The Lone Wolfe

by Kate Hewitt

  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. She had no idea what to say. ‘Or,’ Jacob suggested softly, ‘I could guess what you think. I could guess what you think quite easily.’

  Her mouth was dry, the food like dust. She swallowed and licked her lips. ‘Could you?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Jacob assured her, his voice laced with laughter. Mocking, cold and cruel. ‘I could. You think I left because I was bored. I’d had enough of playing daddy to my brothers and sister and I decided they could fend for themselves while I went in pursuit of my own pleasure. I never wrote a letter or called or came back at all because I just didn’t care. Not about them, and certainly not about you, the ragamuffin gardener’s daughter who always followed me around with her heart in her eyes.’

  Mollie let out an involuntary choked cry. Even though she should have known, should have expected it, she hadn’t. She hadn’t thought he would be so cruel. To her.

  ‘Isn’t that what you thought, Mollie?’ Jacob asked in a silky whisper, and in a sickening flash Mollie knew she was as cruel as he was. She’d thought everything he’d said, more than once. She’d thought it in the anger and hurt of being left behind, unimportant and forgotten.

  She’d judged him again and again in her own heart, condemned him without a trial, without an explanation.

  And now, seeing the pain flash in Jacob’s dark eyes, she suddenly wondered if she’d been wrong.

  Jacob laughed. It wasn’t a sound Mollie liked to hear. ‘Don’t bother answering,’ he said as he slid off his stool and took his plate—he’d eaten everything—to the sink. ‘I know what you think. Every emotion and thought is reflected in those lovely eyes.’

  Those lovely eyes? Now Mollie was thrown in a completely different direction, her body suddenly tingling in response to that throwaway compliment. Jacob turned to face her, bracing one hip against the kitchen counter. The candlelight threw his face into half-shadow, flickering across his features.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Mollie said after a moment. She didn’t even know what she was apologising for, yet she felt, deep inside, that the words needed to be said. She’d made so many judgements, in her loneliness and hurt, and she shouldn’t have. She didn’t deserve an explanation or even an apology. Yet she still didn’t know what Jacob thought … or why he’d left. And now she wanted to know, for an entirely different reason. One she couldn’t quite name.

  ‘Don’t,’ Jacob said brusquely. He averted his face. ‘Don’t apologise for the truth.’

  ‘The truth?’ Mollie repeated in confusion. ‘What are you saying, Jacob?’

  ‘I did abandon my brothers and sister,’ Jacob said flatly. His voice was without emotion.

  ‘It was a price I was willing to pay, but the cost was high.’ Questions clambered in Mollie’s mind. The price for what? And the cost was high—for who? His siblings? Himself? ‘Come on,’

  Jacob said after a moment. He sounded resigned and yet also strangely gentle. Mollie looked up.

  He’d pushed away from the counter and held out his hand. Without even thinking about what she was doing, Mollie slid off the stool and took his hand.

  His fingers curled around hers, warm, dry, strong. A shiver of awareness rippled from his touch all the way through her body, making her breath hitch and her blood pump and everything inside her come alive. Bubbles again, so sweet and tempting and dangerous.

  ‘What—?’

  ‘I want to show you something,’ Jacob said. And still holding her hand, he led her from the room.

  Chapter Four

  Jacob hadn’t meant to hold her hand. He hadn’t even meant to show her what he’d found; she probably already knew, and even if she didn’t, he could have slipped it in an envelope and left it on her doorstep.

  He didn’t want to draw closer to this woman who asked him pointed questions, and yet stared at him with a shock and hurt he’d caused.

  Yet here he was, leading her through the shadowy corridors, his hand laced with hers, her fingers small and slender under his, trusting and fragile despite his harsh words of just a few moments ago. It felt good. Too good. It had been so long since he’d felt another human being’s gentle touch. Years since he’d allowed himself to get that close to anyone. Mollie Parker drew him in with her sweetness, her softness, and even her determination and strength. He didn’t want to be drawn, and yet still he was. Still he wanted.

  Yet he knew he couldn’t want this. Jacob had returned home for one purpose, and one purpose only: to sell the manor. Reuniting his family was a necessary and important part of that, but seducing Mollie Parker was not.

  For that was all it would be. A seduction: pleasurable, pointless. That was all he ever allowed himself to have, because he knew it was all he could ever give.

  He was empty inside, empty and aching. Or worse, Jacob corrected himself, he was full.

  Full of poisoned memories, treacherous regrets. Full of the truth of himself, of what he was capable of. He had nothing to give Mollie Parker. Nothing she would want.

  Except a rose.

  ‘Why are we going back here?’ Mollie asked, for Jacob had led her into the study. The room still felt suffocating to her, despite the windows open to the night. The smell of rain and roses carried on the breeze.

  ‘I found something when I was going through my father’s papers,’ Jacob said. He’d dropped her hand and retreated behind the big oak desk, leaving Mollie with the sweet memory of his touch. Her fingers tingled. He began to riffle through the papers on his desk. ‘He had the most atrocious filing system,’ he continued. ‘Which of course isn’t very surprising.’

  ‘I didn’t know much about your father,’ Mollie said cautiously. ‘Except …’

  Jacob glanced up, his eyes flashing. He had stilled, again. Watchful and wary. ‘Except what?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘What people said. Whispered about in the village.’

  ‘And what did they whisper about in the village?’ Jacob asked, his tone deceptively mild.

  ‘That he was charming,’ Mollie answered hesitantly, ‘and a drunk.’

  ‘He was both. Unfortunately he wasn’t much of a father.’

  He spoke so dispassionately, as if it hardly mattered, that Mollie was compelled to ask,

  ‘You must regret that.’

  His eyes narrowed as he looked up at her. ‘I do. I’ve regretted it my whole life.’ She heard something in his voice, a raw, jagged note she hadn’t expected; it cut beneath his cold, composed exterior, hinted at the hurting man underneath. ‘I regret it for my brothers and sister,’ Jacob continued. ‘I wasn’t much of a replacement.’

  ‘But you tried.’

  He lifted one shoulder in a dismissive shrug before turning back to the papers on the desk, his manner brisk. ‘My father did, amazingly, have a few redeeming qualities. Such as this.’ He held out a piece of thick parchment paper, yellowed and crackling with age, towards her.

  Hesitantly Mollie took it. ‘What …’ she began, her breath coming out in a soft rush as she gazed down at the paper. A dried rose, its petals brown and faded yet still perfect, had been affixed to the parchment. Underneath, in an unfamiliar hand, was written The Mollie Rose.

  Her throat thickened, unexpectedly, with tears, and her fingers clenched on the fragile parchment.

  ‘Careful,’ Jacob said, and he gently loosened her fingers’ death grip with his own.

  ‘Sorry. I—I didn’t—How did he—your father—get this?’

  ‘As far as I can tell, your father showed him.’ Jacob pointed to some more handwriting, smaller and slanted, underneath the rose’s name.

  A new hybrid Parker named after his daughter. Sweet.

  ‘It must have touched my father in one of his more lucid moments.’
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br />   ‘My father was always experimenting with roses,’ Mollie said in a voice she didn’t quite recognise as her own. ‘Sometimes I thought—it seemed—as if he cared more for them …’ She shook her head, not wanting to taint her father’s memory with regretful recollections. Yes, he’d loved his beloved roses, been obsessed by them even, but she’d always known he’d loved her more. She’d never doubted that, even in the darkest moments of his disease. She looked up at Jacob. ‘He never told me—I never knew he named one after me.’

  Jacob glanced down at the pressed petals, now leached of colour. ‘I wonder what colour it was. Red, perhaps, like your hair.’ He reached out to gently tuck a stray curl behind her ear. His fingers barely brushed her skin, yet Mollie felt as if they lingered. Her whole body reacted to that touch, the whisper of skin against skin. Instinctively she leaned into it. Abruptly Jacob dropped his hand, took a step back.

  Mollie realised she was holding her breath, and she drew it in with an audible gulp.

  ‘Thank you for showing me this,’ she said. She tried to ignore the fact that her heart was hammering and her ear and cheek still tingled from his touch.

  ‘You can keep it.’

  ‘Thank you. It means a lot.’

  ‘You were close to your father?’ He sounded almost wistful.

  ‘Yes …’ Mollie realised she sounded hesitant, unsure. How could she explain the kind of relationship she had with her father? He’d adored her; she’d always known that. It had just been the two of them, together, forever, and for so long she couldn’t imagine life without him.

  Yet living alone with a forgetful father who was obsessed with the quality of soil and the new fertilising techniques had been difficult at times; Henry Parker had not always known when she needed new clothes, or a listening ear, or a simple hug. And then five years of dwindling into dementia had left Mollie feeling more alone and bereft than ever.

  His death, in some ways, had been a relief. It was a thought that made her cringe inwardly with guilt and shame even now.

  ‘I know it was nothing like—like your father,’ she said stiltedly, ‘nothing at all. But … sometimes … it was lonely.’ She felt ashamed to say it, especially considering what Jacob and the other Wolfes must have endured under William’s unforgiving hand.

  Jacob gave her the faintest of smiles. ‘We all carry our own sorrows. Just because they’re different, doesn’t make them any less.’ He gestured to the rose. ‘I’m glad you have that.’

  Her throat too tight to speak, Mollie could only nod. She felt humbled by Jacob’s willingness to accept her own pain. He could have easily shrugged it off, told her she had no idea, nothing to cry about …

  Or was that just how she felt?

  She looked up and saw that Jacob was regarding her with a certain thoughtfulness that made her think he saw too much. Knew too much.

  And she didn’t know anything.

  ‘Tell me about him,’ she said, and he stiffened.

  ‘There’s not much worth telling,’ he said after a moment. Mollie was glad he didn’t pretend to misunderstand. She was talking about William Wolfe, his father, the author of his own sorrows. The man he’d accidentally killed—and must have hated. ‘I wish.’ Jacob said, and then stopped.

  ‘Wished …?’ Mollie prompted softly.

  ‘I wish there was more to tell,’ Jacob said, a brusque note entering his voice. ‘I wish I had—we all had—more happy memories with him. I wish my siblings had had a proper father, rather than—’ He stopped abruptly, but Mollie, just as before, felt she could have finished his thought.

  Rather than me. He gave her a bleak smile. ‘If wishes were horses, eh?’

  ‘Something like that.’ The intimacy of the moment still seemed to wrap around them.

  ‘Annabelle never spoke about him,’ Mollie said quietly. ‘Not that I asked. I was only eight when—’

  ‘He died.’ Jacob’s voice was flat, cold. Mollie realised she shouldn’t have said anything.

  They could have moved on, away from this startling intimacy, the sharing of memories, secrets.

  Yet even now she didn’t want to. She wanted to know.

  ‘It must have been so hard,’ she whispered. ‘For you, especially.’ Jacob flinched at her words. Mollie wished she knew what to say. No words seemed adequate, appropriate, so she said the only thing she could think of, the only thing she knew she really meant. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

  ‘I told you, you don’t need to apologise for the truth,’ Jacob told her. His expression hardened into something unfriendly and even mean. It was hard to believe that a moment ago he’d made her heart beat with awareness and desire. Now, taking in his tightened mouth and narrowed eyes, so endlessly dark, it hammered with something close to fear—yet not for herself.

  She was afraid for him. ‘The truth,’ he continued in the same brutal tone, ‘was that he was an utter bastard. He terrorised his wives and his children, he drank away the family’s money, and when he died I felt—’ He stopped suddenly, his face twisted in an agony of grief. He drew a shuddering breath and looked away, every muscle tensed.

  ‘Jacob …’ Mollie said, inadvertently, instinctively, for something deep in her called to the broken-ness she saw in the man before her. She lifted her arms, reaching out as if to do—what?

  Hug him? Even though she knew Jacob Wolfe would probably be appalled by the thought of a hug, she couldn’t help herself. She wanted to reach him. Touch him.

  His face cleared, as if a veil had been drawn across that deeper, darker emotion; he hid the broken edges, the jagged memories, and coated them with blandness. ‘You asked,’ he said. ‘And now you know.’ His mouth curved in a slow smile. ‘Satisfied, Mollie?’ he asked, touching her cheek with one finger. Mollie jerked under the caress, for that was surely what it was. Slowly, thoughtfully, his face still a hard mask, Jacob trailed his finger down her cheek, igniting sparks of awareness along her jaw, to the sensitive curve of her neck. He lingered there, his finger touching her pulse, a witness to its frantic hammering.

  Mollie remained rooted to the spot, amazed at how such a simple, little touch could affect her so utterly. So disastrously. She felt as she was filled with bubbles once again, bubbles made of the most fragile glass, and they were popping one by one. She didn’t know what would be left when they were gone. She didn’t know what would happen, what could happen.

  What Jacob wanted to happen.

  He watched her carefully, noting her reaction, and in her appalled shame Mollie wondered how the mood could have changed so suddenly, how the charged atmosphere of anger and regret had turned so quickly to something just as dangerous.

  She swallowed convulsively as Jacob rested just one finger in the curve of her neck, stroking that smooth, secretive skin lightly, as if he were learning a landmark. And she didn’t move away. Didn’t protest. Didn’t do anything except submit, her body yearning for his deeper caress.

  After a long, pulsating moment, the only sound the hitch of her own breath, he trailed his finger from that curve to her collarbone, pausing to stroke the hard ridge of bone, the skin stretched so achingly taut over it, and then let it drop lightly yet quite deliberately to the V of her T-shirt— his T-shirt.

  Mollie heard her sharply in-drawn breath as his finger nestled there in the soft dip between her breasts, stroking the skin softly, as if asking a question.

  She felt heat flood through her—and he was touching her with only one finger! She glanced up and saw the clinical, detached look on his face and shame replaced that liquefying heat. He wasn’t affected at all.

  ‘Don’t—’ she whispered. She didn’t even know what she wanted to stop, the look on Jacob’s face or the touch of his hand. Her body certainly didn’t want him to stop; her body wanted hands, mouths, lips. Everywhere, everything.

  ‘Don’t what?’ Jacob asked in a voice of lethal softness.

  ‘Don’t tease me,’ Mollie said, for surely that was what he was doing. He used seduction—sex—lik
e a weapon, the most powerful one he had. She wished she had the strength to step away but she didn’t. She closed her eyes, briefly, in silent supplication, then opened them. She drew a steady breath. ‘What do you want from me, Jacob?’

  ‘Now, that’s an interesting question.’ Smiling faintly, Jacob drew his finger back along her collarbone, up her neck and then lightly across one cheek. She felt as if he’d marked her, as if she’d see a livid red line where he’d touched. She even glanced down at herself to check; there was nothing.

  His hand rested on her cheek, his thumb caressing the fullness of her lips. ‘I’m attracted to you, Mollie,’ he said, and inside she quavered at the knowledge, both with wonder and trepidation. ‘And you’re attracted to me.’ His thumb rested fully on her mouth; she couldn’t speak even if she wanted to. ‘We’re alone here, for the foreseeable future. Why not make the most of it?’

  He sounded so reasonable, so affable, so bland. Why not make the most of it? As if it could—or would—be so simple and easy. She knew it would not. She knew Jacob knew it too; she could see it in the blazing blackness of his eyes. He was provoking her with this seductive suggestion. It was a challenge, a reaction to her intrusive questions, her instinctive sympathy. It wasn’t the easy suggestion he made it sound. It was a punishment.

  Somehow she found the strength to step away; Jacob let his hand fall, easily, without regret or apology. ‘You mean an affair,’ she stated flatly.

  He paused, his eyes narrowing slightly. ‘Call it what you will.’

  ‘No strings,’ she clarified, because even though it was so obvious she still had to say it.

  Jacob Wolfe was not a man who cultivated relationships.

  ‘None.’

  And for one gloriously tempting moment, despite the dark reasons for his suggestion that she could only guess, she could imagine it. Every nerve and sinew of her body clamoured for it, because when had she ever indulged in something so sensual, so basic and pleasurable, as an affair? She’d had a few mediocre relationships in university, but nothing that remotely came close to what Jacob Wolfe was offering. And for the past five years she’d been living the life of a reclusive nun, caring for her father, working as much as she could, barely able to make ends meet. Even in Italy she’d been too busy visiting gardens and healing her own grief to really pay attention to any men.