A Duke by Default Read online

  Tav hadn’t asked for the property and all the worries it brought—his knob of an absentee father had put it in trust for him, like some kind of shitty “sorry for denying your existence and hiding mine” eighteenth birthday surprise—but Tav had eventually turned it into the headquarters for his passion. He was bleeding money, stalled in sales, and worried he would lose his business, but he’d be damned if he revealed any of that. Tavish took care of people, and he’d take care of this.

  “Mr. McKenzie, do you know what my nickname is?” she asked. There was that brow raise again. “And if you say bawbag or some other weird Scottish insult, I’ll be forced to mace you again.”

  Tav suppressed a laugh at that. He gave her as stern an appraisal as he could muster, his gaze lingering on her nose for some reason. It was a cute nose, which made no fucking sense to him. A nose was a nose, but hers was the kind of nose you could imagine dropping a kiss onto, if you were into sappy shite like that.

  She’s annoying, remember? You’re not that boss, remember?

  “Freckles,” he responded drily. “Freckles McGee.”

  Portia smirked, and he hadn’t thought smirks could be beguiling, but fucking hell if hers wasn’t.

  Christ, take a cold shower, McKenzie.

  “Cute, but it’s Search Engine Brown. Friend is going on a date with a strange guy? I can have all the info on him, from his middle school to his favorite T-shirt, in under an hour. Museum can’t track down info on a rare piece? I’m on it. Going to work for a new employer and need to know what the deal is with them? Guess who can dig up that info for you?”

  She tilted her head to the side and gave him a know-it-all grin that conveyed a very explicit message: she saw right through him. He should have known that from the moment she’d looked him in the face all wide-eyed innocence and then maced the fuck out of him. There was no point in playing coy.

  “What did you find out?” He thought he did a good job of sounding unconcerned.

  “Everything available in the public record,” she said. “People always underestimate the public record. Lots of interesting stuff there.”

  “So you want to add blackmail to the assault charges then, eh Freckles?”

  “I want to do lots of things. I want to learn how to make swords, and I want to know the how and why behind every decision that goes into a blade. I want to rebuild your entire web presence, from social media to the website, and I want to get Bodotria Armory positioned as the premiere manufacturer of Scottish swords, knives, and various other weaponry. Basically? I want to do what I was brought here to do, which is to be your apprentice. Whether you allow me to do all, a fraction of, or none of that in the next three months is up to you.”

  Tav allowed his chuckle to escape this time. She’d gone from doe in the headlights to brash businesswoman in no time flat. It shouldn’t have surprised him. Jamie was no fool, goofy as he was, and he had selected Portia. That and she’d shown uncommon bravery when she’d thought Cheryl was in trouble.

  She held his gaze, but then her shoulders drooped and the fight left her eyes. Tav’s gaze dropped to her hands, which were clasped tightly in her lap.

  “Look, I know we got off on the wrong foot, but don’t fire me,” she said quietly. “I . . . really need this right now. You don’t even have to pay me the honorarium. I’ll make my time here worth your while. I promise.”

  Suddenly, she wasn’t an annoying apprentice or a savvy shit talker. She was a woman in freefall searching for something solid to hold on to. Tav knew that feeling well; he’d spent his whole damn life looking for a foothold, a sense of stability, and he was going to lose the one he’d found if he didn’t try something different. Portia Hobbs was most definitely something different.

  He hadn’t planned on firing her, and he wished he’d made that clear earlier because the pleading look in her eyes gutted him. He felt an illogical need to soothe her, and despite all the swords and armor, chivalry was most certainly not his thing.

  He scrubbed a hand over his stubble.

  “Aye. Jamie will be back this evening to teach a class and he can talk over all the administrative shite with ye. Enough with this puppy dog face.” He waved a hand dismissively in the air between them. “I prefer the ‘I’m about to burn your fucking eyeballs out, ye creepy bastard’ look you gave me earlier.”

  He schooled his expression into a scowl and reached his hand across the desk, holding it in front of her. “Welcome to Bodotria Armory.”

  She let out a sigh of relief and took his hand, giving it a good, firm, professional handshake. Tav touched women all the damn time during training and demonstrations without feeling a thing, but the feel of Portia’s slim fingers curling against his sent something bright and electric zipping through his veins.

  Bloody hell, it’s going to be a long few months.

  He noticed her gaze had slipped past his face, over his shoulder to where the framed photos lined his bookshelf next to souvenirs from trips to his parents’ respective homelands; a Moai statue from Chile and a small Jamaican flag. There was a photo of him and Jamie and their parents, a spectrum of browns with Tav’s face the only pale one. Portia was a smart woman—she’d figure it out.

  He released her hand. “Come on, I’ll show you to your room.”

  He’d doled out cash he didn’t have for a new mattress, bedding, and towels for her, and Cheryl had decorated the room for him. He wasn’t sure the New York skyline duvet cover and matching lamp from Tesco would be to Portia’s taste, but she’d deal with it.

  He maneuvered around her giant suitcase and rolling bag. He couldn’t imagine how much the set had cost. “What’ve you got in there, an elephant?”

  “No, I’ve got several folding chairs for men who act like fitting your entire life into two bags is some kind of diva move.”

  It seemed she’d tucked vulnerable Portia away again. Good. He didn’t need her giving him calf eyes when he was in the mood for veal.

  He hefted the larger bag and headed into the hallway, stowing his complaints, and the only sound behind him was the wheels of her rolling suitcase on the thin runner that covered the old hardwood floor. His office and room were on the topmost floor, and he tried to manage some sense of dignity and grace as he lugged her bag down the stairs to the next landing.

  “This is a beautiful building,” she said, as they walked down the corridor toward the guest room. Her room. In Tav’s home.

  Fucking hell.

  “It looks imposing on the outside, but up here feels homey,” she said. Homey was a nice way of saying “run down,” he figured. He could tell she was trying to be friendly, but his eyes still burned and the bloody bag was heavier than he’d anticipated; he refused to give in and roll it.

  “How old is this place? The exterior looks Georgian but I’m guessing it’s been renovated more recently than the seventeen hundreds.”

  “It’s old,” he said.

  Beads of sweat were breaking out on his hairline and her room was still a few meters away. Dammit. How had she carried this on a train? He imagined men had fallen over themselves to help her with the luggage. After all, Kevyn was the one who had dragged it up to his office unnecessarily.

  “When did you move in?” she asked.

  “Almost twenty years ago,” he said. “Let out the extra rooms to my uni friends for a few years, and then I got married and moved and rented out all the rooms. When we separated and I started the business, I moved back in and stopped renting.”

  And he regretted it every time he saw a moving truck carrying away one of the neighborhood’s residents and replacing them with people escaping the even higher rent of the tonier Edinburgh neighborhoods. He knew time stood still for no man, and he couldn’t run a boarding house, but sometimes he felt like an alien on the streets he’d walked since he was a wean.

  “Twenty years?” The sound of her luggage wheels grew louder and then she was beside him, peering up into his face with her bloodshot eyes. “How old are you?”


  “Thirty-eight.” Just a few more steps to her room.

  “Whoa. That’s . . .”

  He shot her an annoyed look.

  “Not old at all!”

  She was near thirty herself, according to what Jamie had told him, but Tav had never felt older—huffing as he carried a suitcase with a bright young thing chirping up at him.

  “Wait, so you bought this place when you were eighteen?”

  They reached the door and he dropped the suitcase in front of it with a thud and took a controlled breath through his nose. He opened the door and ushered her in ahead of him, mostly so he could have a second to wipe the sheen of sweat that had gathered on his forehead.

  “One of the benefits of having a rich shite for a biological father. They leave you their extra properties. Was probably a write-off for the codger.”

  Tav wouldn’t know. He’d never met his bio dad and had never sought him out either—he’d never cared to meet the type of man who’d impregnate a refugee who’d lost everything, then abandon her and their child.

  He glanced at Portia and took in her look of discomfort, then realized he was scowling hard.

  “Sorry. I shouldn’t have pried,” she said. “It’s just a fantastic building. My entire place in New York is about the size of this room, has walls as thin as tissue paper, and would sell for as much as the GDP of a small nation.”

  Tav kept himself from commenting on the last bit, by the skin of his teeth. She was a spoiled, rich American, but he didn’t want to see those puppy dog eyes again.

  “Pry away, it’s fine. It worked out for me. Mum married when I was young, so I got a life with a great dad and property from a shite one.”

  “Sounds like a pretty good deal.” She flopped down on the bed and sighed, snuggling into the duvet. “I’m sorry, all the traveling is catching up to me.”

  He looked at her sprawled out on the bed with her eyes fluttering shut, with that damn nose, and that damn mouth, and those damned freckles. He liked looking at her, and he hated that he liked it. He didn’t want to.

  A passing fancy was one thing, but this jittery awareness of her felt both new and devastatingly familiar.

  Nope. Not dirtying my soles on that road again. The destination is always disappointment.

  Her eyes flew open and she gazed up at him, one hand pressing into the bed as if testing it. “Do you have a mattress topper or something? This mattress is kinda . . .”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

  Tav turned and walked out of the room, closing the door soundly behind him.

  He was going to kill Jamie.

  Chapter 3

  Now thrust like you’re trying to disembowel me. Come on! I’m the English marauder come to storm your castle, and those weak-ass jabs aren’t going to stop me!”

  Sweat poured down Portia’s neck. The gray silk blouse she’d chosen to wear was soaked through beneath her breasts and down her back; she was sure she looked like a Rorschach test in which one could find the image of a woman who was going to need an Epsom bath soon. At least her jeans were proving they’d been worth the money for the stretchtech/denim blend. Her heels were lined up on the bleachers because she was good in heels, but not that good.

  She hadn’t expected to do anything but observe the class; Jamie and his wife Cheryl had been out all day, so they hadn’t been able to go over the parameters of the internship earlier. She’d avoided Tavish as best she could by walking around the neighborhood and checking out coffee shops, trying not to replay her disastrous first morning in Scotland on a humiliating mental loop, then fallen asleep in her room for a few hours. She was dressed more “casual chic” than “CrossFit” when she’d walked into the gymnasium located just off of the courtyard, she’d realized that when Jamie said “come check out my class before we chat” he’d actually meant “come meet my sadistic drill sergeant alter ego.”

  Jamie—tall, dark-skinned, with short, glossy curls that made her want to ask what product he used—had pulled her into a welcoming hug, then turned and lined her up with the group of students waiting for the evening’s class to start. She’d thought herself reasonably in shape, but the Defending the Castle boot camp was kicking her ass.

  They’d lifted kettle bells in a “pour boiling oil on the bastards scaling the wall” maneuver, then did wall sits in an exercise called “battering ram resistance” just before entering the hand-to-hand combat training. The gray-haired older woman beside Portia was leaning forward and faux-parrying with all her might, but her shirt was dry and her face serene.

  “Jab! Jab!” Jamie commanded, his curls bouncing as he cheerfully stabbed imaginary attackers while jogging in place.

  Portia’s thighs burned and her arms were getting heavier and heavier, but even so . . . it was kind of fun. She’d tried barre, and yoga, and Pilates, but pretending to ward off attackers fulfilled some primal urge that had apparently been lying dormant within her.

  Or maybe this one showed up after you stopped indulging your other primal urges.

  Giving up sex had been surprisingly easy. She’d replaced happy hours and hookups with quiet nights with friends and courses on social engineering, marketing, and tech. Then Reggie had sent her the apprenticeship application and Portia had become infatuated with the idea—she’d even uploaded the application days ahead of the deadline instead of at the very last minute, like she usually did. When she’d received the email saying she’d been selected, she’d looked forward to it, thinking she already had her physical longings under wraps. Her vow of celibacy hadn’t been a problem until she was sitting across from Tavish McKenzie.

  She’d realized several things at once in his office: (1) She’d been wrong to scoff at the silver fox phenomenon, because Tavish’s salt-and-pepper hair was like the perfect seasoning on a slab of delicious Angus steak. (2) Her diet had definitely been lacking in protein. (3) She had committed to sexual veganism, there was no way in hell she was going to mess up Project: New Portia by sleeping with her boss of all people.

  “Don’t you want to protect your castle?” Jamie shouted, doubling the tempo of the imaginary dagger thrusting where he led from the front of the class. “Don’t you, mates?”

  A few scattered grunts and roars were his response.

  “Fuck off away from me castle!” the woman beside Portia yelled as she kept time with Jamie. Her jabs were vicious but precise, belied by her pleasant smile.

  Portia’s castle needed defending. There was some invisible pull between people, woo-woo as it seemed, and years of nightlife adventures had honed her ability to find that connection and see where it led—specifically, whether it was to a bedroom. Or a couch. Or kitchen table. It was a skill that had been invaluable in the late-night campaigns waged in bars across New York City, as she pillaged her way through the singles scene.

  Tav had been gruff, combative even, when they’d spoken in his office, but she’d felt the pull so hard that it’d nearly jerked her up onto his desk. This was a game of tug-of-war that she wouldn’t lose, though. She couldn’t. She was in Scotland to learn and grow, to see who she really was, not to fall back into the same patterns she was trying to break.

  “What do you get out of these encounters, Portia?”

  Portia wheezed and jabbed as she jogged in place. She had no regrets about her sex life; some hookups had been pleasurable, some had been boring, but none of them had amounted to much in the grand scheme of things. She’d drank her fears away, and fucked them away, but the thing about distractions was they didn’t make the real issues go away. It took work to do that, and not the kind of work she wanted to put in with Tavish McKenzie.

  She jabbed with her left hand and then her right, her body finding the rhythm even though she’d thought she was ready to drop a minute before.

  This was about more than whether or not to give in to fleeting pleasure. It was about proving that she didn’t need a drink, didn’t need a hookup—that she could be good enough without any of the “oh honey, no” accessories of
her past. She was fine, or on her way to fine, and she didn’t need any damned sexy-annoying Scotsmen getting in the way of that.

  “Protect your castle at all costs,” Jamie shouted encouragingly. “Don’t give up! You can do it!”

  “This is my castle!” Portia shouted as she stabbed out with her imaginary dagger. “The drawbridge is up and you can’t come in!”

  “That’s it, Portia! Now you’ve got it!” Jamie called out with a bright smile, then lifted a hand up to his brow as if shading his eyes while searching the horizon. “Look! The invaders are running off, the mangy cowards! We’ve won!”

  A cheer rang out from the group, and Portia joined them. A sense of victory fueled by endorphins was a powerful feeling, even if the invaders weren’t real. She felt like maybe she could conquer anything, even her own hopeless tangle of flaws. A sudden, embarrassing wash of tears warmed her eyes.

  She blinked hard.

  “Okay, let’s wind it down now.” Jamie dropped down into a stretch and the students followed suit.

  After the class had ended, the students grabbed their bags and began to mill around Jamie. A shock of bright pink hair that Portia recognized as Cheryl barreled through the crowd toward him, standing on her tiptoes and pulling him down into a kiss when she finally reached him. Portia could see both of their smiles and wondered at that. Being so happy to see each other that even the serious mouthwork they were putting on display couldn’t stop them from grinning like fools.

  She looked away, pulling out her phone and snapping a sweaty selfie.

  First evening of internship! Just finished defending my castle with @JamieMac007 at a @BodotriaArmory boot camp. So much fun! #DefendingYourCastle

  She uploaded it to the various social media feeds that catalogued her daily activities. She was planning on asking Jamie to let her take over Bodotria’s social media accounts, which hadn’t been updated for months. The pic would be something she could share later to start beefing up their internet presence.