Compromising Kessen (12 page)

“Please tell me I didn’t say that last part out loud, because it was meant to be a thought.”

He used every ounce of self-control he possessed to keep his voice from cracking in laughter. “I’ll ignore it, if you want me to.”

She turned toward him and sighed. “It’s fine. I mean, at least you know how I feel. And I think it’s safe to say everyone knows how you feel … seriously, you have issues. You can’t go around just kissing people and pouncing on them and—”

“I’m sorry. Are you complaining?” he asked as he neared her. “Because I don’t recall any complaints at the time.”

“I was busy.”

“Yes, you were.” His gaze burned into hers as he reached out to touch her skin. He regretted it immediately. It was as if he was trying to brand her as his with his touch. It nearly made him fall to his knees, and he wasn’t the type of man to swoon at the touch of a woman. But this woman? She could probably make him do anything.

“I have an idea,” he said, still caressing her cheek.

She looked out the window and exhaled. “What’s your brilliant plan?”

“I’m touched by your assessment of my intelligence,” he said, almost feeling her eyes roll in disgust. “I think we should spend some time getting to know each other. Somewhere away from everyone—and not in that blasted cottage.”

“What a day for language.” She lifted her eyebrows and took a deep breath. “So what do you propose?”

He smiled wickedly. “A little trip.”

“To?”

Christian leaned closer. “A trip to my country home.”

Kessen’s eyes widened, but she said nothing.

“Your obvious interest in my country home forces me to admit it has been the actual setting for every single one of those books you’re so fond of. In fact, rumor has it the author in question used to stay there to write about my family.”

Kessen looked like she was choking on something, so he stopped talking. She regained her composure and continued to stare. What a terrible actress she was. It was impossible for her to hide her excitement. Christian felt a momentary ache of tenderness for this woman. What was wrong with him? Tenderness and lust shouldn’t go together, but here he was, being proved wrong yet again by his own feelings.

She was adorable.

Granted, she fought dirty. But when she wanted to, she could melt anyone, including him. He needed a cold shower.

“What do you say?” he asked.

Her voice came out in barely a whisper. “Does this mean we will be married there?”

He couldn’t have planned it more perfectly if he tried. In the last book of the series, the author had left an epilogue about a garden wedding which took place between the late duke and the servant girl who turned out to be more than just a servant girl.

It had girls all over London swooning for months.

Duncan even admitted to reading it, and he forced Christian to read it as well, which made him positively ill that women would expect such things from him.

Except in this moment, he wanted to give her that. Why? He didn’t know. All he knew was, if she wanted to live out the events of that storybook, he was going to make it happen. Even if it killed him, which it probably would. This was Kessen he was dealing with, not some servant girl.

“Of course we’ll be married there. It will be perfect, don’t you think? The chapel on our grounds is small, but we can make it work.” He nudged her a little, and she sighed. Yes, she actually sighed. It wasn’t an “I hate you and want to kill you” sigh, either. It was a “I’m a girl and hopelessly in love with a character in a book who doesn’t exist” sigh.

Her face lit up like the sun as she turned to him. “Lets do it!”

“Perfect.” He kissed her hand. “We shall leave as soon as possible.”

Her eyes sparkled. She nodded silently as he left the room. Even one moment longer looking into her vulnerable and perfect eyes and he would not have been responsible for what would happen next, which would have been enough to send her grandmother to an early grave. He was sure of it.

Chapter Fourteen

It was crazy. Kessen was actually living out the story she’d been obsessing over for the past month.

But it wasn’t real. And the future duke truly was as dangerous as people said. One minute he was as sweet as homemade cookies—the next minute she felt the need to guard her virtue with a knife. Men.

It only took her an hour to pack her belongings and explain to Grandmother she was going to spend some time with Christian at his summer home. She called home to explain to her father what was going on, but was met with nothing but pure joy from the other end of the telephone.

In fact, several times he had to excuse himself, because he said he was catching a cold and needed to blow his nose. After the seventh time, he admitted he was in fact crying tears of joy.

It made Kessen wonder if he had believed she was going to be single the rest of her life. It’s not as if she owned an obscene number of cats, or any woodland creature for that matter.

“Dad,” she said, after he had returned from blowing his nose again. “It’s just a wedding. It’s not a big deal. More of a business transaction.”

He replied by grunting and saying if he conducted business transactions the way she did, he would be in prison—which led her to believe he had seen page six.

The conversation ended with him promising to attend the wedding if she vowed to try as hard as she could not to kill Christian before then. Not because he was afraid for Christian’s welfare—no, he just didn’t want the stocks to drop. Stocks were the highest they had ever been, to her everlasting shame.

After hanging up with her dad and making herself look more presentable, she dialed Nick’s number. It went straight to voicemail.

She dialed Sammy’s number and hers did the same.

What was wrong with her friends? Where were they during her time of need? She dialed Nick again.

“Hi you’ve reached Nick .You know what to do—and if this is Kessen, I saw page six. You get yours, honey.“BEEP.

“Nick, it’s Kessen. Take that blasted message off of your voicemail! And yes, I did say blast. And no, it’s not because I’m trying to prove a point. It’s because I’m in England, and they have no idea how to use swear words here, so I’m stuck with blast and drat, none of which I ever thought to use in my vocabulary until page six. In other news, if you don’t call me back within the next twenty-four hours, I can’t be held responsible for my actions. But it will involve a machete and paintball gun. Use your imagination.”

Kessen threw her phone onto the bed and groaned aloud, another thing she’d been doing a lot of, especially when her grandmother let her know there would be a party held at the country home in her honor. How perfect. A ball. Wasn’t she leaving London so she wouldn’t have to attend any more balls?

She heard a knock on her door and muttered for the person to enter.

Naturally it was Christian, in all his glory. Did the guy ever wear the same thing twice? His tight sweater left nothing to the imagination as it hugged the planes of his abs and chest. He smelled like he just stepped out of a magazine. If he wasn’t already an English lord, he would make an incredible model.

This time his hair was covered with a fedora. It was as if he was channeling Neil Caffry himself. Not that she thought he would even know what show she was referencing, considering it was on the USA network—something she was convinced all of England most likely censored because of its title. Figures.

“You ready?” he asked in a smooth and perfect voice.

“Uh…”She stuttered, sounding every inch the American she fully was. “Sure, yeah. Let’s go.” That was better; at least her voice wasn’t shaking anymore. For crying out loud, it was Christian. Christian! Her future husband. If she couldn’t be in the same room with him without becoming tongue tied, what hope was there for their future? Then again, he could always simply fill those silences with kissing.

Her face reddened.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Christian tilted his head in her direction. It made his face seem angelic. Almost.

“Worse timing ever,” she muttered, shaking away the thoughts of him kissing her.

“Maybe you’ll show me later, then?” He pressed closer to her, closing the much-needed distance between the two of them.

“I don’t remember canceling our no-touching rule.”

He laughed. “I believe that rule was rendered moot the moment you started kissing me in your room this morning.”

“I plead temporary insanity.”

He smirked. “Care to plead it again?”

His breath was hot on her face. Must escape before bad choices are made!

As if reading her mind, he backed off and took her bag. “Later. You shall be mine later, Kessen. I’ll wait a week, and then all bets are off.”

She wanted to offer a snappy retort, but nothing came to mind. Nothing except for the self-indulgent thought that he in fact wanted her so badly, he could barely think straight. But no, that would be conceited … and impossible. He was a marquess. She needed to remind herself of his title—if anything, it kept her sane. He did this all the time; he was a womanizer. He was a Vandenbrook.

He helped her into the car and started driving. She decided to break the silence with questions. “Let’s play a game.”

He rolled his eyes. “Kessen, I’m actually tired. Exhausted from the preparations for leaving today. I don’t have energy for games.”

“You’re grumpy. Did you eat?”

He appeared to be thinking about it. “No, actually I haven’t.”

“Great! Let’s stop for something. I forgot to eat too.”

“We don’t live in the land of fast food, Kessen,” he snapped.

“Wow. You really do need carbohydrates and sugar. Seriously. You’re dangerous when you’re grumpy. What are you? Hypoglycemic?”

She was shaking her head when she heard him clear his throat. “Oh no! You are! I’m so sorry! We must stop then; you need food.”

“Fine,” he grumbled.

She could tell he wasn’t one who liked being taken care of.

****

Christian hated that he liked being taken care of. What was wrong with him? He was a grown man but still went to stay with his mother when he was sick, thinking she was the only person who could bring him back into the land of the living.

Kessen had that same nurturing side to her. It was odd how he hadn’t noticed it before. She probably rescued stray cats and dogs and…

“Kessen?”

“What?” She was looking curiously out the window.

“Do you rescue animals?”

“Don’t believe anything you hear! It was one time. One time! And the puppy was nearly dead. What did you want me to do, Christian? Just let it die? And then the vet had the audacity to tell me nobody would want such an ugly dog! And honestly, I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t! So, I put an ad in the paper and a nice kid in a wheelchair took the puppy, because he felt like they had something in common, what with the dog not having any legs and all. What?”

Christian knew he had the deer-in-headlights look going for him. Sometimes he wondered why he even asked her questions? One minute she was silent as the grave, the next he would do anything in his power to get her to shut up, but she was so endearing all he could do was smile.

“What was his name?”

She looked confused. “The boy?”

He laughed. “No, the dog.”

“Oh. I named him Dog.”

He coughed, hiding his laughter. “How original of you.”

She glared. “I’ll have you know it was a perfect name. He didn’t feel like a real dog, because he didn’t have legs. I was helping him with his identity crisis.” She crossed her arms triumphantly, leaving Christian struggling between staring at her dumbfounded and staying between the correct lines on the road.

“So, you haven’t made a habit of rescuing, then?”

“No, only that one time. My dad doesn’t appreciate pets. He gave me a rock once.”

“A rock? As in a rock from someone’s yard, or a cool rock?” He couldn’t help but ask. The girl was so appealing, it scared him.

“I can’t keep things alive. Not even plants. So my dad decided if we ever got a pet, he would end up taking care of it. Like I said, he doesn’t like pets, so he gave me a rock. He even painted a face on it. We named it Kevin.”

Christian was careful to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “You named your pet rock Kevin?”

She nodded, clearly not getting how odd the whole conversation had become.

“Where is Kevin?”

She giggled. His heart melted a little bit more, then he swerved. After he decided he should keep his eyes on the road as he should have been doing all along, she answered.

“I have no idea.”

“Maybe we’ll find you a new Kevin,” he found himself saying, then realized he sounded like he was talking to a three-year-old.

“I’ve got my hands full enough with you, thank you very much,” she said, patting him patronizingly on the head.

“I deserve that, I guess.”

“Well, you did make fun of my pet rock.”

“I’m not even going to respond to that,” he mumbled.

It was quiet again. Christian found himself praying Kessen would talk. Earlier he wanted to muzzle her, now he wanted to hear her tell stories and never stop. That was it, he needed food. Either that, or he was getting a fever. Never in his life had he wanted any woman to keep talking to him. If anything he had prayed science would develop some sort of listening device to drown out any high-pitched voice within ten feet.

Kessen piped up with more enthusiasm than he thought possible when she saw them nearing the edge of town. “Look, there’s a little convenience store! Should we stop for food?”

He nodded and parked, watching in disbelief as she hopped from the car and ran into the bakery. Just as he was locking the doors and getting ready to step inside, his cell rang.

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Nick.”

“Nick! It’s good to hear from you. Sorry about all the confusion this morning with the flights.”

“No prob. Have you told her yet?”

“No. I’m going to leave the surprises to you.”

“She threatened me with a machete, Christian. Surprising her may not be the best idea.”

“She does have a tendency to become violent.”