Hiring Mr. Darcy (Austen Hunks Book 1) Read online

  I took my own deep breath and counted to ten, a trick my mother had taught me when I was young. Harrison was right. Our boss, Dr. Edwin Holmes, the chairman of the history department, had told us many times that the entire college was watching us in the wake of Lacey Lewis coming to town. Paparazzi had been spotted on campus. Everton was getting more press than it ever had, and all because of Harrison working with Lacey Lewis.

  “Dr. Holmes asked me to take her,” Harrison said, moving his hands down my arms and cupping my elbows. “Several members of the press will be going too.”

  “I know,” I muttered under my breath. Harrison and I both wanted the same thing. Tenure. We’d do anything to make Dr. Holmes happy. I’d been hoping a win at the Jane Austen Festival might give us the publicity Everton needed. Apparently, Dr. Holmes had thought of a better idea.

  “My hands are tied here, Meg.” Harrison glanced back at Lacey again and gave her a little wave that made the creeping feeling of doom wrap its tentacles around my insides.

  When he turned back to face me, I asked, “Are you sleeping with Lacey?” I couldn’t help myself. The question just jumped out of my mouth like a dramatic little skydiver.

  Harrison’s eyes registered true surprise and instantly I felt like an ass. “Meg! No. What are you saying?”

  What was I saying? I had even briefly considered asking Lacey the same question. I glanced over at Lady Red Suit and then at Harrison again. He was handsome, but not movie star handsome. I supposed it would be funny to Lacey Lewis if I even suggested such a thing.

  “Look, Meg.” Harrison held up his hands in a calm, reassuring gesture as if he were trying to reason with an unpredictable monkey. The insane noise I’d made earlier was likely to blame. “I know how much you were looking forward to the festival. I think you should come with us. Be our consultant.” He cleared his throat and pulled at the lapels of his jacket like he did whenever he was anxious.

  Be their consultant? I’d rather be boiled in donut oil. Besides, Harrison didn’t need me. He knew everything I knew. He was just trying to appease me. I closed my eyes. I’d only been gone for five days. Five lousy days, giving a series of lectures on nineteenth-century England’s social norms to the history faculty at Yale. In a mere five days, it felt like I’d lost my boyfriend to someone who better knew the ins-and-outs of shopping for a tight-fitting red suit than the first thing about Jane Austen’s brilliant characters.

  “I’ll have to think about it,” I said, glaring at his tattersall shirtfront and considering how I could gracefully pull my suitcase up the multiple stone steps to my front door. Where was my deadbeat roommate brother when I needed him?

  “Let me help you with that.” Harrison started forward to assist me. Always the gentleman.

  “No. I’ll be fine.” No female with any self-respect and a Herstory bumper sticker allows a man who has just finished dumping her as his partner in Jane Austen fandom to carry her suitcase up ten stairs. Even if the stairs are ridiculously steep and she has a bunch of heavy books inside the suitcase. It’s bad form.

  “Okay.” He knew I didn’t like things such as having my car door opened for me or help with my luggage. He jogged over to me and kissed me quickly, half on the lips and half on the cheek. He turned to leave, and I began to hoist the case up the stairs like I was going for the crown in the Miss Ignominious pageant—which would be a much more fun pageant to watch than your run-of-the-mill beauty pageant, if you ask me.

  Harrison must have turned back and seen my slow, awkward plight, because the next thing I knew, he was at my side, trying to help me with the suitcase again.

  “I’m fine,” I insisted, refusing to look at him. A short semi-slap fight ensued, which I won. I needed to get my suitcase into my house and not cry. I continued my assent, my eyes focused on the shiny black door above me. The suitcase bumped my leg on each step and pushed me forward a little. Apparently graceful was out of the question.

  I pulled the luggage up the remaining three steps, hoping that when I turned back, Harrison and Lacey would be long gone. I pivoted on my heel.

  No such luck.

  Harrison was headed for the car, while Lacey’s shining eyes gazed at me from the side window. She actually had the audacity to make a frowny face. A freakin’ frowny face. Then she waved at me. An honest-to-goodness wave. Like, “See ya around. I didn’t just take your spot and run off with your boyfriend or anything.”

  “Meg, I’ll call you later,” Harrison said as he climbed into the car. “We’ll finish our talk.”

  “Fine,” I shouted over my shoulder, fumbling in my purse for the key to the front door. Why did I have so much crap in my purse? No one needs four different kinds of tiny hand sanitizers, even if they are ‘buy three get one free.’ I pushed aside the sanitizers, the empty orange and pink donut bag, my purple journal, and my ubiquitous dog-eared copy of Pride and Prejudice. By the way, purse-fumbling? Also not graceful.

  Then it began to rain. Because A) it was poetic, and poetic things always happen to me, and B) because the only thing less graceful than standing in front of your door, fumbling for your key in your crap-filled purse in desperation to get away from your boyfriend and his hot, famous employer as they stare at your back...is fumbling for your key in your crap-filled purse, in front of them, in the rain. Which plasters the bangs you shouldn’t’ve let your hair stylist talk you into to your wet forehead and makes you look like you are crying. Which you are not doing...yet.

  I finally found the bloody key, but in my haste to put it into the lock, I dropped it in front of my feet. When I leaned over to retrieve it, the unmistakable sound of fabric ripping met my disbelieving ears. I closed my eyes. Damn. Damn. Damn.

  I scooped up the key and jammed it into the lock as quickly as possible, and twisted the knob open with a jerk. I was just about to pull in my suitcase behind me and slam the door with gratifying force when I heard Lacey’s mock-concerned voice drift up to me from below. “Dr. Knightley! I hate to be the one to tell you, but your skirt ripped and your panties are showing.”

  Chapter 2

  When one is confronted with the news that one’s granny panties are visible, there are clearly only two choices. Laugh and quickly tuck them out of sight, or pretend you didn’t hear such information and blithely continue about your self-righteous business.

  Had Harrison not just tossed me over for Lacey Lewis on the night I had hoped we’d become engaged, I would have chosen the former. However, under the circumstances, I was left with only the latter as a viable option. Head held high, I pushed my recalcitrant suitcase inside with my foot. I let the door slam satisfyingly behind me, even though I knew Harrison and Lacey and the Audi had long since purred away.

  I glanced around the tiny foyer of my townhouse. A print of Monet’s Houses of Parliament hung on the wall over a cherry wood side table that held a silver bowl where I dropped my keys. The table generally housed a silver vase with fresh flowers, too. This time of year, I preferred sunflowers, but the ones that greeted me were half-dead from not having been cared for all week by my brother, Luke.

  Aside from the dead flowers, the first thing I noticed was the smell. The next was the mail scattered all over the dark wood floor from where the mail carrier had pushed it through the slot.

  “Luke!” I yelled. “Luuuuke!”

  “Whaa?” His voice came from the living room, not nearly as far away as it should have been if he wanted to avoid serious bodily harm...or at least a severe talking-to. I kicked off my sensible flats—Lacey had been wearing shiny red heels—and pulled my suitcase behind me into the living room on my fat little hobbit feet. The ones that kept me from ever wearing heels because they felt like medieval torture devices on such ungainly hooves.

  The sight that greeted me in the living room was my older brother, lying on the sofa reading a book, wearing his usual garb: boxers and a T-shirt. Old pizza boxes and half-empty beer bottles were strewn everywhere.

  “Luke, what the hell are you doing? This
place smells like an armpit and it’s a bloody mess!” Leaving the suitcase to its own devices, I splayed my hands wide and swept them out to the sides to demonstrate said mess. I knew I was being a control freak, but I couldn’t take my frustration out on Harrison, and Luke was the only one available.

  “Calm down,” Luke said, not looking up from War and Peace. “I’ll clean it up.” He took a swig of beer. Only my brother would drink beer while reading War and Peace. He pushed up his T-shirt and scratched his flat belly. His unfairly completely flat belly. If I so much as glanced at pizza, my pot belly swelled. Apparently, Luke had been subsisting on the stuff for a week with no repercussions or puffery.

  I trudged into the kitchen to get a trash bag out of the pantry and then trudged back with the lilac-scented bag (cuz that’s how I roll) and began shoving every disgusting thing into it. I am a solid feminist and the idea of cleaning up after a man makes my head want to explode, but I am also a complete OCD clean freak and my head would explode faster if I had to sit around in this mess. Hence, the trash bag.

  Luke jumped up and pulled the bag from my hand. He took over while I stood there, nearly shaking with righteous indignation, and glared at him with my hands on my hips. If you’re thinking I had a lot of righteous indignation on this particular day, you are correct.

  “Sorry,” he said, sweeping waded napkins and pizza crusts into the bag. “I didn’t think you’d be home so early. Weren’t you and Dr. Strangelove supposed to go on a date tonight?”

  “His name isn’t Dr. Strangelove, and this is my house. I’m bloody well allowed to arrive whenever I please.”

  He stopped shoving pizza boxes into the bag and lifted an eyebrow at me. “What’s wrong?”

  “You’ve made a mess in my house and as you’ve often told me, I’m a crazy control freak, obsessive-compulsive person. What do you think is wrong?”

  “No. Something else is wrong. You don’t use British cuss words and get all controlling unless you’re really mad. Pizza boxes don’t make you that mad.”

  Why did my bloody brother have to know me so bloody well?

  “I’m fine,” I insisted, fixing my unreliable, dead-giveaway eyes on the wall behind him.

  “I heard you call me a ne’er-do-well when you were in the kitchen,” Luke countered in a singsong voice.

  Busted.

  “Fine. Harrison dumped me.” I crossed my arms over my chest.

  Luke let the trash bag drop to the rug. He shuffled over and gave me a hug. I didn’t open my arms. My cold little nose, pressed to his chest, stung with self-pity. Luke was a foot taller than me. He smelled like soap and maybe pizza.

  “Oh, Meggie,” he said. “I’m sorry. What happened? Had a falling out over the difference between top boots and Hessians?”

  I wish. I at least could have won that argument.

  “No,” I snorted.

  “What is it? What did Dr. Strange—er, Harrison, do?” Luke always pronounced Harrison in a fake English accent.

  “We...” What exactly had happened? I had to think about it for a sec. “He’s taking Lewis to the Jane Austen Festival instead of me.”

  Luke pulled away from me and slapped his palm against his thigh. “I knew it. I always knew that dude was gay! Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but—”

  “Lacey Lewis.” I clarified with a sigh.

  The glee disappeared from Luke’s face as quickly as it had arrived, and he winced. “Oh, well, that’s awkward. Forget I said the gay thing.” And then, “Holy shit, wow. I was just kidding when I asked if you had a falling out. I never really thought...”

  I kicked aside the trash bag, slumped to the velvety gray sofa, and pulled my aqua Target throw pillow to my chest. Lacey probably bought throw pillows from Pottery Barn. No—from some fabulous chic boutique in Hollywood where throw pillows cost five hundred dollars each.

  “That sucks.” Luke was still offering brotherly platitudes as he went into the kitchen. When he returned, he had a beer bottle in each hand. He gave me one. I hadn’t had a beer in three years. Harrison and I preferred wine. I took the beer gratefully while Luke kicked the trash bag farther out of the way and lowered himself to sit next to me on the sofa. He put his free arm over my shoulder and pulled me to his side. It made me want to cry again.

  “Tell me all about it,” he said, taking a long swig from his bottle.

  This might be the most apropos moment to mention that my brother is actually not a ne’er-do-well. Nor is he a deadbeat. Well, not really. He’s not a scoundrel, a rake, or a rogue, or any of the old English names I like to call him when I’m mad at him. Which happens a lot when a neat freak and a mess live together for however short a period of time.

  Luke is actually a structural engineer with a master’s degree from Stanford. He worked at a huge corporation in the Silicon Valley for six years until two things happened. They wanted to make him a manager, and his thirtieth birthday arrived. Just shy of that event, he quit to join a country rock band, and now he’s the lead singer and a guitar player and gets steady gigs around our hometown of Milwaukee—and I’ve never seen him happier. But the fact that he doesn’t have a “real” job and leaves pizza boxes around stresses me out in a way it can only stress out someone who is obsessed with her retirement savings plan and throws away all trash with a promptness that would frighten most mortals.

  The truth is I think my brother is terrific. In addition to being creative and brilliant, he’s also handsome and friendly and charming and can sing, while I’m the sort who people sometimes call “terse,” sometimes “short” (and they’re not talking about my height), or my personal favorite, “curt.” Meanwhile, don’t even get me near a microphone if you don’t want your ears to melt.

  I adore Luke and he’d do anything for me, which is why, despite the vast differences in our living habits, I allow him to stay with me when he’s in-between highly inappropriate—though usually gorgeous—girlfriends. He inevitably ends up on my couch until I kick him out for his messiness, or for being too loud too late at night, or for breaking one of my candle holders, or any of the myriad other reasons we fight while living under the same roof.

  Typically, after I kick him out, one of his girlfriends usually takes him back after he does something insanely romantic, like serenading her beneath her window with a song he wrote specifically for the occasion. They stay together until something else breaks them up. Usually the topic revolves around the subject of marriage, which is a dirty word as far as my brother is concerned. He’ll text me and ask to come back, and I always say yes, and this is our dynamic at the ripe old ages of thirty-one and thirty-three.

  But none of that was the point, of course. All that mattered was that he’s my brother and I was sad, and I needed to tell someone. My best friend, Ellie, was in Chicago at a conference until Thursday. Even I, with my dislike of mess, had to admit that I was glad to have Luke to comfort me, pizza boxes and all.

  I took a swig of beer. I’d forgotten how much I liked it. “We didn’t actually break up,” I admitted, halfheartedly picking at the edge of the bottle’s label. “Harrison says Dr. Holmes asked him to take Lacey to the festival instead of me. For publicity. For the department and the college.”

  “Whaa?” Luke’s lips curled into a frown.

  “But I feel like I’ve been dumped. Dumped for Megan Fox.”

  Luke sucked air between his teeth. “Megan Fox is single again?”

  “Shut up,” I sniffed. “Lacey just looks like Megan Fox. I look more like Ellen Page. With glasses.”

  My brother took a swig of beer. “Ellen Page is cute.”

  “Yes. I agree. But she cannot compete with Megan Frickin’ Fox.”

  “Ellen is far too wise to try to compete with Megan,” Luke said sagely. “The Megan Fox man isn’t the Ellen Page man.”

  “Ellen Page isn’t even into men,” I pointed out.

  “That’s not the point.”

  I took another swig of beer and sighed. “I wish I was gay.
Maybe Ellen Page would like me.”

  He gave my forehead an affectionate thump. “You can’t wish yourself gay.”

  “I know.”

  Luke must have heard the defeat in my tone because he patted my shoulder and added, “Look, if Dr. Dumbass didn’t appreciate how great you are, he doesn’t deserve you as a partner.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Call the cliché police. You’re going to jail tonight. Next you’ll tell me that what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”

  He tilted his beer bottle toward me. “It’s true, isn’t it?”

  My mouth quirked a little. “I swear to God. I will slap you.”

  He patted me on the head. “You’re mean.”

  “You’re not the first person who’s told me that. But, I’m serious, Luke.” I squeezed the beer bottle between both hands. “What if Harrison falls madly in love with Lacey Lewis? She’s gorgeous, and they’ve been spending a lot of time together.”

  Luke rested his forearm on the top of his head and leaned back on the sofa. “So what? Breaking up with Harrison wouldn’t be the worst thing that could happen. You could find someone just as good, if not better.”

  “Oh, I’m sure of it,” I said wryly, rubbing my eye beneath my glasses. “There are scores of men out there looking for short neat-freak history professors who are a little too into nineteenth-century England.”

  “Well, you’re not going to find any if you keep using words like ‘scores.’ If I were you, I’d also eschew the words ‘fortnight’ and ‘daresay’ from your vocabulary while you’re at it.”

  He nearly made me laugh by using the word ‘eschew,’ but I wasn’t in a laughing mood. I was in a moping mood. I was firmly into mopery. “Be serious, Luke. Harrison was the only man I’ve ever met who wasn’t a hundred years old and actually had an opinion on the proper way to tie a cravat circa 1815.”

  “Jesus. And you’re sorry he might be into another woman?” But he grinned at me and pushed my shoulder with his cold beer bottle.