How did you tell someone about the blackness of your soul?

How did you seek absolution from the one person who could never give it: yourself?

“I’m ready.”

Jacob whirled around, blinking several times before he could focus properly on the vision in front of him. Mollie frowned.

“Jacob?” she asked, hesitation in his name. “Are you all right?”

Too late Jacob realised he was still in thrall to his memories. “Sorry, I was a million miles away.”

She took a step forward. “It wasn’t a nice place, wherever it was.”

“No,” Jacob agreed quietly. “It wasn’t.” He gazed down at her, taking in her slender frame swathed in lavender silk. “You look beautiful, Mollie.” The dress clung to her curves and her skin was pale and covered with a shimmering of golden freckles. He wanted to touch her, brush her mouth with his lips. He took a step away.

Jacob knew he would need every lesson he’d learned in order to resist the greatest temptation he’d ever faced, far more than a whisky bottle or a clenched fist: the intoxicating sweetness of Mollie Parker.

ALL ABOUT THE AUTHOR …

KATE HEWITT discovered her first Mills & Boon® romance on a trip to England when she was thirteen, and she’s continued to read them ever since. She wrote her first story at the age of five, simply because her older brother had written one and she thought she could do it too. That story was one sentence long—fortunately they’ve become a bit more detailed as she’s grown older.

She has written plays, short stories, and magazine serials for many years, but writing romance remains her first love. Besides writing, she enjoys reading, travelling, and learning to knit.

After marrying the man of her dreams—her older brother’s childhood friend—she lived in England for six years and now resides in Connecticut, with her husband, her three young children, and the possibility of one day getting a dog.

Kate loves to hear from readers—you can contact her through her website:www.kate-hewitt.com.

Bad Blood

Lone Wolfe

Kate Hewitt

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my fellow writers in this continuity: thanks for making it such a fun journey!

CHAPTER ONE

WOLFE MANOR was no more than a darkened hulk in the distance when Mollie Parker’s cab pulled up to its gates.

‘Where to now, luv?’ the driver called over his shoulder. ‘The gates are locked.’

‘They are?’ Mollie struggled to a straighter position. She’d been slumped against her bags, the fatigue from her flight catching up with her, making her content to doze gently in the warm fug of the taxi. ‘Strange, they haven’t been locked in ages.’ She shrugged, too tired to consider the conundrum now. Perhaps some local youths had been wreaking havoc up at the old manor house yet again, throwing stones at the remaining windows or breaking in for a lark or a dare. The police might have needed to take matters a step further than they usually did. ‘Never mind,’ Mollie told the cabbie. She reached into her handbag for a couple of notes. ‘You can just drop me here. I’ll walk the rest of the way.’

The cabbie looked sceptical; not a single light twinkled in the distance. Still, he shrugged and accepted the money Mollie handed him before helping her take her two battered cases out of the cab.

‘You sure, luv?’ he asked, and Mollie smiled.

‘Yes, my cottage is over there.’ She pointed to the forbiddingly tall hedge that ran alongside the gates. ‘Don’t worry. I could find the way with my eyes closed.’ She’d walked the route between the gardener’s cottage and the manor many times, when Annabelle had been living there. Her friend had rarely left the estate, and Mollie, the gardener’s tear-away daughter, had been one of her only friends.

But now Annabelle was long gone, along with her many brothers; Jacob, the oldest, had started the exodus when he’d turned his back on his family at only eighteen years old. He’d left the manor house to slowly moulder and ruin without a single thought of who might age along with it.

Mollie shrugged these thoughts away. She was only thinking this way because she was tired; the flight from Rome had been delayed several hours. Yet as the cab drove off and she was left alone in the dark without even the moon to cheer her or light her way, she realised it was more than mere fatigue that was making her rake up old memories, old feelings.

After six months travelling through Europe, six months she’d put aside, selfishly, just for herself and her own pleasure, coming home was hard. Coming home was lonely. There was nobody—had been nobody for so long—living at Wolfe Manor except her.

And she wouldn’t be here very long, Mollie told herself firmly. She’d pack up the last of her father’s things and find a place in the village or perhaps even the nearby market town, somewhere small and clean and bright, without memories or regrets. She thought of the notebook in her case with all of her new landscaping ideas, a lifetime of energy and thought just waiting to be given wings. Roots. And she would make it happen. Soon.

She straightened the smart, tailored jacket she’d bought at a market in Rome, and tugged a bit self-consciously on the skinny jeans she wasn’t used to wearing. Her knee-length boots of soft Italian leather still felt new and strange; she generally wore wellies. The clothes, along with the notebook of ideas, were all part of her new life. Her new self. Mollie Parker was looking forward.

Smiling with newfound determination, dragging her cases behind her, Mollie made her way along the high stone wall that separated the manor from the rest of the world. The high hedge met the wall at a right angle, and although it was dense and prickly Mollie knew every inch of it; she knew every acre of the Wolfe estate, even if none of it belonged to her. She’d only been in the house a handful of times—it had always been an unhappy place, and Annabelle had preferred the cluttered warmth of the cottage—but the land she knew like her hand, or her heart.

The land felt like it was hers.

Halfway down the hedge Mollie found the opening that had always been her secret. No one, not even the boys from the village who snuck up here on dares, knew about this hidden little entrance. She slipped through the gap in the hedge, and headed towards home.

The gardener’s cottage was hidden behind yet another high hedge, so that it was completely separate from the manor house. The small garden surrounding it was cloaked in darkness, yet Mollie wondered just how overgrown and weedy it had become. She’d left in midwinter, when everything had been barren and stark, rimed in frozen mud, but from the heady fragrance of roses perfuming the air she knew the garden—her father’s garden—had sprung to life once more.

A lump, unbidden, rose to her throat. Even in the velvety darkness she could picture her father bent over his beloved roses, trowel in hand, gazing blankly around him. The world had shifted and changed and moved on and Henry Parker had stayed in the crumbling confines of his own mind until the very end … seven months ago.

Mollie swallowed past that treacherous lump and reached for her key. Starting over, she reminded herself. New plans, new life.

Inside, the cottage smelled musty and unused; it was the smell of loneliness. She should have asked a friend from the village to open the windows, Mollie thought with a sigh, but communication with anyone had been difficult. Now she reached for the light switch and flipped it on.

Nothing happened.

Mollie blinked in the darkness, wondering if the bulb had gone out. Had she left the lights on six months ago by accident? Yet as she gazed through the gloom she realised there was not one sign of electric life in the cottage. The clock on the stove was ominously blank, the refrigerator wasn’t humming in its familiar, laboured way; everything was still, silent, dark.

The electricity had been turned off.

Mollie groaned aloud. Had she forgotten to pay a bill? She must have, even though she’d paid in advance in preparation for her trip. Perhaps there had been a mixup. Something must have happened, some annoying piece of bureaucratic red tape that left her fumbling in the darkness when all she wanted to do was have a cup of tea and go to bed.

Sighing, Mollie kicked her suitcases away from the door and reached for the torch she kept in the old pine dresser. She found it easily, and flicking the switch, gave a grateful sigh of relief as the narrow beam of light cut a swath through the darkness.

Yet her sigh ended on something sadder as she shone the torch around her home. Everything was as it should be: the table tucked into the corner, the sagging sofa, the old range and ancient refrigerator. Her father’s boots were still caked in mud, lined up by the door. The sight was so familiar, so dear, so right, that she couldn’t imagine them not being there, and yet …

All around her the house was silent. Empty. At that moment Mollie was conscious of how alone she was, alone on the Wolfe estate, with the huge manor house vacant and violated a few hundred metres away, the cottage empty save her. Alone in the world, as the only child of parents who had both died.

Alone.

Jacob Wolfe couldn’t sleep. Again. He was used to this, welcomed insomnia because at least it was better than dreaming. Dreams were one of the few things he couldn’t control. They came unbidden, seeped into his sleeping mind and poisoned it with memories. At least his active, conscious brain was under his own authority.

He left his bedroom, left the manor house, not wanting to dwell in the rooms that held so much pain and regret. No, he corrected himself, refusing to shy away from the truth even in the privacy of his own mind. Not wanting—not able. Living at Wolfe Manor for the past six months as he oversaw its renovation and sale had been the most harrowing test of his own endurance.

And now, as sleep eluded him and memories threatened to claim him once more, he feared he was failing.

He stalked past his siblings’ bedrooms, empty and abandoned, forcing himself to walk down the curving staircase that was one of Wolfe Manor’s showpieces, past the study where nineteen years ago he’d made the decision to leave the manor, leave his family, leave himself.

Except you couldn’t run away from your very self. You could only control it.

Outside the air was fresher, soft with night, and he took a few deep cleansing breaths as he reached for the torch in the pocket of his jeans. The memories of the manor still echoed in his mind: Here is where my brother cried himself to sleep. Here is where I nearly hit my sister. Here is where I killed my father.

‘Stop.’ Jacob said the single word aloud, cold and final. It was a warning to himself. In the nineteen years since he’d left Wolfe Manor, he’d learned control over both his body and brain. The body had been far easier—a test of physical strength and endurance, laughably simple compared to the mind. Control over the sly mind with its seductive whispers and cruel taunts was difficult, torturous, and no more so than here, where his old demons—his old self—rose up and howled at him to escape once again.

The dreams were the worst, for he was vulnerable in sleep. For years he’d kept the old nightmare at bay and it had ceased—almost—to hurt him. Yet since he’d returned to Wolfe Manor the nightmare had returned in full force, and even worse than that. Even in its aftershocks he could feel his clenched fist, hear the echo of trembling, wild laughter.

He took another breath and stilled his body, stilled his mind. The thoughts retreated and the memories crouched, silent and waiting, in the corners of his heart. Jacob flicked on the torch and began to walk.

He knew most of the gardens now, for he’d taken to walking through them at night. He doubted he’d ever cover every corner of the vast Wolfe estate, but the neat paths, admittedly now overgrown, soothed him; the simple order of flowers, shrubs and trees calmed him. He walked.

The air cooled his heated skin, and his mind blanked, at least for a little while. He thought of nothing. He walked with purpose, as if he were going somewhere, yet in reality he had no destination.

Renovating the manor to sell it? You’re just running away again.

His brother Jack’s scathing condemnation echoed emptily within him. Jack was still angry with him for leaving in the first place; Jacob had expected that. Understood that. He’d already seen the flickers of disappointment and pain in all of his siblings’ eyes during their various reunions, even though they’d forgiven him. He’d reconciled with everyone except Jack, and while he’d steeled himself to accept the pain he’d caused, he hadn’t realised how much it would hurt.

How the regret and guilt he’d pushed far, far down would rise up and threaten to consume him, so he couldn’t think of anything else, feel anything else. He’d abandoned his brothers and sister, and even though he’d accepted the fact and even the need of it long ago, the reality of the hurt and confusion in their faces near crippled him again with the old guilt.

Where was his precious control now?

Jacob stopped, for something danced in the corner of his vision. His senses prickled to awareness, and he turned his head.

Light.

Light was flickering through the trees, dancing amidst the shadows. Had teenagers broken in again and started something in the woods? Fires, Jacob knew from his long experience on building sites, could easily get out of control.

He strode through the copse of birches that divided the once-ordered, once-organised garden from a separate untamed wilderness. Determination drove him; he had a purpose now.

He stopped short when he emerged through the trees into another, smaller garden, a place he’d never been before. In the centre of the garden a little stone cottage was huddled like something out of a fairy tale, complete with a miniature turret. And the fire was coming from inside, illuminating the windowpanes with its flickering light.

Jacob had never even known about the existence of this cottage, but he sure as hell knew it was on his property. And so was the trespasser inside it. The dream he’d just escaped still flickered at the edges of his mind and fuelled the anger that made him march towards the cottage.

He stopped in front of a stable door whose top half was made of pretty mullioned glass, and in one brutal, effective movement, kicked it open.

He heard the scream first, one short, controlled shriek before it stopped, and in the gloom of the cottage’s small front room he blinked, his vision focusing slowly. A woman stood by the fireplace hearth, half bent over as she tended to its flickering flames. The light from the fire danced over her hair, turning it the same colour as the flames.

She straightened now, a log still held in her hands. A weapon.

Of course, as a weapon it posed no threat. With nearly twenty years’ training in the martial arts, Jacob knew he could disarm the trespasser in a matter of seconds. But he wouldn’t hurt her. He wouldn’t hurt anyone ever again.

His gaze flicked over her appearance; she was not what he’d expected. Auburn curls cascaded down her back in an untamed riot, and her skin was as pale as milk. She wore some stylish, trendy outfit, utterly unsuitable for a life in the country.

What was she doing here?

And then her eyes, already dilated with shock, widened even further and the log dropped from her hands.

‘Jacob?’

Mollie hadn’t recognised Jacob Wolfe when he’d burst through her front door like a madman from a horror film. She’d only screamed once, the sound abruptly cut off as truth dawned, and with it shock. Jacob Wolfe—the lord of Wolfe Manor—had returned. He was older, of course, and bigger, his body sinewy and yet with the muscles of a man. Even in her shocked state Mollie took in the way the faded grey T-shirt and old jeans clung to his powerful frame. His hair was dark and rumpled and just a little long, his eyes dark too, black and cold. He held a torch in his hand, and its beam was pointed directly at her.

It was impossible. He was gone, maybe dead, disappeared in one afternoon, leaving seven siblings broken-hearted. He hadn’t been seen or even heard from in twenty years.

And yet now he was here. Here, and as Mollie stared at him, she felt a confusing welter of emotions: surprise, relief, even a strange joy. And then, suddenly, a sharp needle of anger stabbed her. She’d seen how Jacob’s departure had affected his siblings; from afar she’d witnessed their own sorrows and struggles. And she’d struggled herself; in the long, lonely years since Jacob had left, Mollie had wondered if the crumbling of the manor and the wild ruin of the garden had speeded her father’s own descent into dementia. She’d often imagined the seductive what-ifs … what if Jacob had stayed, if all the Wolfes had stayed, if the manor had remained loved and lived in, and the gardens as well …?

Yet now it was too late. Now her father was dead, the Wolfes all gone, the manor a falling-down wreck. Now Jacob was back, and Mollie wasn’t sure she was glad to see him.

Standing there now, staring at him, at his coldly composed face, so handsome, so blank, she felt the bitterness rush back, filling the empty spaces in her heart and mind.

‘You know me?’ His words were careful, controlled and completely without emotion.

Mollie let out a short, abrupt laugh. ‘Yes, I know you. And you know me, although you obviously don’t remember. I know I was always easily forgotten.’ Even that rankled. She’d watched the Wolfe siblings play together, seen them tramp off to London to go to their fancy department store, and in some desperate corner of her childish heart she’d been jealous. Their lives had been torn apart by unhappiness and despair—who didn’t know that? Yet at least they’d always had one another … until Jacob had left.

Jacob’s eyes narrowed, and his gaze swept around the dismal clutter of the cottage. Her bags still lay in a heap by the door, and Mollie was conscious of all the things she hadn’t thrown out before she’d left, because she hadn’t been ready to. Her father’s pipe and tobacco pouch on the mantel, his coat hanging on the door. Even her father’s post was stacked on the table, a jumble of flyers and bills and letters that no one would ever answer.

‘You’re the gardener’s girl.’

Indignation rose up inside her; it tasted sour in her mouth. ‘His name was Henry Parker.’

Jacob turned to face her again. His eyes were cold and grey and so very shrewd. ‘Was?’

‘He died seven months ago,’ Mollie replied stiffly.

‘I’m sorry.’ Mollie nodded jerkily in acceptance and Jacob’s glance flicked to the suitcases by the door. ‘You just returned …?’

‘I’ve been in Italy.’ Mollie realised how it sounded; her father died and she swanned off to Italy?

She refused to explain herself. Jacob Wolfe could think what he liked. She would not make excuses. He did not deserve explanations.

‘I see.’ And Mollie knew just how much he thought he saw. ‘And you returned to the cottage because …?’ It wasn’t so much a question as an accusation.

‘Because this is my home,’ Mollie replied. ‘And has been since I was born. You may have run out on Wolfe Manor, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us did.’

Jacob tensed, his body stilling, and Mollie felt the sense of latent anger like a shiver through the room. Then he relaxed and arched one eyebrow, the expression eloquently contemptuous. ‘Wolfe Manor is your home?’ he inquired with a dangerous softness.

Fury raced through Mollie’s veins and burst in her heart. ‘Yes, it is, and always has been,’ she snapped. ‘Even if you never thought of it that way. But don’t worry,’ she continued before Jacob could say something scathing in reply, ‘I’m not staying long. I just came back to pack up my things and then I’ll be on my way.’

Jacob folded his arms. ‘Very well.’ His glance took in the small, cluttered cottage. ‘That shouldn’t take too long.’

Mollie’s mouth dropped open in indignant outrage as she realised what he was implying. ‘You want me to leave tonight?’

‘I’m not completely heartless, despite what you seem to think,’ Jacob said coolly. ‘You can stay the night.’

Mollie swallowed. ‘And then?’

‘This is private property, Miss Parker.’

Staring at him now, his eyes so black and pitiless, his expression utterly unyielding, every grudge and hurt she’d held against Jacob Wolfe crowded her mind and burst from her lips.

‘Oh, I see,’ she managed, choking a little on the words. ‘You don’t have enough space up at the manor. You need this little cottage as well.’

‘It’s private property,’ Jacob repeated. His expression didn’t flicker.

‘It was my home,’ Mollie threw at him. Her voice shook, but only a little bit. ‘And my father’s home. He died in the bed upstairs—’ She stopped the words, the memory, because she didn’t want Jacob sharing it. She certainly didn’t want him to pity her. Besides her four years doing a degree in horticulture, this had been the only home she’d ever known. It churned in her gut and burned in her heart that Jacob Wolfe was going to throw her out without so much as a flicker of regret or apology, especially considering how her father had given his very life for the wretched Wolfe family.

Yet how she could protest? She’d been living here rent-free for years, and Jacob was right, it was private property. It had never been hers. She’d grown up with that knowledge heavy in her heart; she could certainly live with it now. She swallowed, lifted her chin.

‘Fine. I need a little time to go through my father’s things, but then the cottage is all yours.’ It hurt to say it, to act so nonchalant, yet Mollie forced herself to meet Jacob’s hard gaze. He was just speeding up her plans by a few days or weeks, that was all.

Jacob continued to look at her, his expression considering. His gaze swept over the cluttered room, seeming to rest on various telling items: her father’s boots, his pipe, her suitcase. ‘You have somewhere to go,’ he said, more of a statement than a question.

‘I want to let a place in the village,’ Mollie said. It was not precisely a confirmation, because she did not in fact have any arrangements made. Jacob must have realised this, for his gaze sharpened as it rested on her; it felt like a razor.

‘And what will you do with yourself? Do you have a job?’

Mollie bit her lip. ‘I run a gardening business,’ she admitted reluctantly. ‘But I’m hoping to expand into landscaping and garden design.’

‘Oh?’ His eyebrows arched as he took in this information. Then he nodded once, briskly, as if coming to a decision. ‘Well, in that case perhaps we can come to a mutually beneficial arrangement.’

Mollie stared at him in bewilderment. She could not imagine how anything between them could be mutually beneficial. ‘I don’t—’

‘If you’d like to stay in the cottage,’ Jacob cut across her, ‘you can earn your bed and board. You’ll work for me.’

CHAPTER TWO

HE REMEMBERED her now. She’d followed him—all of them—when they were younger, gap-toothed and tousle-haired, peeking at him and his brothers and sister from the tangled limbs of a tree or behind a hedge. She’d barely registered on his radar; he’d had seven siblings to protect and provide for. The gardener’s daughter had been completely outside his authority or interest.

More recently he’d seen her image plastered over the walls of Annabelle’s room. His sister must have taken Mollie Parker’s photograph a hundred times. And he could see why: with her pale skin and tumbling, auburn hair, she possessed a Titian beauty that seemed almost otherworldly, especially considering how he’d stumbled upon her in this enchanted little place. It had taken a moment to connect this flashily dressed interloper with the laughing, graceful girl on his sister’s bedroom walls, but now Jacob recognised the tumbling curls and creamy skin. She was beautiful, stylish, and he had no idea why she would be in this place.

On his property.

Why had Mollie Parker gone off to Italy the moment her father had died? Why had she returned? And what was he going to do with her now? The look of uncertainty and fear in those soft, pansy-brown eyes annoyed him, because he didn’t want to deal with it. He didn’t want to deal with the outraged Miss Mollie Parker. He had enough to worry about, managing the renovation and sale of Wolfe Manor, and attempting, as best as he could, to repair his fractured family. Concerning himself with a stranger’s well-being was not on his agenda. He didn’t need the feeling those proud yet pleading eyes stirred in him: something between curiosity and compassion, something real and alive. He hadn’t felt anything like that in … years. Nineteen years.

And he wasn’t about to feel it again.

He watched her gaze steal to the boots by the door. Her father’s boots, he suspected. Seven months on, she would still be grieving. He felt an uncomfortable jab in his conscience as he realised he could have been more sensitive; the unexpectedness of her presence, and her vulnerability, had caught him on the raw. For a single moment, with her fancy clothes and her trip to Italy, he’d assumed the worst. It had not taken long to realise his mistake, but then, it never did.

Still, Jacob didn’t want to have to deal with her. Think of her. Be affected by her. And yet something in her eyes reached out to him, spoke to him, and despite his misgivings and even his fear, he answered that silent call.

He would help her and at the same time assuage his own conscience. He’d given her the commission of a lifetime.

‘Work for you?’ Mollie repeated incredulously. She felt another sharp stab of anger. ‘My father worked for you for fifty years, and for the past fifteen he didn’t even get a pay cheque.’

Jacob stilled. Mollie realised she’d surprised him. She wondered if he’d thought of her father at all in the past nineteen years. He obviously hadn’t concerned himself for a moment with her. ‘I’m not talking about your father,’ he replied after a moment. ‘You are the one in need of a place to stay, and I happen to be in need of—’

‘I won’t be your maid. Or your cook. Or—’ ‘Landscape designer?’ Jacob finished softly. Mollie almost thought she heard laughter lurking in his voice. She must have imagined it, she decided, for Jacob’s expression was as coldly foreboding as ever.

‘Landscape designer?’ she repeated, testing the words. ‘You can’t—’

‘You told me you were planning to start a garden design business. And I happen to need someone to landscape the estate’s gardens.’

Mollie blinked, realisation dawning. ‘That’s—that’s a huge job,’ she replied faintly.

Jacob lifted one shoulder in an indifferent shrug. ‘So?’

‘But … a job like that …’ She paused, her heart beating with sudden, frantic desperation. She didn’t want to disqualify herself for such an amazing opportunity, but her own conscience required that she explain to Jacob the absurdity of what he was suggesting. ‘An offer like that should go to a much more experienced landscaper,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s a huge commission.’

‘I know,’ Jacob replied drily. ‘And you do too, apparently, yet you’re throwing it away with both hands.’

‘Why are you asking me?’ Mollie persisted. She could not fathom why Jacob Wolfe, after so many years away, would now offer her such a huge commission, and without even reviewing a CV or reference! Looking into his cold, hard eyes, he did not seem like a man to be moved by pity. So what did he want?

‘Because you’re here,’ Jacob replied, his voice edged with impatience, ‘and I need a landscape designer. I also need to turn around this place quickly, and I don’t have time to trawl through endless CVs of hopeful gardeners.’

‘Turn around?’ Mollie repeated. ‘You’re selling Wolfe Manor?’

Jacob’s mouth curved in a smile that was both bitter and mocking; there was nothing warm or funny or even human about it. Yet somehow the sight of that cruel little smile made Mollie feel only sad. No one should smile like that. She couldn’t even imagine the feelings that lay behind it, inside him. ‘Too much space for just one person,’ he said softly.

Heat flooded her face as she recalled the words she’d thrown at him. You don’t have enough space up at the manor. Well, she’d been angry. And she still didn’t know what Jacob Wolfe was about. Was he doing her a favour? Was this really pity? The thought made her want to throw the commission right back in his face, even if it was the stupidest thing she’d ever do in her life. ‘Still—’

‘It’s late,’ Jacob cut her off. ‘And frankly, when I went for a relaxing midnight stroll, intruders were not on my mind. If you’re so concerned about your own abilities, you can show me some initial designs tomorrow.’ He turned to the door he’d so unceremoniously kicked in just moments before. ‘And if you don’t, you can start packing tonight.’

Mollie watched him leave, his tall frame swallowed up by the darkness, and she sagged against the fireplace hearth. She glanced at the cosy glow she’d created moments before; all that was left was smoking ash.

Her mind spun in dizzying circles. It was all too much to process: coming back home, seeing her father’s things, meeting Jacob Wolfe again and now this commission… . The past and the present had come together with an almighty crash.

Sighing wearily, Mollie pushed her tumbled thoughts to the back of her already disordered mind and, after closing the door—Jacob had as good as vanished into the night—she retrieved her torch and headed upstairs. It didn’t matter that there was no light, or water, or even food in the non-working refrigerator. There were sheets on the bed, only a little musty and damp, and she was exhausted.

Kicking off her Italian leather boots, shedding the clothes that she’d never truly felt comfortable in, Mollie tumbled into bed and then gratefully, blissfully, into sleep.

She woke to bright summer sunlight streaming in through the diamond-paned windows of her bedroom. She blinked, groggily, yet within seconds it all came crashing back: the cottage, the job, Jacob.

She leaned back against her pillow and closed her eyes, yet the image of Jacob danced before her closed lids. He’d looked so much older, so much more rugged and weary somehow. What had he been doing for the past nineteen years? Why had he come back now? Was he in need of a little cash? Was that why he was selling Wolfe Manor?

Mollie told herself not to rush to conclusions. She’d thrown enough accusations at Jacob last night. She’d tried and judged him years ago, even when Annabelle, who as his younger sister had far more cause, had not. Annabelle, when she’d talked of her family, which had been rarely, had always seemed willing to forgive Jacob, to assume the best.

Last night Mollie had assumed the worst.

Had Annabelle seen Jacob? Did she know he was back? Did any of the Wolfe siblings know? So many questions. So few answers. And, Mollie acknowledged, sighing, none of it really concerned her anyway. She’d always danced on the farthest fringes of the Wolfe family, watching as Jacob and Lucas took their younger siblings out for a picnic, or played hide-and-seek amidst the vast grounds. No one had ever known she existed, until Jacob had left and Annabelle, scarred both inside and out, had retreated to the manor, refusing to show her face in public again. Then Mollie had been a friend, because she didn’t have any others.

But the other Wolfes—Jacob included—had never so much as looked in her direction. And they’d never considered what it would mean to her or her father to let Wolfe Manor fall into such desperate disrepair.

Shrugging these thoughts away, Mollie got out of bed. Now was the time to think of the future, not the past. Jacob Wolfe wanted some landscaping designs by the end of today, and she’d give them to him. Mollie didn’t know when she’d decided to accept the commission; but when she’d awakened in the morning she realised she already knew. This was too important to throw away in a moment of pique or pride, and there was something redemptive, something right, about restoring Wolfe Manor’s gardens to their former glory. She wasn’t doing it for Jacob, or even for herself. She was doing it for her dad.

She pulled on her old gardening clothes—jeans and a worn button-down shirt of her father’s—and tied her hair up in a careless knot. No point impressing Jacob Wolfe with her stylish new clothes. He hadn’t looked impressed last night, and the effort would be useless considering without water she couldn’t even have a shower or so much as brush her teeth. Armed with her notebook and a couple of pencils, Mollie put on her wellies and headed outside.

It was one of those freshly minted days of early summer, when the trees, impossibly green, glinted with sunlight, and every furled flower was spangled with diamond dewdrops. Mollie took several deep breaths, filling her lungs with the fresh, damp morning air. She felt a rush of feelings: happiness, homesickness, sorrow and hope. Excitement too, as she left the cottage’s little garden for the unkempt acres beyond.

Over the years, as her father’s condition had worsened and he’d been unable to tend to his duties—few as they were—on the estate, Mollie had taken over what she could. She’d kept up the small garden surrounding the cottage, enabling her father to exist in his own little make-believe world where the manor was lived in and the gardens were glorious, the roses in full bloom even in the middle of winter. Meanwhile, all around them, the estate gardens had fallen into ruin along with the house.

Now she walked down a cracked stone path, the once-pristine flower beds choked with weeds. Sighing, she noticed the trees in desperate need of pruning; for many, pruning wouldn’t even help. There was enough dead wood to keep the manor stocked with logs for its fires for a year.

The manor’s rose garden was a particular disappointment. It had once been the pride of the estate—and her father—designed nearly five hundred years ago, laid out in an octagonal shape with a different variety of rose in each section. Henry Parker had tended each of these beds with love and care, so often absorbed in nurturing the rare hybrids that bloomed there.

Mollie’s heart fell as she saw what had befallen her father’s precious plants: as she stooped to inspect one, she saw the telltale yellow mottling on the leaves that signalled the mosaic virus. Once a rose bush had the infection, there was little to be done, and most of the bushes in the garden looked to have contracted it.

She straightened, her heart heavy. So much loss. So much waste. Yet there were still pockets of hope and growth amidst all the decay and disease: the acacia borders were bursting with shrub roses and peonies; the wildflower meadow was a sea of colour; the wisteria climbed all over the kitchen garden’s stone walls, spreading its violet, vibrant blooms.

She found a bench tucked away underneath a lilac bush in the Children’s Garden. Her father had known all the names of the formally landscaped plots, and he’d told them to Mollie. The Rose Garden, the Children’s Garden, the Water Garden, the Bluebell Wood. Like chapters in a book of fairy tales. And she’d loved them all.

Now she laid her notebook on her knees and took out a pencil, intending to jot down some ideas, but in truth she didn’t know where to begin. All she could see in her mind’s eye was the weeds and waste … and her father’s lined face, concern etching his faded features as he worried about whether Master William, long dead, would be disappointed to see the beds hadn’t been weeded.

Perhaps landscaping the Wolfe estate gardens was too big a job for her. She had so little practice, so little experience, and the thought of ploughing under even an inch of her father’s beloved flowers and trees made her heart ache. Yet clearly this couldn’t just be a patch-up job; the Rose Garden alone would have to be nearly completely replaced.

Leaning her head back against the stone wall, Mollie closed her eyes and let the sun warm her face, the sweet scent of lilacs drifting on the breeze. She felt incredibly weary, both emotionally and physically. Too tired even to think. She didn’t know how long she sat there, her mind blank, her eyes closed, but when she heard the dark, mocking tones that could belong to only one man her eyes flew open and she nearly jumped from the bench.

‘Hard at work, I see.’

Jacob Wolfe stood in the entrance to the garden, his hands in the pockets of his trousers. He wore a steel-grey business suit, his cobalt tie the only splash of colour. He looked coolly remote and arrogantly self-assured as he arched an eyebrow in sardonic amusement.

‘You can’t rush the creative process,’ Mollie replied a bit tartly, although her mouth curled up in a smile anyway. It was rather ridiculous, having Jacob catching her practically taking a nap. She straightened, aware that unruly wisps were falling from her untidy bun and her clothes were sloppy and old. Jacob, on the other hand, looked cool and crisp and rather amazing.

‘I wouldn’t dare,’ he murmured, and Mollie’s smile widened. Were they having a civil conversation? Or were they—unbelievably—flirting? ‘I’ve just been walking through the gardens to assess the damage,’ she explained, her tone a little stilted. Her heart was beating just a little too hard.

‘So you’ll take the job.’

Now she actually laughed. ‘I suppose I should have said that first.’

‘Never mind. I’m glad you got right to it.’

Jacob looked so grave that Mollie’s tone turned stilted again. ‘Thank you. It’s an amazing opportunity.’

‘You’re welcome.’ He glanced around the enclosed garden. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been here before.’

‘It’s the Children’s Garden.’

‘Is it?’ He continued looking around, as if he’d find a stray child hiding underneath one of the lilac bushes like some kind of fairy or elf.

‘I always thought there should be something more childlike about it,’ Mollie admitted ruefully. ‘Like toys.’

Jacob nodded in the direction of the fountain that reigned as the centre piece of the small space. ‘I suppose that’s where it gets its name from.’

‘You’re quick,’ Mollie said with a little laugh. ‘It took me years to suss that.’ She glanced at the fountain of three cherubic youths, each one reaching for a ball that had just rolled out of reach. It was dry and empty now, the basin filled with dead leaves.

‘Did you come here as a child?’ Jacob asked, and Mollie nodded.

‘My dad took me everywhere. I know these gardens like my own hand, or I did once.’ She gave a small, sad laugh. ‘To tell you the truth, it’s been years since I’ve walked through them properly.’ She lapsed into silence, and when Jacob did not respond, she cleared her throat and attempted to change the subject, at least somewhat. ‘When are you hoping to sell the manor?’ she asked, a bit diffidently, for she wasn’t even sure how she felt about the manor being sold. It had been Jacob Wolfe’s home, but it had encompassed hers as well.

‘By the end of the summer. I can’t stay here longer than that.’

‘Why not?’ She couldn’t keep the curiosity from her voice; she had no idea what Jacob did or had been doing with his life. Did he have a job? A home? A wife?

Mollie didn’t know why that last thought had popped into her head, or why it left her with a strange, restless sense of discontent. She shrugged the feeling away.

‘I have obligations,’ Jacob replied flatly. He obviously wasn’t going to say any more. ‘Why don’t you come back to the house? We can discuss whatever you need to begin your landscaping, and agree on terms.’

‘All right,’ Mollie agreed. She glanced down at the blank page of her notebook, and wondered just how much they would have to discuss. If Jacob wanted to hear her ideas, she didn’t have any yet. The sun was getting warmer as she followed Jacob back to the manor, and while she felt her own hair curl and frizz and sweat break out along her shoulders and back, she noticed a bit resentfully that Jacob looked utterly immaculate, as unruffled as stone, as cold as marble. Nothing affected him. Nothing touched him.

Was that why he’d been able to walk away? To leave his brothers and sister, his entire family, without so much as a backwards glance?

And what of his father? Mollie felt a chilly ripple of remembrance. She’d only been eight, but she remembered the furore of the press, the gossip of the village, when Jacob had been arrested for the murder of his father. In the end he’d been let off; everyone agreed it was self-defence. And William Wolfe had been a brute in any case. The entire village had rallied around Jacob, and there had never been any doubt that he’d been simply protecting himself and his sister. Yet walking behind Jacob, Mollie could not keep herself from thinking: he killed a man.

Almost as if he guessed the nature of her thoughts, Jacob paused on the threshold of the house, turning around to give her the flicker of a cool smile. ‘I realise that as we’re the only two living on the estate, you might feel, at times, vulnerable. I want to assure you that you are completely safe with me.’

Mollie flushed with shame at the nature of her own thoughts. They were utterly unworthy of either her or Jacob. She might be a bit angry at him, and bitter about all the lost years, but she was not at all afraid. In fact, there was something almost comforting about Jacob’s steady presence, and she realised that despite the fact he’d broken into her cottage last night, she did feel safe with him. Secure. The thought surprised her, even as she acknowledged the rightness of it.

‘Thank you for that reassurance,’ she said a bit pertly, desperate to lighten the mood even a little bit, ‘but it’s really not necessary. I know I’m safe.’

Something flickered in Jacob’s eyes, and his mouth twitched. She might feel safe with him, but Mollie knew she had no idea what he thought. Felt. He gave a brief nod and led the way inside.

Outside, the manor was covered in scaffolding, and inside, Mollie could see how much work was being done. The floor was draped with drop cloths, and ladders lay propped against different walls; nearly all the furniture was covered in dust sheets. From somewhere in the distance she heard the steady rhythm of a hammer.

‘You’re hard at work, I see,’ she said, parroting his words back at him, and was rewarded with a tiny smile, one corner of his mouth flicking gently upwards. It was, Mollie realised, the first time he’d smiled since she’d seen him, and it did something strange to her insides; she felt as if she’d just gulped too much fizzy soda and was filled with bubbles.

Then he turned away from her and she was left flat.

Uh-oh. She didn’t want to be feeling like that, didn’t want to have any kind of ephemeral, effervescent reaction to Jacob Wolfe. She knew what that kind of feeling signified, what it meant.

Attraction.

Desire.

No way. Jacob Wolfe was not a man to dally with. Yes, he might exude a steady presence, but that control had a ruthless, unyielding core. He’d walked away from his family and responsibilities without a single explanation, had remained silent for nineteen years, letting his siblings fear and think the worst. She could not, would not, allow herself to be attracted to him even for an instant, even if he was incredibly good-looking, even if she’d always thought he had the same perfectly sculpted look as the prince in her old book of fairy tales, except with dark hair and no smile.

Even when he was younger he hadn’t smiled much—at least, not that she could remember. He’d always seemed serious, preoccupied, as if the weight of the world rested on those boyish shoulders. Of all the Wolfe children, Jacob had fascinated her the most. Something in his eyes, in his beautiful, unsmiling face, had called out to her. Not that he’d ever noticed.

He turned back to her again, and she took in the clean, strong lines of his cheek and jaw. She smelled his aftershave, something understated and woodsy.

‘Right this way,’ Jacob murmured, and led her into what seemed to be the only room that remained untouched by the renovations. William Wolfe’s study.

Mollie gazed around the oak-panelled room with its huge partners’ desk and deep leather chairs and a memory flooded over with her such sudden, merciless detail that she felt dizzy. Dizzy and sick.

She’d been four or five years old, brought here by her father, holding his hand. The office had smelled funny; Mollie remembered it now as stale cigarette smoke and the pungent fumes of alcohol. Of course she hadn’t recognised those scents as a child.

Jacob must have seen or perhaps just sensed her involuntary recoil as she entered the room, for he turned around with a wry, mocking smile and said, ‘I don’t particularly like this room either.’

‘Why do you use it, then?’ Mollie asked. Her voice sounded strange and scratchy.

Her father had been asking for money, she remembered. He was a proud man, and even at her young age Mollie had known he didn’t like to do it.

I haven’t been paid in six months, sir.

William Wolfe had been impatient, bored, scornful. He’d refused at first, and when Henry Parker had doggedly continued, his head lowered in respect, he’d thrown several notes at him and stalked from the room. Still holding her hand, Henry had bent to pick them up. Mollie had seen the sheen of tears in his eyes and known something was terribly wrong. She’d completely forgotten the episode until now, when it came back with the smells and the sights and the churning sense of fear and uncertainty.

She looked at Jacob now; he was gazing around the room with a dispassionate air of assessment. ‘It’s good for me,’ he said at last, and Mollie wondered what that meant. She decided not to ask.

She moved into the room, stepping gingerly across the thick, faded Turkish carpet, her notebook clasped to her chest as if she were a timid schoolgirl. The memory still reverberated through her, made her realise—a little bit—what Jacob and his siblings had endured from their father. She’d experienced only a moment of it; they’d had a lifetime. Annabelle had never really spoke of her father to Mollie, never wanted to mention the terrible night that had given her the scar she was so self-conscious about.

Mollie was starting to realise now just how much she didn’t know.

‘Here.’ Jacob held out a folded piece of paper. ‘This is yours, I believe.’ Mollie took it automatically, although she had no idea what it could possibly be. Nothing of hers had ever been at the manor. ‘I had the water and electricity turned back on at the cottage,’ Jacob continued. ‘So you should be comfortable there for however long the landscaping takes.’

Mollie barely heard what he’d said. She had opened the paper he’d given her, and now gaped at it in soundless shock. It was a cheque. For five hundred thousand pounds.

‘What …?’ Her mind spun. She could barely get her head around all those noughts.

‘Back pay,’ Jacob explained briefly. ‘For your father.’

Ten years of back pay. Her fingers clenched on the paper. ‘You don’t—’

‘Whatever you may think of me, I’m not a thief.’

Mollie swallowed. How did Jacob know what she thought of him? At that moment, she didn’t even know herself. And she was beginning to wonder if the assumptions and judgements she’d unconsciously made over the years about Jacob Wolfe were true at all. The thought filled her with an uneasy curiosity.

‘This is more than he would have earned,’ she finally said. ‘A lot more.’

Jacob shrugged. ‘With interest.’

‘That’s not—’

‘It’s standard business practice.’ He cut her off, his voice edged with impatience. ‘Trust me, I can afford it. Now shall we discuss the landscaping?’

What had Jacob been doing, Mollie wondered, that made half a million pounds a negligible amount of money? Stiffly she sat on the edge of the chair in front of the desk. She slipped the cheque into her pocket; she still didn’t know if she ever would cash it.

‘Thank you,’ she said, awkwardly, because how did you thank someone for giving you a fortune, especially when it seemed to matter so little to him?

Jacob shrugged her gratitude aside. ‘So.’ He folded his hands on the desk and levelled her with one dark look. His eyes, Mollie thought, were endlessly black. No silver or gold glints, no warmth or light. Just black. ‘You mentioned there was damage. Besides the obvious?’

‘It looks like a virus has claimed most of the bushes in the Rose Garden. There are a lot of dead trees that need to be cleared and cut, and of course all the stonework and masonry need to be repointed.’ Jacob nodded, clearly expecting her to continue. ‘I don’t want to take away from the beauty of the original design,’ Mollie said firmly. ‘The gardens’ designs are at least five hundred years old in some places. So whatever landscaping I do, I’d like to maintain the integrity of the original work.’

‘Of course.’

‘Like you’re doing with the house,’ she added. ‘Aren’t you?’

There was a tiny pause. ‘Of course,’ he said again. ‘The house is a historic monument. The last thing I want to do is modernise it needlessly.’

‘Who is overseeing the renovations?’

‘I am.’

‘I mean, what company. Did you hire an architect?’

Another tiny pause. ‘J Design.’

Mollie sat back, impressed. ‘They’re quite good, aren’t they?’

Jacob gave her the faintest of smiles. ‘So I’ve heard.’

She glanced around the room; even with the windows thrown open to the fresh summer day, she thought she could still catch the stale whiff of cigarette smoke, the reek of old alcohol. Or was that just her imagination? She felt claustrophobic, as if the house and its memories were pressing in on her, squeezing the very breath and life out of her. She could only imagine how Jacob felt. He had so many more memories here than she did. ‘When are you hoping to put the manor on the market?’

Jacob’s face tightened, his mouth thinning to a hard line. ‘As soon as possible.’

‘You won’t miss it?’ Mollie asked impulsively. She didn’t know what made her ask the question; perhaps it was the force of her own memories, or maybe the way Jacob looked so hard, so unfeeling. Yet he’d cared enough to give her her father’s back pay and then some. Or was that just out of guilt or perhaps pity? Did the man feel anything at all? Looking at his impassive face, she could hardly credit him with any deep emotion. ‘It was your home,’ she said quietly. ‘Whatever happened here.’

‘And it’s time for it to be someone else’s home,’ Jacob replied coolly. Mollie could tell she’d pushed too far, asked too much. He rose from the desk, clearly expecting her to rise as well. ‘Feel free to order whatever you need to begin the landscaping work. You can send the bills to me.’

The thought was incredible. The greatest commission she’d probably ever receive, with carte blanche to do as she liked. It was like a dream. A fantasy. Yet she still felt uneasy, uncertain … and no more so than when she looked into Jacob’s dark eyes. It was like looking into a deep pit, Mollie thought. An endless well of … sorrow. The word popped into her mind, as unexpected as a bubble—the bubbles she’d felt earlier. Perhaps sorrow was an emotion he felt.

‘Thank you,’ she finally said. ‘You’re putting an awful lot of trust in me.’

Jacob’s face twisted for no more than a second, and something like pain flashed in his eyes. Then his expression ironed out, as blank and implacable as ever. ‘Then earn it,’ he replied brusquely. ‘Starting now.’ He walked out of the study, leaving Mollie no choice but to follow.

CHAPTER THREE

MOLLIE threw herself into the work. She wanted to, and it was easier than dealing with the other demands of her life … packing up her father’s things, or thinking about her own future, or wondering about Jacob Wolfe.

She spent an inordinate amount of time doing the latter. She wanted to ask him where he’d been, what he’d done, why he’d come back. She never got the chance. In the week she’d been back at Wolfe Manor, she’d hardly seen Jacob since she’d walked out of his study.

Emails from Annabelle didn’t clarify the situation too much. Now that the electricity was working in the cottage, she’d finally managed to check her email. There were at least a dozen from Annabelle, detailing Jacob’s arrival at the manor, warning Mollie that he didn’t know she was at the cottage. Wryly Mollie wished she’d thought to check her email while in Italy. Access had been limited, and frankly she’d been happy to escape the world and all of its demands for a little while.

It felt good to work hard with her hands all day, to get sweaty and dirty and covered in mud. She came back to the cottage every night to shower and fall into bed, too tired even to dream.

And yet still, in her spare and unguarded moments, her thoughts returned to Jacob again and again. She wanted to ask him questions. She wanted to know what he’d been doing all these years, and what he was doing now. She wanted to see him again. Just to get some clarity, Mollie told herself. And some closure. Explanations that would justify why he’d left everyone in such a lurch. Nothing more.

Except even as she told herself that was all, she knew it wasn’t. She thought of the darkness of his eyes, the crisp scent of his aftershave, and knew she wanted to see him again, full stop.

A week after Jacob gave her the commission Mollie was still removing all the weeds and dead wood in preparation to actually begin the landscaping and give the garden new life. She’d hired a tree surgeon from the neighbouring village to come to the manor and cut some of the larger trees down, yet when he didn’t arrive and the hours ticked on, annoyance gave way to alarm.

She rung the man’s mobile, only to have him explain without too much apology, ‘Sorry, but I called the manor to check on some details, and was told to cancel.’

‘What …?’ Mollie exclaimed in an outraged squeak. ‘Who told you that?’

‘I dunno … someone there who picks up the phone, at any rate. Sorry.’

And Mollie knew who that would be. There were only two of them here after all. And she wasn’t supposed to feel vulnerable. Well, she didn’t. She felt bloody cross. She’d wasted a whole day waiting for someone who had no intention of coming, and Jacob had not even had the courtesy to inform her he’d cancelled her arrangements. She was operating on a tight schedule already, and she certainly didn’t need his interference.

After rearranging a time with the tree surgeon, she stalked to the manor. If Jacob Wolfe was going to interfere with her job, she wanted to know why. And she’d also tell him to butt out. She looked forward to the sense of vindication. Yet when she knocked on the manor’s front doors so hard her knuckles ached she received no response. She peeked in the windows and rattled the doorknob, uselessly, for the house was locked up. Above her the sky was heavy and dank, and she felt as if its weight were pressing on her. It looked ready to pour, and she was too annoyed and out of sorts to head back to the gardens in this weather.

Mollie decided to return to the cottage. She’d take the opportunity to start sorting through her father’s things, something she’d put off for far too long already. As she headed down the twisting path through the woods, the first fat drops began to fall.

An hour later, freshly showered and dressed in comfortable trackie bottoms and a T-shirt, Mollie started through her father’s things. She’d picked the least emotional of his possessions: boxes of old bills and paperwork that had never managed to be filed. Yet even these held their own poignancy; Mollie gazed at her father’s crabbed handwriting on one of the papers. He’d been jotting notes about a new rose hybrid on the back of a warning that the electricity would be turned off if a payment wasn’t made. She thought of the crumpled notes William Wolfe had thrown at her father, and how he’d picked them up. Her heart twisted inside her.

As if on cue, the lights flickered and then went out, and Mollie was once again left in darkness. She sat there in disbelief, the notice still in her hand. Then anger—unreasonable, unrelenting fury—took over. First the tree surgeon was cancelled. Now the electricity was turned off—again! If Jacob Wolfe had changed his mind about having her stay here, he could have just said.

Without even thinking about what she was doing, Mollie yanked on her wellies. She reached for her torch and her parka and slammed out into the night.

It had been pouring all afternoon, and the deluge from the heavens had not stopped. Despite her rain gear, Mollie was soaked in seconds. She didn’t care. Righteous indignation spurred her onwards, stalking through the trees, all the way up to the manor house steps. She knocked on the door as hard as she could, but the sound was lost in the wind and the rain. She knocked again, and again, sensing, knowing, that Jacob was home, despite the darkened windows. And even if he wasn’t, she refused to slink back to her servant quarters yet again. She wouldn’t be stopped by a closed door. Not this time. With a satisfying loud thwack, Mollie kicked the door.

‘Ow!’ The door swung open, and hobbling on one foot, she practically fell into Jacob’s arms.

‘Are you all right?’ Unruffled as ever, he righted her, his hands running down her arms, pausing on her waist and then examining her calves and feet. Even in her outrage and pain, Mollie registered a curious tingle as he touched her, so lightly, so impersonally, yet with obvious concern, his fingers deft and sure. ‘Did you break a bone?’ She thought she detected the tiniest trace of amusement in his voice, yet she had to be mistaken. His touch and his expression were both impersonal, emotionless.

‘No, I just stubbed my toe,’ she snapped. She stepped away from him and those light, capable hands. He reached behind her to close the door.

‘Is something the matter?’ Jacob inquired, and Mollie let out a sharp laugh.

‘I’ll say something’s the matter! Why did you cancel the tree surgeon I’d arranged? He’s booked solid through June, and I only got the appointment by calling in a favour. And if you had to cancel, you could have at least told me—’

‘I’m sorry,’ Jacob replied coolly. ‘I’m afraid it was an oversight. I was in London for the day on business and I had all my calls routed through my office. My assistant must have cancelled the appointment.’

‘Oh.’ Mollie didn’t know what to say after that. She found herself imagining the assistant, some sexy, polished city girl in red lipstick and kitten heels. ‘Well, why did you turn off the electricity?’ she finally demanded, blustering once again. ‘If you’d changed your mind about me, you could just—’

‘I turned off the electricity?’ Now Jacob looked truly amused. ‘I’m afraid I don’t have that much authority. The wind and the waves do not obey me.’ He glanced around the foyer, and suddenly Mollie saw just how dark the manor was. She noticed the torch in Jacob’s hand, and understood, far too late, that the electricity must be off in the manor as well.

It was a storm, for heaven’s sake. Even though she was shivering with cold, her cheeks reddened. She was a complete idiot, coming in here full of fury, and for what? Jacob had a reason for everything.

‘Oh.’ She shifted, and muddy water leaked out of a ripped seam in her boot. She stared at the spreading stain on the rug, and saw that Jacob was looking at it too. ‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled, feeling both foolish and stupid. ‘I jumped to some awful conclusions.’

‘So it would appear.’ Jacob let the silence tick on rather uncomfortably as he gazed at her for a moment, and Mollie suffered through it. Perhaps this would be her penance. ‘Well, I can hardly send you out in that storm the way you are now,’ he said, sounding resigned. ‘Fortunately the plumbing has already been repaired. Why don’t you dry off upstairs? Have a bath if you like. You can change into something of Annabelle’s.’

Mollie’s eyes widened as an array of images cart-wheeled across her brain. ‘I couldn’t—’

‘Why not?’ Jacob challenged blandly. ‘Surely there’s nothing waiting for you back at your cottage? I was just making myself some dinner. I only got back from London an hour ago. You are free to join me.’

Free, not welcome. Mollie was under no illusion that Jacob actually wanted her company. She was an obligation; perhaps she always had been. Perhaps that was what lay behind the cheque she still hadn’t cashed, as well as the commission he’d given her. Just his wretched sense of duty.

Yet he obviously hadn’t felt any sense of duty to his family; why should he feel it for her? Confused by her own thoughts, Mollie found herself nodding.

‘All right, I will. Thank you,’ she said, and heard the challenge in her voice. Maybe now was the time for the clarity and closure she wanted. Maybe now she’d get some answers.

‘Good. You know the way?’

Mollie nodded again, and Jacob turned from here. ‘Take all the time you need. I’ll meet you in the kitchen when you’re done. Don’t forget your torch.’

Without waiting for her to respond, he walked away, swallowed by the darkness.

As he stalked down the hall back to the kitchen, Jacob wondered why he’d just invited Mollie Parker to share his dinner. He wished he hadn’t. He didn’t want any company, and certainly not hers. She gazed at him with an unsettling mix of judgement and compassion, and he needed neither. He refused to explain himself to her, yet he couldn’t stand the thought of her jumping to more asinine conclusions.

She’d assumed he’d turned off the electricity again, just as she assumed he’d walked out on his family to follow his own selfish desires. He saw the condemnation and contempt in her eyes, had heard it in her voice that first night.

You may have run out on Wolfe Manor, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us did.

Jacob closed his mind to the memory. There was no point in thinking of it, of her, because he had enough people to apologise to and enough sins to atone for without adding Mollie Parker to the list. He’d give her dinner and send her on her way.

Yet even as he made that resolution, another thought, treacherous and sly, slipped into his mind.

You invited her here because you want to see her. Want to talk to her. You want her.

He’d avoided her this past week for too many reasons, on too many levels. Yet now her auburn curls and milky skin flashed across his mind; he could almost smell her, damp earth and lilac, and his gut clenched with a helpless spasm of lust. He was annoyed—and angry—with himself for indulging in such pointless, useless thoughts. Desires.

He’d had enough meaningless affairs, engaged in enough no-strings sex, to know when a woman was off-limits. And Mollie Parker, with her pansy eyes and tremulous smile and fearsome fury, had strings all over her. There was no way Jacob would ever get involved with her beyond the barest of business details.

The day he’d left Wolfe Manor, he’d made a vow to himself never to hurt anyone again, never to allow himself the opportunity. It was a vow he intended to keep; he knew his own weakness all too well. And anyone included Mollie Parker.

It was strange to be in Annabelle’s room. Mollie had only been here a few times, and then not for years, and she now saw that the walls were covered in photographs: artful pictures of a rainy windowpane, a bowl of lilies. And her. Many of the photos were of her; she’d forgotten how Annabelle had asked her to pose. She’d been her first reluctant model. Mollie stepped closer, shining her torch over the photos, now faded and curling at the corners. In half the photos she was posing rather unwillingly, looking both silly and pained. The other half were candids.

Annabelle had caught so many emotions on her face. It was strange, to see yourself so unguarded. There was a photo of her at age thirteen, gangly, awkward, a look of naked longing in her eyes as she stared off into the distance, caught in the snare of her own daydream. Her at sixteen, dressed up for a date—an unusual occurrence—looking proudly pretty. Nineteen, her arm loped around her father’s shoulders. He was smiling, but there was a vague look in his eyes that Mollie hadn’t seen then. The descent to dementia, unbeknownst to her, had already started.

She turned away from the photos, feeling shaken and exposed. Jacob must have seen all these pictures. He’d glimpsed these moments of her life that she hadn’t even been aware of, and it left her feeling vulnerable and even a little angry. Annabelle should have taken the photos down. Jacob should have.

Pushing the thoughts away, she turned towards the en suite bathroom. She’d intended just to dry off with a towel, but when she saw the huge marble whirlpool tub she gave in to the decadent desire for a long, hot soak. The cottage’s old claw-footed tub and sparing amount of hot water made it especially tempting. She turned the taps on full and within moments was sinking beneath the hot, fragrant bubbles, all thoughts of the photographs and everything they revealed far from her mind.

Half an hour later, swathed in a thick terry towel, a little embarrassed by her own indulgence, she reluctantly riffled through Annabelle’s drawers. Clothes from her teenaged years filled them; making a face, Mollie gazed at styles years out of date and several sizes too small. There was nothing remotely appropriate. Then she saw a T-shirt and a pair of track bottoms, along with a leather belt, laid out on the bed.

Jacob’s clothes.

On top of them was a note: In case the others aren’t suitable.

She stared at his strong, slanted handwriting, a strange tingle starting right down in her toes and spreading its warmth upwards. She hadn’t expected him to be so thoughtful.

Yet why shouldn’t she? Mollie asked herself. He’d been thoughtful to the tune of half a million pounds already. Yet somehow his thoughtfulness in the little, hidden things meant even more than a scrawled cheque. She picked up the grey T-shirt, worn to softness, and held it to her face; it smelled like soap. It smelled like Jacob.

He’d been in here, just a few metres away from the bathroom, while she’d been soaking in the tub. Naked. Groaning a little, Mollie buried her face in the T-shirt. Why was she thinking this way? Feeling this way about Jacob Wolfe? He was so inappropriate as boyfriend material it was laughable. She couldn’t even believe she’d mentally put boyfriend and Jacob Wolfe in the same sentence. She did not still have a stupid schoolgirl crush on him, she told herself fiercely. She didn’t even want a boyfriend, or husband, or lover of any kind. Her business was going to take up all of her time and energy, and after five years of caring for her father, her emotional reserves were surely at an all-time low. She didn’t need the complication of caring for another person.

But what about desire?

She couldn’t ignore the fact that Jacob Wolfe was quite possibly the most attractive man she’d ever seen, or that her body responded to him in the most basic, elemental way.

Still, Mollie told herself as she slipped Jacob’s T-shirt over her head, she didn’t have to act on that attraction. She didn’t have to do anything about desire. And she wouldn’t have the opportunity anyway, because as far as she could tell Jacob didn’t even like her very much.

She slipped on the track bottoms, which engulfed her, and rolling up the cuffs, she cinched them at the waist with the belt. She looked ridiculous, she knew, but it was better than wearing clothes that were two sizes too small and a decade out of date.

Taking her torch, Mollie started down the corridor, in search of the kitchen.

There was something a bit creepy about walking through the darkened, dust-shrouded manor on her own. She wondered how Jacob felt living here. Surely a hotel or rented flat would be more comfortable. As she made her way downstairs she peeked into several rooms; some looked as if they’d been cleaned but others were frozen in time, untouched save for dust and cobwebs. She pictured Jacob in the manor, moving about these rooms, haunted by their memories, and suppressed an odd shiver.

She finally found the kitchen in the back of the house, a huge room now flickering with candlelight. Jacob had brought in several old silver candelabra and positioned them in various points around the room so the space danced with shadows.

‘You made it.’ Jacob turned around and in the dim light Mollie thought she saw his teeth flash white in a smile. ‘I hope you didn’t get lost.’

‘Almost.’ She smiled back. ‘Actually, I just had a good long soak in the tub. It felt amazing.’ She gestured to the clothes she wore. ‘Thank you. This was very thoughtful.’

‘I realised Annabelle’s clothes were undoubtedly musty. They haven’t been worn or even aired in years.’

‘It’s strange,’ Mollie murmured, ‘how forgotten everything is. I haven’t been inside the house in years. I didn’t realise how much had been left.’

Jacob stilled, and Mollie could feel his tension. She knew the exact moment when he released it and simply shrugged. ‘Everyone made their own lives away from here.’

‘I know.’

He reached for two plates, sliding her a sideways glance. ‘Yes, you must know better than anyone, Mollie. You watched it all happen. You were the one who was left last of all, weren’t you?’ He spoke quietly, without mockery, and yet his words stung because she knew how true they were. She’d felt it, year after year, labouring alone.

‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘I was.’

‘Have you stayed here the whole time?’ Jacob asked. He laid the plates on the breakfast bar in the centre of the kitchen. ‘Did you never go anywhere, except for Italy?’

He made it sound as if she’d just been waiting, a prisoner of time and fate. Even if it had felt that way sometimes, to her own shame, she didn’t like Jacob Wolfe remarking on it.

Yes, I was waiting. Waiting for my father to die.

‘I went to university,’ she told him stiffly. ‘To study horticulture.’

‘Of course. But other than that … you waited. You stayed.’ He glanced at her, his eyes dark and fathomless, revealing nothing, but she felt his words like an accusation. A judgement.

‘Yes,’ she said in little more than a whisper. ‘I stayed.’ Even if I didn’t want to. Even if sometimes … She swallowed and looked away. ‘Something smells delicious,’ she said, trying to keep her voice light and bright and airy. Trying desperately to change the subject.

Jacob opened the oven and removed a foil pan. ‘I’m afraid I’m not much of a cook. It’s just an Indian takeaway, but at least the oven runs on gas so it’s warm still.’

‘Thank you,’ she replied, her voice still stiff. ‘It’s very generous of you to share your meal.’ As Jacob pried off the foil lid from the chicken dish, Mollie realised she was starving. She’d been so involved in going through her father’s things that she’d completely forgotten about dinner.

Jacob ladled the fragrant chicken and rice onto the two plates and then gestured to one of the high bar stools. ‘Come and eat.’

Sliding on a stool opposite of him, Mollie was conscious of how intimate this felt. Was. All around them the kitchen flickered and glimmered with candlelight. The house yawned emptily in several acres in every direction; they were completely alone.

She took a bite of chicken. She knew that now was the time to ask Jacob what he’d been doing all these years, why he’d left, if he’d ever spared a single thought for any of the people he’d left behind—all the questions she wanted answers to, deserved answers to, for that supposed clarity and closure. So she could move on from this place, just as all the Wolfes had, just as Jacob would again.

Yet the words stuck in her throat, in her heart. Did she really have a right to ask—and know—such things? She wasn’t even part of the Wolfe family. She might have spent her whole life on the Wolfe estate, in the family’s shadow, but she’d never been one of them. She knew that, had always known that. She’d been an observer, a silent witness, a peeping Tom. Never part of the family, not even remotely close. Her friendship with Annabelle and her father’s faithful service were the only links to the family whose actions had played such havoc with her own life. Why should she have ever expected the Wolfes to feel any sense of obligation or responsibility to her or her father? Annabelle’s offer to let them stay at the cottage had been a kindness, an act of charity that no one else had known about.

And yet Jacob obviously felt responsible; he’d shown her with that cheque. Yet she didn’t want money, even if it was deserved. So just what did she want from Jacob Wolfe?

‘So what have you been doing all this time?’ she asked. Her voice sounded too loud, too bright. Jacob stilled. He was good at that, Mollie thought. She knew she’d caught him off guard only when he became more cautious, more careful, his movements both precise and predatory.

‘Many things.’

‘Such as?’

‘Work.’

‘What kind of work?’

‘This and that.’

Mollie laid down her fork, exasperated by his oblique answers. ‘Why don’t you want to say? Was it something illegal?’

Jacob’s brows snapped together in a dark frown. ‘No, of course not.’

She shrugged. ‘Well, how am I supposed to know? You never sent a letter or left a message. Annabelle waited—’

‘I don’t,’ Jacob told her, his tone turning icy, ‘want to talk about my sister.’

Mollie refused to back down. ‘She’s my friend too.’

‘So I gather from the photographs plastered on her wall.’ Now he sounded mocking, and Mollie flushed. She hated the thought of Jacob seeing those photos, gazing at her in so many awkward and emotional stages.

‘Well, if it’s not something illegal, I don’t know why you can’t tell me,’ she resumed after a second’s pause. Jacob’s eyes flashed blackly.

‘And I don’t know why you’re so curious, Miss Parker,’ he drawled, his tone soft. Yet there was nothing soft about his body or expression; everything was hard. Hard and unrelenting and cold.

Mollie swallowed. Suddenly this had stopped being a conversation. It had become a battle, and one she wasn’t sure she wanted to fight. She had a feeling Jacob would win. She lifted her shoulder in a shrug and lightened her tone. ‘Of course I’m curious. You mentioned yourself how I’m the one who has been here for so many years. How I waited. And I did. I waited and I watched everyone leave, one by one, starting with you. So yes, I’d like to know what started the exodus.’ Somehow, as she’d started speaking, her tone had hardened and darkened. Mollie stopped, her lips still parted in surprise at just how bitter she sounded. She felt a little flicker of shame.

‘So,’ Jacob said after a moment, his voice still sounding soft and yet so very hard, ‘you don’t just want to know what I’ve been doing, but why I went.’

Mollie’s breath escaped in a soft, surprised rush. She might as well see this through. ‘Yes.’

Jacob leaned back, his position relaxed even though his eyes were wary and alert. ‘Why don’t you tell me why you think I left?’ Mollie stared at him, speechless. She hadn’t expected that

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