Royal Bastard (Instantly Royal 1)

Nick walked out into the room, wearing only loose basketball shorts and a tool belt slung low on his waist. He had small towels tied together like slippers on his feet, a duster in one hand, and a canister hoover strapped to his back like a knapsack. The tool belt was stocked with different bottles, towels and wipes hanging from the slots where the hammers and stuff should go. It was almost enough to distract her from his drool-worthy abs. Almost.

“Whoa,” he said, shooting her a grin that woke up every butterfly in her stomach. “I didn’t expect you for another few hours.”

“What’s on your feet?” Brilliant query, Brooke, you git.

“Duster slippers.” He lifted a leg so she could see the dirt-covered bottoms. “So easy to mock up. Totally effective. Killer profit maker. This puppy was one of my first inventions.”

“But why are you…?” She circled her hand in his direction, encompassing his entire look because putting it into words wasn’t something her brain was ready for.

He shrugged, seemingly totally unbothered by getting caught looking like a demented cleaner. “I ditched Gramps and got bored.”

Her stomach tightened. That couldn’t be good. The blowup between the two of them had to have been of epic proportions for Nick to go to ground. “You’re hiding from the earl?”

“No.” He crossed his arms across his substantial chest. “I don’t hide. I avoid when the confrontation isn’t worth the headache.” The statement came out like she’d just accused him of licking the bottom of his shoe. “He’s got some muckity mucks over at the house, and I don’t want to deal with them, so I ghosted.”

Since the earl’s son died, visitors to Dallinger Park weren’t plentiful. Well, except for a rather unpleasant few. “What did the visitors look like?”

“From what I saw as I hustled it out of there, one guy was tall, bald, and paunchy and the other one looked the same but with a full head of hair and had either his daughter or third trophy wife with him.”

Just brilliant.

“Daughter.” Portia Haverstam was as mean as she was beautiful and made Brooke’s life a misery whenever she visited for the afternoon with her father, Lord Kanter. There was no way she was going back to the big house unless forced. “Can you make a pair of those cleaning slippers for me?”

Nick’s grin did things to her. “Why, Lady Lemons, are you hiding out? What if Gramps needs his secretary?”

“I don’t hide.” Two could play the denial game. She held out her hand, palm up. “I’m working.”

“Whatever you say, sweetheart.” One brown eyebrow went up, but he handed her the glass cleaner and a cloth. “Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.”

Three hours later, the sun had dipped below the horizon, the former stables were sparkling, and Nick Vane had disappeared. She couldn’t complain, though. The man had worked his rather nice arse off. Brooke blew a drooping strand of hair out of her face and tried to ignore her growling stomach. If she gave it another hour, she’d miss the horrid Portia Haverstam, her irritable father, and their annoying crony, Andrew Warren. Her gut rumbled again.

“Put a cork in it, belly,” she muttered to herself.

“So I’m guessing my timing is impeccable?” Nick asked as he stood in the doorway, holding a heavy tray loaded down with fish and chips, a box of Cadbury Roses, and a few cans of beer.

Her stomach pledged at that moment to marry him. Settle, belly. “You’re a godsend.”

Nick strutted in, putting the tray down on the freshly hoovered carpet in front of the dark fireplace. “We’ve worked. Time to feast.”

And they did. She teased him about the amount of ketchup he dipped his chips in. Of course, he just responded that fries were ketchup delivery devices and that vinegar she was sprinkling on hers was a travesty. The teasing continued through the meal right up until the dessert, when he unwrapped a blue-wrapped caramel Cadbury Rose, popped it into his mouth, and his eyes nearly rolled back in his head with bliss.

“What in the hell do you do with chocolate over here to make it taste like that?” he asked, reaching for another.

“Why, Mr. Vane,” she said with a laugh, grabbing a piece of her absolute favorite Golden Barrel Rose, marked by the gold wrapper, for herself. “Have you finally found something about England that you like?”

He stopped unwrapping a Hazel Whirl Rose with its purple-and-orange-tipped wrapper and gave her a look that should have melted the chocolate in her hand on the spot. “Oh, I found something I liked about this island the minute I stepped off the plane.”

Hello to the flock of racing pigeons that had just taken flight in her chest. Saving herself from trying to answer that, she reminded herself of all the reasons shagging him was wrong—you know, he’s her boss’s heir, he’s only grudgingly going to be here six months out of the year, nothing could ever come of them being together (except orgasms, her mutinous body reminded her by turning her nipples to hard pebbles)—Brooke shoved the barrel-shaped chocolate filled with caramel in her mouth and barely tasted a thing.

“You’ve never answered my question about why you’re still here in Bowhaven,” he said.

Okay, that was not what she expected to come next. It was like he had a special superpower when it came to putting people at a distance. “I have told you. I love this place.”

“Why?” He ate the hazelnut chocolate he’d unwrapped.

“Because it was the one place I knew where I’d be safe when everything went to shit on the front page of the tabloids.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I’m gonna need more information than that.”