11
Levi
I WATCHED AS THE woman I've worked with for years stared in awe at the sword.
"Amazing, isn't it?" I took it out of its scabbard and waved it around.
It was a fourteenth-century relic from the Hundred Years' War.
"An ancestor of mine fought with it in the Crusades.
Or so the story goes. I couldn't find anything to corroborate the claim. "
She scoffed. "Of course, you would try to find out if it's true."
"I can't help it. I am a historian." I put the sword back into the scabbard.
She held out her hand. "Can I touch it?"
I drew it out again and carefully handed it to her by the jewel-toned hilt. "It does look to be from that period," she said, her fingers running around the chipped pommel. Her eyes were bright with excitement. "Amazing. Can I swing it?"
I stepped back. "By all means."
She assumed the guard stance and swished and swooshed the sword around the bare stone room.
After the thrill of making that purchase yesterday, I wanted to spend some time away from the city and brought Elvira to our family home.
My mother's family home, to be precise. And since no one was around except the staff, and it was closed to visitors this time of year, the castle was the perfect place to relax.
It didn't take much to convince Elle to come.
All I said was there was a castle built in the thirteenth century she could run around in, and she was in the car ready to go.
We arrived in Berkshire, and I gave her a tour of Redwood Hall.
Her joy throughout the tour was infectious.
Everything fascinated her, pointing out anything she thought was interesting, and I was happy to tell her all about it.
It was good to see her this excited, especially after yesterday.
If I had known Wyatt would be there, I would have made sure not to bring Elle along.
But the last time I did that—that time I barred her from going to a workshop that Billie and Wyatt were attending—she had been mad at me for days.
Near the end of our tour, we entered a large hall where she spotted the sword and knight's armor.
"I didn't know you had a liking for swords."
"Not a liking per se." She swung it again.
"But they are interesting. The history that's imbued in them.
The battles they've seen. The dark deeds they've committed.
Who knows how many men this took out? Or women.
" She paused, her back to me, swung it again, and then turned to face me and handed it to me.
"Fascinating, isn't it? Not just the lives it took, but the number of people who held it. "
I nodded. "Yeah, I see what you mean."
She scoffed. "Don't act like you don't have a whole-ass sword in your living room, mister."
I took the sword and put it back on its mount.
"You must want to see the library," I said.
Part of my promise of bringing her here was the library we had.
It had some old, rare books that were hard to find even in some university libraries.
She flashed a smile that made my heart stop.
Every time I thought I was getting used to her presence, Elvira would do something so innocuous but earth-shattering in the world of Levi Hawthorne.
I had to stop myself from drawing her to me and kissing her when she handed me that sword.
I wanted to do it that day in my living room, and I wanted to do it again, especially now that I knew how her lips tasted.
There was something about seeing her holding an ancient weapon that made me hard.
Why did you kiss me?
The question rang in my mind. I kissed her because I wanted to. The taste of her lips haunted me day and night. And once I kissed her at the altar, something that I had not planned on doing, by the way, I wanted to kiss her again and again. And do more than that.
We entered the library, and I took her to the history section. Her gaze kept darting around the castle in awe. "Everything is so medieval," she said, rubbing her hands around her arms. Because the castle wasn't fully insulated, some rooms remained cold even in summer.
"My mom likes keeping it like this. And since this place is mostly a museum and a holiday house, the theme works."
She ran her hands over the old books that mostly populated the library. "You vacation here?"
"Sometimes. When my mother is not on a yacht with her latest lover. She's the one who usually organizes the holidays."
Elle raised her eyebrows. "You don't sound like you enjoy it."
Did she detect the derision in my voice?
When I didn't respond, she said, "Is that why you always come to England for Christmas?"
"Nolan loves getting the gang together on holidays, so some Christmases I spend in New York." My mother preferred only to spend time with Seb, Ty, and me, and whenever we went to Nolan's place, she would go on vacation with her friends.
She shook her head. "The dynamics of your family are so complicated."
"I don't know. I'm kinda used to it, I guess."
She tilted her head to the side and looked like she was about to say more, but then shook her head and said, "So where's the book you were talking about?"
I walked to the bookshelf behind her. As I reached for the book she wanted, I brushed against the side of her breast. I bit my tongue to resist any temptation.
She wore a bottle-green tank top, shorts, and Doc Martens.
Her hourglass figure turned this simple outfit into something that looked like a burlesque costume.
My cock had been semi-hard ever since she came out of her room wearing denims that clung to her curvy butt so well.
I took out the book and gave it to her. "It was written by a Victorian historian, Sir Gregory Watson. He gathered firsthand accounts, letters, and documents from Muslim warriors who converted to Christianity. Some returned to France. A few were of African descent."
Her face beamed as she reverently held the book in her hands.
"Wow. You've made my thesis simple. Thank you.
" She examined the book, slowly opening the pages as though she were afraid it would disintegrate in her hands.
She closed the book. Her eyes darted back to my face, a frown appearing on her brow. "Why are you doing this?"
I jerked back. "Doing what? Giving you a book?"
"You know what I mean."
"No, I don't, Miss Edwards."
"Oh," her brows shot up. "It's Miss Edwards now?"
"Is that not your name?"
She chuckled and shook her head. I knew what she was thinking.
That I was withdrawing from her. That I was too personal and pulling back.
It was the right thing to do. Regardless of our sham marriage, she was still my subordinate.
I had already gone too far in marrying her.
A mistake I shamelessly refused to regret.
"Fine, Mr. Hawthorne." She tilted her chin up. I hate how beautiful she looked when she did that. She wore her sable black hair in a large afro puff, which bounced as she moved, and I longed to unravel it. "Why did you go through all that?"
"What?"
"Acquiring the collection. Not only did you drop twenty fucking million pounds, you had to resort to marrying your TA to do it. Why?"
"To set the record straight."
"Bullshit. You've never cared about what people think about you until that interview. And if I didn't know better, I would say the interview went the way it went because they hit you too close to the heart."
Of course, she would be the one to catch it. She has always been astute when it comes to her assessment of me. "You're right, you don't know any better."
She placed the book she was holding down on a coffee table next to her and put one foot in front of the other, slowly gliding like a panther until she was a few inches away from me. "Bullshit," she said to my face.
"I know you think you know me, but you don't."
"Quite the opposite, actually. I know very little about you. You try to hide your true self. But when you think you’re covered, your cloak tears.
Then, I catch a glimpse of the real you.
And in that interview, the way you retreated into yourself and let that hack historian and that journalist browbeat you, you revealed something about yourself that I had never seen before. "
She was the first person ever to say that.
No one caught that. Not even the journalist. The interview came to mind as though it happened yesterday.
I had been on a media tour. Since my book had become something of a sensation regardless of it being a non-fiction, my publisher thought it best that I do TV and podcast interviews.
"You are like a hot professor everyone wanted to sleep with when they were in college," she had said.
The media tour had gone well without incident until the second-to-last one.
It was a historical podcast run by a former journalist turned amateur historian and an inane second host whose job only seemed to be acting shocked at anything consequential.
The podcast was a bit sensationalist, but I didn't think much of it.
I went on thinking it would be a simple book-shilling interview.
It wasn't. The hosts had invited another person.
A historian who was obsessed with Richard III.
She had come on to dispute the claims I made in my book.
In particular, ones that had to do with the death of the princes in the tower.
It was an ambush. I wasn't prepared and ended up humiliating myself defending an unsubstantiated claim.
That there were letters that proved Richard did it.
There were only rumors of such letters existing, but that was as far as it went.
I don't know what I was thinking at that moment.
I am usually calm under pressure, but that day… that day was something else.