Marrying Mr. Darcy (Love Manor #2) - Kate O'Keeffe Page 0,9
lovely for you” while Sebastian explains what Budweiser and macaroni and cheese are to her. She’s playing the part of an approving relation, the initial shock wiped skillfully from her face.
I can tell she doesn’t approve. I can tell she thinks all of it—me, how we met on the dating show, everything—is beneath her and her family.
And I make a decision here and now. I’m going to do my best to prove to her that I am good enough for her grandson.
Even if it’s the last thing I do.
Chapter 3
Despite Geraldine’s obvious disapproval of “the match,” as Jane Austen would have put it, the next couple of days with Sebastian are a blur of utter, unadulterated happiness. We spend as much time as we can together, basking in our newly engaged status, and enjoying some alone time. We wander around Martinston’s beautiful grounds, we visit Mia’s Café with its curved leadlight windows, brightly painted chairs, and quaint hanging baskets. And we perfect our bedroom skills behind firmly shut doors—and I will leave it to your imagination what I mean by that.
Hint: it’s not using hospital corners to make the bed.
I’m leaning up against Sebastian, cupping a coffee in my hands, as we lounge on the terrace in the warm morning sun, when my phone beeps beside me.
“Don’t answer it,” Sebastian murmurs into my hair. “This feels too nice. Whoever it is can leave a message.”
I nudge him on the arm. “It might be Penny. I’ve gone a bit AWOL on her lately, and I know she needs me.”
He lets out a breath. “I suppose. Can I help it if I want you all to myself?”
Feeling relaxed and content with my life, I pick up my phone and see it’s not from Penny. It’s an alert on my name, something I set up when the show first began to air and I was paranoid about what people were saying about me in the media.
My heart sinks as I scan it.
“Everything okay?”
“It’s about our engagement.”
“Hand it to me.”
I pass him my phone, and he reads the headline out. “Dating Mr. Darcy star Sebastian Huntington-Ross has been spotted out with Emma Brady, the girl he left show favorite Phoebe Watson for. They announced their engagement today. He looked as hot as ever in his polo shirt and shorts. What’s the problem with that? Other than the fact they’re still banging on about Phoebe, of course, which they really do need to let go.”
“Scroll down and look at the image.”
He does so. “It’s a photo of us from a day or two ago. We’d been to Mia’s, if I remember correctly. You really do love their cookies.”
I snatch the phone back. “Seb, it’s a photo of you looking hot and me mid sneeze. It’s horrible.” I peer at the photo. My eyes are closed, my nose scrunched up, and my mouth is wide open as I sneeze all over my cookie.
“I think you look cute.”
“There is absolutely nothing cute about this.”
He pulls me down for a kiss. “Well, I think you’re adorable, Brady.”
“You’re biased.”
“I am biased, it’s true, and I need you to know I love you before, during, and after all your sneezes.”
I let out a giggle. “You like it when I sneeze? Is that some weird boarding school fetish thing you’ve got going on there, dude?”
His laugh rumbles through me. “Oh, yes. Although I think I prefer it when you fall out of limos and swear like a fishwife. That is so much sexier.”
“Hey,” I protest. He’s referring to the moment we met when I fell backwards out of the limo and onto my butt. In my defense, I was wrangling with a sequined dress that had gotten stuck in my hair as I changed into my activewear line so I could promote it on reality TV.
A perfectly reasonable explanation, if you ask me.
“Granny cornered me this morning,” Sebastian says, his voice sounding more serious.
At the mention of her name, my nerves kick up. “Did you have to stop her from going on about how amazing I am?”
“Granny takes a while to warm to people. She’ll come around. Just give her time.”
“I guess,” I reply, totally unconvinced. I think for Sebastian’s granny to “come around” to the idea of him marrying me, I’d have to morph into a member of the British landed gentry on her extremely short list of suitable partners for her grandson.
As Lady Catherine de Bourgh said of Lizzie Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, I’m a girl with no