Royal Bastard (Instantly Royal 1)

The ride back to the stable house in Dallinger Park’s Land Rover was fast and quiet. Whatever was building between them, Nick didn’t seem any more anxious to talk about it than she was. Still, after they said their good nights and headed to their bedrooms, she couldn’t help but take a last peek at him in the hall before she shut her door. Too bad he was already inside his room. And that little voice in her head asking what if and why not got louder.

Chapter Nineteen

Brooke skipped the fish and chips shop the next day to avoid the line of people spilling out the door. It wasn’t just there, though. People were everywhere in the shops, on the footpaths. The flash of light in the window of the Bits and Bobs bookstore caught her attention next. Taking care to peek in between villagers crowding around the big window, she spotted a man and a woman signing autographs and smiling for photos with locals. The man looked familiar and there was no mistaking the woman. She’d been in a dozen rom-coms that Brooke had curled up with during the past few winters.

She had no idea how the two managed to stand it. All the camera phones and crowds were giving her flashbacks. Of course, unlike her, these two weren’t the center of attention because it was the most humiliating time of their lives. Skin getting itchy from the awful claustrophobic anxiety climbing up every single nerve in her body, she hustled past to the Fox next door.

Per usual, just walking through the door smoothed out her janky breathing and settled her shoulders down a few inches.

“Aye up, Brooke,” her mum and dad said nearly in union from their spots behind the bar.

The others in the pub looked up from their pints and said their hellos—which passed as an overwhelmingly effusive welcome for Yorkshire—as she made her way over to her parents, who were both standing behind the bar beaming at her.

“What’s going on?” she asked as her mum handed her a cuppa.

“You’ve been the talk of the village,” her dad said before heading down to refill Bruce Ackerman’s pint.

“Oh, great.” Being at the center of the teatime chatter was not what she’d been hoping to get out of this. She owed Bowhaven, and all she wanted to do was repay that debt.

Her mum leaned forward, pride gleaming in her eyes. “No one can stop talking about the movie and the fact that Nick said it was you who helped him talk the earl into agreeing to let them film at Dallinger Park.”

There went the butterflies at the mention of his name. “Mr. Vane,” she said automatically.

“Oh, there you go with that. Fine. That’s what Mr. Vane said,” her mum added. “Brian Kaye asked me this morning if you were still interested in running for village council. He said Alma Fistlegate is stepping away.”

The village council? They wanted her to run? She figured she’d be fighting tooth and nail for years before she actually got on the council, and now they weren’t just going to listen to her, they wanted her to run? The news had her speechless.

“Brian,” her mum said, calling out to the man sitting at a table nearby. “I was just telling our Brooke how you’d mentioned an upcoming opening on the council.”

The older man stood up and carried his pint over to the bar, giving Brooke the friendliest look he’d ever shot her in the two years she’d been insistently sharing her ideas with him.

“Aye up, Brooke,” he said. “There’s not much power in the position; the county council is in charge of most things, but you’ll have a voice and help the village. So can I put you down as a yes?”

Would she say yes? In a bloody heartbeat. “Of course.”

It took Brooke a second to put a name on the floaty feeling making her lungs tight. Determined accomplishment. That’s what it was. She’d crossed a line and was going to do whatever it took to make sure she never went back to being the village joke again.

…

The moors looked like a live-action Instagram filter. Even for as much as Nick didn’t want to be standing hunched over in a hunting butt with Gramps waiting for the grouse to come bursting out from the heather-covered hills, he didn’t have a choice. He had dark-green ear protection on his head, but with one ear uncovered until the shooting started.

Gramps turned to him in the small stone-lined space. “We need to talk about Ms. Chapman-Powell.”

Yep. He definitely should have left ear protection over both ears. “Why?”

“Because your dalliance isn’t going unnoticed,” he said. “The villagers are talking.”

Great. That was exactly how to not get Brooke back into his bed. He’d fucked this whole thing up. “How is that any business of yours?”

“I’m your grandfather.” The earl straightened his tweed vest that went with his tweed pants that ended under his knees.

It was like looking at a fancy English rich-guy cosplayer. Really, a group of them, because the others in the hunting party were dressed in similar outfits. Meanwhile, he was in jeans and a dark-green fleece. In August. Thank you, winds off the North Sea.

“The question remains, why do you care?” he asked.

The earl kept his gaze on the horizon, but there was no missing the way he flinched at Nick’s words. “Your father was a complicated man.”

“He was a rich asshole who got what he wanted and left without a second thought.” About Nick’s mama. About him. About anything but himself.