The mere suggestion that her ingenuity, skill and commitment to running a teashop made her sound so unattractive appalled her. Surely men respected entrepreneurship and independence in a woman! Surely they liked tea and baked goods and wouldn’t find her dull or repulsive because of them! The prince was making a generalization, speaking only from his preference. Which unfortunately was the one she wanted. She was too wholesome, too responsible to attract him in real life. Any port in a storm and all that, she supposed.
She slipped the cookie cake into the oven and tinted the frosting to a deep royal blue, piping it in little peaks all around the rim. She tried to write Happy Birthday Leopold with frosting. Then, halfway through the lopsided second word, she remembered that she was crap at lettering and turned the word into an alarmingly big blue balloon, so the cookie just said happy. Which, oddly enough, Evie was. She stood in her kitchen in her kitten heels, making a birthday treat for a scrumptious prince who happened to be asleep up in her apartment. She hoped the cookie cake would make him smile. That smile knocked her off her feet every time.
Evie was making a careful muffin pyramid for atop the glass case when Leo came down the back stairs and startled her. Whipping her head around and seeing him there, still damp from a shower with sandy hair wet and curling up at the ends made her drop a muffin. Which caused an avalanche of breakfast bread. Muffins rolled across the counter and onto the floor. They both bent over and scooped up the muffins. Leo dropped two in the bin, and she shouted.
“Stop! They’re fine! Five-second rule!”
He paused, looking at the floor-tainted blueberry crumble muffin in his hand dubiously. “I’m not sure I’m familiar with that policy,” he said.
“If it’s on the floor less than five seconds, it’s clean and edible. No germs, scout’s honor!” she said.
He set the muffin on the counter and backed away from it, “I find that claim suspicious. Bacteria are unlikely to abide by any such rules. Anarchist little bastards that they are,” he said.
God, he was devastating even at six in the morning, “Tea?” she offered.
“I’m more of a coffee man in the mornings.”
“As your sanctuary provider, I can’t let you get a cup of coffee. You’d be sighted and mobbed, and you’re supposed to keep your head down right now. So you’ll have to make do with Earl Grey. I’ll put the kettle on,” she said.
“But I like coffee,” he said.
“You and the rest of the Starbucks generation, Leo. Give it a chance; I might convert you to tea,” she said, “I’ll even give you a muffin untouched by floor germs,” she said.
“I don’t believe you, with your highly questionable food sanitation methods,” he said.
“Go ahead and report me to the Ministry of muffins or whatever,” she said.
“No need for that. A stern warning from the crown ought to straighten you out,”
“You’re going to tattle to your dad?” she asked incredulously.
“No, I’m near enough to the throne to issue a warning. In the name of England, I order you to cease dumping pastries on the floor,” he said.
“It’s fairly unusual for me to have a prince come down the back stairs and startle me.”
“So it was the sight of me that made you drop your muffins,” he said, preening.
“Yes. It was,” she said.
Evie wanted to say something flirtatious or cheeky to him, but she couldn’t. She was afraid to get her hopes up, to banter with him and flirt with him and start to believe he might want something with her after all. She couldn’t flirt with him. It was because she could smell him, the damp freshly showered scent with just a hint of her botanical shower gel. She was overwhelmed with wanting. She wanted to press her hand against his chest and feel the warmth of his wet skin through the clinging cotton fabric. She wanted him to take her in his arms. It was embarrassing since she’d told him that he was a cliché of a charming prince, then she was the standard issue groupie, a Cinderella wannabe of the most common sort. Except what she wanted had nothing to do with his royal bloodline or his titles. She didn’t even want to be Princess Leopold, not really. She wanted to be his lover.
“What?” he said finally.
“You’re too distracting. I’ll let you know when the tea’s ready. You’re welcome to watch TV upstairs or something. Having you in my kitchen is too distracting.”
“You said that twice. That’s a great deal of distraction. I thought I might help out. I know how to wash dishes, and I reckon I can stack up some scones or something,” he offered.
Oh, Lord save her, she could not work with this man scrubbing baking trays three feet away from her! She’d kiss him or grab his butt or something stupid. Her scalp tingled, the palms of her hands burned to touch him. She shook her head rather ineffectually.
“No! Don’t help me!” she said, voice high and shaky.
Leo closed the distance between them, removed the muffin from her hand, although she’d already crushed it. He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and looked at her earnestly. Her heart pounded. She would never have believed that something that small, something like a guy tucking her hair back for her would feel so intimate and so dangerous all at once.
“I want to help you. Tell me what I can do,” he said.
Evie was perfectly still. It took all of her will, all of her conscious thought to keep from kissing him because she simply could not go on kissing him with no possible relationship in sight. She didn’t want to be a prince groupie. She wanted to be his lover. Lover, there was that word again. She’d had a few crappy boyfriends, but she’d never really had a lover, not one who knew what he was doing. Leo, for all he thought she was dull and calm compared to his adrenaline junkie ways, clearly knew what he was doing.
He was standing close enough she could feel his body heat. Unable to meet his gaze, she dropped her eyes and saw that her heart was pounding so hard that the fabric of her slinky black top was obviously fluttering along with it. She’d be amazed if he didn’t hear her pulse racing. He brushed her cheek with the back of his fingers, cupped her head in his hand. Breathless, Evie put her hands on his shoulders to hold him there, close to her.
Then, a moment later, she knew he felt her pulse because he put his mouth right there on her throat and kissed her neck right at the spot where her pulse beat. She gave a small cry, and her hands were in his hair. His hair was damp and silky between her fingers, and she couldn’t believe that Leo was touching her, kissing her this way in her kitchen. The kettle whistled, and they ignored it.
“Please,” she whispered.
Leo’s mouth found hers and he kissed her thoroughly. She arched against him instinctively, kissing him back until everything was blurry and hot and breathless. Evie heard Leo breathing hard, heard her heart pounding and the high sing of the kettle as if from far away. She had tea to brew and tarts to bake, but there was no way in the world she would stop kissing Leo to do any of it. She would have been hard pressed to decide between kissing him and escaping from a deadly fire if it had come to that.
He cupped her face in his hand, stroking a tight circle with his thumb just beneath her earlobe. She pushed her tongue in his mouth, gripped his shirt in her fist and made herself stay in the moment. Her mind kept darting around to questions about how long it was until the shop opened and what if she asked him to come upstairs with her and he said no—or what if he said yes?
Evie released the fistful of the shirt she was gripping and wrapped her arms around him fully, holding him. She loved the feeling of his strong back, his muscled arms, and shoulders beneath her fingers. It felt so good to hold on to him, to kiss him back. Don’t ruin it, a voice in her head warned. She ignored it and planted little kisses on his cheek and along his jaw. She could love him like this, without saying a word to embarrass herself.
Abruptly, Leo let go of her, disentangling himself from her arms and stepped back. “Forgive me,” he said, “terrible way to behave
. You must understand I’ve had a—shock from Adriana’s death, and I suppose I want to lose myself. There’s no helicopter to fly, no cliff to dive from, so I looked for a spur to hold on to and—“
“You’re comparing me to a piece of floating wood,” she said bleakly, kicking off her useless kitten heels that had failed to do their seductive job.
“What I mean to say is that it was ungentlemanly of me to corner you that way and press my attentions on you. I should leave,” he said, abashed, running his hands through his rumpled hair.
“You didn’t force anything on me. I’m not sure why you—I’m not sure why you do anything as a matter of fact. I will say this—if you were just going to quit like that, I wish you’d never started kissing me.”
“Forgive me. I’m sorry, Evie. You deserve better than that. You’ve been a true friend to me. The reason I came down, in fact, is that this has been ringing,” he said, holding out her phone, “You gave it to me last night as a pledge that you wouldn’t take photos or post about me. I’m giving it back. Especially after how I’ve behaved, taking advantage of you last night when I was in my cups, and then just now when I was quite sober--I can make no claims on your loyalty.”
She took the phone, not wanting it at all, and dropped it on the counter without so much as glancing at the screen. The only thing she cared about right now was in the kitchen with her, apologizing in the most infuriating way. She stood there dumbfounded as Leo took the kettle off the hob and poured two cups of tea. He dipped honey into one and poured cream into the other and set the infusers in them. He gave her cup a stir and passed it to her. The bastard remembered how she took her tea, damn him.
“I don’t,” she said.
“You don’t?”
“Forgive you. You keep asking me to and I just don’t. Because you’re confusing me. I kissed you, and you said you weren’t interested. I respected that and then you wanted me to stay with you and I did. I was trying to be cool about it and give you your space, assume it was a one-off. Then you scared the muffins out of me by coming downstairs and taking away all my composure and kissing me stupid and then quitting. What does that even mean?”
“That I’m a wreck. That I’m no better than that wanker who kissed Halle Berry at the Oscars,”
“I’m no Halle Berry. I’m a baker, and I don’t have time for this shit, Leo. I like you. In fact I more than like you, but I guess you don’t want to hear it. So—shit, that’s the oven!” she said as the timer sounded, “Go upstairs, I’ll deal with you in a minute.”
***
He’d fucked up this time. Not as badly as when he’d failed to return Adriana’s calls, obviously, but he was on the road to messing this tea girl about. He sat in her lounge, petting the tabby cat, which occasionally bit him for his trouble, and wondered how he’d got mixed up with any of this. The rain, he decided. The bloody English climate and its rain that drove him to seek shelter in a tearoom during a dating party. That was where his house of cards had toppled.
Soon, she clambered up the stairs and set an enormous platter down on the table and started to sing For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow, which was staggeringly inaccurate given their situation. He went to the kitchen and found a massive flat biscuit festooned with neon blue frosting, like a fairy cake gone badly awry.
“Happy birthday!” she said, her smile incandescent.
It stopped him for a moment, very nearly took his breath. She was looking at him as if she were unbelievably happy he was there, a squatter in her flat hiding out from the press. And meddling with her feelings and shagging her.
“Thank you. What is this?”
“It’s a cookie cake! Greatest things in the world. It’s a giant soft chocolate chip cookie!”
“I can’t say I’m familiar with what must be a peculiarly American phenomenon. An enormous biscuit? Can it be possible that a baker doesn’t know how to make a proper Victoria sponge?” he teased.
“How boring! Have a slice. Here, you cut it,” she handed him a knife.
“How?”
“With the knife. Into wedges, like pizza. Triangles,” she said.
He cut the big biscuit into slices and served her one on a plate she held. She took a bite and bright blue frosting smeared on her upper lip. He tasted his piece of cookie cake, sugary beyond all sense and one of the nicest things anyone had ever done for him.
“Thank you,” he said, “this was very kind of you and the first proper birthday celebration I’ve had in a great many years. I’m twenty-nine today,” he confessed.
“Such an old man,” she said, “what was your best birthday? Mine was the year I turned nine, and I got to take two friends to the skating rink. We had pizza, and roller skated and played Double Dragon in the arcade.”
“I’m not certain I understand any of what made that birthday good apart from having pizza. Mine, I reckon, was the year we were in Sweden to ski with my mum’s friend Inga and her family. I was eleven or twelve, and I made my first run on the trickiest slope. It was quite steep, and I was incredibly chuffed that I managed it.”
“I’m going to go with the context and assume chuffed means you were pleased with yourself because, I’m American, and, to me, it sounds like the noise a choo-choo train makes,” she said.
“I’m still not clear on what purpose the dragons served at your birthday party…we’ve a language barrier at times,” he said, “but this biscuit, while large beyond all sense, is quite tasty, thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I didn’t have a chance to get you a present, but you can have your pick of scones from the kitchen.”
“I think I’m done for after this slice of biscuit, though,” he said.
“I’ll be down in the shop. I don’t think you should come down, though, because you’d be recognized,” she said.
“Indeed. I’ll remain up here and read all the lurid headlines about Adriana,” he said grimly.
“Happy birthday, despite that. I know it’s a silly thing to say given the circumstances, but I wish you—I wish you better days, Leo.”
She dipped her head a little, not quite a bow or a curtsey but something like it, and dodged back down the stairs. What was he to make of such a woman? She was utterly nonsensical half the time, baked tremendous scones, and was so caring, so considerate of him that it damn near broke his heart. He had never had anyone look after him so. Certainly he’d been well cared for as a child, good schools, fine clothes, an assortment of playthings, but no one had been so minutely concerned with his interests and his comfort even then.
He sat and puzzled over that for a moment. Here was a woman, smart and strong and funny, who wanted to take care of him. He could not run away fast enough. Just the thought of it made him break into a sweat. He shoved his razor, his hairbrush, and gel into the dopp kit. He took his toothbrush off the toothbrush stand where it stood beside hers, far too cozy for his taste. He made a quick sweep of the rooms to make sure he left nothing behind. Then he dialed her mobile.
“Hello?” she said, sounding bewildered.
Leo could hear the chime of the shop door opening, the bustle of a morning takeaway crowd in a rush, the click and slide of the cash drawer in the background. “I know you’re busy. I didn’t want to leave without saying thank you for all you’ve done. I’ve called for a car to get me round the back in the alley. I’ll try not to draw any attention,” he said.
“You’re leaving? I thought—listen, I’ll be right up.”
She clicked off. He imagined her unwinding the strings of her apron, passing a customer off to the part time girl. He heard her step on the stair, and he shouldered his bag. “I thought you were laying low, trying to keep from winding up part of the scandal?” she asked.
Evie was breathing hard from running up the steps. Seeing the heave of her chest with the exertion brought to him the full force of how she had felt in his arms, the rush and tremble of her gasps when he had kissed her neck only a few moments before. Her softness
, her eagerness on the couch last night, the way she’d said his name. He needed quite badly to shake that memory off.
“I’m going to pay my respects. I owe Adriana that much at least. Damn what the press might say,” he said, “they’ll say it anyhow. That her death is down to our stormy relationship, that it’s my fault. Let them say it. Who’s to say they’re wrong? Saying a proper goodbye to her—she deserves that, and it’s worth more than my pride.”
“I could go with you,” she said.
Stricken by the suggestion, he looked at her hard. She was all guileless loyalty, looking wide-eyed at him and he knew she meant it. That she would go to some stranger’s funeral to help him out.
“I hadn’t thought to bring a date to her funeral. It wouldn’t be very respectful,” he said, intentionally gruff.
Evie nodded, “Good luck, Leo,” she said and put out her hand. She was marvelous; he would give her that. Not one recrimination, not one plea for him to stay—her lip didn’t even tremble, though he knew if he stood there too long that the tears would start to fall. She was steady as could be when he shook her hand.
“For what it’s worth, Evie, I wish you better days as well,” he said. Bending, he kissed her cheek once for goodbye.
Chapter Four
In the end, he couldn’t do it. Leo drove to the church out in Warwickshire near the Wellingford estate. He saw the hoards of autos streaming in the queue to the entrance, letting out chic mourners who huddled together under bouquets of black umbrellas. If he went inside the church, two things were inevitable. He would become the focus of every pair of eyes in the building. That was one. He would have to pass through the receiving line and look down at Adrianna’s body; that was two. Her body. Not herself, just the shell that was left of the woman who had struggled and suffered. He wasn’t sure if it was the desire not to steal all the attention away from her short, sad life with his celebrity presence or if it was merely dread of the latter, but he drove off.
The Royal Rake (Royal Romances Book 3) Page 7
