The Mother And The Millionaire

Esme continued to stare at him. “I can’t think what else there is to know,” she responded at length. “You’re Jack Doyle, Internet entrepreneur and new owner of Highfield. I’m Esme Hamilton, single mother of one and ex-cleaner of your mansion. Do you think we have any common ground?”

“Is it Highfield?” he asked bluntly. “Is that the problem? You can’t bear for me, the cook’s son, to have it?”

Esme’s eyes widened at the slant he’d put on things. The animosity she felt was unconnected to house deeds and family origins.

“A little tip for the future, though. If you really don’t like a man, it’s best not to make those little moaning sounds when he’s kissing you. Might give him the whole wrong idea.”

She’s his in the bedroom,

but he can’t buy her love…

The ultimate fantasy becomes a reality

in

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Harlequin Presents (#2263)

The Mother and the Millionaire

Alison Fraser

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS one of those life-changing moments. For Esme, anyway. She opened the door and there he was. Not so different. Older, of course. Better-dressed, too, in dark suit and silk tie. But essentially the same.

‘Midge?’ He half smiled, uncertain whether it was her.

She didn’t smile back. She was sick with shock. It was as if he’d just risen from the dead.

‘Jack Doyle.’ He identified himself.

Quite unnecessary. A towering six feet two, dark-haired and grey-eyed, with razor-sharp cheekbones and a wicked smile, he wasn’t easy to forget.

She struggled to collect her thoughts, only to find herself stammering. ‘I—I—I…’

All her hard-won composure out of the window. A decade’s worth. Back to the gawky teenager, cursed with puppy fat and the awful nickname Midge.

Speech proved impossible. Just as well or she might have said, Go away. I have a life now.

And he wouldn’t have understood.

He took advantage of her silence to do an inventory. Heavy-lidded grey eyes travelled from her coiled blonde hair and fine-boned face to her slim figure in an A-line dress, and back again.

‘Who would have thought it—little Midge all grown up?’ His voice was teasing rather than mocking.

Midge knew that—no, Esme; that was her name—knew that, but it didn’t help. Still, it rescued her from incoherence.

‘No one calls me that now.’ She finally spoke and, looking down her nose, added, ‘May I help you?’

Polite veneer barely masking condescension.

He got it, of course. She’d expected him to. Doyle had always been quick on the uptake. Brilliantly so apart from when it concerned her sister, Arabella.

‘Scary,’ he commented.

‘What?’ she demanded, unable to help herself.

He shook his head but a smile played on his mouth. He was laughing at something.

She remembered that of old, too. Jack Doyle watching her family as if they were interesting curiosities, unable to comment because of their respective positions, but commenting all the same with the curve of his lips or the lift of a brow.

‘You haven’t changed!’ she accused.

‘You have,’ he accused in return. ‘Very lady of the manor.’

Esme glowered but was unable to argue, considering she had just borrowed her mother’s airs and graces to try and put him down. Unsuccessfully.

‘Better than being mannerless,’ she threw back at length.

He looked surprised, as well he might. He might have been the cook’s son, educated at the local county school, but Jack Doyle had always known how to behave.

His eyes narrowed slightly before he responded, ‘Well, you’ll know how that feels soon. Being manorless yourselves, I mean.’

So he’d heard. The manor was to be sold.

‘Is that supposed to be a joke?’

‘No.’

She hadn’t thought so. More a cruel remark. That surprised her. She didn’t remember that side of him.

‘Is your mother about?’ he added. ‘Her ladyship, should I say?’

‘No, actually you shouldn’t,’ she corrected. ‘My mother remarried.’

‘Of course,’ he concluded, ‘and presumably lost the title. Poor old Rosie. That must have been traumatic for her.’

It had been. In fact, her mother, Rosalind—who had never allowed anyone to call her Rosie in her life—had been very slow to take a second walk up the aisle. Only an ultimatum from her new husband had forced the issue.

‘Is she around?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘Arabella?’ he added casually.

But Esme wasn’t fooled. Jack Doyle had never been casual where Arabella was concerned.

‘No, she’s in New York,’ Esme relayed, then, after a pause, ‘With her husband.’

She watched for a reaction but there was none. Jack had always kept his emotions under wraps. Well, almost always.

‘She lives there?’ was all he said.

‘At the moment,’ she confirmed.

It wasn’t a lie. Arabella would be there for some time yet. Just as being with her husband wasn’t a lie. No need to tell this man that the two were sitting on opposite sides of a divorce court.

‘Well, I’d really love to chat—’ she curled her hand round the doorknob ‘—but I’m expecting someone.’

‘Yes, I know.’ The amused look was back on his face.

It was a moment or so before Esme caught on. ‘You’re it—the man from Jadenet?’

He gave a nod. ‘I’m it—or he, to be more precise.’

Jack watched her changing expression, but found he couldn’t interpret it. Initially he’d been pleased when Esme had been the one to appear at the door. He had always liked her. The best of the Scott-Hamiltons. Now she was so much prettier—beautiful, even—but had also grown disappointingly similar to her mother.

‘Phone the estate agent,’ he suggested, ‘check my credentials if you like.’

He proffered her his mobile phone.

Esme ignored it, her uncertain look turning into a positive scowl. She believed him but his whole attitude riled her.

‘You have no idea, have you?’ she accused.

Doyle frowned. He imagined he’d been trying to help her. ‘Obviously not.’

‘Do you know how many years there’s been Scott-Hamiltons in this house?’ she demanded with atypical arrogance.

‘Don’t tell me,’ he drawled back, ‘since the Magna Carta?’

Having never been a great history student, Esme hadn’t the first idea when that was, but it was scarcely relevant, as he was laughing at her.

He always had, only in the past there had been a degree of fondness in it.

‘What’s the point?’ she dismissed at length. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

‘Being of simple peasant stock, you mean?’ he concluded, an edge behind the banter now.

Esme was left wishing she hadn’t started this. She was coming over as the snob of the century, and that wasn’t really her at all. Jack Doyle had just thrown her off balance.

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘You didn’t have to. I know what your family thought of me. I heard it from the horse’s mouth, remember?’

Esme coloured. She remembered. She was unlikely to forget, having her own memento from that day.

‘I always thought you were different, though, Midge.’ Dark grey eyes studied her once more.

Esme wanted to say, I was different. I am different. But it seemed so much safer to hide behind the class barrier.

‘Don’t call me Midge,’ was all she eventually muttered. ‘I’m not ten any more.’

‘No.’ Jack underlined the word as he noted once again the new Esme. Slim and long-legged but shapely where it counted, at breasts and hips. ‘I can see that.’

His eyes stopped just short of undressing her. One of life’s ironies. Ten years ago she had longed for him to look at her this way. Now it was anathema to her.

‘Papers,’ she almost barked at him, ‘I assume you have some.’

‘Papers?’

‘To prove you have a viewing appointment.’

Jack’s mouth tightened as he wondered who Miss High and Mighty Scott-Hamilton thought she was—or who he was, for that matter.

He reached a hand into the inside pocket of his suit and took out his wallet. From it he withdrew a business card.

It was extended with a thin-lipped smile and Esme didn’t need clairvoyance to know she’d annoyed him. She took the card but, without her reading glasses, the small print danced in front of her. Perhaps it would have with her glasses on, thrown back as she had been to her past.

She screwed up her eyes and the print started to come into focus, but not before he suggested, ‘I’ll read it for you if you like.’

This time his tone was milder, less sarcastic, but it still sliced through her. Midge wasn’t the only nickname bestowed on her by her big sister Arabella when they were children, only she’d confined the use of Dumbo to outside parental range.

‘I’m not that thick, you know!’ she snapped back.

He looked surprised, as if such a thought had never crossed his mind. ‘Have I ever suggested you were, Mi—Esme?’

In fairness, no. He was the one who’d suggested otherwise.

‘I just remember you wearing reading glasses,’ he added.

She cringed a little. Was she forever printed on his mind as a plump, bespectacled teen? At the time she’d longed for him to look her way, to notice. It seemed he had. She just hadn’t measured up.

She stared back down at the card until the bold lettering came into focus:

Jack Doyle

Managing Director

J.D. Net

She didn’t bother scrutinising the telephone number. She was too busy absorbing the rest. He was MD and it wasn’t Jadenet as she’d heard her mother say—but J.D. Net. As in, Jack Doyle Net?

What else had her mother said about their prospective buyer? Some American internet entrepreneur worth mega-bucks. Had her mother been in the dark or was she too proud to admit the truth?

‘Does my mother know J.D. Net is you?’ she asked bluntly.

He shrugged. ‘Possibly not. I didn’t arrange this viewing in person.’

No, he would have lackeys to do that. Go buy my childhood home, he’d probably said. Only technically it wasn’t. The cottage in the grounds where he’d lived was the one thing held back in the sale. She assumed he knew that.

‘You’d better come in,’ she said finally, and left him to follow her into the hall.

It was stark and bare. What furniture her mother hadn’t wanted had been auctioned off. She had tried to auction the house, too, but it hadn’t made its reserve price and now they were struggling to find a buyer.

The chequered marble on the floor was worn but still magnificent. Jack Doyle looked up towards the sweeping staircase and the galleried landing above.

Esme watched him assessing, measuring, perhaps trying to picture it with his own taste of decor and furniture.

Eventually he walked towards the drawing room, his footsteps echoing in the hall, and opened the double doors to glance inside. He seemed to be taking brief mental snapshots, repeating the process for each of the main rooms until he reached what had been the dining room.

There he lingered. The room was bare but Esme wondered if he remembered how it was the night he’d barged in, looking for Arabella. Esme had sat at the window end of the long table, Rosalind Scott-Hamilton at the other. No Arabella. She’d left their mother to act as go-between, a task the older woman had seemed to relish. Esme had burned with humiliation on his behalf.

She was brought back sharply to the present as he finally turned to face her, his expression neutral. ‘I’d like to look round upstairs.’

Esme shrugged her permission. She knew she should be trying to sell the house and its good points but she couldn’t bring herself to do it—not to him, anyway.

Jack started to climb the stairs and she followed automatically. When he paused at the landing window where the stairs forked into two, Esme ventured, ‘Was it always an ambition—to come back and buy this place?’

Of course, it was a silly thing to ask. He was hardly likely to confess such cupidity.

His lips twisted slightly. ‘I see your reading taste hasn’t altered.’

Esme looked blank at this non sequitur. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Jane Eyre?’ He raised a quizzical brow. ‘Or was it Wuthering Heights? The one where the uncouth stable boy returns a rich man to wreak havoc on the family.’

‘Wuthering Heights,’ she responded, although she suspected he knew the answer.

He nodded to the view outside, stone terraces and cultivated lawns leading down to disused tennis courts, the maze and a small lake beyond. ‘Not exactly Heathcliff territory, is it? Don’t think I’ll hear Cathy calling for me out there.’

He was laughing at her. What else?

Esme knew how to wipe the smile from his face and did so, saying, ‘Don’t you mean Arabella?’

‘Arabella?’ His mouth thinned slightly. ‘As the Great Love of my life, you mean?’

She hadn’t expected him to be so upfront about it. Nor had she expected it to still hurt—his preference for her big sister. But it did.

Then he added, ‘Well, sorry to disappoint but I’ve moved on from there. I’ve had at least two or three Great Loves since then,’ he informed her, very much tongue-in-cheek.

Esme answered in kind, ‘How wonderful for you—and them, of course,’ hiding her real feelings behind sarcasm.

What else could she do? Tell him what a pig of a time she’d been having while he was living the life of Reilly? It wouldn’t be true, anyway. She and Harry were happy enough.

Jack was taken aback for a moment—this new Esme really had grown claws—but found himself amused despite the fact.

‘I’ll take that as a vote of confidence,’ he said as she began leading the way to the first-floor gallery.

‘I wouldn’t,’ Esme muttered under her breath but loud enough for him to hear.

Jack chose to ignore the comment but, wanting to set the record straight, continued, ‘Anyway, it’s more a coincidence, us buying this place.’

Us? Esme picked that up and pondered over it. Us as in his business, or us as in significant other?

‘We need a base near London. Sussex is well-placed for the Continent and Highfield is one of three possibilities the location agency came up with,’ he relayed as she showed him the first of the twelve upstairs rooms. ‘Unfortunately our first choice was sold off before we were in a position to move on it and the other place has no permission for business use, so that leaves Highfield.’

He made it sound as if he might settle for the house. Her beloved home. One of the finest Georgian manors in the area.

‘Never mind,’ she rallied, striding in and out of bedrooms like a demented estate agent, ‘it has at least one point in its favour.’

‘Which is?’ Jack followed in her wake and, leaning against a door jamb, forced her to come to rest.

‘Well, you could always claim it’s your family seat,’ Esme volunteered recklessly, resentfully. ‘Impress your other nouveau riche friends.’

She knew she’d gone too far even before she said it. She just didn’t care.

She wanted to pierce that seamless confidence. Hurt him as he’d hurt her, however unknowingly. Because suddenly it seemed worse that he didn’t know, had never known, hadn’t the first idea of the tears she’d cried for him, the pain she’d endured.

For a moment Jack didn’t react at all. The truth was he wasn’t sure how to. It was as if the family terrier, cute and loveable, had suddenly turned into a teeth-baring Rottweiler, guarding her territory.

Only it wasn’t hers for much longer, whether he bought it or someone else did. He’d gathered that much from the location agent. And, yes, though it held some appeal—the idea that Rosalind Scott-Hamilton would eventually discover it was the cook’s son who had bought her stately pile—it wasn’t part of some grand master plan. He would pass on it if it proved unsuitable.

‘You may have something there,’ he replied in dry tones. ‘Crest of arms on the door and my portrait above the mantelpiece—what do you think?’

Esme thought he was laughing at her again.

‘I’ll give you the commission if you like,’ he added.

‘Me?’

‘You were something of an artist, as I recall.’

‘That was in the past.’

‘But you went to art college?’

That had been Esme’s intention but reality had intruded.

‘No, I did other things,’ she dismissed.

Jack waited for her to expand on that statement but she remained tight-lipped. He guessed she’d probably gone down the finishing school-debutante route that her sister her taken. Was that what had changed her?

‘Do you want to see the other rooms?’ she asked offhandedly.

It drew the response, ‘Do you want to sell the house?’

She flushed. Did she want to sell the house? No. Did they have to? Yes.

‘I’m sorry.’ Somehow she gritted out the words. ‘I wasn’t sure if you were still interested.’

‘Well, I won’t be if I don’t see it all,’ he pointed out.

‘Right.’ Teeth clenched, Esme continued the guided tour.

At each room, she became increasingly conscious of how bare and decaying the whole house looked. Only her old sanctuary still had furniture. A bed, washstand, bookcase and chest of drawers were earmarked for her new home but she had been slow in arranging for the pieces to be moved.

‘Your room?’ Jack guessed, seeing the book titles on a shelf.

She nodded.

‘Are you still living here?’ he added, frowning a little.

‘No,’ she replied shortly. ‘Everything will be gone by the time the house is sold on.’

‘Where are you based now?’ It was a natural enough question.

She gave a deliberately vague, ‘Locally.’

‘Are you married?’ he added with mild curiosity.

The question made her inexplicably cross. ‘Who would I be married to?’

She recognised the oddity of her answer, even before he gave her a quizzical look.

‘Well, there was that boy,’ he replied with a slight smile, ‘from one of the neighbouring estates. You used to go riding with him. Sandy-haired. One of a few brothers?’

Esme knew who he meant but didn’t help him out. There had been no real romance with Henry Fairfax.

Instead she said, ‘Jack, you’ve been away almost ten years. Do you imagine everyone else’s life has stood still?’

‘Fair comment.’ He pulled an apologetic face. ‘But people do get frozen in time if you haven’t seen them for a while.’

Esme supposed he was right. Up until today—until just this hour—Jack Doyle had stayed in her head as her first love, a love tainted by anguish for a young man she’d idolised.

Now here he was, far too real, and bringing with him feelings of resentment that had somehow never properly surfaced till now.

‘So what is it that the new Esme does?’ he enquired with a smile.

The interest could have been genuine but Esme didn’t think so. Had he ever really noticed her with Arabella around?

‘I do people’s houses,’ she replied shortly.

‘Do?’ he echoed. ‘As in…what exactly?’

He sounded hesitant, unusual for him.

Esme glanced at him briefly. Something in his expression helped her read his mind. God, he really did think the family had fallen on hard times!

She was almost amused. Certainly amused enough to play along. ‘How do people normally do houses?’

‘You clean them?’ he said with lingering incredulity.

No, she actually decorated them, but she was enjoying his confusion too much to say so.

‘Have you a problem with that?’ she rejoined.

‘No, of course not.’ His own mother, though officially cook, had cleaned up after the Scott-Hamiltons. ‘It just isn’t something I pictured you doing.’

‘Well, that’s life,’ Esme concluded philosophically. ‘I never pictured you a big-shot wheeler-dealer businessman.’

‘Hardly that,’ he denied. ‘I design and market websites. That just happens to be where the money is now.’

It wasn’t false modesty. Esme knew that much. Even as a young man, Jack Doyle had never underplayed or overstated his achievements. He’d sailed through school and college, a straight ‘A’ student, but, being totally secure about his intellectual gifts, had felt no need to advertise them.

It was Esme’s father who had noticed and come up with the idea of him tutoring Esme. Up till then the cook’s son had done work in the stables or on the home farm or thinning out the wood. But, with his brains, surely he would be better employed doing something about Esme?

Looking back it was a mad idea. Why should a seventeen-year-old boy, however clever, manage to help eleven-year-old Esme when her expensive prep school had failed miserably?

But he had. That was the even crazier thing. He’d been the one to notice Esme could remember perfectly anything she was taught verbally, could talk with intelligence on most subjects and only descended into gibberish when committing to paper. Remarkably, he’d been the first to suggest dyslexia as a possibility, and tests had proved him right.

Esme found herself treading down memory lane once more and pulled herself back sharply.

‘And money is important?’ she remarked for something to say.

‘It is if you haven’t got any,’ he responded quite equably.

Esme didn’t argue. She knew he was talking from experience. His mother had died from cancer just after his finals, keeping her illness secret almost to the end. Accompanied by Jack, she had gone home to her native Ireland for a holiday and passed away there. She had left nothing but the money for her funeral. If Jack had grieved, he’d done it alone.

She watched him now, gazing through her bedroom window. It faced the back of the house and offered a view of the stable block and woods beyond. In autumn, when the trees were bare, it was just possible to see the chimney of the gamekeeper’s cottage where Jack had lived with his mother. But it was currently spring and greenery obscured it.

It was in his mind, however, as he said, ‘I understand the cottage is rented out.’

Esme’s stomach tightened a little but she kept her cool. ‘Yes, it is. You know it’s not part of the sale?’

He turned. ‘No, I didn’t. There’s no mention in the particulars.’

Esme glanced towards the folder in his hand. She’d not perused the estate agent’s details. She’d trusted her mother’s word instead.

‘I don’t really see how it could be excluded,’ he continued, ‘considering it’s in the middle of the estate.’

‘Well, it is!’ Esme snapped with a certainty she was far from feeling.

Jack shrugged, unwilling to argue, commenting instead, ‘Perhaps that’s why you’re having difficulty selling—people buy these estates for privacy.’

Esme wondered if he was going out of his way to upset. ‘Who says we’re having difficulty selling?’

‘The fact,’ he replied, ‘that the estate has been on the market over a year, perhaps… Is it a sitting tenant, the person in the cottage?’

‘Why?’ Esme had no idea what she was.