Compromising Kessen (The Vandenbrook #1)(4)
Author: Rachel Van Dyken

Kessen merely glanced at Nick and tried not to smile; he returned a searing glare that said, “I hate this. I hate this. I hate this.” She had turned back to Sammy and nodded. “Oh yes, I think you’re right.”

Nick had stopped talking to Kessen for two days, but finally broke his oath of silence when she promised to fake an accident during his next spa outing.

Thus the reason Nick was not happy about having to meet Kessen at the spa today.

Kessen drove through Boulder with a vengeance. She pulled her car into the first open space she could find and slammed her door. The receptionist, noticing her strained face, smiled tightly and pointed a perfectly manicured nail towards the waiting area.

“Coffee?” she asked, getting out of her seat.

“Yes.”

Kessen waited for five minutes before Nick came bounding through the door. It was obvious she had woken him up. His brown Twilight-styled hair was mussed all over his head. His designer faded jeans and muscle shirt were wrinkled and mismatched.

She shook her head at him and smiled. “You, my friend, do not match.”

He mimicked her words with his mouth before sitting down in a huff. “It’s not like I had many options this morning. It is laundry day, and it’s not every morning I get a call at the crack of dawn from my best friend telling me she’s going to London.” He turned towards her and scowled. “You despise London. What gives? Don’t tell me your father is singing the national anthem over you again. He’s been humming it at work lately, too. I think it’s gotten worse since—”

He didn’t finish the sentence. Tension hung in the air like a cloud. What he meant to say was since Lady Newberry’s death, but the guilty look on his face told Kessen he felt bad for bringing it up.

When the receptionist set the coffee in front of Kessen, Nick grabbed it before she had a chance.

“Nick, I swear I will cut your lips off if they touch that blessed drink before mine do.”

He challenged her with a glare before he finally gave up and handed the coffee over, but not before ordering one of his own—double shots.

Kessen sipped the black brew and sighed. “It’s not that I hate London, I just hate what it represents.”

Nick nodded knowingly. “Tea.”

It was his typical Newberry answer. After working at Newberry and Co., employees were so overwhelmed with tea products, they blamed everything on tea itself, including world hunger. Naturally it was just a joke, considering tea was literally their bread and butter, but it didn’t keep them from teasing one another about it.

Kessen laughed. “More than tea.”

“Stuffy old British people who can’t hug?” He winked.

“Why can’t they hug?” Kessen asked thoughtfully. “I’ve always wanted to know why British people are so emotionally unresponsive. Then again, all of our evidence is based on stories from my father and from watching too much TV.”

Nick shrugged. “It’s the tea.”

Kessen rolled her eyes. “I think it’s all the weird aristocratic bloodlines not allowing themselves to mix. They have no flavor, for crying out loud!”

“And when you say mix,” Nick said, smiling, “you mean—”

“Stop being a guy,” Kessen interrupted.

His response was putting his hands up while he laughed silently. Do boys ever grow into men?

Kessen needed a change of subject. “Where’s Sammy?”

Nick looked sheepish. “It’s possible I told her you were going to London, and she panicked and is trying to get here as soon as she can.” His words gushed out in breathtaking speed.

He put his head down like a little boy who had just been punished.

“Why would you worry her like that?” Kessen slapped the back of his head. “She has enough on her plate right now!”

Sammy was the senior marketing director at competing tea company headquartered in Boulder as well. Her new product launches were due in a matter of days.

Nick rubbed the back of his head and shot Kessen a deadly glare. “She’s a big girl. She can handle herself. Plus, what was your plan? Go to London, then call and tell her where you were? She would have been worried sick!”

Kessen bit her lip. He did have a point. “In my defense,” she said, “I was planning to call her from the airport, not from London.”

“It’s the same thing,” he snorted.

“Is not!”

“Are we going to do this? Really? Stop arguing. You always get so argumentative when you’re nervous. How long do you have to stay in London anyway?”

Kessen sighed. “A Season.”

“Oh, so for the summer?” Nick said, winking at the sixty-year-old receptionist.

“Focus,” Kessen snapped. “And no, not for the summer. A Season, as in a London Season, where they have all the parties, and I don’t know if they still call them balls? I’m ignorant. Anyway, it will be more like four or five months.” She left out the forever part. Poor Nick couldn’t handle that much information this early in the morning.

Nick spit out his coffee, spraying it all over the new fashion magazine in front of him. “That long? And why does your father think you need to have a Season?”

Ah, the dreaded question Kessen knew he would ask. She silently contemplated lying. It wouldn’t matter, because he would find out anyway, most likely from her father.

“Um… I’m being launched into society. Oh, look! It’s my turn for a pedicure!” She jumped up from her seat.

Nick moved his hands to brace Kessen’s shoulders. “Please repeat,” he ordered.

“I’d rather not, my throat hurts.”

“Stop lying.”

She gave him a puppy dog look, but it didn’t work.

“Kessen?” he urged.

“Fine!” Anger welled up in her chest. “My dad’s going to disinherit me, and he refuses to pass the company to me unless I go to London and experience my heritage.“

Nick laughed. “Um, you’re American. As American as they come. For crying out loud, Kessen, you still say the pledge of allegiance every day!”

Her face reddened. “I’m being patriotic, Nick!”

“No,” he laughed. “You’re being a first grader.”

She punched him in the arm.

“Easy,” he mumbled, setting the magazine down.

“Does your dad know you at all? Does he know when you were small you dreamed you would be president, or that you have all of our founding fathers’ names memorized? Good grief, Kessen! This must a bloody nightmare for you!”