Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 117740 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 589(@200wpm)___ 471(@250wpm)___ 392(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117740 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 589(@200wpm)___ 471(@250wpm)___ 392(@300wpm)
“I would, actually.” He took a step closer to me and dipped his chin. “You know, Rose, if you want to spend time with me that badly, all you have to do is ask.”
“I’d prefer if you kept your perverted fantasies to yourself, sir,” I replied nonchalantly. “I believe I’ve already told you there will never be a time in which I actually want to spend time with you.”
“There already has been.”
“We all make mistakes.”
“Ouch. You wound me, Rose. Was it that bad?”
Thank God he couldn’t see my face right now. “The night? No. My decision making at the time? Yes. Now stop hounding me.” I pushed at his shoulder and turned around, heading back into my shed yet again.
“Okay.”
I paused and looked back over my shoulder. “Huh?”
“Okay,” Oliver repeated. “I’ll do what you want. But swap two of those evenings for one weekday. I can make that work.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “I assume you have a very good reason for asking for it, so I’ll humour your request.”
“Wow.” I hung the fork back up and closed the distance between us, touching my hand to his arm as I leant in. “In that case, Oliver de Havilland, the Duke of Hanbury, I hope you have a taste for submission, because I’m going to make you my bitch.”
11
* * *
OLIVER
Little Errand Boy
If I’d known what she meant when she said those words, I never would have agreed.
To be honest, I’d genuinely considered the fact that Rose meant to make me her sexual sub, and I was momentarily baffled by the thought that I’d be all right with that. Her time constraints for weekends seemed a little wild, but so was our one-night stand, so maybe marathon sex was her thing.
But no.
Sadly.
Kind of.
As thrilling as the idea of Rose making me her sexual ‘bitch’ might have been for the few seconds I’d seriously considered it, the reality was far bleaker.
And, well. More realistic. As reality tended to be.
Which explained exactly why I was hauling two-hundred-litre bags of compost from her van to a nursery’s back garden as if I was some kind of delivery boy.
On the day where I’d agreed to her absurd compensation agreement, she immediately issued me with a one-week notice to help her out, after which she’d dropped off the face of the Earth.
If there was anything more terrifying than Rose Matthews running her mouth, it was Rose Matthews going ghost-mode.
My fear was not unfounded, given the first thing she’d told me to do today was take off my shirt and swap it for something easier to work in. I was woefully unprepared for manual labour, but in my defence, she’d hardly mentioned what she was going to have me do.
Now, I understood.
She wanted me to be her little errand boy.
“That’s it, Micky,” Rose said gently. “Be careful of the roots, okay?”
“The white fins?” Micky said, tilting his head and peering at the mess of roots on the plant in his hand. “Looks like a jellyfiss.”
Rose laughed—a soft, airy laugh that was unlike anything I’d heard come out of her mouth before. “It does look a bit like a jellyfish, doesn’t it? But they’re fragile, too, so you must be very careful not to hurt them.”
“Otay.” Micky nodded his head and tentatively put the plant down in the hole Rose was holding open. “Like this?”
“Just like that, then we carefully scoop the soil back into the hole.” Rose guided him to fill the hole back in. “You know how you give your grandpa’s old cat gentle pats on the head?”
Micky nodded.
“We must give the soil gentle pats too, just around the stem. Look at how nice Abby is tucking up her strawberry plant.”
Abby beamed. “I tuck in, Miss Rose!”
“It looks ever so cosy.” Rose wrinkled her nose up as she smiled at the little girl with pigtails. “You’re so good at this!”
“O’course. I wanna be juss like Miss Rose when I an adult!”
I wouldn’t suggest becoming Rose as a career path. She was a bit too whacky for it.
“Me, too! Me, too!” Micky said, grabbing Rose’s vest top with his dirt-covered hand. I expected her to brush it off, but instead she leant in and chucked him under the chin with her finger.
“She’s surprisingly gentle, isn’t she?”
I flinched.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Your Grace.” Tasha, the nursery manager, hid a chuckle behind her hand. “I didn’t mean to surprise you like that.”
“No, I just…”
“I understand.” She held out a mug with ‘World’s Best Teacher’ on it to me, and I quickly thanked her. “A lot of people react this way when they see this side of her.” She peered over at where Rose had now shuffled down the line to one of the younger staff members and seemed to be explaining things. “Her reputation for being the village wild child does tend to precede her, after all.”