Royal Bastard (Instantly Royal 1)

Nick: Better than this?

The picture that came through was a close up of a dented beer can being balanced on a very muscular forearm. Okay, she’d never admit it out loud but that was a good view.

Nick: Wrong photo!

The next photo that came next was of a sunset over a lake. It was all pinks and oranges and deep blues. So that’s how he wanted to go at this? Challenge accepted. She hustled up Dallinger Park’s large main staircase to one of the functional guest rooms and flung open the beveled glass window. The heather wasn’t in full bloom yet, but the sight was still striking. She took the photo and hit send.

…

Nick couldn’t argue that the moors were postcard-worthy, but that wasn’t why he was still looking at the photo a day later as he sat at the counter at the Kitchen Sink Diner enjoying the best pecan pie on the face of the earth. It was the reflection of the woman who wouldn’t take no for an answer. He couldn’t quite make out what she looked like because of the angle, but it was enough for him to want more. The woman had him curious.

Why was she so determined to get him to England? Sure, it was her job, but there was doing your job and then there was the full-court press. She got paid either way, so what was the big deal?

“Is there something wrong with the pie?” Ruby Sue asked from the other side of the counter as she wiped down the pie display case.

Wily, spry, and in her mid-seventies if she was a day, Ruby Sue knew everyone in Salvation and exactly what they were up to. She was the gossipy heart of this small town, and her pecan pie was the spirit that kept it beating.

“No, ma’am.” There was never anything wrong with the pie.

“Really?” She hung the damp hand towel on a hook as she gave him a hard stare. “Because usually you eat it so fast that I say a little prayer for your digestive system.”

“I’m working on a riddle.” One about a woman determined to make him do the one thing he never, ever wanted to do and why he was so damn tempted.

Ruby Sue poured herself a sweet tea, added way too many additional sugar packets to ever be considered even kinda healthy, and sat down on the stool next to his. “Spill your guts.”

So he did—and it wasn’t just because the town’s favorite gossip controlled the secret pecan pie recipe that he’d been trying—and failing—to replicate

since he moved to Salvation, though it did factor in a bit.

Ruby Sue shook her head when he was done and gave him a look that all but screamed “bless your heart.” “So you’re turning down a free vacation to England because you’re too stubborn to say yes.”

“That’s not exactly it.” Had she missed the part about supposed family obligations and an old man he hated?

“Seems like it to me.” She took a sip of the tea that would send a normal human into diabetic shock. “You go, you meet that earl fella, you say ‘no thank you, I’m going to stay in Salvation,’ then you come home. Problem solved.”

Could it be that easy? He’d been rolling it around in his head for days, but Ruby Sue had hit on it in minutes. If he went, he could tell the earl he’d never be his heir, satisfy his curiosity about one Brooke Chapman-Powell, and see those moors for himself. Then he’d come back home. He was practically on the lake already.

Chapter Three

Yorkshire, England…

Brooke had to figure out how to tempt the devil. Okay, maybe not the devil, but, if the solicitor’s report delivered yesterday was to be believed, definitely one of the dark lord’s minions. Sitting in the back seat of the earl’s Mercedes on her way to the airport, she tried to calm the fluttering sense in her chest and the jittery drank-sixteen-cups-of-tea-in-a-quarter-hour feeling zooming through her.

“It’ll be fine,” Mr. Harleson said, the driver watching her in the car’s mirror.

Denial at this point was ridiculous. “What makes you think so?”

The driver returned his attention to the motorway and shrugged. “How could it be worse?”

Brooke smiled despite her nerves. Leave it to a Yorkshire man to give a Yorkshire answer. They’d been knocked down, what with the factories closing all around, but they got up again, over and over. It was their story for as long as anyone could remember. Determined and proud, they were a people with a code of not taking anything for granted. Now some in the south might file that under the saying that a Yorkshireman is a Scotsman with all the generosity squeezed out of him, but there was more to it than being flinty with their pounds. It was that bloody-minded stubbornness that kept people going when times were tough and from getting too full of themselves when they were flush.

Maybe she needed to turn in some of that pint-half-full optimism and go back to her cultural roots, get a little bloody-minded herself. All the hope filling her belly after the early-morning call two days ago with Mr. Vane had blown away like coal dust. Why? Because the earl’s heir had gone back to ignoring her. He’d responded to her missives only one more time after she’d sent him a text with his itinerary and a link to his mobile boarding pass.

He’d texted a thumbs-up emoji.

Nothing else.

No “thank you.”