Abruptly, she stopped talking and turned beet red.
“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.”