You Are My Summer (The Cuttings #2) [In (Painstakingly Slow) Progress]

Chapter Three

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Cole demanded, halting his stallion in one swift motion.

His brows drew into a vertical line at the ridiculous sight of the girl in front of him, who clung to the tree like an orangutan.

"Oh!" she said in a quavering voice, the muscles on her long limbs straining around his ancestral oak tree. Her straw hat toppled onto the grass with a final thud. Her head stretched back to gaze at the top of the tree, and huffed, "Oh you know...just chilling. Around a...tree trunk. I'm a tree, um, hugger."

Despite it all he found himself smiling inwardly. If he wasn't so damn pissed off, he'd probably tease her and grin at her creativity to get him to notice her.

Probably.

Just thinking about that made his features taut and, with a low, vicious curse, he descended his horse and walked straight toward the bloody fool, wrapping his hands around her trim waist and yanking her away from the tree before she made even more of a cake of herself.

She was caught off guard that she couldn't even form words but odd, breathy huffs as he effortlessly carried her (albeit roughly) into his arms, and plopping her on top of his dark grey Arabian stallion. As soon as he did that, he immediately placed one foot into the stirrup and hopped onto Gazelle.

And so, before she could protest, he clucked his tongue and nudged the stallion into a run toward the back entrance.

>>>>><<<<<

Well, I got my handsome dark knight on top of a majestic horse, all right. But he wasn't what I expected, like, at all.

"Excuse me?"

I couldn't believe what I had just heard. I mean, here I was, in an elegantly masculine study that seemed to be a set for freaking Downton Abbey, while a ridiculously handsome and equally crazy young man lashed out on me in clipped sentences that were filled with atrocious male arrogance!

"Oh come now," he drawled lazily, crossing his arms and leaning a hip on his giant mahogany desk, "aren't you here to set your sights on marrying me?"

"What?"

Who the hell did this dude think he was? The nerve! He looked fresh out of college or something and he was talking about marriage? My mouth hung open in sudden shock as I stood a few paces away from him.

He lifted one sardonic brow at me. My cheeks started flaming in quiet mutiny and humiliation. "Don't get me wrong," he continued dryly in a bored tone, "you surely know how to catch one's attention. Many other girls have attempted to best one another in trying to get my notice, and this is the first time someone also caught my grandaunt's awareness."

I didn't really want to ask but I had to -- so I burst out in a splutter, "Attention for what!"

"For becoming the Marchioness of Havenhurst."

My mouth clamped shut and I blinked my eyes in confusion. Marchioness...marchioness...marchioness. Where had I heard that term before?

Suddenly everything started clicking into place. My eyes rounded as my head snapped up to meet his wintry, unfathomable eyes that stared back at me coolly (what was the colour?)

I remembered my other romance novels; the way people back then had more titles than one could count; how there were English lords...

Oh, my God.

Aunt Mary's warning rang like sirens in my head, telling me to not go too far because I'd be stepping into the property of an English lord and -- my eyes grew even larger at the sight of this young man in front of me -- he was the one!