Royal Bastard (Instantly Royal 1)

Instead of being horrified to come home and find the dishwasher disassembled in their kitchen, his mom had sat down with him, and together they’d figured out how to make the water pulsate at a higher rate to clean the dishes in half the time. That was Charity August (formerly Vane). She didn’t freak out; she didn’t lose her shit—not even when the doctor had come back with the terminal diagnosis. She figured out what to do next, and then she did it.

After her diagnosis, his mama had reached out for help to the man who’d knocked her up and disappeared, letting him know the situation. Nick’s sperm donor had blocked his mama’s number and sent a lackey with a check. A pissed-off, already mourning Nick had wanted to burn it to ash, but his mama had a more practical nature. She put it into a savings account for him and told him he’d know when the time was right. That time had turned out to be when he needed funding to produce his first invention, which had put him on the road to millions more—both in terms of cash and ideas.

And that old fucker in that decrepit shell of a mansion wanted him to be his heir? After that? After what the Vanes had done to his mom? To him? Yeah, he had a different idea of how he’d repay their generosity—with a giant fuck-you to the Earl of Assholery.

So lost in his thoughts—and, frankly, because he was looking on the wrong side of the road for traffic—Nick didn’t see the little red Peugeot until it was slow rolling right next to him. The window went down, revealing a cute blonde—did they have a factory hidden in the fields of heather somewhere?—with the biggest blue eyes he’d ever seen in his life sitting behind the wheel.

“Heading to the village?” she asked, her voice a little louder than necessary.

He laid his hand on the roof of the car and leaned down to better look in the window. “Yeah.”

“Want a lift?”

Okay, this was a giant nope in the United States. Picking up hitchhikers? That was a quick way to end up as a skin suit in someone’s closet. Maybe the homicidal over here were less Buffalo Bill than back home. Still, the imbalance in their sizes made him cautious on her behalf.

“You sure?” he asked, taking a step back so she could see for herself that he wasn’t some scrawny pip-squeak.

“Come on in, future Earl of Englefield.” She reached over and shoved open the passenger door.

“I’m not an earl of anything.” Reflexively, he caught the door as it swung open. “How did you know who I was?”

“In this village?” She laughed, the sound a little flat to his ears. “Good luck having a pint in Bowhaven and not having everyone know within seconds how many you had.”

Yeah, that sounded like Salvation. It seemed that part of small-town life was universal. Shrugging off his natural doubts, he slid into the passenger seat on the left, ignoring the inner warning that he was getting into the wrong side, and closed the door behind him. And they were off with a quick shift of the manual transmission.

The blonde looked out onto the road, not sparing him a glance even though her gaze was constantly traveling from the road in front of her to the rearview mirror and back again.

“I’m Nick, by the way, not ‘sir’ or ‘earl’ or anything else.” He’d had enough of the “future earl” and “sir” business to last twelve lifetimes.

His good Samaritan kept her attention focused on the road and didn’t react at all. Okay, that was weird. “And you are?” he prodded.

The question hung in the air between them still without any kind of reaction from her.

Okay then, if he didn’t have close to eighty pounds and half a foot advantage on the driver, he’d be worried about how weird she’d look dressed in his skin. Instead, he just shrugged and chalked the rudeness up to one more thing he hated about England as he glanced out of his passenger window at the countryside.

The area was almost all green hilly pasture-looking land and roads so narrow, he was holding on to the door handle for dear life any time they encountered a car coming in the other direction. A few minutes down a country lane that dipped into a valley and a roundabout later and they were driving past connected townhomes with small front yards surrounded by stone fences.

Despite the quaint look to the stores and the cobblestone parking spots along Bowhaven’s main drag, the town reminded him of Salvation. Mom-and-pop stores lined the road, and there wasn’t a big-box store in sight. His driver pulled over into a tiny parallel-parking spot tight enough to make his ass tense. However, she maneuvered into the spot with the ease of someone more than a little confident of her abilities.

She cut the engine and turned to him, a friendly smile on her face. “Well, this is it for me.” She jerked her head at the building they were in front of. “The family pub. You should stop in for a pint before heading back to my sister.”

“Your sister?” He was usually faster on the uptake than this, but his brain was blank.

She held out her hand. “Daisy Chapman-Powell. Our family runs the Quick Fox Pub.”

He shook her hand, trying to process how in the world Lady Lemons and the blond pixie with mad parking skills could be sisters. Sure, he could clock the family resemblance now, but their personalities couldn’t be more different.

“Sorry about the silent treatment on the way here,” she went on. “I have to really concentrate when I drive, since I can’t hear a bloody thing.”

And there went the light bulb. The slightly too loud voice, the flat tone to her laugh. “You’re deaf?”

She nodded. “Seven years now.”

“You read lips.” It wasn’t a question; it was just him working through the process of how it all worked.

Daisy snorted. “Well, I’m certainly not imagining this conversation, now, am I?”

And that was all it took to see the connection between the two women. Daisy and Brooke were definitely sisters in tart sarcasm in addition to any familial bond. “Yep, you’re Brooke’s sister, all right.”