by Douglas, Michelle; Gordon, Lucy; Pembroke, Sophie; Hardy, Kate
He shifted on the chair, ran a hand down his T-shirt. He wasn’t kissing the Princess.
‘If memory serves me correctly—’ she bit each word out ‘—you went to jail on drug charges, not robbery. And if the rumours buzzing about town are anything to go by, those charges are in the process of being dropped and your name cleared.’
Did she think that made up for fifteen months behind bars?
A sudden heaviness threatened to fell him. One stupid party had led to...
He dragged a hand down his face. Cheryl, at seventeen, hadn’t known what she’d been doing, hadn’t known the trouble that the marijuana she’d bought could get her into—could get them all into. She’d been searching for escape—escape from a sexually abusive father. He understood that, sympathised. The fear that had flashed into her eyes, though, when the police had burst in, her desperation—the desperation of someone who’d been betrayed again and again by people who were supposed to love her—it still plagued his nightmares.
His chest cramped. Little Cheryl who he’d known since she’d started kindergarten. Little Cheryl who he’d done his best to protect...and, when that hadn’t been enough, who he’d tried to comfort. He hadn’t known it then, but there wasn’t enough comfort in the world to help heal her. It hadn’t been her fault.
So he’d taken the blame for her. He’d been a much more likely candidate for the drugs anyway. At the age of eighteen he’d gone to jail for fifteen months. He pulled in a breath. In the end, though, none of it had made any difference. That was what really galled him.
Nell thrust out her chin. ‘So drop the attitude and stop playing the criminal with me.’
It snapped him out of his memories and he couldn’t have said why, but he suddenly wanted to smile.
‘The only way to find out what John has to say is to open the letter.’
He folded his arms. ‘What’s it to you, anyway?’
‘I made a promise to a dying man.’
‘And now you’ve kept it.’
She leaned across, picked up his hand and slapped the letter into it. She smelled sweet, like cupcakes. ‘Now I’ve kept it.’
A pulse pounded inside him. Nell moved back. She moved right across to the other side of the kitchen and refilled their mugs from the pot kept warm by the percolator hotplate. But her sugar-sweet scent remained to swirl around him. He swallowed. He blinked until his vision cleared and he could read his name in black-inked capitals on the envelope. For some reason, those capitals struck him as ominous.
For heaven’s sake, just open the damn thing and be done with it. It’d just be one more righteous citizen telling him the exact moment he’d gone off the rails, listing a litany of perceived injuries received—both imagined and in some cases real—and then a biting critique of what the rest of his life would hold if he didn’t mend his ways.
The entire thing would take him less than a minute to read and then he could draw a line under this whole stupid episode. With a half-smothered curse he made deliberately unintelligible in honour of the Princess’s upper class ears, he tore open the envelope.
Heaving out a breath, he unfolded the enclosed sheet of paper. The letter wasn’t long. At least he wouldn’t have to endure a detailed rant. He registered when Nell placed another mug of coffee in front of him that she even added milk and sugar to it.
He opened his mouth to thank her, but...
The words on the page were in the same odd style of all capitals as the envelope. All in the same black ink. He read the words but couldn’t make sense of them to begin with.
They began to dance on the page and then each word rose up and hit him with the force of a sledgehammer. He flinched. He clenched the letter so hard it tore. He swore—loud and rude and blue—as black dots danced before his eyes.
Nell jumped. He expected her to run away. He told himself he hoped she would.
‘Rick!’ Her voice and its shrillness dive-bombed him like a magpie hostile with nesting instinct. ‘Stick your head between your knees. Now!’
And then she was there, pushing his head between his knees and ordering him to breathe, telling him how to do it. He followed her instructions—pulling air into his lungs, holding it there and releasing it—but as soon as the dizziness left him he surged upright again.
He spun to her and waved the balled-up letter beneath her nose. ‘Do you know what this says? Do you know what the—’
He pulled back the ugly language that clawed at his throat. ‘Do you know what this says?’ he repeated.
She shook her head. ‘I wasn’t there when he wrote it. It was already sealed when he gave it to me. He never confided in me about its contents and I never asked.’ She gave one of those shrugs. ‘I’ll admit to a passing curiosity.’ She drew herself up, all haughty blonde sleekness in her crazy, beautiful Hawaiian dress. ‘But I would never open someone else’s mail. So, no, I haven’t read its contents.’
He wasn’t sure he believed her.
She moved back around the table, sat and brought her mug to her lips. It was so normal it eased some of the raging beast inside him.
She glanced up, her eyes clouded. ‘I do hope he hasn’t accused you of something ridiculous like stealing my grandmother’s pearls.’
He sat too. ‘It’s nothing like that.’
‘Good, because I know for a fact that was my father.’
He choked. Father. The word echoed through his mind. Father. Father. Father. In ugly black capitals.
‘And I’m sorry I’ve not tracked you down sooner to give that letter to you, but John died and then my father’s business fell apart and...and I wasn’t sure where to look for you.’
He could see now that she hadn’t wanted to approach Tash to ask how she might find him.
He wasn’t sorry. Not one little bit.
‘But when I heard you were home...’
He dragged a hand down his face before gulping half his coffee in one go. ‘Did he say anything else to you when he gave you this?’ The letter was still balled in his hand.
She reached out as if to swipe her finger through the frosting of one of the cupcakes, but she pulled her hand back at the last moment. ‘He said you might have some questions you’d like to ask me and that he’d appreciate it if I did my best to answer them.’
He coughed back a hysterical laugh. Some questions? All he had were questions.
Her forehead creased. ‘This isn’t about that nonsense when we were ten-year-olds, is it?’
He didn’t understand why she twisted her hands together. She wasn’t the one who’d been hauled to the police station.
‘I tried to tell my parents and the police that I gave the locket to you of my own free will and that you hadn’t taken it. That I gave it to you as a present.’
She stared down into her coffee and something in her face twisted his gut.
‘I thought it was mine to give.’ She said the words so softly he had to strain to catch them. He thought about how she’d handed her apartment, her car and her trust fund all over to her father without a murmur. So why refuse to hand over Whittaker House?
She straightened and tossed back her hair. ‘That was the moment when I realised my possessions weren’t my own.’
But for some reason she felt that Whittaker House was hers?
‘I told them how I wanted to give you something because you’d given me your toy aeroplane.’
It was the only thing he’d had to give her.
‘Which, mind you, I absolutely refused to hand over when they demanded me to.’
That made him laugh.
She met his gaze squarely and there wasn’t an ounce of haughtiness in her face. He sobered. ‘I’ve never had the chance to say it before but, Rick, I’m sorry. My mother and father were so angry. And then the policeman frightened me so much I...I eve
ntually just told them what they wanted to hear. It was cowardly of me and I’m truly sorry if that episode caused a lot of trouble for you.’
It’d caused trouble all right. It was the first time he’d come to the police’s attention. It hadn’t been the last time he’d been labelled a thief, liar and troublemaker by them, though.
They’d just been two kids exchanging treasures and trying to forge a connection. Her father, the police and his background had all conspired to blow it out of proportion.
But none of it had been Nell’s fault and he’d always known that. ‘Don’t sweat it, Princess.’ He used the nickname to remind himself of all the differences between them, to reinforce them.
She sat back, her chin tilted at that unconsciously noble angle that made him want to smile. ‘Don’t worry. I was let off with a caution, but I didn’t know the police had questioned you too.’ The poor kid had probably been terrified. He had been.
She nodded to the letter balled in his hand. ‘But John hasn’t hassled you about any of that?’
He shook his head and her shoulders slumped in relief. She straightened again a moment later. ‘So...do you have any questions?’
She looked as puzzled and bewildered as he felt. He wondered if she was counting down the minutes until this interview ended. Did she find it awkward and wrong for him to be sitting across the table from her? Or did it feel weirdly comfortable?
He shook off the thought and set the crumpled letter on the table and did what he could to smooth it out.
‘I won’t beat around the bush,’ he read, ‘but you might as well know that I’m your father.’
Nell’s mug wobbled back to the table. She stared at him. Her mouth opened and closed. ‘But he chased you away.’ And then her eyes filled.
Rick knew then that she’d had no notion of what John’s letter contained.
He glanced back at the letter and continued reading. ‘I may be better served taking this knowledge to the grave as it’s brought me no joy. I don’t expect it to bring you any either.’
Nell’s intake of breath reverberated in the silence.
‘I have no faith in you.’
Her hands slapped to the table.
‘But you might as well know you have a sibling.’
She practically leapt out of her chair. ‘Who?’ she demanded, and then forced herself back down into her seat. ‘Really?’ She frowned. ‘Older or younger?’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘I think I’m the one who’s supposed to be asking the questions.’
‘Oh, yes, of course.’ She sat back and folded her hands in her lap. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I’m not going to tell you who it is. If it matters to you then you’ll have to prove it.’
Her jaw dropped. ‘But that’s... How...how can he be so hard and cold? He’s supposed to have looked after you and...’ She swallowed and sat back again. ‘Sorry.’ She smiled, a weak thing that did nothing to hide her turmoil. She made a zipping motion across her mouth.
Rick shrugged. ‘He ends by simply signing it John Cox.’
She shook herself, frowned. ‘I know the questions belong to you, but, Rick, I have no idea how to answer any of them. I haven’t a clue who your sibling could be. I had no idea John was your father. I’ve never seen him with either a woman or a child. I—’
He handed the letter to her. He watched her face as she read the remaining lines. It darkened, which gladdened his heart.
And then it went blank. Rick eased back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling, not knowing whether to be relieved or disappointed.
* * *
Nell ignored the first lines John addressed to her in the letter. Miss Nell, if you think Rick is in any way redeemable and you can find it in yourself to help him... She snorted. What kind of nonsense was that? What kind of father just turned his back on his child? She thought about her own father with all of his demands and bit back a sigh.
‘You’ll find a clue where the marigolds grow.’ She turned the letter over, but there was nothing written on the back.
‘Any idea what that might mean?’ Rick asked, slouching back in his chair as if they were discussing nothing more interesting than the weather.
She opened her mouth. She closed it again and scratched her head. ‘My best guess is that, as he was a gardener and this is where he gardened, it refers to a garden bed somewhere on the estate, a garden bed where he grew marigolds, but...’
‘But?’
Rick sounded bored. She glanced at him, tried to read his face, but couldn’t. She lifted one shoulder. ‘The thing is, I don’t recall John ever growing marigolds. Apparently my mother didn’t like them.’
She stabbed a finger into the Passion Fruit Delight cupcake, glowering at it. ‘Why couldn’t he have just told you who your sibling is?’ She stabbed it again. ‘Why couldn’t he have told you the truth from the start and been a proper father to you?’ Stab. Stab. ‘I’d never have guessed any of this in a million years and—’
She pulled herself up and collected herself. None of this was helping. She wiped her finger on a napkin. ‘Okay, so what else could marigold mean?’
Rick picked up the Strawberries and Cream cupcake and pushed nearly half of it into his mouth. She watched, mesmerised, at the way his lips closed around it, at the appreciation that lit his eyes and the way his mouth worked, the way his Adam’s apple bobbed...the way his tongue flicked out to seize a crumb from the corner of his mouth.
She wrenched her gaze back. ‘It could be a girl’s name.’ Her voice came out strangled.
‘Do you know a Marigold or two?’
The words came out lazy and barely interested. Didn’t he care? She tried to focus on the question he asked rather than the ones pounding through her. She frowned, thought hard and eventually shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t even think I know any Marys.’ She leapt up, seized her address book from the sideboard drawer and flicked through it...and then searched the list of contacts in her mobile phone. Nothing.
She stood. ‘Okay, maybe there’s marigold wallpaper somewhere in the house or...or moulding in the shape of a marigold...or an ornament or a painting or—’
‘Princess, you’ve lived here your whole life. Do you really need to go through this mausoleum room by room to know whether it has marigold wallpaper?’
No, of course not. She sat. She knew every room intimately. She could remember what it looked like ten years ago as if it were only yesterday. There hadn’t been any marigold paintings on any of the walls. There’d been no marigold wallpaper or bedspreads or curtains. No marigolds. Anywhere.
She glanced at Rick again. She could deal with his devil-may-care teasing and that tough-guy swagger. In fact, those things gave her a bit of a thrill. Considering she didn’t get too many thrills, she’d take them where she could. She could even deal with the cold, hard wall he retreated behind. She could relate to it, even if she did feel he was judging her behind it and finding her lacking. But this... This nothingness hidden behind mockery and indifference. She was having no part of it.
She folded her arms. ‘Don’t you care?’
‘Why should I?’ He licked his fingers clean.
‘Because...’
‘What did he ever do for me?’
‘Not about John!’ She could understand his indifference and resentment of the other man. On that head it was John’s stance that baffled her. She leaned across the table until its edges dug into her ribs. ‘Don’t you care that you have a brother or sister somewhere in the wide world?’
One shoulder lifted. He reached for the last unmangled cupcake. A dark lick of hair fell across his forehead. Nell pushed away from the table to stare, unseeing, out of the kitchen window, determined not to watch him demolish it with those delectable lips, determined not to watch him demolish it the way he seemed he
ll-bent on destroying this chance, this gift, he’d been given.
She pressed her hands to her chest. To have a sibling...
She stilled. She glanced back behind her for a second and then spun back. Rick hadn’t left. He hadn’t read John’s letter and then stormed out. He had shared the letter with her. Rick could feign indifference and couldn’t-care-less disregard all he wanted, but if he really didn’t care he’d have left by now.
Her cupcakes were good, but they weren’t that good.
She sat again. ‘I wish I had a brother or sister.’
‘And whose image would you most like them cast in?’ He leaned back, hands clasped behind his head. ‘Your mother’s or your father’s?’
She flinched. He blinked and for a moment she thought he might reach across the table to touch her. He didn’t. She forced herself to laugh. ‘I guess there is always that. A sibling may have provided further proof that I was the cuckoo in the nest.’
‘I didn’t mean it like that.’
The hell he hadn’t. ‘It’s okay.’ She made her voice wry. ‘You’ve had a shock, so it’s okay to say hurtful things to other people.’
He scrubbed a hand across his face. ‘I didn’t mean for it to be hurtful. I’m sorry. I just refuse to turn this into a “they-all-lived-happily-ever-after” fairy tale like you seem so set on doing.’
He didn’t want to get his hopes up. She couldn’t blame him for that.
He rose. ‘I believe I’ve long outstayed my welcome.’
Nell shot to her feet too. ‘But...but we haven’t figured out what marigolds mean yet or—’
‘I’m not sure I care, Princess.’
She opened her mouth, but he shook his head and the expression on his face had her shutting it again. ‘Good girl,’ he said.
Her chin shot up. ‘Don’t patronise me.’
He grinned a grin that made her blood heat and her knees weak and she suddenly wanted him gone. Now. ‘You know where to find me if you decide to investigate this issue further.’ And then she swung away to dump the used coffee grounds into the kitchen tidy. When she turned back he was gone. She sat, her heart pounding as if she’d run a race.
