The Lone Wolfe

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.