Logan

As the sounds of the helicopter drew closer, I grabbed my jacket and keys. One of the perks of commuting this way was I could stay in the country on a Sunday night and still get into the office early on Monday. I glanced at my watch. I had an important call with China at ten, but I should just make it. I pulled the door shut behind me and headed toward the helicopter that had just landed.

I ducked beneath the still-rotating blades and out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a figure approaching over the lawns. I squinted through the wind and realized it was Darcy. I took a few steps toward her, the artificial breeze relenting slightly.

I hadn’t seen her since our kiss last week. I supposed a part of me had wanted to run into her this weekend, but another part had been relieved I hadn’t. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d kissed a woman without fucking her. And although I knew that I shouldn’t be fucking Darcy, there had been something about our kiss that had left me far from satiated. I was used to deciding what I wanted and following through. But I couldn’t want Darcy. It just wasn’t practical. But something about that fact had rankled and left me irritated.

I waved. “Hi,” I bellowed.

As she marched toward me, her furious eyes came into focus. In one hand she gripped some papers, the other was fisted by her side.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she screamed. She didn’t slow down as she neared me. When she reached me, she shoved at my chest and I had to step back to stop myself from falling. What the hell was her problem?

“What’s the matter?” I asked, completely confused.

“What’s the matter? Are you serious?” she shouted, making herself heard above the noise of the helicopter. “You’re about to ruin this village and you ask me what’s the matter? You know full well what you’ve done.”

I tried to focus on what she was saying rather than the way her hair lifted in the breeze, or the smear of mud on her left cheek. Neither one was adorable. I liked disciplined, glamorous women. Not screaming banshees.

“Darcy, I really don’t have time for this.” I glanced toward the helicopter.

“I bet you don’t. You don’t give a shit about anyone but yourself or anything but money.”

What the hell had her knickers in a knot? I didn’t have time to stop and talk to her. I had a meeting as soon as I landed followed by a jam-packed calendar, but I couldn’t leave her so…unhinged.

She waved the papers in the air and shouted some more about how selfish I was, but I still had no idea what she was talking about and I wasn’t about to be late. Darcy Westbury would just have to come with me, but there was no way she’d agree to that.

There was only one thing to do.

Before she could ask me what the hell I was doing, I bent and tossed her over my shoulder. I kept my grip tight around her legs as I strode toward the waiting helicopter, Darcy kicking and screaming all the way. I tipped her into the interior of the Sikorsky, and followed as she scrambled to her feet and tried to open the door on the other side. “What are you doing, you maniac? You can’t kidnap me.”

I pulled her away from the door and placed her into one of the eight seats. She continued to struggle until we started to take off and then she grabbed my arm, fear in her eyes, which at least meant I got the opportunity to fix her belt and mine.

“Just calm down,” I said, sitting back in my chair.

She narrowed her eyes. “I’m being kidnapped. Why would I be calm?”

I gripped the armrests of my seat, trying not to laugh. “I’m not kidnapping you, for crying out loud. I just don’t have the time for you to shout at me in Woolton. You’ll have to yell while I go to the office. I have a meeting.”

“Oh, you have a meeting. What if I have a meeting?”

I sighed. “I thought you wanted to speak to me?”

For the next few minutes I got the silent treatment.

“I can’t believe you kissed me,” she mumbled.

I was totally confused. “You’re angry because I kissed you?”

“Given the circumstances, I want to cut your bollocks off.”

“Have I missed something?” This girl was making my head spin, and not for the first time. “What circumstances? I thought we’d had a nice evening.” Kissing her had been phenomenal. The way she’d gasped as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was feeling. The way her smart mouth had yielded under my tongue. It hadn’t been an ordinary kiss. It was the kind you carried with you your whole life, trying to find another that lived up to such promise.

“But it was all a sham. You were just using me.”

“It was a kiss. Using you, how?”

“Just trying to soften me up before you dropped this fucking bomb.” She tossed the few remaining papers she had in her hand at me.

I scooped the crumpled white sheets from my feet and recognized the planning application for the private members’ club I’d lodged. I’d planned to bring the glamour of London to the country and provide a country retreat for people in the city who didn’t want the responsibility of a second home. It would be the first business I’d ever started. The first one that I’d built myself.

It was small but personal, and hopefully wouldn’t be too distracting from my day job. I needed this to prove to myself I could build something. The scale wasn’t important. And Manor House Club had been percolating in my mind for ten years. I’d seen how wealth and opportunity was concentrated in London—that’s where people who could provide opportunities and had wealth spent their time. My idea was to attract these people outside of London in the hopes that their wealth would seep into the community. That they would find and provide opportunity outside the city.

“What has Manor House Club got to do with me kissing you?” I asked.

“Well, presumably you were hoping to make sure I didn’t object to the planning. Otherwise, why wouldn’t you tell me? Especially when I was talking about how passionate I was about Woolton.”

“Did it work?” I asked. I was being deliberately provocative, but this woman? She was equal parts beautiful and crazy.

She just glared at me.

“Look, I didn’t realize I had to give you a rundown of my five-year plan in order to kiss you.”

“You’re an arsehole.”

“Darcy, kissing you had nothing to do with these plans. Running into you was a complete accident.”

“Was it?”

“As much as I might have made the effort to do it on purpose, I can promise you that it was a coincidence.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me? I’d never have kissed you had I known.”

A dull ache gnawed at my stomach as she confessed her regret. “It didn’t come up. Manor House Club will be a phenomenal thing. It’s going to attract all the best people, have them experience a beautiful place, provide employment in the area, customers for the shops in the village. Why would you be devastated?”

She folded her arms as she stared straight ahead. “It will completely ruin village life as we know it. Think of all the pollution from the visitors, all those trees you’ll have to chop down, plus all the building works that will make our lives a misery for years. Not to mention the way the community will be watered down with tourists who think they’re better than the rest of us.” She blew out a breath as if she was trying to stop herself from crying. “We’ve seen this before. We’ve had outsiders come in and tell us how they will improve things, only for the village to suffer. The Thompsons’ renovations lasted three years. And then they just flipped the house—it was just an investment for them. Woolton is special.”

“I can promise you that the works won’t take three years. I want the place open and making money within twelve months.” I’d expected some local opposition to my plans. There were people against change whenever you tried to make improvements—I came across it all the time in business. I’d move into a new company, start asking questions about their processes and come across the phrase, “because that’s how we do it” too often for me to even be surprised anymore. Most people’s automatic reaction to change was to assume it was bad rather than to embrace the opportunity it brought.

“You see? It’s just about money for you. You don’t care about the impact you’ll have on the rest of us. You won’t get away with it—there’s no way those plans will get through the Parish Council.”

“You want to ban any building works in the village? What about when Woolton Hall needs a new roof or—”

“Don’t twist my words. That’s not what I’m saying, I just want to be respectful of our way of life, of our history.”

It was my job to sell people on a brighter future and that was what I’d planned to do with Manor House Club. I was pretty sure I could convince the Parish Council that it would be a great thing for Woolton. “Well, I guess we’ll see. Some people have broader minds than you might imagine,” I replied.

“What does that mean?” she asked, shifting next to me so she could look at me. “Are you planning to try and bribe people?”

I chuckled. “Are you drunk? Of course I’m not going to bribe anyone.” I might have a reputation for doing whatever it took to succeed, but I never broke the law, let alone did anything my grandmother would be ashamed of me for.

She sighed and sat back in her seat. “That’s not what it sounded like to me. You seem too sure to be leaving anything to chance.”

“I think that says more about your Parish Council members than it does about me. Do they take bribes often?”

“How dare you!” she snapped. “The Parish Council would never succumb to such dirty tricks.”

“Then why would you assume I’d been successful in bribing them?”

“What? Don’t twist my words again.”

“I’m not. I’m following their logical conclusion.”

“Whatever.”

“Which I interpret as ‘You’re quite correct, Logan. I accept that our kiss had nothing to do with your plans for Manor House Club and that you’re not committing criminal offenses by bribing public officials’.”

She rolled her eyes and shook her head. Darcy seemed clever and running the Woolton estate took a great deal of skill, but this girl was acting as if she’d lost her mind.

“Can’t you drop it?” Her tone lowered.

“Drop what?”

“Your plans. They would ruin everything I worked so hard for.”

I didn’t see how Manor House Club would ruin anything for the Woolton estate, and it would breathe fresh life into the village, bring opportunities to those who weren’t as lucky as Darcy. “It’s important to me, Darcy. Try to look at all the positive things it will bring to the village.” As much as I liked and respected her, and as much as I’d enjoyed kissing her, I wasn’t about to abandon Manor House Club just because she wanted to remain in a time warp.

“Is that a no?” she asked.

“I’m afraid so,” I replied. “Once I’m committed to something, I follow through. It’s how I’m built.”

“Then game fucking on,” she said lightly, her tone not matching her words at all.

I wanted to ask what she meant, but the helicopter began to descend and I needed to focus on my meeting rather than whatever trouble Darcy might be planning to stir up.

“I’m sure we can work together to make it a great opportunity for the village.”

“How am I getting back to Woolton?” she asked, ignoring my attempt to move forward on a positive note.

“The helicopter will take you back.”

“You see? You don’t even realize what a scourge on the village you helicoptering in and out is. It’s deafening. It scares the horses, tears the leaves from the trees. We all hate it.”

No one had said anything to me. “You can’t make time stand still. Why do you want to put obstacles in the way of progress, Darcy?” What made her want to live in the past?

She didn’t respond, didn’t look at me. She just stared ahead, her eyebrows pinched together in a determined scowl.

“Let me take you through the plans next weekend,” I said as we landed. “I can show you how beautiful it’s going to be. How it will be in keeping with the surrounding areas. You’re assuming the worst, but when you have all the facts, you might find you like it.”

I sighed when she didn’t respond. It was like dealing with a toddler that I couldn’t put on a naughty step.

“I have to go,” I said as the door opened. “I’ll be back in Woolton on Friday. Let’s talk then.”

I got no response, so I left the helicopter and headed toward the entrance to my building. Darcy might be distracting, beautiful and refreshingly open, but she was also infuriating as hell. She had my attention completely diverted from what I should be thinking about and instead wondering what “game on” meant, and whether she really did regret kissing me.

What was the matter with me? I needed to get a grip. Kick arse on my call and maybe reward myself this evening by blowing off steam with an uncomplicated fuck.