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Jed put her down and told her to stand. Off balance, she locked her knees and watched him whip off his shirt and shove it into the back of his jodhpurs.

Eden watched, mouth open, as he strode over to the hose attached to the outside tap, and doused his head with water, then his chest, and back of his neck.

His muscles bunched and rippled as he stroked water off his body with a broad hand, and droplets flew as he shook his head.

She felt off balance and woozy, tired but wired. And so turned on that she expected her panties to burst into flames at any moment. Hot, hot, hot… or was that from the allergic reaction? A bit of both?

Jed returned and scooped her up, cradling her against his now cool, damp, bare, wide-as-Australia chest. ‘Whatever I have left on me isn’t going to make a difference, Mick,’ he snapped.

He looked down, and their eyes connected.

The fuzzy edges of sleep and the narcotic efforts of the antihistamine distorted his image, but he was still ridiculously, stupendously sexy.

‘Put her down, and I’ll walk her up,’ Mick sounded annoyed, but from very far away.

‘She’s woozy, and besides, we need you down at the field,’ Jed said. ‘Kit fell off and has dislocated his shoulder again. You need to go shove it back in.’

Mick dropped an F-bomb. ‘That’s the third time in two years. That man is a lunatic.’

‘You go attend to him; I’ll take her up to the house,’ he said and tightened his grip as he started to walk, his stride steady and sure. Eden curled up in his arms, put both her hands between her cheek and his chest and allowed sleep to claim her.

She’d deal with whatever madness life had handed her later.

* * *

‘Jungkook!’

‘Jin!’

‘Seriously? Jungkook for the win.’

‘RM is amazing, too.’

Later that afternoon, after a long sleep, Eden couldn’t believe that she was sitting cross-legged in the middle of what she was sure was a seventeenth-century bed, discussing K-pop with Mick.

They’d been chatting about being fully fledged members of ARMY and the band’s performances for the last twenty minutes while Eden drank two cups of tea and scoffed four scones topped high with home-made strawberry jam and yellow clotted cream.

She was still covered in hives, but she felt a lot better than when Jed had deposited her on this bed several hours ago. Mick had also jabbed her with another antihistamine dose ten minutes ago, so she was expecting to feel sleepy again soon.

Mick sighed. ‘They are so incredibly talented. But sometimes I think of the sacrifices they made to get to where they are today and how difficult it must be to live a vaguely normal life.’

Eden nodded. She had no concept of what it would feel like to be that visible, to live your life in a fishbowl.

Frankly, she couldn’t think of anything worse. Just going to the police, being questioned by them, had been bad enough– terrible, actually– and she couldn’t imagine having reporters and fans in your face all the time.

While her uncle wasn’t K-pop, BTS famous, he was well known, and his liaisons with much younger women often made the online, and print, gossip columns. From what she’d seen, he didn’t seem to mind the attention.

Eden placed her teacup on the tray. ‘Are you sure MrCastle doesn’t mind me staying here?’ she asked, once again looking for reassurance.

‘He loves having people to stay. Did I tell you that this room is called the Tatooine Suite? There are five other empty guest rooms on this floor. Alderaan is opposite, with the Yavin, Hoth and Dagobah further down the long passage. Troyden’s obsession with Stars Wars knows no bounds.’

So she wasn’t putting anyone out. Good to know. ‘And you live on the grounds?’

Mick nodded. ‘With my demon spawn. Gemma is six, Liam is four.’

Should she ask? Would she be overstepping the mark? ‘Where’s their dad?’ she asked. ‘You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.’

‘Why wouldn’t I want to?’ Mick asked, reaching across the bed to snag the last scone, popping it into her mouth and closing her eyes. ‘Yum. Xavier is an Argentinian polo player, one of a handful of ten-handicap players in the world.’

Eden blinked, trying to keep up. ‘That’s good, right?’

‘Very. He’s not a bad father; he’s affectionate when he remembers they exist. Xavier is’—she hesitated—‘loud and brash and sucks the marrow out of life. He’s made to keep moving through life at speed, and children slow him down.

Naturally, I blame the kids’ wild streak on him.

’ Mick wrinkled her nose. ‘Though, to be fair, I used to be that way too.’

She was so open, so very honest, and in her company, Eden felt herself relaxing.

She’d never met anyone who made her feel so quickly accepted and more at ease than Mick.

Is this what it felt like to have a friend?

It was a silly thought, because she’d be leaving Elmsleigh House in the morning and she wasn’t sure she’d ever return.

Eden slid down the bed, tucked a pillow behind her head and yawned.

‘How long have you been living on the estate?’ Eden asked, feeling satiated. And sleepy.

‘I moved in shortly after Liam was born,’ Mick said, stretching like a cat. ‘Alistair had been living here for a few years already and I moved in with him?—’

‘Who?’

Mick rolled onto her stomach and placed her pointed chin in the palm of her hand. ‘Alistair, one of my three stepbrothers.’

‘You have three stepbrothers?’

Mick grinned. ‘Growing up with them was why I mistakenly thought I could handle Xavier.’

Eden loved hearing stories about other people’s families. ‘How did you come to have three stepbrothers?’

Oh, she knew that Troyden had been married and divorced, that he had stepchildren, but Eden suspected Mick’s version of the story would be a lot more interesting, and vivid, than what the press reported.

This felt like a girly heart-to-heart, a combination of a sleepover and gossip-sesh. And she was here for it. Because it might, realistically, be her first and last.

‘Okay, so Troyden is very bad at keeping wives, but he excels at keeping his stepkids around. Alistair is his oldest step and he occupies the first cottage. He’s crazy about Justin, his saint-like husband, gym and boring spreadsheets, for the love of God.’

‘Spreadsheets are incredible,’ Eden protested, because she was partial to a good spreadsheet.

‘What’s wrong with a Post-it?’ Mick waved a hand in the air and lifted her nose. ‘If you defend Al and his love of spreadsheets, we can’t possibly be friends.’

Seriously? Oh, wait, the smile lifting Mick’s lips suggested she was teasing. Right. ‘Tell me about your other siblings,’ she murmured.

‘Anyway, Al and Justin, first cottage, no kids. I have the second cottage and share it with the demon spawn. Kael uses the next cottage along when he’s at home.

He’s a war correspondent and photographer, very intense, seldom around, and the youngest of my sibs.

I miss him.’ Mick pulled out her phone and scrolled through her photos, stopping on an image of a dusty, stubbled blonde staring into the camera.

Eden noticed the streak of soot across his cheekbone, and his intense, flinty green eyes.

He was hot, in a touch-me-and-get-singed way.

Although they weren’t related, something about him– his sheer masculinity, his no-bullshit stare, his wide shoulders– reminded her of Number Three.

‘I worry about him and am terrified we’re going to get a call saying that he’s been kidnapped by Somalian pirates, or by those scary dudes in Indonesia.’

He looked like he could handle himself. Eden passed Mick her phone, her eyes feeling like they were weighted down with concrete blocks. ‘And Number Three?’

‘Jed’s cottage is at the end of the row and is attached to his equally big workshop.’

A workshop for what? Eden yawned and pushed her cheek deeper into the softly scented pillow. She was so tired, she’d just close her eyes for a minute…

* * *

Jed knocked and poked his head around the door. Mick stood between him and the bed, but he could read his sister’s face and didn’t pick up any worry in the green eyes he knew so well. She held up a hand, halting his progress into the room.

‘Have you showered?’ Mick demanded, in her bossy doctor voice.

She placed her hands on her lower back and arched her spine.

Dressed for a day spent with her kids, Mick did not look like the shit-hot doctor he knew her to be.

She looked like what she was, a tired single mum trying to cope with two kids under the age of six and a busy job. He nodded.

‘Washed your hair?’

Jeez, Mick never took this much interest in his hygiene. ‘Yes, Mum,’ he muttered, pushing his hand through his wet hair.

‘Okay, then you can come in.’

Jed walked to the bed, looked down at the sleeping woman, and his heart bounced off his chest. He could see the tiny veins in the thin skin hiding her blue-green eyes and took in the length of her thick eyelashes.

Her strawberry blonde hair was half in and half out of a complicated plait, and the freckles on her nose and cheekbones were flecks of cinnamon on her pale skin. Her lips looked a little bloodless.

‘How is she?’ he asked Mick, placing his hands on the bed next to her calves, unable to look away from the woman who’d collapsed at his feet and scared the shit out of him.

‘She’s okay. She had an allergic reaction, but she didn’t go into anaphylactic shock.’ Mick patted his arm. ‘I didn’t need to use adrenalin and that’s a good thing.’

Why did he care? And why, for the love of God, did his voice sound like it was trembling? God, he hoped Mick didn’t hear it; she’d never let him live it down. ‘Should she have gone to A she stroked Rey; she wiped her face with a horse blanket. She got a megadose.’

Jed stood up and pushed his hands through his hair. ‘Shit.’

If he’d had any ideas of making a move on her, her allergy to horses blew that notion straight out of the water. He sometimes spent the best part of the day either on or around horses and was always covered in horse dander.

Jed resisted the urge to push a long tendril of rose-coloured hair off Eden’s cheek and behind her ear.

Not wanting to do anything stupid, he folded his arms and tucked his hands under his armpits.

He was a guy who knew how to keep his distance, fully in control of his body and actions, so why did he want to put himself between her and the world?

He had enough people in his life he was responsible for, enough people to protect, why would he want to add one more?

He stared at her, annoyed by his fast heart rate and prickling skin. She was so gorgeous, in a woodland sprite, Midsummer’s Night’s Dream , type of way. But he wouldn’t allow his out-of-the-norm fascination to blunt his cynicism.

He’d seen it all before. He just needed to find out what her story was, what she was up to?

Why was she interested in his stepfather?

Was she really allergic to horses or did she take something to make her break out in hives?

Okay, drastic, but it wouldn’t be the first time a woman did something extreme to catch the attention of an older, exceedingly rich man.

Rubbing his forehead, Jed felt exhausted.

Jesus, keeping an eye out on Troyden, a silver fox with more money than common sense, was an exhausting job.

Mick picked up her backpack, no black doctor’s bag for her, and slung it over her shoulder. ‘The meds have knocked her out, and her urticaria has settled down. We can leave her to sleep.’

He nodded, as always amused when Mick went into doctor mode. She stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. ‘I’ll see you in the morning,’ she told him. ‘Wish me luck, Gem’s decided that she wants dreadlocks, and Liam thinks bathing will rub his skin away.’

He smiled, remembering how revolting Mick had been when he’d met her as children. She often blamed Xavier for their kids being out of control, but Mick frequently forgot there were years when they were all convinced she was one breath away from turning feral.

Turning his attention back to Eden, Jed’s throat tightened.

She looked much younger than earlier, more vulnerable.

He picked up a long, loose curl to see if her hair was as soft as it looked.

It was. He rubbed the strands between his fingers and frowned.

As pretty as Eden was, something about her felt off. Very off.

What brought her to Elmsleigh?

It sure as hell wasn’t an interest in polo.

On the plus side, he’d pushed all thoughts about the Duke dying to the back of his mind.