Love is a Battlefield: Games of Love, Book 1 (2 page)

Kate eyed her doubtfully. When it came to Jada, “great” was definitely a relative term, unless it was rated on the international scale of Highly Inappropriate Activities Kate Will Surely Regret. She would forever bear the scars—and the tiny sheep tattoo on her foot—to prove it.

“It was a good show, I’ll give you that,” Kate offered, glancing down at her foot with a slight smile. “But it wasn’t very nice of you to walk out on the ball and leave me with your mess. I know you think it’s silly, but I
like
those people, Jada. I
like
the group.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

“No.”

“Did anyone cry?”

“No.”

“Did anyone laugh?”

“Maybe.” Kate gave a reluctant laugh of her own.

“I know you wanted me to get along with all those old biddies,” Jada said, wiping down the counter. She winked at the customer on the stool next to Kate, a middle-aged man trying hard not to look like he was following their every word. “But I’m not really into costume play unless there are handcuffs involved.”

Kate shot some of the coffee—hot and scalding—out her nose.

Although Jada was her best friend, there were fundamental differences between them that would never be fully bridged. For one, Kate lacked the youthful stamina necessary to go to clubs five nights a week and still rise out of bed with perfect hair. She was fond of fripperies like cameo brooches and vintage dresses and Saturday nights with a good romance novel. And there Jada stood, brazenly sporting a tight pink T-shirt that proclaimed,
I may have lost my virginity, but I still have the box it came in
.

“You could have saved us both a lot of trouble and said ‘no’ when I invited you to the ball,” Kate pointed out. “You forget sometimes we can’t all waltz through life like it’s a carnival game.”

“Then you shouldn’t hang out with a bunch of sitting ducks,” Jada bantered, right on beat.

“Well, you’re making up for it, anyway. I’ve been handed down a punishment.”

Jada leaned in on one elbow. “That sounds promising. What is it?”

“We’re going out in search of land.”

“Land?” Jada wrinkled her nose. “Like Columbus?”

“Don’t blame me. It’s your fault. Lady Lovelace has officially put me in charge of this year’s Fauxhall Gardens event. It’s our big fundraiser of the year.”

Big was the objective, anyway. In the past years, the event had always turned out to be a typical Jane Austen Regency Re-Enactment Society meeting, but extended over two days and with a few lectures thrown in. Kate had other plans. She wasn’t just going to name it after the Vauxhall Gardens, a somewhat scandalous gathering place for all the lords, ladies and pleasure-seekers of 1810s London. She was going to recreate it, right down to the Chinese pavilion, paper lanterns and fireworks displays. There was no better way to capture all the romance and intrigue of the era than with a social event like that one—and the bigger and more elaborate it was, the more likely others would begin to take the JARRS group seriously. Take
her
seriously.

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Jada scoffed.

“No. It doesn’t
sound
bad.” Kate rapped her knuckles on the manila folder. “But when you have ten very opinionated women trying to plan a single event for the past five months, the result is a whole lot of conflicting ideas and nothing accomplished.”

“So you need land?”

“A venue for the event—big enough to hold a guest list of about a hundred attendees and on a budget that’s practically nonexistent. Oh, and I have four weeks in which to do it.”

Jada pursed her lips. “And you can’t just phone it in?”

Kate shook her head. Even if she could do a half-hearted job, she didn’t want to. Sure, some of the women in the JARRS group acted as though the wanton ways of the modern world existed solely to cast them into decline, but in all, they were simply a group of people who loved history. People who loved something that was honest and good in a world that moved too quickly and with too many sparkling blue thongs in the backdrop.

She’d been part of the group for years. Originally, she’d joined thinking it was a Jane Austen book club, but she’d quickly learned it was much, much more. It was a celebration of the Regency era and all the things that went into it. The food. The books. The art. The clothes—oh, yes, the clothes. There wasn’t a woman alive who didn’t feel transported the moment she donned her best pair of long, satin gloves and saw her breasts bubbling over one of those low-necked, puff-sleeved gowns.

Bras and jeans just couldn’t compare—which was why Kate avoided them wherever possible. And Jada, for all her faults, knew how much Kate loved it.

“All right,” Jada agreed, snapping her towel at the manila envelope. “You know you can count me in. But this land explorer is going to require liquid reinforcements before the day is through.”

“You mean like a big tankard of grog?”

Jada laughed. “As long as it’s got an olive in it, I don’t care what it’s called.”

The afternoon sun blazed in full force as the two women slid into Kate’s car, an outdated black Cadillac that looked as though it moonlighted in funeral processions. Jada ran her hand over the dark wood grain that made up most of the interior paneling and sighed.

“I swear it’s like you’re trying to actively repel men.”

“It’s just a car. Besides, I’ll have you know older Cadillacs are a very good investment.”

“Unless you’re seventy-five years old or sporting a diamond-studded grill, I think you wasted your money.” Jada shook her head sadly.

“I looked into horse-drawn carriages,” Kate said as she pulled the car onto the freeway. “But the maintenance is a bitch.”

She was only half joking. If she thought for a minute she could get away with a footman in full dress and a rackety brougham, she’d be the only homeowner on her block to convert her garage back into a carriage house.

She pulled the car up to the first location listed in the painstaking hand of Lady Anne, the JARRS secretary and Lady Lovelace’s daughter. It was a city park situated a few blocks off the freeway, popular among street artists and people who didn’t clean up after their dogs. One look at the rusty, ominously swinging play set, and Kate didn’t even need to get out of the car.

“No way.” She shook her head. “I don’t care if the city will let us use it for free.”

The second location was perfect. A popular wedding venue, it was nestled in the rolling five acres of a privately owned mansion-for-hire. The lawn sloped in perfect waves of greenery, and a pavilion stood in the middle of the grounds, flanked by fountains and marble statues. She could practically see the dinner tents pitched along the edge of the lawn, lanterns hung in all the white lattice work in an exact emulation of the real Vauxhall Gardens.

“Five thousand a day, and it’s available for the weekend,” the proprietor offered proudly.

Kate almost had to pick up her eyes from the ground. Ten
thousand
dollars for two days? She had one-fifth that amount of money to plan the whole thing, and that was with a generous infusion of her own savings—which, as a bookstore manager, she couldn’t really afford.

“We’ll get back to you,” Jada promised, steering Kate back toward the car. “Don’t look back, Katy-did. A flock of honest-to-God doves just landed on the lawn. It’ll break your heart.”

She looked anyway. The doves looked back, a perfect array of white and gray feathers set against the green lawn, their beady eyes mocking.

“I suppose ‘there will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere,’” Kate said with a sigh, quoting Jane Austen and ignoring Jada’s look of intense warning. Her friend hated when she did that—said it made her sound stuffy. “What’s next on the list?”

“Some state park called Cornwall. It’s down by the river.”

“That sounds promising. But it’s probably going to have to be the last one for today.”

“Good call,” Jada agreed. “Especially since we’ll need to stop by your house before we go out for drinks. Honestly, did you even do your hair this morning?”

Kate’s hand shot to her head. She’d done little more than wash her face and run her fingers through her longish dirty-blonde hair before heading out the door that morning. It didn’t take a professional stylist to realize the only thing saving her from a state of complete offensiveness were a few lingering curls from the hasty updo she’d managed for last night’s ball.

“It’s not my fault,” she protested. “I had to go into work very early to get caught up on inventory.”

“You look like my granny’s crazy neighbor—you know, the one who escaped from that religious compound twenty years ago? The one who has eleventy billion cats and thinks pants on women are the devil’s work? Honestly, I get the historic clothes you wear for your Regency ladies, but you really need to update this…” She waved her hand in Kate’s direction and sighed. “Forget it. What you need is a man.”

Kate reached for the crystal pendulum that hung from her rearview mirror and swung it in Jada’s direction. It missed, but that didn’t stop her hand from following in its wake and smacking her friend on the arm.

“Jada, I didn’t invite you so you could lecture me on my attire and love life. I’ve already told you, I’m perfectly happy with the state of both of them.”

Okay, so that wasn’t entirely true. Her style
was
a trifle outdated, and there were times when the pearls she’d come to wear as a standard part of her wardrobe felt more like a noose than a piece of elegant jewelry. But she liked the way the flowing twenties-style dress she was wearing made her feel—like she was one chiffon shift away from reaching a state of bliss.

And the love-life issue—well, best not to think too hard about it. She didn’t ask for a lot out of the men she dated. A little chivalry. A touch of elegance. And if he happened to have the last name of Darcy or Knightly or Wentworth, then so much the better.

At first glance, Cornwall Park was a plot of land undeserving of its title, not much more than an expanse of tall weeds marking a gravel parking lot. As she stepped out of the car, Kate could see nothing even remotely appealing about it. There were no trails, no children’s play areas, not even a patch of grass for an impromptu picnic.

“Oh, Kate, this is the best park ever,” Jada murmured.

Kate turned and followed the path of Jada’s gaze, which was riveted on a pair of figures in the distance.

Two massive, hulking figures.

Two massive, hulking figures about to—

“Jada, watch out!” Kate cried. She ducked behind her friend, using the taller woman’s size as a shield against a giant sledgehammer that was suddenly whistling through the air, metal and wood flying in a perfect arc of attack.

They were going to be killed. In the middle of the park. On a beautiful, sunny day.

Except the weapon whirled in a few complete rotations before landing a hundred feet away from them, and there was a span of about thirty seconds in which a more intelligent woman might have taken an opportunity to flee. But Jada hadn’t flinched—not even to bat an eyelash.

Kate stood up, looking around with quick, furtive glances that made her think of the way her cat, Gretna, reacted after a particularly spectacular fall.

“Did you use me as a human shield?” Jada cried.

Kate had always imagined she was the type of person who would be a survivor, the one person to get out of a burning building in time or find something to eat in all the post-apocalypse debris. She’d just never realized cowardice was going to be her path there. She laughed. “You’re so much taller than me, Jada. I can’t help it. I look to you for protection.”

“Protection, my a—wait. Never mind.” Jada cut herself off and nudged Kate with her hip, indicating their would-be assailants. “Two of the finest specimens of manhood I’ve ever seen are heading this way. Why the hell didn’t we fix your hair before we got out of the car?”

Kate ignored the remark and narrowed her eyes as the figures approached them. Jada was right—this pair could only be described with a word like “manhood”, though the term might be more appropriate when combined with adjectives of a pulsating nature. They walked with slow, confident steps and all the latent masculinity of farmhands of a bygone era. One of the men still held a sledgehammer, which he’d tossed casually over his shoulder as Jada might her long black hair. The other one looked bowlegged, a misplaced cowboy in the Inland Northwest.

“What are they doing?”

Jada straightened and stuck out her chest, her breasts a beacon for the men to follow in case they got lost along the way. “Who cares?”

Kate opened her mouth to retort, but as the figure with the sledgehammer drew closer, she found herself echoing the sentiment.

They were standing before sex come to life. The man in front of them was contained within a solid mass of muscles so tight and so taut, he looked like he might break out of his skin at any moment, his body molded as though he’d stepped off the covers of a romance novel only to spring to six foot, throbbing life.

Except this man left any number of barrel-chested cover models in his dust. Short, dark hair, dark eyes, a rich skin tone that hinted at an Asian heritage—it was a powerful combination even without the muscle definition. His face was full of smooth lines and perfect symmetry, the high slopes of his cheekbones set off by a close-cropped head that only accentuated his features. He had a rough patch of stubble all along his jaw and chin—a testament to the masculinity that pounded through every part of his body.