The Duke Takes a Bride (Entitled Book 2) (7 page)

Julian had ordered roasted pumpkin soup, a green salad with smoked salmon, Chicken Provençale, and sliced fresh fruits for dessert. Imogen tucked into the soup contentedly.

“I’m on the mend,” she proclaimed with certainty halfway through the meal.

He quirked an eyebrow at her.

“My appetite is back.”

“You didn’t even finish your soup.” He looked towards her half-empty bowl.

“If not for the pain when I swallow, I would have had the chicken.” She gazed longingly at Julian’s plate where he was cutting up said fowl. “It looks and smells delicious.”

“It is,” he agreed. But tonight everything tasted like sawdust. It was the taste of guilt. “They also do a very nice teriyaki cod. We can order it tomorrow.”

“I do love fish,” she said wistfully, then her expression grew alarmed. “Oh my goodness! I forgot to feed Clark! Did you bring his food?”

His head shot up from his dinner. “What food?”

“
Y
ou’re buying what
?” Maggie exclaimed incredulously all the way from some remote village in China.

“You heard me the first time.” Julian politely thanked the middle-aged lady who led him to the pet supplies section of the store. She blushed delightfully before rounding an aisle and disappearing from view. “This goldfish is more high-maintenance than my last girlfriend,” he grumbled, forgetting his mobile was still pressed to his ear.

He heard her snort. “All your exes were high-maintenance. Period.” Maggie had not been very subtle about her disapproval of the women who were linked to him. Not that she had met any of them personally, but she read the tabloids and kept tabs on his personal life. He had become more discreet two years ago when Alexandria had turned twenty-five. Even away on far-flung archaeological digs, Maggie was scarily up to date with the identity of the latest woman being linked to him. “You need a GPS to navigate your way around the store?” she teased.

“Stop being cheeky, Margaret. I have been inside, inside−” he craned his neck for clues and found it on a huge sale sign by the cashier. “Shopmart before,” he replied defensively. Like five minutes before.

The area was huge and the endless products on display were fascinating. Julian was amazed at the sheer number of cereals to choose from. No wonder women took a long time to shop. Carter was trailing him a discreet distance away. Julian had jammed a cap on his head and a dark pair of sunglasses on his face. He looked ridiculous, but Carter had insisted. He would have just sent Carter on this errand, but the bodyguard was dyslexic and might have trouble reading the fine print on labels. Carter also insisted he couldn’t leave His Grace in the penthouse without Hopkins on duty. And Hopkins had already finished his shift. Imogen assured him she would be fine on her own. She had insisted on coming, but Julian silenced her with a raised eyebrow. She charged her mobile and had retired to her bedroom to wait for his return. Julian let her believe that he had left her all alone, but in truth, he had hired another bodyguard to stand watch at Blakely Towers. It was habit, he supposed.

Confronted with an array of fish food on display, he tried to recall Imogen’s instructions. “Clark really prefers the brand AquaFood.”

“He has a preference?” He hadn’t been able to keep the skepticism out of his tone. He had frowned at the fish in question. Pretty uppity, eh? He blinked. Did the little fellow just blow a bubble at him?

“He wasn’t eating the other brand I bought him until I came across AquaFood. He just loves them to bits. It has to be the pellets though. He sees them better. He hasn’t got very good vision.”

Julian took in the odd, almost laterally positioned, protruding eyes. He couldn’t really see the attraction.

“His body is not made for surface eating, so he can’t really eat much of the flakes. You have to look for the blue stripes on the can. That means it has Omega 3. Clark needs his Omega 3.” Imogen’s affection for her adopted pet animated her face. Julian’s almost permanently raised eyebrow − brought on by this rather bizarre conversation − lifted higher.

Which brought him to scrupulously reading the labels on the various cans of fish food in array because heaven help him if Clark didn’t get his daily dose of Omega 3. He chuckled, arrested it midway, and then gave in to the absurdity of the situation. His noble ancestors were probably frowning down, or up − he was pretty sure most of them were somewhere hot due to some nefarious activities in the past − their Roman noses to see their progeny reduced to procuring food for a picky goldfish.

“What’s so funny?” He had almost forgotten Maggie was on the other line.

“Nothing.”

“Oh. It’s good hearing you laugh over nothing,” Maggie quipped dryly. “Is Genie feeling better?”

Julian had texted Maggie as soon as they arrived at the penthouse after Lukas had examined her.

“She’s feeling better. She was able to get some soup down tonight.”

“That’s great!”

“
Maggie, is Imogen in some kind of financial trouble?”

“Financial trouble?” Maggie echoed uncertainly. “She works as a graphic artist for an advertising firm. She had it pretty rough when her father got sick...took on additional freelance jobs. She adamantly refused my help though.”

“She hasn’t paid her rent,” Julian said, then not to alarm Maggie, he added, “I’ll let you know once I know more. Don’t worry about it.”

“Take care of her, Jules.”

“I will. Take care, Maggie. I’ll update you with her condition.”

“Love you.”

“You too, brat,” he said gruffly before disconnecting.

Julian finally spotted the special fish food for Clark. He grabbed it off the shelf and took it to the cashier, where his gaze was caught by a tabloid displayed on the counter. The headline screamed, “Graham Walkden is the father of my baby!” Below it was the photo of his brother with his arm around the lush Lolita Andalus. “Love child with adult film star may be future Duke of Blackmoore!”

Julian’s mood darkened as he was reminded of the urgency of finding a new wife. The short taste of freedom from his broken engagement had just made the task a bitter pill to swallow.

“
N
o worries
, Imogen,” Stella reassured her over a bad, static-ridden connection. “I was thinking of moving in with Paul anyway.”

“Paul?” Imogen repeated, blindsided. Stellla had been thinking of moving out?

“Really, Imogen!” Stella sounded fondly put out. “I pointed him out to you when we were watching reruns of the show? He was the cute zombie who got run over by the lawn mower?”

“I thought you said he was so last season.” Imogen had one ear on the conversation. She was busy taking in the beautiful guest bedroom she was now appreciating in the early morning light of Los Angeles. The wall in front of the foot of the queen-sized bed was made of floor-to-ceiling windows with a view of the city bordered by mountain ranges.

“The fans wanted him back, and he has such a huge following that the producers decided to give him more episodes,” Stella said proudly.

“If he was run over by a truck, isn’t he supposed to be dead? His skull was flattened and his brain was squashed.” Imogen pondered the unnatural laws of the undead or lack thereof in the series.

“Huh?” Stella made a dismissive sound. “Maybe he has a twin or something.”

“Stella, you know I wouldn’t bring this up if I didn’t really need to. About the rent−”

“I hear the director calling. Sorry sweetheart. I’ll pay you as soon as I can. Give my love to Clark. I hope he’s still alive. Gotta go.”

Imogen stared at the disconnected mobile in her hand dumbly. Served her right for hoping Stella would finally make good on her promise to pay her back. She should have seen the writing on the wall. Stella’s unopened credit card bills, her designer shoes and bags, her party hearty lifestyle. But no, she had chosen to turn a blind eye on Stella’s unreliability and a deaf ear to nocturnal activities emanating from her room involving her latest hook−ups with scruffy, suspicious types of men.

Resistance to change. That was Imogen’s motto. She was a stone, the kind that stayed put and gathered layers and layers of moss she was practically a topiary. She didn’t want to leave UCLA’s neighborhood for sentimental reasons. Her father loved it there. Loved serving as the campus’ foremost history professor on Chinese antiquities.

But Los Angeles wasn’t loving her back. The high cost of living plus her father’s medical bills had eaten into her savings and now that she didn’t have a job to go back to…she should have moved to Kansas to her aunt after her father had died and now it was too late. Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke. Well, now everything was “broke” and Imogen better make a back-up plan soon so she wouldn’t overstay her welcome.

It had been three days since she had arrived delirious and delusional in the luxurious penthouse apartment. Unfortunately, amnesia was not part of her flu’s symptoms, and waves of mortification would ebb and flow with the peek-a-boo snapshots her memory chose to inconvenience her with.

Her behavior with Julian was appalling. Imagine her making him retrieve her goldfish and making him buy fish food? What was she thinking? And oh God, the things she had said to him! Although her fever broke the day after she arrived, Imogen wanted to hide under the bedcovers in shame, which she actually did, making excuses of how poorly still she felt. When the amiable doctor came to check on her again yesterday and pronounced to Julian that she was on her way to recovery, she had no choice but to show her face to him this morning.

But Julian’s absence was anti-climactic.

The housekeeper, Mrs. Nero, shed light on the master of the house’s disappearance.

“Sir Julian is a very busy man,” Mrs. Nero clucked while she pottered around the state-of-the-art kitchen, preparing Imogen’s breakfast. The aroma of frying bacon made her tummy do a dance of joy. It was very modern and very stark and would probably be right at home inside the Enterprise. “He just drinks orange juice and runs out the door.”

Somehow it didn’t quite fit with Imogen’s composite of Julian. He was sometimes impatient, but he never appeared to be in any hurry when she saw him in Trennery Court. He was all languid athletic grace, striding around the grounds, riding his horses. Imogen thought of him somewhat like the .gif she once saw on the Internet of a man standing in front of a subway station. The man was still but the train was a blur of movement in the background. Julian could be still but with a snap of his fingers, everyone would scurry to do his bidding.

She was well on her way to her third croissant when he suddenly appeared in the kitchen. Imogen grabbed a napkin and surreptitiously wiped any crumbs that might have stuck to her mouth. He was wearing a shirt and tracksuit pants. His defined arms were tanned and his blond hair was damp with perspiration. He had not run out the door, he had been running
outdoors.

“Good morning,” he greeted, flashing her a small, tight smile as he sauntered to the refrigerator.

Imogen gulped her orange juice to moisten her suddenly dry mouth. “Good morning.”

“Feeling better?” He cocked an eyebrow and took a swig of sparkling water, his Adam’s apple bobbing on his beautiful, extended throat. His eyes never left hers. The masculinity on display rendered her speechless. She could only nod dumbly.

“She has been, how do you say it, eating like a horse,” Mrs. Nero piped in helpfully. She looked at Imogen like a proud mother hen.

Imogen’s cheeks grew hot.
Oh God, kill me now.

But wait. There was more from Mrs. Nero.

“She ate two eggs, bacon, and four croissants,” Mrs. Nero ticked off proudly.

It was only three croissants! And they were rather small! But heck, the damage had been done. Julian was leaning against a kitchen counter beside the refrigerator, amused. The slightly downward tilt to his eyes was more pronounced as he regarded her in mild amusement.

“Good girl,” he murmured approvingly before taking another swig of water.

“No use for girls always on diet,” Mrs. Nero spat the word diet like it was poison. “The flavor is in the fat. I tell my son Antonio,” she declared, but she kept glancing at Julian and Imogen knew who this pearl nugget was aimed at, “if he wants big, strong babies he choose women also with big−” she gestured to her ample bosom with a scooping motion of her hands to make sure nothing got lost in the translation, and satisfied that she had made her point, brought her hands lower and grabbed the side of her buttocks, “hips.”

Imogen glanced involuntarily at her breasts. Or what was left of them. They were nothing now, but give or take a few pounds and they would be back to their buoyant selves. Constant worry and the flu had made Imogen the thinnest ever in her whole life. If she weren’t so weak and hungry all the time now, she would have rejoiced at finally achieving that elusive ideal of slimness she had been dreaming of since she was a pudgy kid in the company of her willowy best friend Maggie. As it was, gaining weight via Mrs. Nero’s delicious meals was the least of her worries when the possibility of not having enough to eat in a few days’ time should be her utmost concern.

When she glanced up, she caught Julian staring at her chest too. But then he blinked and then chuckled as he turned to Mrs. Nero, “If you were younger, Mrs. Nero, I would have made you the mother of my brats.”

“Bah!” Mrs. Nero grumped, but she was also smiling. “Would you like me to prepare breakfast for you? Imogen has eaten everything.” She bestowed another smile of hearty approval at a blushing Imogen.

Imogen feared all the heat in her cheeks would trigger a relapse of her fever.

He shook his head. “I’m good. Thank you. I have to leave for a meeting in a few minutes.”

“Too busy to eat,” harrumphed Mrs. Nero. “You need a wife to take care of you.”

It was so fleeting Imogen must have imagined it, but a shadow fell on his face.

“Have to work, Mrs. Nero, otherwise I won’t be able to afford you.” He flashed the housekeeper a disarming grin.

The housekeeper waved him off, but Imogen saw she was smiling broadly. Julian could charm the knickers off anyone.

He straightened from lounging at the kitchen counter and on the way out, ruffled her hair like an awkward uncle. He halted at the edge of the kitchen. “The rent has been paid until next month so you don’t need to hurry to get your things from the apartment. I keyed in my number on your mobile. Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you need anything.”

All Imogen could utter was an inadequate “Thank you.” She stared at his retreating back and realized that she hadn’t said beyond four words in the entire exchange in the kitchen. Again, she had lost the opportunity to talk to him.

After finishing the rest of her meal, she went to the living room to check on Clark. Propped in front of his spanking new fish tank complete with oxygen pump and filter (and did she mention the tap water conditioning kit?) was a note. In bold, cursive handwriting, it read: Clark has had his breakfast. Mrs. N has changed the water. J.

A small laugh bubbled forth. “We are so much more trouble than we are worth,” she said, ruefully shaking her head and noticing for the first time that the paintings in the living room had been changed. Ill as she was a few days ago, she couldn’t believe she had missed them. They were different. Primarily smaller, but still breathtaking. Circling the room, Imogen saw it was a mixture of landscape paintings of the English countryside. She recognized another Gainsborough that she recalled used to hang in one of the drawing rooms in Trennery Court. She wondered why Julian had decided to pull them out of his ancestral home. And where had the previous portraits gone?

She went back to her room and opened her sketchbook, trying to get some work done on the drawing for a children’s story she had written about four little girls with magical bracelets and their magical adventure. But she couldn’t concentrate. After staring blankly at the white page for fifteen minutes, she recapped her Sharpie, flopped on the bed, and stared at the ceiling to take stock of her situation.

Her savings had dwindled to an all-time low. Her parents’ cottage in England would have to be sold, much as it wrenched her heart to do so. When her father had gotten ill he had told her to sell the house to help with his medical bills, but Imogen refused to do so. Selling the house would be like she had given up on her father overcoming his battle with cancer. So she had shouldered the bills and had gotten freelance online jobs in addition to her work as in-house graphic designer for Hudson and Thomas until Hudson had fired her, citing her frequent absences as a sign of her lack of focus and dedication to her job. They were those times she had to bring her father to the hospital. Hudson had never liked her. Their design sensibilities differed and they had been frequently at odds. She wasn’t surprised when she had been let go.

The plan was her parents would retire in that same house. Her dad fought valiantly for a year but six months ago, it was just too much and he had succumbed. Weary with grief, Imogen knew she should have gotten out of Los Angeles. The cost of living was too high and the medical bills had eaten at her savings. To cut down on her expenses she took on Stella, hoping she could weather it through, but she had miscalculated. It looked like she would have to take Aunt Emma’s, her mother’s cousin, offer after all and help out with her homemade jam business in Kansas until she could regroup.

She sighed. The next thing Imogen knew, the room had grown darker and disoriented, she grabbed her mobile by the bedside and gasped at the time. It was past six in the evening. She had literally slept the day away.

Disgusted at her persisting weakness, she dragged herself out of bed and made her way to the kitchen where Mrs. Nero left a note saying she had prepared some sandwiches, soup, and salad in the ref. Imogen debated whether to text Julian to ask if he was coming home to have dinner so she could wait for him but was afraid that she would sound demanding and presumptuous. He solved the problem for her when her phone pinged.

JULIAN: I asked Mrs. Nero to prepare a meal for you. I’ll be back late.

Was he telepathic also?

IMOGEN: Thank you.

JULIAN: No thanks necessary.

IMOGEN: Still, thank you.

If she was expecting a smiley icon after that show of gratitude, she was disappointed as her phone remained silent. But not for long. An unregistered number appeared on the screen.

“Genie?”

“Maggie?”

“Thank goodness you remembered to charge your phone this time.” Her friend’s husky contralto came loud and clear through the choppy signal.

Imogen grimaced. “I’m not ready for another of your lectures. Save it for your students. I’m still weak from the flu.”

“After four croissants?” Maggie snorted. “I don’t think so.”

“It was only three! Did Julian tell you that?” The humiliation! Imogen deposited her butt on a white post-modern stool.

“It was Mrs. Nero. She wanted to let me know how our patient was faring.”

“Oh.” Thank God.

“I called the house phone an hour ago and she told me you were out like a light. Hold on. I’m losing you.” There was some interference in the signal.

“Where are you?”

“Right now I’m hanging off a window ledge to get better signal. I accidentally dropped my phone in a rice paddy and it’s been acting up since.” Maggie yelled something that sounded a lot like Chinese.

“You’re still in China?”

“Anyan, Northern China if you want to be exact. We have excavated more stoneware and−” she yelled again, louder this time. “Bloody hell! I’m going to get a heart attack if they drop one of those vases. The Chinese government is going to kill me!” Maggie’s boundless, intense energy crackled through the device. Stubborn and willful, she was like a dog with a bone when she was on to something. Excavating long-lost artifacts gave focus to that dogged determination. “How’s my big brother treating you?”

“You shouldn’t have called him. He’s very busy,” Imogen said, “and it was just the flu.”

“How was I supposed to know it wasn’t something serious?”

Imogen felt contrite. “It’s just that I didn’t want to impose.”

“Did my blockhead of a brother say something to you?” Maggie bristled.