by Avery Flynn
Too tired to be nervous—or to think about what he was or wasn’t wearing to bed, really she wasn’t—she tapped on the connection door. “Mr. Vane?”
Nothing.
She rapped against the door again. “Excuse me, sir?”
Zilch.
The temptation to tuck tail and scurry into a bed despite her already itchy eyes was strong. She glanced over at the four-poster bed bordered by long curtains of navy and cream hanging from the wood canopy that could be closed to block out the morning sun. Really, would it be so bad to sleep in her contacts? Unconsciously, she pressed a finger against the corner of her already dry right eye, catching herself before she started rubbing the eyelid in earnest. An eye infection was the last thing she needed on top of everything else she’d be dealing with over the next few weeks. She all but stomped her foot in frustration. Oh, this was just ridiculous. Nick was asleep. All she had to do was quietly go in there and retrieve her suitcase. She could do that.
Mind made up, she squared her shoulders and turned the knob, opening the door only enough to squeeze through. It wasn’t quite pitch dark inside the room. That turned out to be good and bad.
The positive being that there was enough light for her to spot her suitcase beside the bed right away. The con? The light allowed her to visually confirm that the earl’s private investigator was not a Photoshop guru. Nick did, indeed, have eight individual abs. They rose and fell in time with each of his deep breaths as he lay in the middle of the canopy bed on top of the fitted sheet. The duvet was hanging half off the bed and wasn’t covering him a stitch. She shouldn’t notice that he was lying with one well-muscled arm flung over his eyes or that he was only wearing his pants—but she did.
The sight stopped her cold.
Or hot.
Or bothered.
Or…bloody hell.
He was a man—a very impressively endowed man if the bulge in his navy boxer briefs was anything to go by—but, more importantly, he was the earl’s heir, which made him totally, completely, and utterly off-limits. Not that her body gave a care. Everything south of her ears was enthralled and embarrassingly tingly. This would not do. Not. At. All.
Forcing her gaze away, she spotted his jeans, socks, and T-shirt on the floor in a pile right next to the bed and her suitcase. That’s when she remembered that getting oxygen in her lungs was necessary in order to not pass out at Nick’s bedside. However, that’s also when she forgot about her allergies. She took a deep breath and instantly regretted it. The dust coating so much of the room tickled her nose, making it twitch as her eyes watered and pure one-hundred-proof panic shot through her.
Waking Nick up by having a sneezing fit in his bedroom while she was standing by his bed watching him sleep (not that that’s what she’d been doing, but how else was it going to appear?) was not how she’d let this evening go. Forcing her entire body to still, she willed herself to focus on something—anything—that wasn’t the dust making her nostrils twitch. Of course, her gaze fell to the man sleeping on top of the fitted sheet in just a pair of navy boxer briefs that clung to his strong thighs and…her pulse kicked it into high gear…other parts of him. Her brain fizzled out at the sight, and it took her a few breaths before she realized that just-about-to-sneeze feeling was gone.
Well, thank the bloody fates for that.
Setting her sights on her suitcase, she took in a deep breath to test her allergies. Her nose tickled and her eyes were watery, but she could take it. She would endure. Six steps to the bed. Six steps back. After that, she’d close the door behind her and forget she ever saw Nick Vane in just his pants.
Brilliant plan. So move already, Brooke.
She shook out the last of her hesitation and tiptoed across the carpet decorated with roses and ivy done up in muted shades of pink and green. By the time she got to his bedside, her cheeks were flaming and her stomach was knotting. Her pulse was pounding in her ears loud enough that she was surprised it didn’t wake him. Letting out a breath, she gripped the handle of her suitcase and picked it up, the urgency of the move lifting up a swath of nearby dust.
Her nose twitched. Her eyes watered. A tingling force built up. She froze, trying to will the damn thing into submission, but she had run out of freebies already. This one would not be denied.
Her sneeze boomed in the otherwise silent room. A startled Nick jackknifed into a sitting position and grabbed her wrist, yanking her off balance so she fell onto the bed. Well, somewhat on top of the bed. Mostly she was on top of him, which wasn’t awkward at all. It was more like it wasn’t only awkward. It was so many things at once—petrifying, lust-inducing, embarrassing, nipple-hardening to name just a few—that she was going to get internal-reaction whiplash.
“Are you watching to make sure I sleep like an earl?” he asked, his voice sleep rough but still teasing.
“Suitcase.” She managed to squeak out the single word without busting into lust flames. It was a miracle. Really.
She should get up. She would get up. She couldn’t move.
“Brooke?” he asked, concern thick in his voice. “Are you okay? Did you hurt yourself?”
“I’m fine,” she managed to get out as the reality of her imminent death from embarrassment broke the spell of immobility.
She put a hand down on the bed so she could push herself up and off him. At least she meant to put her palm on the bed. Instead, it landed on something warm and hard and lightly dusted with a happy trail that disappeared under the waistband of his pants.
Nick let out something that sounded like a cross between a needy groan and a tortured sigh as his gaze dipped down to her hand splayed across his abs.
Gulping down a squawk of mortification, she practically flew off the bed. Once she was on her own less-than-totally-stable two feet, she grabbed her suitcase and then headed out with as much dignity as possible considering she’d nearly given the earl’s heir an accidental handy and she was all but running.
Only once she was safe in her room—well, Nick’s room—could she breathe again. She squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep, calming inhale, but all the action did was give her a full-color mental image of Nick on the bed with that look on his face that promised things. Good things. Bad things. Things she couldn’t have.
Bloody hell, it was going to be a long night.
Chapter Nine
Brooke cracked an eye open and tried to figure out where in the hell she was. She took a fuzzy, half-blind-without-her-contacts-or-glasses look around. The navy and cream canopy above her was mostly in focus. Sun streaming in through leaded-glass bay windows was a little blurrier. Still trying to work out where she was as her brain slowly came back online, a solid knocking behind her almost sent her jumping out of her pajamas, taking her consciousness from white noise to high-definition in an instant.
She whirled around in Nick’s huge canopy bed so she faced the door connecting their rooms.
“You awake?” His muffled voice came through the door.
She snatched the duvet and yanked it up to her chin. “Don’t come in.”
“Give me a little credit.” She didn’t have to see Nick to know he’d rolled his eyes at her. “I’m not a total perv.”
Okay, maybe that had just been her. The dreams she’d had last night. Heat flamed against her cheeks. Thank God she couldn’t be held accountable for her subconsciousness. Unless she’d made noise? Her heart clanged against her ribs. Please not that. “What made you think I might be awake?”
“You stopped snoring.”
Her pulse slowed and she released a pent-up breath. Then she processed what he’d said. “I don’t snore.”
“Think again, Lady Lemons.” He chuckled. “You have an adorable sigh-whistle-snore thing.”
She opened her mouth to argue but realized half a second later that she did, in fact, snore. Usually only when she was stressed, which was almost always o
f course, but that didn’t mean he should have heard it. Embarrassment threatened to sizzle the skin off her cheeks, negating her ability to come up with anything to say in response.
“And not to push you out of bed or anything,” he continued from his side of the closed door. “But we’ve got to swap rooms back. I can’t imagine it would do to have someone find you in my bed.”
Shit! How had she not thought of that? The man discombobulated her. The doorknob turned.
“I’m not decent,” she said, jumping up from the bed and sprinting over to the door to hold it shut. Before she got there, though, the handle stopped and went back to its original position. She let out a relieved breath.
“So how do you want to do this?” he asked.
She scooped up her clothes and hurried over to the door so she’d be in position to scoot into her room as soon as he came in. Her pajamas covered everything, but that didn’t mean she wanted him to know what she wore to sleep.
“You can come in.”
He opened the door and, of course, he was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt while she was in a worn tank and shorts. Unlike her, his hair wasn’t going every which way but how it should. Not to mention he didn’t look like his brain was still a fuzzy, tea-free mess. No, his gaze was sharp and focused totally on her. She clutched her bundle of clothes a little closer to her chest.
“What time is it?” And why was she asking when what she needed was to just get her arse into her room?
He turned one of his wrists, highlighting the muscles of his forearm. “Six thirty.”
“And you’ve been up for hours, haven’t you?” Yes. Focus on that and not the muscles in his forearm. Anything but that.
“I don’t usually sleep a lot.”
It was a perfectly normal thing to say. There was nothing cheeky in his words, and yet her pulse picked up and she forgot how to breathe for a second. Snap out of it, Brooke. He’s the earl’s heir. She was the earl’s secretary. She’d overstepped her station before and been slapped down. It wasn’t a mistake she was going to ever make again.
“We have work to do.”
The easygoing amusement evaporated from his face. “Time for Earl School, huh?”
She stepped forward, brushing past him on her way through the door. “You did agree to give it your every effort.”
“That’s not exactly what I said.” He let out a grumpy sigh that reminded her almost exactly of the old earl.
“But it should have been what you said, so I sorted that for you,” she said, taking another step into her room but keeping her focus on him. “You’re welcome.”
And on that triumphant correction, she shut the door between their rooms with a speedy flick of her wrist before he could get more than a glance of her in her threadbare tank top and sleep shorts.
Mentally congratulating herself, she turned and prepped herself for the attack of the allergies that never came. Instead of highlighting all the dust floating in the air, the sun streaming in from the windows landed on newly uncovered dust-free furniture. The bed had been made. Even the window that had been stuck closed as long as she’d been working at Dallinger Park was open to let in the sound of birds chirping. It was as if in the middle of the night, an entire cleaning crew had attacked her temporary room. But no one had. It was too early for Kate the housekeeper to have made it to the big house, let alone to have done this. That left only one person. She turned and marched to the door, not quite believing what logic dictated.
Keeping herself behind the door, she opened it enough to peek her head out. “Did you do this?”
Nick picked up yesterday’s copy of the Financial Times that was lying on the coffee table. “Do what?”
“Tidy up my room.”
He shrugged his broad shoulders and adjusted the newspaper so she couldn’t see his face below his unlined forehead. “I was bored.”
Uh-huh. And cleaning her room was the first thing an heir to an earldom would do to cure that? Not in her experience—not even for someone who wasn’t about to be the lord of the land.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice soft as she tried to work out the puzzle that was Nick Vane, self-proclaimed lazy git.
He shook the paper out but didn’t emerge from behind it. “Remember that later when you admit defeat on this whole earl thing.”
She shut the door, a smile playing on her lips. Yeah. He wasn’t going to get off the hook that easily. She was going to win that bet and then Bowhaven—and everyone who lived there—would benefit, even if they never realized exactly who was behind it or why. That part didn’t matter to her. She’d learned the hard way that the spotlight wasn’t for her.
…
Dallinger Park’s dining room, with its many windows overlooking the manicured garden and the french doors opening out onto the stone walkway that led to a small fountain surrounded by a riot of white roses, was one of Brooke’s favorite rooms in the house. The table for sixteen, which was currently set for two, had been in the Vane family for generations.
When she’d emerged from her room—dressed, thank you very much—she made her way down the stairwell decorated with stag heads and stuffed grouse to the dining room currently bathed in sunlight. The earl was nowhere in sight, but Nick was in one of the chairs, his honey-brown hair sticking up here and there as if he’d rammed his fingers through it, and he was staring at the full Yorkshire breakfast before him with a mix of curiosity and horror.
She cleared her throat to alert him to her presence and strode in, stopping at the edge of the table. “This is the perfect way to begin your lessons.”
Few things marked one as an outsider as effectively as how one ate a meal—especially among the upper crust. Imagine the horror of his fellow earls-to-be if Nick nibbled from the cheese plate at the beginning of a luncheon instead of during the cheese course. They’d be aghast. And for some reason, that image made the corner of her mouth curl up. Thank God she had the wherewithal to smother it immediately.
“What is this?” Using the tip of his knife, he nudged the circle of black pudding nestled between the fried bread and beans. “And why are there pork and beans for breakfast?”
Closing her eyes, she forced herself to remember the lemon-clean scent of her bedroom and the way the duvet had been one smooth line without a wrinkle in sight. He was goading her on purpose. He had to be. There was no other explanation for why he would be so kind one second and such a pain in the arse the next. Well, he could try to provoke a reaction, but she wasn’t going to give in. To borrow a saying from the earl, if Churchill didn’t give in, neither would she.
“Black pudding and beans is a Yorkshire tradition.”
He continued to jab at it. “What’s it made of?”
All right. She loved black pudding, but even her stomach rebelled a little when she remembered the ingredients. A Canadian pen pal she’d had in primary school had once compared it to hot dogs—they were delicious as long as one didn’t think about what went into making them. “You don’t want to know—just enjoy it.”
Nick looked up at her, a lazy smile playing on his lips. As easygoing as it was, though, it didn’t match the serious, contemplative look in his eyes. Someone wasn’t as disengaged as he wanted everyone to believe. Interesting. Brooke filed that bit of information away to ponder later.
“No,” he said, attention back on the black pudding as he used the side of his fork to cut off a piece. “I really do. What’s in it?”
“It’s a delicious mix of pork blood, pork fat, and oatmeal.” Ugh. Just saying the words kind of ruined it.
“Sounds delicious,” he said with a hearty slathering of sarcasm and then stabbed the piece with his fork and lifted it up in the air, studying it from all angles.
The annoyed sigh escaped before she could stop it. This man would try the patience of a doting grandmother with her only grandchild. “Just try it.”
> After giving it another look, he popped it in his mouth and left it there for a second before starting to chew. Gaze directed up at the ceiling as if he was noting all the flavor layers, he took his time to finish the single bite. Finally. Did the man have to examine everything?
Wonder what it would be like to be the one on the receiving end of all that attention?
Oh my God! Where had that come from? Cheeks burning, she dropped her gaze down to the tips of her very sensible loafers.
“It’s pretty salty,” Nick said, drawing her attention back to him. “But I like it.”
“Our country can rest well at last.” She managed—just barely—not to roll her eyes as she said it.
He pointed his fork at a place set for the earl. “Are you going to join me?”
Like that could even be considered in good form. She was an employee, not a member of the family. “The earl will be here soon.”
“There are fourteen more seats.” He laid his fork down on the side of his plate and shot her an imploring look. “Eating while being stared at is just weird. Sit. Please.”
She shouldn’t. It wasn’t right. But she sat down anyway. Something in that “please” hit her right in the feels.
Nick dug in to his breakfast, scarfing down the dry-cured English bacon, pork sausages, eggs, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, and fried bread. He wasn’t making a mess of it, but he set his fork down between bites and cut up his entire sausage in one go—not like an English earl at all. That just would not do.
“Time for your first lesson,” she said. “When it comes to meals, you need to hold your fork at all times and only cut one bite at a time.”
