Nancy Warren - British Bad Boys

She was reading over what she’d written, scratching out a line here, adding a sharper adjective there, when he returned with a fresh pot of tea.

“Thanks,” she said, adding milk and sugar and then pouring.

“When do you think he lived, the poor murdered man?” he asked her, nodding his head toward the chair where Manfred Waxman had breathed his last.

“Oh, he’s contemporary,” she said.

The dark brows rose. “How contemporary?”

She laughed suddenly. “I am so sorry. You must think I’m nuts. I’m not psychic.” She paused. “At least, not very. I’m a writer. Fiction. I made him up. I saw him sitting there, and the blood, and I knew I had the victim for my next novel.”

“Ah,” he said, seeming a little disappointed. “I was hoping for a ghost.”

“You like ghosts?”

“Well, it would make the quiet times more interesting.”

She looked at him and found him even more attractive than the last time she’d seen his face. The angles were so strong. His skin was swarthy; she bet it would be tough and leathery to the touch. He wasn’t even handsome in the acknowledged movie star way. What he had was magnetism. Amazing animal magnetism, the kind that would lead a woman to do very foolish things.

“You write murder mysteries, then?”

“Yes.” She sighed with pure bliss and sipped her tea, strong and hot as only the English could make it. “I can’t tell you what a relief it was to find my victim.”

“Is that the hardest part? The victim?”

“No. The hardest part is the villain.” This probably wasn’t the moment to tell him that she thought she’d found her villain in this out-of-the-way country pub, too.

“Really?”

He appeared more than politely interested and the pub was nearly empty, so she told him. “A villain is the crux of a murder mystery. Especially one like mine. A maniacal, cruel, serial killer. He or she has to be attractive, subtle, devious, and deadly. You want the readers to identify with him enough that they become truly gripped.”

“The reader identifies with the people trying to catch the killer, surely?”

“Who’s the most interesting character in The Silence of the Lambs? For me it’s Hannibal.” She shrugged. “When I’m writing, the villain is the key.” And as she stared into that deeply magnetic face with those stunning eyes, she began to be very glad she’d come into the pub. There was something tough, uncompromising, and somehow dangerous about this man. She had not only discovered her victim, but she had a strong sense that her villain was gazing at her now. A tiny shiver of excitement, apprehension-hell, maybe it was glee-traveled across her skin. “When I figure out who he is, I’ll be able to really get going.”

“Are you staying in the neighborhood?”

“Yes.” She put a hand to her forehead. “I’m staying at Stag Cottage. I came in here to pick up the keys.”

“And found a bloody corpse.”

She started to laugh. “I’m so glad I came here.”

“So’m I.” And he sent her a glittering half smile that made her thankful she was sitting down so he wouldn’t notice that he’d made her knees tremble. Dark, brooding, intense. There was something about him that made her vision of murder fade and something equally visual take its place. She envisioned hot, sweaty, high-octane sex, arms and legs tangled. His skin tawny, his hair so black against her own pale skin and light brown hair.

His eyes were staring into hers and she felt that he shared the intense awareness. She forced herself to break eye contact and take refuge in her tea.

“You must be Ms. Stanton?”

“Meg Stanton, that’s right.”

“Arthur Denby. Welcome to Ponsford.” He held out his hand and she shook it. Arthur, she thought. Noble, resourceful, a warrior king. It fit him, though she wasn’t sure the sexually predatory Lancelot wouldn’t have suited the man better.

He strode back behind the bar and returned with a set of keys on a disappointingly modern-looking key ring. “Come on, then. If you’re ready, I’ll take you over.”

“Oh. I’m sure I can manage.” She didn’t want him in her living space until that insistent picture of them together could be excised from her mind. For all she knew, the guy had a wife and six kids living upstairs, the kids washing glasses and the missus ironing his shirts while he lorded it over his domain down here.

“There are a few things I need to show you.”

“Okay.” She glanced around. He was the only bartender. “Do you want me to wait until it’s more convenient?”

“Now’s fine.” He turned to the young guy with the printout. “Joe, I’m going to show this lady to Stag Cottage. Can you watch things for half an hour?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Cheers.”

They walked out together and Arthur said, “Have you got a car?”

“No. I thought about renting one, but I’m here to work, not sightsee.”

“Where’s your luggage?”

“At the train station. I walked over.”

“Right. Come on then, Stag Cottage is across the way.”

The sun was sudden and warm after the dim light in the pub. The stone walls glowed golden and the great estate on which her cottage was located was as elegant as a dream. Hart House, seen in context, looked even better than the pictures she’d viewed on the Internet.

There was no traffic on the narrow road, so they crossed it together. She liked the way Arthur walked, his long limbs swinging with confidence. He wore jeans and a long-sleeved black T-shirt that advertised no band, no cause, no brand-name clothes maker. She got the feeling that this man was nobody’s billboard.

She tucked that notion away as an excellent detail to give her villain.

“How long are you staying?” he asked as they reached the road’s dusty shoulder.

“Three months.”

“To write your book?”

“Yes. I really hope to have a first draft written by then.” A complete first draft. Not bits and pieces of chapters that went nowhere.

“This is the short way, across the fields. If you’d a car we’d have gone around by the road.” As he spoke he gestured to a stile. An honest-to-goodness stile. She felt like a heroine out of Jane Austen as she stepped up and over and into the public footpath on the other side. Late-summer sunshine spread like butter across the fields.

And the tiny stone house sat there like a perfect retreat from the world.

“And there’s Stag Cottage.”

Her heart flipped over. She actually felt it somersault in her chest. The cottage was so perfect-exactly what a cottage should be, built of warm stone, with a thatched roof. She wanted to hug the place. Her senses were stirring and the mild panic that had traveled across the ocean with her relaxed. Maybe, just maybe, her crazy idea was going to work.

Arthur Denby opened the door for her with the key, and she stepped inside. And she knew. If she hadn’t already had a pretty big hint in the pub, she knew that she’d find her story here.

“This is so perfect,” she breathed.

“Ever set a book in England before?”

She turned to stare at him. “No,” she said slowly. “This is the first time.” How stupid-it wasn’t until he’d asked the question that she’d realized her book was going to be set in England.

She wanted to walk right up to Arthur and kiss him. Not because he was gorgeous and sexy and about to be written into her book as an irresistible villain, but because he’d saved her wasting any more time in the wrong setting. She’d come to England thinking her book would take place in the Puget Sound.

Nope. Britain all the way. She must have known. Somewhere inside her she must have known the solution, so she was receptive that day she was idling on the Internet looking for inspiration, and she’d come across the Web site that featured Hart House and its visitors’ accommodation in Stag Cottage.