Lizzy
That arrogant sod. Not pretty enough to tempt me. I was tempted, all right—to run at him and give him what for. But this was someone else’s place and someone else’s event.
I immediately recognized him from press photos.
Darcy Wainwright. Everything about him radiated rich, posh arsehole.
Ugh. Of course, he insisted on being unfairly handsome with stupid, slicked-back black hair, steely blue eyes, his impeccable charcoal suit showcasing the impressive width of his shoulders and chest and the length of his strong legs.
I wrote those kinds of descriptions all the time for my romance novels.
Well, had written. I’d only agreed to this weekend for one reason—renewed inspiration.
To watch other people fall in love and cure my writer’s block.
Not get insulted by a man who looked like one of my dashing characters.
Only good thing about having him here? His shaggy red-haired dog and his equally shaggy red-haired brother, both of whom looked bouncy and jolly and delighted to be here.
Mum screwed up her face. “How rude. He’d go a long way to find women as beautiful and sophisticated as my daughters.
Indeed, as sophisticated as our family. Why, just last Saturday night, we had the McClusters over, and I served crudités and a lovely Mallorca Spritz.
” She pronounced crudités with an exaggerated, quite wonky French accent.
She sniffed. “I’m not sure we even want to be bothered with someone like Darcy Wainwright. ”
Outraged, she bent everyone’s ear for another minute, which would have amused me if she weren’t speaking so loudly.
Then something flickered in her expression, which I knew indicated she’d concocted some kind of plan.
I didn’t like that look. That clarity in her eyes and set of her lips usually preceded an embarrassing interaction.
She touched her phone to cue up her next song.
“Still, they are the billionaire brothers, so I counsel tolerance,” Mum said to Jane, Emma, and me in one of her stage whispers that must have been heard by everyone in the room.
Her frequent regency romance phrases were the result of her position as administrator of my author Facebook group.
“Show them your assets. Jane, out with the boobs, Lizzy—bum. Emma, no instructions for you, love. As usual, you’ve got this. ”
When she tapped her phone again, a song boomed from the speakers. She stuck out her bum and slapped it, exhorting us to do the same.
Mortified, Jane and I stood stock-still. Cousin Emma, dressed like she was walking the catwalk for Chanel, joined in without a trace of guile or self-consciousness.
“C’mon, girls. Let’s be having you,” Mum squealed with joy, then hooted. “A trick as old as time.”
“Mum, stop. They can hear you,” I said. Scotland can hear you.
“Mum, please, don’t do this,” Jane pleaded. “Let’s just go back to line dancing.”
“Jane, a primary school teacher will never make a bean, dear girl. God helps those who help themselves.” Mum gave her bum another searing slap.
Mum kept on circling and slapping and shimmying her bejeweled denim behind, delighted with her plan.
Not that Jane and I had many options.
One of the guys had started flirting with a young woman during the dog walking on arrival, they’d bumped hips during the cocktails, and after only one dance, were wrapped around each other in the corner, full-out snogging.
Another guy, a terrible know-it-all, was besotted with a woman who was devastated from a recent breakup.
Cousin Emma’s neighbor Knightley, who was busy doing Emma’s bidding adjusting the light machine, seemed secretly stuck on her, so he was out of the question.
So really, it was just the Wainwright brothers who were the only single, male options for us. And Darcy had his arms crossed over his wide chest, looking appalled.
Not that I cared—I wasn’t looking for anyone this weekend.
I’d just come out of a subpar relationship myself and was here to get ideas for my next novel.
Even though I wrote regency romances, I always tried to give them a fresh, more contemporary angle, so I was hoping this weekend would inspire the spark I’d written about countless times and believed in, but had never actually experienced.
“Jane and Lizzy. Could you do us a favor?” The homeowner, Penelope Balfour, for some reason, was dressed in a floor-length blue gown. She and her husband Montgomery both loved to get use out of their family heirlooms. “Would you ask those Wainwright boys to dance?”
“We’d be terribly grateful,” Monty Balfour added. He was dressed like an Edwardian groundskeeper. “I’m worried they’re being left out.”
Maybe they should go all the way out. Or at least try jumping in instead of rudely standing in the corner and slagging people off.
But Jane had a softer heart than I, and her forehead creased with sympathy.
“Could you get Mum to switch to something more couth, like an English barn dance?” I asked.
“I’ll ask her,” Penny said.
Jane, ever dutiful and kind, took my hand and pulled me over to the brothers. Maybe I’d ask the smiley red-haired one.
But Jane got to him first.
“Hello. Would you like to dance?” she asked him shyly.
“I would love to,” said the pleasant brother. “I’m Wills, and this is my brother, Darcy.”
Close-up, Darcy was an uncompromising wall of shoulders, raven hair, and hard midnight-blue eyes, which did not seem to like what they were taking in. To leave me in no doubt about his feelings, his mouth tightened even more.
You bloody berk. I turned to his brother and introduced myself.
“Hello, nice to meet you, Wills. I’m Lizzy, and this is my sister, Jane.”
Wills enthusiastically held out his hand and shook ours. Darcy, hands lodged deep in his suit pant pockets, scowled and barely nodded.
Wills strolled off with Jane to take their positions, him chatty and Jane, head dipped modestly, with a slight smile.
All my instincts told me to turn on a heel and run far from Darcy Wainwright. But I’d promised Penny and Monty that I’d try to include him. I loved to dance, I needed a partner for this reel, and I was hoping against hope that his rude blurting was an off-character moment for him. “Would you—”
“I don’t dance,” Darcy cut in, staring down his nose at me.