Royal Bastard (Instantly Royal 1)

Still, the words poured out of his mouth. “I’ll make the market day negotiations work on one condition.”

She tugged her bottom lip between her teeth, giving him a distrusting look. “What’s that?”

Yeah. Great question. You probably should have thought of that before you opened your piehole, Vane. His gaze fell on the ideas he’d scratched down into his notebook yesterday about the anxiety dog collar. “You help me out with a little problem I’m working on. An invention.”

In full Lady Lemons mode, she lifted an eyebrow. “I don’t see how I can help with that.”

“I need distraction, something that will keep the left side of my brain busy so I can work out the problem with my right side.” And considering he’d have to really think to figure out the square root of eighty-one, he was plenty distracted by the woman in front of him looking at him like he was a little bit unhinged and a whole lotta dangerous. “Show me the side of Bowhaven that makes you want to help the place so badly that you’d put up with the Earl of Snarl and the village snark.”

“You want a tour?” she asked, her blue eyes wide with surprise but her tone guarded.

“No, I want to see Bowhaven from a local’s perspective.” He wanted to unravel whatever the draw was pulling Lady Lemons back to the middle of nowhere Yorkshire when she could go where the people appreciated her, tart temperament and all.

She crossed her arms over her belly. “Fine, but it has to be in public.”

“Why’s that, Lady Lemons?” he asked, taking a step closer to her but stopping just shy of touching her. Not that it mattered. The woman had a way of imprinting herself on his fingertips. “Who don’t you trust in private? Me? Or you?”

She swallowed, the move drawing his attention to her creamy throat, the one he’d kissed and licked last night until he nearly lost his damn mind listening to her little cries of pleasure. That was all it took to make his cock start to thicken against his thigh. Fuck. Last night shouldn’t have happened. Not because it wasn’t good, but because it was. So. Very. Good.

“We shan’t repeat last night,” she declared as her pulse danced against her throat.

“Why?” He could think of a billion reasons in a heartbeat, but none of them mattered when he was close enough to dip his head down and kiss her silky skin, feel her nipples harden under his touch, and hear her cries for more.

“It will complicate things.” She looked up at him, her pink tongue wetting her lips.

He could have nutted right there, watching her do that. Instead, he put his hands palms flat against the wall on either side of her, hoping the substitution of hard wall for soft skin would dim the urge to touch her. Her eyelids lowered as the tension tightened between them like a rubber band that was about to break and snap them both hard enough to leave a mark.

“Good thing I don’t believe in complications,” he said, his voice a low rumble he barely recognized. “Only easy solutions.”

/> “Are you saying I’m easy?” Fire sparked in her eyes.

“No one would ever be foolish enough to call Lady Lemons easy.”

“Good.” She cocked her chin up a few degrees, giving him a look that said everything had been decided—and he would have believed her, except for the desire still swirling in her eyes and the husky breathiness of her words. “Because last night needs to be an anomaly.”

It was an anomaly all right, just not in the way she was thinking. She’d gotten under his skin and he couldn’t figure out why. Probably it was because of the fish-out-of-water situation he found himself in as the lone American in a small English village. Of course, he’d be drawn to whomever was a lifeline of normalcy.

The puzzle of Brooke Chapman-Powell partially solved, he pivoted and took one arm away from the wall so she could walk away. “Of course, whatever you want.”

The tiniest bit of indecision flickered across her face. He’d lay odds, it was one of the few times in her life that Brooke wasn’t exactly sure of her next move. He could appreciate how uncomfortable that was, but he’d still use it to his advantage.

He wasn’t going to be satisfied with just one night spent naked with her—and judging by her reaction to him, neither was she. The easiest way to find satisfaction—for them both—was to let this attraction run its course just like all attractions did. He couldn’t imagine a reason why it would be any different with Brooke—life had taught him that things always ended the same, with him alone.

“Text me with where you want to meet later,” he said, walking toward the door, not letting himself look back at the flush-cheeked, uptight Lady Lemons who’d reveled in his bed last night—if he did, he wasn’t sure he’d even make it downstairs for the market day negotiations, and then his grandfather would show up and get a more shocking view than he had this morning.

…

All the usual suspects were gathered inside the Quick Fox that night and a nice, low hum of family togetherness permeated the place when Brooke walked through the door. As usual, the tension pulling her shoulders tight ebbed out the minute she crossed the threshold—well, at least 99 percent of it. The remaining one percent was due to a particular American who her imagination had conjured up in every window and hall in Dallinger Park all day, even though she hadn’t actually set eyes on him even once. The man was a distraction without even being around. Last night had been a mistake. Huge. One that wouldn’t—couldn’t—happen again. She was a woman with a strategy, a course of action, and the determination to save her village. Shagging the earl’s heir didn’t factor into that, no matter how toe-curling good it had been or how badly she wanted to do it again.

Walking past Karen and Harry Styron sitting at a table with Ed Ambrose and a couple of the old-timers telling stories about Bowhaven’s glory days before the factory closed down, Brooke headed straight toward where Daisy stood at the end of the bar, a book opened in front of her. Their dad set a pint of ale down in front of her with a wink and then ambled off to no doubt continue talking pigeons with Daniel Winter, who sat at the opposite end of the bar with a pint of stout and his usual hangdog expression. Daniel was a taciturn Yorkshire man through and through. If he’d just won the National Lottery, he’d say he was “fair t’middlin’.”

“How goes it with the hot heir?” Daisy asked, watching the mirror for her sister’s response.

Brooke would have thought it was dim enough in the pub that her heated cheeks wouldn’t have shown. She’d thought wrong.

“Oh!” Daisy exclaimed, her eyes going round as a smile curled her lips upward. “You shagged him.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Brooke took a long drink of her ale because she’d always been a horrible liar