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‘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.
