Royal Bastard (Instantly Royal 1)

“What in the hell are you doing in here?” he asked, feeling every bit like a teenager getting caught jacking off into a sock.

The earl picked an invisible piece of lint from his tweed jacket. “Informing you that you’re late.”

His brain moved quick, but not first thing in the morning and definitely not with his grandfather looking at him like he was a box of rocks. “For what?”

The old man let out a sigh. “Two members of the village council have arrived to discuss market day.”

None of this made sense. “So?”

“As my heir, you’ll be my representative in the negotiations.”

Like that made anything any clearer. “Negotiations?”

“Has Ms. Chapman-Powell not taught you anything? The stalls on the high street must pay a fee to the estate for the privilege of selling their goods on the portion of the street that I own,” he said slowly, as if talking to a particularly difficult child. “You are going to determine the amount and ensure that it is paid.”

“Or what, I break their legs?” Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” his grandfather scoffed. “Now get yourself sorted and downstairs.”

With that, the old man strode out of the room, leaving Nick alone at last, trying to figure out how he’d gone from his original mission of telling the earl to fuck off to spending half the year here and being a part of market day negotiations. He got dressed in jeans and one of the few button-up shirts he owned. Everything had gone sideways the moment he set eyes on Lady Lemons in the airport. He should have stuck with the airline attendant. Hell, he should have turned around and gotten right back on the plane. Instead, here he was for a six-month stay in a country that saw five days of sunshine a year.

He was sitting on the bed and putting on his shoes when Brooke knocked. How did he know it was her? Because that little buzz of something that zipped through his subconsciousness whenever he was around her had started humming. Plus the knock came from the door connecting their rooms. It didn’t take a genius with his IQ to figure it out.

“Come in,” he called out as he tied his shoes.

He kept his eyes on the job at hand until a pair of black heels came into view. Following the long line of her legs, he let his gaze move up slowly over the knee-length black skirt and sensible white blouse, wishing like hell he had a pair of those glasses sold in the back of the old comic books that let you see under a woman’s clothes. He’d more than seen her in the moonlight last night, but the urge to see her naked in the sunshine streaming in through his windows had his brain taking a vacation.

“How’s the head?” she asked, the cool, clipped tones of her voice betrayed by the heat in her cheeks.

Head? Which head? Her gaze wasn’t on the part of him growing heavy at the sound of her voice, so he had to figure she meant his noggin. “I’ll live.”

“Good.” Her hand moved toward the small knot near his hairline but stopped halfway there. Then she took a step back away from him that made it feel like there was a mile of space between them.

“Do you know what market day is?” she asked, all back to business except for the way that she was looking at him.

Since stripping back down and then getting her naked wasn’t an option at the moment, he went with her line of questioning. “No frickin’ clue.”

“Villagers set up stands along the high street and sell artisanal products, food, flowers, and those sorts of things.”

The light bulb went off. “So it’s a farmer’s market, but how does the estate own the village street?”

“That’s just the way it is. The market day negotiations are tricky,” she said, her expression grim. Lady Lemons might be in control right now, but she was worried. There was no missing that. “The parking spots along the village’s high street are part of each earl’s inheritance. The shopkeepers own the buildings; the earl owns the street. Market days are crucial to the village economy, so vendors rent the parking spots to set up their stalls. The estate needs the funds, but the vendors don’t have a lot of money. You have to find the sweet spot.”

“I suppose you know where that is.” God knew he’d found her sweet spot and wanted to dive right back in there now.

That wasn’t to be, though. Instead, she fished a piece of paper out of the folder in her left hand and gave it to him. “I made some notes.”

He looked over the numbers she’d jotted down and did a quick mental conversion from British pounds to U.S. dollars. It all looked relatively reasonable, considering he had no clue what he was doing.

“This is not what I came here for,” he grumbled mostly to himself as he refolded the fee recommendations and shoved the paper into his pants pocket, then stood up.

“No,” Brooke agreed, reaching up and straightening his collar that he’d sworn was already on point. “But it’s what Dallinger Park and Bowhaven need you for.”

“And what about you?” Standing this close to her, he got a whiff of the summer sunshine she wore as perfume—or maybe it was just her. “What do you need?”

Her hands smoothed down his shirt as if she couldn’t help herself, and then she stepped back, clasping her hands together close to her stomach. “To make these negotiations a success for everyone.”

Whatever her reasoning, he didn’t doubt that’s what she wanted, but there was no way it was all she needed. He’d had an inkling about the sweet spice that lay under her tart Lady Lemons exterior, but last night had shown him just how much more there was to her. Now all he wanted—needed—was to see her let go like that again. If he was another man, he’d wonder if this could be the start of something here, but he knew better. He’d been conditioned since birth to know that the only way to survive in this world was to not give a shit about it, because all the world wanted was to break a person in half. The key to happiness was to get what you could before the only option was to cut and run, or before he looked up to find himself alone again.