A Duke Worth Falling For by Sarah MacLean

9

Max and Lilah lingered on the estate, exploring until the sun had almost set and Atlas had to lead them home through the fast-darkening fields, as Max lit the last bit of the journey with the flashlight on his phone.

They tumbled into the cottage like young lovers sneaking home after curfew, cheeks red from the evening chill, and Lilah scraped together pickle and ham and cheese and a packet of Ryvita while he built a fire in the study. After supper, he poured them both a Scotch and they curled together beneath a cashmere blanket he’d unearthed, Atlas by the fire.

Max watched as Lilah pulled up the shots from the folly and proved to him that she was one of the greatest portrait photographers the world had ever seen.

“Here,” she’d said, finally finished editing the picture she’d deemed the best of the bunch, one where he looked happy and relaxed on the land. “Let me send you this one. They should put it on the Salterton Abbey website.”

He pressed a kiss to her temple and said, “I don’t care about the one of me. Where’s the one of us?”

With a little laugh, she snatched up her phone from the low table nearby and pulled up the picture. “You know, there was a time when many, many people in the world would have done crime for a portrait session with me. And you want the selfie.”

“I want the one with you.”

She fiddled with it, opening the edit menu to play with lighting and crop it just so, and he watched, marveling at the idea that anyone could take so long perfecting a photo they’d snapped with a phone.

When she was done, she sent it to him, and they returned to what she called farmhouse idyll.

And it felt like idyll, like time had stopped, the world no longer beyond the windows now that her ear was pressed to his chest, the warm weight of her like a gift as he told her about the estate—about goats on the rough land to the west, the sheep in the east pasture, the beehives that would have to be wintered soon.

As she told him stories of the farmers she’d met on her travels—the apiarist in Crete, the cattle crowdfarming initiative in Ghana, the women dry-growing grapes on California’s Central Coast.

And it was not lost on either of them that it was perfect.

Or that it was fleeting.

When the fire waned, left to nothing but embers, Max took the empty glass from Lilah’s hand and guided her off the couch and up the stairs to bed, where he stripped her bare and lay her down and reset the clock once more, worshipping her long and slow, like they had all the time in the world.

Of course, they didn’t have all the time in the world, but neither of them wanted to think about that.

Not that night, with six days ahead of them like a promise. And not the next.

But it became more and more difficult for Max to think about giving her up at the end of their time together. And more and more difficult to hold his tongue when all he wanted to do was beg her to stay.

He’d fallen for her.

It wasn’t supposed to have happened. It was supposed to have been nine days—nine days of easy companionship and intense pleasure. Nine days in isolation, without either of them knowing enough about the other to complicate things.

Nine days with Max and Lilah, and no one else.

She didn’t know the truth of who he was, and he didn’t know the truth of what she’d run from, and every time he thought to tell her or ask her, he resisted, because it was only supposed to be nine days, long and lush and free.

But they weren’t free anymore. Because Max didn’t want to be free of her.

Wild as it seemed after not even a week, he’d fallen for this woman, and he wanted a shot at forever with her. But forever meant more than Max and Lilah in a cottage tucked away deep in the Devon countryside.

Forever meant real life. It meant the Duke of Weston hermited away at his estate, and Lilah Rose, celebrity photographer and friend of the glitterati in New York and Paris and Hollywood or wherever.

Except she had stopped. She’d left that world for a time. Something had happened, and he’d never pressed her on it. I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to take pictures again. She’d sold her studio. Disappeared.

Why?

And so, as they lay in bed, tired and sated from another round of the best sex he’d ever had, and likely would ever have, her fingers trailing through the hair on his chest, his tracing patterns over her soft skin, the scent of her filling him like sunshine, he asked her.

“Why did you stop?”

“Stop what?” The reply was full of sleepy satisfaction, and Max nearly didn’t clarify. He didn’t want to burst the bubble.

But he had to know whether the future was an option.

“Your work. Posh photography.”

She stilled against him. “You don’t think sheep are posh?”

“Hey,” he said, softly, and she lifted her head to look at him. “You don’t ever have to use your armor with me.”

She watched him for a long moment, and then put her head back to his chest. “I want to believe that.”

He waited, willing her to speak. Knowing he couldn’t ask her to tell him anything. Knowing she didn’t owe him truth. Knowing he didn’t deserve it.

And then, “I turned down the wrong man.”

Every muscle in his body tensed, and he went hot with immediate anger. “What does that mean?”

She didn’t look at him. “I was asked to shoot a cover for Culture Magazine. They were doing a huge piece on a very powerful man.” No name. Max gritted his teeth, going through the dozens of possibilities. “It was massive—ten thousand words, the first of its kind about someone the whole world knew and, it seemed, no one knew.”

More likely, someone everyone knew, and no one was willing to discuss. Max was a member of the British aristocracy—they’d practically invented sweeping scandal under the rug.

Lilah took a deep breath, her body pressing closer to his, as though she needed strength to go on. “To get the story, the editor-in-chief of Culture had made a number of promises. The subject got to choose his interviewer, location, approve a list of staff and colleagues who would be the only people Culture could contact.”

Fury flared. “And you.”

She nodded. “I wanted the gig. I’d worked with the magazine before. I liked the team there. They respected me . . . or so I thought. So I didn’t really think twice. He chose the photographer for the piece . . . and the location, date and time for the shoot.”

Max cursed, low and dark, his hand going wide over her shoulder, tight, as though he could protect her in hindsight.

“It’s funny, how you see it. I didn’t. I should have known when they said they were willing to triple my fee. I’m not exactly cheap to begin with. But I was at the top of my game, and hubris is real.”

No. Whatever this story—however it played out, it wasn’t her fault. “Lilah—”

She cut him off before he could argue. “I’d shot the Bonfire Hollywood issue earlier in the year and I had the Finezzi Calendar scheduled. This cover—it would be a hat trick.” She paused and looked up at him. “A hat trick is when—”

“I know. It comes from cricket.”

“It does? Cool.” She smiled and he would have matched it if he wasn’t resisting the urge to book a flight immediately to wherever this man was and do damage.

“Lilah . . . ”

“He chose his house in the Hamptons. His wife would be there, his staff, his kids, probably. But if I came in the evening, things would be quieter. Would that be fine?”

“Fucking hell.” Not damage. He’d do murder.

“I drove out from the city,” she said. “I borrowed a friend’s car—this nonsense convertible that half the time wouldn’t even start—but it was a beautiful spring day and I spent the drive out going over the ideas that I’d had for the shoot. His staff had sent me photos of this mansion—it was bananas. All white walls and chrome and steel and built right on the edge of the Atlantic. I’d been in houses like it before—it was my job not to be impressed. But this house—” She quieted. “Well. It was bananas.”

“He was alone.”

She nodded. “He was used to photographers, but not artists, he told me, and he thought it would be easier if it was just the two of us. Gross, right?” She paused. “I really thought it would be fine. I’d dealt with slimeballs before.” Max growled, and she looked at him with amused surprise. “What was that?”

“Me, resisting the urge to ask you to make me a list.”

She let out a little laugh, like he had made a joke. It wasn’t a joke. It was truth. This story was turning him into pure vengeance, and he probably shouldn’t like it but he was too busy imagining how much he’d enjoy putting his fist into this man’s face.

“I handled them just fine,” she said, stacking her hands on his chest and setting her chin to them. “Athletes, actors, talk show hosts, princes, every kind of egomaniac you could come up with . . . billionaires are the worst. Here’s the thing—they’re all the same. They want the power play, but they want the great picture more. So I get in, get the shot, find a way to turn them down, and get out. No problem.”

She stopped, the air between them heavy with the story, Max’s jaw aching from the clench of his teeth. If this man had hurt her, he would move every mountain he could to punish him. He’d use every inch of the dukedom to ruin him.

“Lilah,” he said, her name coming out like gravel. Sounding like he was in pain.

“He didn’t touch me,” she said quickly, as though to soothe him, and a twist of relief curled through Max, though not enough. He might not have touched her, but she’d been harmed. She’d stopped working, for Christ’s sake, and she loved working.

“He went to get something; he claimed to have a folio of unseen Helen Levitt shots that he’d bought at auction—his staff must have done some research, because Helen Levitt is one of the few people who could have made me stick around. Anyway, when he came back, he was naked.” She scoffed. “I should’ve taken a picture of that. But I didn’t. I took off.”

“The car started.” There. More relief. More fury.

She gave a little laugh. “Thank God. And I thought it was over. I called my best friend and told her the whole story on the drive back and I still remember coming over the bridge into the city and saying, clear as day, ‘But I got the fucking shot.’” She looked at him. “And I did. I had this vision of that shot on the cover of the most respected magazine in the world—revealing what a creep that guy was.”

He didn’t doubt she’d gotten the shot. Of course she had.

That was her job, and she was remarkable at it.

He stroked his hand down the soft skin of her back, pride warring with a dozen other emotions, not the least of which was fear. The photograph hadn’t been enough. Something else had happened. “Then what?”

Sadness clouded her beautiful eyes, and Max’s chest tightened. He already hated what was to come. “Three days later I got a call from Culture. They were going in a different direction with the story. I’d be paid, but the images wouldn’t run. ‘Please deliver the files to the magazine and delete any copies.’” She spoke to his chin as he continued to stroke down her spine. Back up. “A few days after that, we got word that Bonfire had decided to reshoot the Hollywood issue with a new photographer. A different direction. Literally weeks before the issue shipped. It was unheard of.”

Fury threaded through him. Hot and angry and foreign. “And Finezzi?” He didn’t know much about the calendar, but he knew it was an enormous win for art photographers.

She shook her head. “Different direction.”

“Christ.”

“It was going to be great,” she said, her eyes meeting his. Max heard the urgency in her voice, as though it was important she say it out loud. And it was the truth. He knew it. It would have been magnificent. He knew, without question, that Lilah Rose would have made sure the whole world knew about that calendar. “I had this plan to play with hard and soft—I wanted to go back to the original erotic pinup style, but really change the gaze. Shoot the whole thing centering women and pleasure and power. Twelve women who were unashamed of passion. Upend the whole thing.”

“That sounds perfect,” he said. It sounded like exactly the kind of thing this glorious woman would do.

“It would have been. It was the dream, and I could reach out and touch it. And he robbed me of it.” There was anger in the words, along with frustration and sadness and fury. She gave a little wave of her hand. “Like that. He robbed me of my career. And the rest of the world helped. My agent—who’d signed me when I was twenty years old and not even out of art school—she stopped calling me. My mentors, who I thought would stand by me. All those people I thought were my friends . . . ” She laughed, the sound without humor. “A few months ago, I was in Ghana?”

Max nodded, hating this story and wanting to hear all of it. Every word.

“I pulled out my phone and scrolled through it, and deleted two hundred and seventy-three contacts. Dozens of people who would make you starry-eyed.”

“I promise you they wouldn’t make me starry-eyed.”

She shot him a look. “They make everyone starry-eyed.”

He shook his head. “Not me.”

After a while, she said, “Weirdly, I believe that.”

But it didn’t help, he could see. It didn’t soothe the furrow at her brow that had come with the memory. He touched that furrow. Smoothed it.

“They were supposed to be my friends,” she said, softly, and his heart broke a little bit at the words. “But they didn’t care about me. They cared about what I could do for them. Ironically, Bonfire ran a piece about me once.” She smiled as she remembered the headline. “Kiss from a Rose. Lilah Rose, whose photos could turn a star into a supernova.”

She shook her head, seeming not to be able to find the right words, and he wanted so much to give them to her. “You weren’t just good at it,” he said. “You cared about it. You loved it. Your work meant something.”

“Yes,” she said, softly. “I know what it looks like from the outside. I know it seems frivolous and silly. Who cares about the photograph? We all have cameras in our pockets and we’ve all taken a decent picture now and then. But I really thought . . . ” She trailed off, and Max couldn’t bear it. The loss. “I built it. It was mine. I was good at it and I gave up everything for it. No real friends, no real love life, no real life in general. Nothing outside of this one thing that I did well and that I loved. And then . . . it was gone.” Her eyes met his. “And then . . . I was gone too.”

He ached for her. He ached for what she’d suffered and what she’d lost and for how hard she’d worked and for how hard she fought, still, for this world that should have lowered itself to its knees and thanked the heavens that it had her.

Just as he would lower himself to his knees if he might have her even a fraction as much.

And he ached for himself, for the keen, clear understanding that the only thing she desired was the thing he would never be able to give her.

His silence had stretched too long, until Lilah pulled back from it. “I’m sorry,” she said, pushing up off his chest to move away, her eyes gone liquid. “That was a lot.”

“No.” He rolled with her, cradling her face, running his thumbs over her cheeks, refusing to let her go until he told her exactly what he thought of her. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for telling me.”

She took a deep, shuddering breath. “No problem.”

He couldn’t help his small smile. She was so strong. “Now I have to tell you something.”

For an instant, he considered doing it. Telling her his truth, a secret for a secret, and finally having it all out in the open between them. He wanted it so badly, the words burned in his throat—but this moment was not for him. This moment was for Lilah, and what she’d been through, and the fact that she’d shared it with him, and no one else.

He waited for her to look at him. “You are the finest person I know.”

Her eyes went liquid with tears.

“No, Lilah.” He brushed the hair from her face, searching it, memorizing it. “You are strong and clever and you play darts like a professional, and you are a brilliant artist with—somehow, though I cannot understand how—a spine of pure steel.”

“Thank you.”

The tears spilled, and he leaned down to kiss her, sipping the words from her lips, before he pulled back and said, “Now. Who was it?”

She exhaled on a laugh. “Why, are you going to go punch his lights out?”

“It’s a damn good start.”

She reached up and pulled him down for another kiss. “You’re really very sweet, you know.”

“I’m not feeling very sweet right now.” He was feeling murderous right now.

“I can take care of myself. Remember? Blade in my kirtle?”

He didn’t rise to the bait. “Save it. Let me bloody my sword instead.”

She tilted her head, her gaze narrowing on his. “Why is that so hot?”

“It’s not meant to be.”

She ran her fingers through his hair and traced the high arc of his cheek and the straight edge of his jaw, still twitching with anger. “I’m already fighting.”

He understood, instantly. “Four days.”

She nodded. “Four days. I return. And the pictures—they’re a good opening salvo.”

God, he was so proud of her. “They’ll get you what you want.”

“The return of Lilah Rose.”

Four days.Four days, and she would be gone.

Four days, and Lilah would head back to her glittering life and her glamorous parties, and she would leave Max here and the farmer she’d once known would fade away as she returned to London, or New York, or Los Angeles or whatever place she needed to be.

He’d tried that life before. And he’d ruined a marriage with his inability to love it. He’d disappointed Georgiana, but somehow the idea of disappointing Lilah was worse.

“Max?”

He looked down at her, this woman he loved, strong and clever and so beautiful she made him ache. “Yes?”

“Do you own a suit?”

He froze, knowing what was to come next. Knowing it would be the most difficult thing he’d ever done to reply.

She smiled. God, he loved her smile. “Come to London with me.”

He hesitated, and she waited, ever patient.

Yes.

Christ, he wanted to say yes.

But he hadn’t fallen for her. He’d fallen in love with her.

The only thing that mattered was her happiness. And he knew, without question, that he could not make her happy. Not forever.

And he couldn’t bear the thought of anything less.

“I can’t.”