by Maya Rodale, Caroline Linden, Miranda Neville, Katharine Ashe
“Lord Melbury’s collection includes an original edition of Pride and Prejudice,” she said. “Ever heard of it?”
She looked adorable, dusty and defiant at once as she challenged him to admit his ignorance. Piers didn’t mind it. He’d nothing to prove to this woman—this woman who hadn’t yet given him one of the sparkling smiles she gave him in the park every Friday morning.
She didn’t reserve those smiles for Philly, though. She’d smiled brilliantly at her friends down at the pool. But she was resisting his flirting.
That intrigued him. Women didn’t resist him. Men didn’t in business or anything else. He always got what he wanted, except in one matter, and he was complicit in that: his brother’s escape from Prescott Global. That ten years later he was still sitting at his brother’s destined desk in the family’s skyscraper was the reason he’d first seen this woman.
“I haven’t read it. Should I?”
She twisted up lips the color of every hot fantasy he’d ever had and gave him a clear-eyed assessment.
“It probably wouldn’t hurt.” She ducked under his arm. He pivoted, following her progress to the other side of the bookshelf lying facedown on the pile of books. “It’s not here, of course. I’d kill myself if I’d damaged it.”
She crouched and started straightening the books. For a moment he let himself admire the snug pull of her jeans around her curves. Then he crossed his arms loosely and leaned his shoulder against the wall.
“You’d kill yourself over a book?” She’d nearly done so six months ago, the day he’d first seen her in Green Park, doling out books from a backpack to kids while a pair of dealers eyed her from across the street.
“A very precious book.” She brushed a wisp of dark hair from her face. She always wore it up, hiding the length. He wanted to see it down and flowing around her bare shoulders.
“But really, all books are precious,” she said, focused on the volumes in her hands. They looked relatively new to him, but she seemed truly anguished. “I suppose your family owns so many expensive things, like cars and vacation houses, that mere books seem insignificant in comparison.”
“Not exactly.”
“I feel terrible about this,” she said quietly.
Something else shone in her eyes now. Worry. Serious worry. The destruction meant more to her than the damage to the books.
Money. She thought she’d have to pay for this.
That couldn’t happen. He wanted to protect her now, the same way he’d wanted to protect her the first time he’d ever seen her.
“If anybody asks, we’ll say I did it.” He gestured to the pile.
“What? No.” She stood up, frowning. “That’s not right. It’s a lie.”
Like pretending he’d just met her yesterday. “But it could easily be the truth. Put me in a library and I’m like a bull in a china shop.”
Her brown eyes that made him want to do things to her—X-rated things—swept him up and down again. Assessing.
“I don’t believe it,” she said. “I don’t believe you’re ever careless about anything.”
But he’d been careless with her. From the start. He should tell her. What was the worst that could happen? She’d tell someone else, the news would get around, and the funds would revert into his bank account. Rather, they’d get tied up in legal knots for months.
Her attention shifted to the doorway and her smile hit him full force in the gut.
“You found her, Piers. Great,” Duke’s fiancé said blithely and looked at the pile on the floor. “What a mess. Mark said it’s still being renovated. I’m glad the rest of the house isn’t like this.”
“I knocked over a bookcase,” he said.
California was staring at him, her honest, expressive eyes very wide, her lips parted.
“Listen,” he said quickly, “I’m going to find someone to clean this up. Careful with those other shelves, California. They’re loose.”
He’d never run from a woman. In his life. Not even his sister when she’d regularly asked him to take her dateless friends to parties. He’d done it. He’d do anything for Amy. And for his brother. Hell, for a decade his life had been about helping out J.T.
Now he ran. At close proximity, California Blake was smarter, sweeter, and a hell of a lot sexier than he’d anticipated. And honest. Her emotions showed so clearly in her eyes. When he told her the truth, he wouldn’t have to guess if she thought he was slime. He would know it. So, according to the provisions of the library grant and his own reliable instinct, he simply wouldn’t tell her.
“Cali doesn’t trust men,” Jane said as she sat down beside Duke, a glass of wine in her hand. She crossed her legs.
Duke turned his head to look at her. “Where’s this coming from?”
Jane speared Piers with a stare. He and Duke had been having a drink. Relaxing for a moment, the kind of relaxation he hadn’t had time for since college.
“Piers is hitting on Cali,” Jane said.
Duke nodded at him. “Nice choice, bro.”
Jane shoved her elbow in her fiancé’s ribs. “Don’t play around with her, Piers. She’s not like the shallow socialites you’re used to. She’s a genuinely good person, and she’s had a really rough time of it since high school.”
“What happened in high school?” He succeeded at sounding casual. Over the past decade he’d perfected sounding casual when he felt everything but.
“Her father was a corporate lawyer. Lots of money. Trips to Vail and Paris and wherever the superrich crowd went. He was a partier. He’d married a waitress at Hooters and it was a wretched mistake. He left her three or four times. Then, when Cali and I were at Penn State, her mom died in iffy circumstances.”
“Suicide?” Duke said.
“Prescription pills. By then, Cali’s dad had been drinking a lot and screwing up. After Cali’s mom OD’d, he lost it entirely. Everything went: his job, the big house, investments, cars, savings. Her sister was still in high school and Cali had to drop out of State so she could carry all three of them. Then, a few years ago, he burned down their house.”
Piers swiveled his martini. “Was he drunk?”
“Passed out. There was a lit cigar, but drugs too. He went to jail.”
Duke whistled low.
“Cali was studying when the fire started,” Jane said. “She was taking night classes from community college so she could finish her degree and get promoted from library page to associate. She dragged her father from the house. Her sister was asleep upstairs. The firemen rescued Zoe, but she was really badly burned.”
Piers hadn’t known. He could have found out. He’d never wanted to. He eavesdropped on her every Friday morning, but she knew that; she lowered her voice when she didn’t want him to hear. Anything else he learned about her, he’d wanted to hear from her directly.
“The house wasn’t insured for fire. So Cali finished her degree in record time and has been working her tail off at the library ever since. It’s been hard for her and Zoe in the past few years,” Jane said. “She doesn’t need you messing around with her head, Piers. And she definitely doesn’t need more lying jerks like her father.”
“That’s harsh, Jane,” Duke said, but he took her hand.
“I’m sorry,” Jane said. “I didn’t mean it that way. Just don’t play around with her, Piers. Okay?”
He didn’t want to play. He wanted to know her. To actually know her. But he’d already made that undoable. Yeah. Great idea, trying to take away her hurt. Great plan to make her wishes come true.
Chapter Five
The Park at Brampton
The morning began with a spectacular thunderstorm that broke directly over the house and woke Cali from dreams of Piers Prescott touching her.
The night before at the casual barbeque dinner, he’d been more gorgeous than a greedy corporate ogre should be allowed. He’d only come near her once, when she’d stood at the bar alone. He asked if she’d gotten hold of the Austen novel yet. She told h
im Mark, the hotel manager, had let her see it and she’d been in heaven. Piers smiled at her and looked right into her eyes the way he had in the library. Then several of the other women guests swarmed all over him. He hadn’t approached her again. But a few times she’d found him watching her.
It was unnerving. And incredibly arousing.
She’d never before dreamed of making out with a man. It took her a few minutes of staring up at the canopy above her five-star mattress to shrug the sensations from her body and switch on her rational brain. But her blood still felt zingy. She needed to get outside. The estate covered acres and acres. She would take a run. And on her run she would reconsider Zoe’s and Roxanna’s advice.
He was gorgeous. He was only thirty-ish and already a millionaire. He was so completely out of her league he would never be interested in her if she weren’t here. Guys like Piers Prescott only cared about money, power, and good looks.
But her imagination was now a train hurtling out of control. She thought about touching his chest. She thought about the way he’d touched her in the dream. Then she thought about him on top of her, between her thighs, pressing her into that five-star mattress.
A run. She needed a long run. Immediately.
And probably a fling. Zoe was right: she was wound up so tightly from stress that she was fantasizing about a guy she’d barely met. A golden opportunity to release tension, to kick loose for the first time in years, was in this house now. And he could probably use some rebound sex after the split with his longtime girlfriend.
No. Bad idea. She wanted nothing to do with the Prescott family, not even a casual fling. Best to steer clear of him. She would find one of Duke’s other friends who seemed nice and interesting and moral. Then she could release tension without sacrificing any self-respect.
She dressed in running shorts and a Lycra tank, and stretched for her run. Then she went looking for a man. A specific man.
She found Lord Melbury’s son, Harry Compton, in his residence, knocking dirt from work boots in a long hallway inside the side door to the house. It seemed a very plebeian activity for the heir to a lord of the realm. But she supposed nobles put their boots on one foot at a time too—and took them off, muddy.
Sick in her stomach, she apologized for the accident in the library. Pleasantly reserved in the way only Englishmen could be, he was a complete gentleman. He assured her that few of the books were damaged and all were easily replaceable. The bookcase hadn’t suffered any harm either. He seemed more worried that she’d been injured. She assured him she’d only gotten what she deserved for being so careless. Then she offered to pay for the damaged books, which he politely refused.
With a much lighter heart, she set off across the estate.
And promptly got lost.
She hadn’t run in the countryside in ages, and Brampton wasn’t exactly laid out on a grid. Thunderclouds rumbled ominously. A droplet of rain splashed on her face. She’d no idea how far she was from the house.
In the distance, a white temple structure rose amidst gorgeous trees and glorious shrubs on the top of a hill. She remembered having seen it from the house. Thunder boomed. As she ran toward the gazebo, the sky split open. Buckets. Cats and dogs. Noah’s Ark-worthy. Lungs burning, she sprinted.
Splashing up the steps of the gazebo and ducking inside, she came face-to-face with the man of her dream.
Of course. Sweaty and flushed, dripping rain from the tip of her nose, her hair plastered to her head, and gulping breaths, she had to bump into Mr. GQ in the middle of nowhere. He sat on a marble bench against the inside wall, his slacks dry and his pristine white linen shirt undone to the third button. He had an iPad mini propped on one knee, and he wore a pair of leather Ferragamos worth more than her monthly rent.
He looked up. And did a double take.
“Hey.”
She swiped water from her dripping chin. “Hi.” The pouring rain almost drowned her out.
He set down the tablet, stood, and came forward, his gaze dipping to her legs. “Thunderstorm running? Is this a new Olympic sport?”
“Yup. I’m a favorite to medal next year.” She told herself it didn’t matter that she was a mess. She didn’t need to impress him. The bookmobile had funding for at least a year. She didn’t need to go begging to any Prescott now.
Not for money.
She couldn’t help thinking about her dream and where he’d touched her. If the storm hadn’t woken her, she might have started begging in that scenario.
“It should be over soon.” He sounded smooth. Assured. Relaxed. While her insides were like a carnival. She kind of hated him for it. But she already hated the Prescotts anyway.
“So, I think it would be best if I set something straight right away,” she said.
“Good idea.”
She blinked. “It is?”
“Yeah.”
“But you don’t know what I’m going to say.”
“If you think it’s important, I’d like to hear it.” He sounded completely earnest.
This wasn’t how she’d thought things would go with him. She hadn’t planned on saying this at all. But she had him trapped, penned in by sheets of rain. He had to listen. It would entirely ruin her golden opportunity, but the words bubbling up in her now were much more important than a fling.
She shifted from one foot to the other and her shoes squelched. “I helped prepare a proposal that the library submitted to your family’s foundation for a mobile library unit that drives through underprivileged neighborhoods, lending books. The foundation rejected our proposal.”
“It receives many proposals,” he said guardedly. It was the first she’d seen him less than entirely confident. It gave her a moment’s pause.
“I know it can’t fund everything,” she admitted, but she had to say this. “It wasn’t the rejection itself that I objected to, but the tone of it.”
“The tone?”
“It was scathing and insulting. It suggested that the project was naively conceived and a waste of money, and that if the people it intended to serve really wanted to improve themselves, they would finish high school and get jobs instead of lazing around expecting taxpayers to entertain them with free books. It intimated that the people who live in those neighborhoods are all drug addicts and illiterate, so what good would it to do to offer them books except give them something to sell in exchange for their next hit? I’ve never read anything so ignorant and condescending in my life.”
“I can understand that.”
“Powerful, rich people just don’t get it that people struggling to make ends meet want to read good books too. But they can’t afford them. Or they can’t afford bus fare to get to the closest branch library. And they can’t afford overdue fines when they have to work overtime to pay the heating bill or send their kids to school with lunch, so they can’t make it back to the library to return a book on time. Or they’re too old to get around and they can’t get books easily. Or they’re teachers and they don’t have the money to buy new books or to take their students on field trips to the library, but they still want to give the kids the world. The bookmobile is for those people.”
“It’s clearly a valid program, California.”
“It is. But people like your family, who sit in their elite ivory towers and dictate how the world turns, don’t think of anybody’s happiness except their own. You’re all about gala balls to celebrate your latest billion-dollar deals and dismantling companies to ship them overseas. You have no idea how the so-called little people struggle to get by every day. You can’t see beyond your upturned noses. And to call the Prescott Foundation a charitable institution is ludicrous when it only gives money to high cultural events like art gallery shows and symphony performances intended for people with three-BMW garages and vacation houses in France. It’s awful and wrong and you should be ashamed of yourselves.”
“I know.”
The air rushed out of her lungs. She pushed a sodden lock of hair back from her forehead
. “You do?”
“Yeah. I agree with you.”
She couldn’t wrap her head around it. “Are you saying this just so I’ll shut up?”
“No. I actually agree with you. My grandfather is a prize bastard with a sense of entitlement longer than his yacht, and he wants to control everyone and everything around him. I don’t like the way the company or the foundation do business any more than you do.”
“But…” She shook her head. “I didn’t expect you to say this.”
“Clearly.” He smiled slightly. The rain had let up but a gust of misty wind swept through the gazebo and brushed his collar wide open, exposing a portion of perfectly toned chest. Goosebumps skittered all over Cali’s skin. She clamped her arms across her breasts.
“You must be cold,” he said, putting a hand to his shirt buttons. “I didn’t bring a jacket out here, but—”
“No.” She stepped back. “No, I’m fine.” If he took off his shirt and gave it to her she would die. Or attack him. “I’m cooling down pretty fast. I should finish my run now.” She glanced at the iPad. “What are you doing out here? Don’t tell me… You’re secretly plotting to overthrow your grandfather, but he found out and bugged the house, so you had to come here to communicate with your guerilla army of spies?”
His warm eyes glimmered. “There’s no Wi-Fi or cell service at the house. Someone discovered a signal here and I came to give it a try.” He glanced around. “I’m surprised there aren’t twenty other people here now.”
“I thought you said you were all about playing this week.”
“I said that because you looked beautiful and I was flirting with you. Which you resisted valiantly. Now I understand at least one reason for that.”
His directness was as sexy as the rest of him. He stepped forward, the wind pressing the linen against his arms and chest.
“Listen, Califor—”
“Why did you come looking for me in the library? Jane said you did.”
“I wanted to get you alone.”
