasn’t here for that. He was here because he had a solution to a problem that was making her worry.
“How bad is the financial situation at Dallinger Park?” he asked, stepping inside the room but leaving the door open behind him.
The soft stream of light coming in from his room illuminated Brooke just enough to show off her messy hair and sweet, sleepy smile as she sat up in bed. It was one more side of her that he couldn’t help but tuck away to remember later. He kept doing that when he was around her, and he didn’t like it. Getting attached to her, the village, this damn house wasn’t his thing and he wasn’t about to change that now.
“What makes you think Dallinger Park has a situation?”
Oh no. They weren’t going to play that game, and he needed solid information to get this plan in motion. Research always went before inventing. “I have eyes. This place is in major need of maintenance and updating.”
She gave him a cautious look. “It’s not inexpensive to run a great house like this one.”
Her non-answer was as good as a yes. “So the earl needs the funds.”
“You’ll have to ask him for confirmation.”
“I’ve got the perfect solution. A zombie ball.”
Her gaze sharpened. “A what?”
This was a conversation that was going to take some time. And there was room on the corner of her bed. That’s why he made his way over there. Not because his dick was controlling the rest of him. Not. At. All. The bed creaked just a bit under his weight. One more bit of proof that the money this movie could bring in would be useful.
“Okay, tell me everything,” Brooke ordered in true Lady Lemons fashion.
So he did. By the time he finished bringing her up to speed, he’d somehow ended up higher on the bed, stealing half of her pillow, as he lay on top of the covers and she remained underneath. His eyelids had drooped downward as he gave her the last of the information. Brooke’s steady breathing and slow-to-come questions told him that she was just as tired as he was.
“I’m just going to close my eyes for a minute, then I’ll go back to my room,” he said, giving in to the rightness of being with her in that moment.
<
br /> Her muffled reply sounded something like “okay,” and she snuggled up next to him, her warm breath against his neck. Somewhere in the back of his mind, alarm bells rang, but not loud enough to jolt him out of bed.
…
Brooke woke up the next morning and her bed was empty. She should have been happy about that.
Too bad she wasn’t.
Her pillow smelled like him. She knew because she’d taken a whiff—okay, several long, deep inhales—before coming downstairs to the dining room where the earl and Nick were already sitting at the table digging into eggs and rashers of bacon. Nick had a giant steaming mug of coffee next to his plate. The earl had tea whitened with milk. Why was she noticing this? Because the second Nick had glanced up and looked at her with a heat that sizzled, her brain went on the fritz.
Her gaze dropped to the worn carpet and she used all three of her brain cells still functioning to get her feet to move one step in front of the other over to the buffet set up and then over to the table with her own plate filled with—she focused on the plate—jam and bacon.
That’s just brilliant, Brooke. No one will see that as odd at all.
Determined not to seem as if anything is amiss, she smoothed her linen napkin across her lap and snapped off a bite of crisp bacon. The only noise in the room was the crunch, crunch of her chewing. Awkward? Not in the least.
Finally, Nick broke the silence. “I had a friend from the States call me this morning.”
“Fascinating,” the earl said from behind his paper.
The vein in Nick’s temple pulsed and a frustrated growl escaped his lips. The sound made her heartbeat tick up. That wasn’t right. She shouldn’t be turned on right now. Still, she couldn’t deny that the noise he made that was so close to the sound he made when she teased his cock with her tongue the other night had her clenching her thighs together. That’s it. She was officially going mad.
Nick tossed his napkin on his plate. “You know, you could try not to act like such a stuffed shirt, especially when the news I have to share could give this place a little financial breathing room.”
The earl snapped his newspaper closed, folded it in half with clipped motions, and laid it on the table to the left of his plate. After a deep, cleansing breath, he directed a withering look at Brooke. “Ms. Chapman-Powell, I was very clear about not including anyone else in confidential financial information.”
Brook’s cheeks went lava hot. “I never—”
“Are you serious?” Nick broke in. “She never said anything—not that it mattered. I’d have to be completely clueless not to see that this place is barely hanging on.”
The Vane stubbornness flashed in the earl’s eyes. “It is none of your concern.”
As the two men faced off, resentment and frustration made the air spark enough that Brooke forgot all about the ridiculousness of her bacon and jam breakfast. She should say something to calm the moment down before it went nuclear, and she would if she knew what in the bloody hell to say. Instead, she froze just like she had the moment she’d found Reggie with his head buried between another woman’s thighs—now wasn’t that a memory she wanted fresh and tender.
“I am your heir,” Nick said, his tone a dangerous growl.
If it had any impact on the earl, the older man didn’t show it. “That may be; however, you aren’t the earl yet.”
“Hundreds of thousands of pounds. That’s how much they’ll pay, but the production company needs nearly full access to the house for their shoot and the two lead actors will need to stay here. “
That jolted Brooke in her chair. That kind of money promised opportunity for Dallinger Park and Bowhaven. She couldn’t let the earl’s innate snobby posh stubbornness mess this up for everyone.
“Have you gone mad?” the earl asked, disapproval thick in his voice.
“Are you saying Dallinger Park, the place you love so damn much that you’re willing to accept an American bastard in all the ways that count as your heir couldn’t use that money?” Nick glanced over at Brooke and winked at her as if he was just discussing the weather instead of something with genuine and extreme importance. “Or the university for the deaf you support?” He turned back to the earl. “Or the villagers who are holding on to each penny since the factory closed?”
“This entire discussion is ridiculous,” the earl said, a red splotch of anger at the base of his throat. “This is a historic structure on the national registry that has been home to Vanes for hundreds of years.”
“And it needs an influx of cash or it’s going to fall even further into disrepair until it’s only a ghost of what it could be,” Brooke said, jumping in and hitting the older man exactly where it hurt—his legacy.
The earl’s right eye twitched, but he didn’t immediately argue. That was a good sign. Nick opened his mouth but shut it as soon as she shot him a death glare. He might be the earl’s heir, but she’d worked for the man for years. She knew the signs of giving in without admitting defeat. The eye twitch. The disappearance of the red flush at the base of his throat. The steady, assessing look that never wavered. If she could keep Nick from backing the earl into a metaphorical corner, they could walk away from the table with more than a pending heart attack from all the bacon she’d ingested.
Finally, the earl turned to his grandson. “If I say yes to this, you’ll go along on the next grouse shoot with me and meet some of our kind of people.”
Nick stiffened. “I like the people in Bowhaven.”
“That may be so, but they aren’t our kind of people,” the earl retorted.
Nick snorted. “Neither am I.”
The earl looked down his partition nose at his grandson. “Which is exactly what I’m working to rectify.”
Brooke gulped. Well then, this was not going anywhere productive. Both of the men were all but pounding their chests and declaring themselves the king of testosterone island. If she hadn’t already known they were related, this little display would have confirmed it. Nick’s shoulders went back and his chest puffed out, but before he could say anything, his attention landed on Brooke. She couldn’t say anything—that was beyond her station—but she thought it hard. Real hard. Don’t make this go tits up, Yank.
“The movie shoot for a grouse shoot?” Nick asked, each word coming out like a curse.
The earl nodded but managed not to gloat—much.
Nick’s jaw went tight enough to make it look like he could crack a walnut, but he managed to get a single word out. “Fine.”
Right then, this changed everything. Brooke’s attention flicked from one satisfied man to one who looked like he might snap the Vane silver between his fingers. He’d done it again—taken on something he didn’t want to help someone out. For all he professed to keep everyone at a distance, it was obvious that the truth of it was something different. Not that she was going to say anything about that, now or ever. She had more important things to deal with rather than the mysteries of Nick Vane that were snagging more of her attention than they should. What she needed to contend with was how Dallinger Park and Bowhaven could capitalize on this movie shoot.
“We’ll have to hire some help from the village to assist Kate with cleaning in preparation here at Dallinger Park,” she said.
“Agreed.” The earl nodded. “However, the east wing will continue to be off-limits except for myself.”
That was a problem. “The only bedrooms in the west wing, though, that are in good-enough shape to work for the movie’s two leads are the rooms Nick…” She started at her public overstep as the earl’s gaze narrowed. “Excuse me, Mr. Vane and I are assigned.”
“I guess we can’t accommodate them, then,” the earl said without an ounce of regret. “What a shame.”
Not ready to give in, Brooke grasped ahold of the first solution to pop into her head. “Actually, I can stay in the stable house.”
&nb
sp; “That only frees up one bedroom,” the earl said.
She was going through the big house’s layout in her head when Nick spoke up.
“The stable house sounds perfect for me, too,” he said. “That frees up two rooms and gets us all in alignment with the movie people’s needs. Problem solved.”
Her mouth went dry at the same moment that other parts of her went soft and wet with anticipation. Oh no. That’s not what she’d been wanting at all. That wasn’t things sorted. That was problems ahead. The how-to-keep-your-knickers-on kind of problems. And judging by the cocky wink he gave her, he knew it.
Chapter Eighteen
Hours later, when Brooke finally stepped onto the path that led through the trees surrounding Dallinger Park and to the stables, she never wanted to talk to another human again. Considering that was coming from her, that meant something. She’d spent the day in the village hiring extra help for the big house, reserving rooms at the inn, and making sure the village shops were ready for the influx of Americans. Now she had one more thing to mark off her to-do list and she could dive beneath the duvet with a good book and a fabulous glass of wine.
Still, even as tired as she was, she couldn’t help but appreciate the view as the setting sun poked through the trees. The soft-focus light highlighted the deep greens, browns, and pops of blue from the wildflowers along the path and gave it all a dreamy, anything-is-possible feeling. As she walked through the kissing gate, she turned toward the east and took a second to admire the golden hue of the wheat in the field overshadowed by the crumbling remains of a centuries-old church leading toward the village. The yellow stalks rocked from side to side in the cool breeze while the cows in the fenced paddock next to it went about their business, oblivious to the complicated world turning around them.
She’d been like that once, so ready to accept whatever came her way. It was amazing how having to deal with the bloodsucking press, cheating shit of a boyfriend, and the eyes of an entire country on her could change that. Now, she was determined to never be that passive woman again. So what if she’d turned all her energy on fixing up the big house and the village? They needed her attention. And what was left over for her? Not worth worrying about.