Lone Wolfe (12 page)

 
          
Jacob
gave her the glimmer of a smile.
‘Hardly necessary.
That rug was nearing the end of its life as it was. You simply dealt the
necessary death blow.’ His words seemed to echo between them, and Mollie saw
how he stiffened. She’d stiffened too.

 
          
Death blow.
The words—the innocent expression—brought to
mind a crowd of ugly, unpleasant memories.

 
          
‘Well,
thank you,’ she finally said again.
‘Really.’

 
          
‘There’s
something else,’ Jacob said.

 
          
Mollie
raised her eyebrows in surprise. ‘Oh?’

 
          
‘I’m
going to London tomorrow for a design expo. J Design is featuring some of its
newest projects, along with several other architectural firms. There will also
be a landscaping element that I thought would interest you.’

 
          
Mollie
blinked. ‘Me?’

 
          
‘Yes,’
Jacob said, and she heard humour—rare, precious—in his voice. ‘I’m asking you
to go with me.’

 
          
Jacob
had made the decision to ask Mollie to accompany him quite suddenly. He’d fully
intended to keep out of her way until her work on the gardens was finished, and
so far he’d managed that. Occasionally he spied her from the study window, a
flash of coppery hair amidst the vivid tangle of green in the garden, and
something in him
constricted,
an unfulfilled ache he
knew was more than just simple lust.

 
          
All the more reason to stay out of her way.

 
          
Yet
when the expo came up, and he saw the landscaping displays, he thought of her,
thought of how the manor seemed as much a prison to her as it was to him. And
for a few days they could both break out of it.

 
          
That
was the only reason he was asking her, Jacob told himself.
Out
of kindness.
Pity, even.

 
          
He’d
lived too long in the confines of his own mind to believe such self-deception.

 
          
Yet
he refused to think of what the other reasons could be.

 
          
Now
he watched as surprise flashed in her soft brown eyes, turning them golden, and
she bit the pink, rosebud fullness of her lower lip in obvious uncertainty. She
hadn’t expected to be asked. She probably wondered why he was asking. Was she
afraid he’d proposition her again?

 
          
He
wouldn’t. Of that Jacob was certain. He surely had enough control over his own
mind and body to keep from embarrassing and frightening her again.

 
          
Yet
he couldn’t keep himself from wanting to spend a little more time with her, to
revel in her soft beauty even if he knew she was out of bounds. He
liked
just being with her, Jacob knew;
she saw something in him that no one else saw. And while that thought half
terrified him, it also made him want more. Want to be known and understood,
even the darkest, most hidden parts of
himself—
the
truth
of himself—he was afraid ever to
reveal. Now,
that
was surely pushing
things too far.

 
          
‘Go
with you?’ Mollie repeated. She heard the blatant surprise in her voice and
blushed. Her heart had already started thudding again, and her palms grew slick
with nerves. Already images were dancing through her mind, a hazy montage of
seductive possibilities that had no business taking up space in her brain. ‘To
London?’ she clarified, because she had no idea what to say.

 
          
‘Yes,
to London.’ Jacob shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans, and Mollie
couldn’t help but notice how the action emphasised the broadness of his
shoulders, the T-shirt clinging to the ridged muscles of his abdomen. She
swallowed and looked away. Already she knew how dangerous such a trip would be.
London.
With
Jacob
.
‘I have a suite at the Grand Wolfe,’ Jacob continued, naming his
brother
Sebastian’s flagship hotel. ‘The expo goes over two
days, so we’d need to stay the night.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I don’t want you
to be—’

 
          
‘No,’
Mollie said quickly. She really didn’t want to hear Jacob assure her yet again
that he had no intention or interest in making his no-strings affair offer
another time. ‘I’m not—
Don’t
worry … you don’t need to
be—’ She was babbling, and she swallowed hard. Jacob
smiled,
a sensual tugging of his mouth that Mollie neither expected nor was prepared
for. His eyes glinted darkly, and she suspected he knew how frazzled she was.
She watched his lips quirk upwards, mesmerised by the simple movement, how it
transformed Jacob’s face, lightened it, so the shadows fell away. She wished he
smiled more. She was glad, fiercely so, that she had made him smile now, even
if it was to her own embarrassment.

 
          
‘All
right,’ he said lightly. ‘I won’t.’

 
          
‘Sorry,’
Mollie mumbled, and Jacob reached out and brushed her cheek. It took Mollie a
few stunned seconds to realise he was simply brushing away a smudge of dirt.
Even so her heart hammered all the more and her cheek tingled.

 
          
‘I’ve
told you,’ he said softly, ‘you don’t need to be sorry for the truth.’

 
          
But I don’t know what the truth—about you—is
.
Mollie swallowed the words and just nodded.

 
          
‘Anyway,
it could be fun,’ Jacob said, smiling again.
‘And
inspirational.
The landscaping displays are meant to be quite good. And
I think we could both use some time away from this place.’

 
          
Mollie
nodded again. She seemed incapable of managing a coherent sentence, yet she
agreed with everything he said. She knew there were things to think about,
worry about, questions and concerns and dangers. Yet in that moment all she
wanted to feel was the bubbles that raced through her like
champagne,
that
made her feel excited and alive in a way she hadn’t felt in years.
‘Yes,’ she said, firmly, quickly. ‘I’d love to go with you.’

 
          
It
was surprisingly easy to leave. She left instructions with the men from the
village and packed a single bag. She decided she wanted to feel smart—never
mind what Jacob thought—and so she threw in her clothes from Italy, including a
sexy little cocktail dress in a shimmery lavender silk that she surely wouldn’t
have any need for. Even so, she tucked it underneath her trousers and then
closed the lid of her case, zipping it firmly.

 
          
Jacob
had told her to meet him up at the manor at nine, and so, lugging her case
behind her, Mollie headed through the gardens, now neat and trimmed and ready
for planting, towards the house.

 
          
She
stopped in surprise when she saw the red convertible, parked in the circular
drive. Jacob stood next to it, the keys in his hand. He looked relaxed and
comfortable in a pair of tan khakis and a white button-down shirt, open at the
throat. Mollie couldn’t quite take her eyes from the base of his throat, the
skin looking so warm and sun-kissed that she wanted to touch it. Touch
him
. She determinedly turned towards the
convertible.

 
          
‘Nice
car.’

 
          
‘Not
when it rains.’ Jacob responded with a grin as he reached for her case. ‘Sorry,
I should have picked you up at the cottage. I’m not even sure how to get there
by car, though. Is there a road?’

 
          
‘No, just a path.’

 
          
Jacob
put her case in the car’s boot and then went round to open Mollie’s door. She
slipped into the sumptuous interior, feeling as if she were Alice and had
fallen down the rabbit hole into an unimaginable world of luxury. Jacob slid
into the driver’s seat and turned on the engine, which purred smoothly to life.

 
          
As
Jacob pulled away from the house, the wind ruffled Mollie’s hair and the sun
was warm on her face. She leaned her head back against the seat and closed her
eyes.

 
          
‘I
never even knew about that cottage until the night I saw you,’ he said. Mollie
opened her eyes.

 
          
‘Not
many people did. It was Annabelle’s idea to let us stay on after you’d left.
She said no one would even notice we were there.’ She knew she was speaking a
bit defensively; even now Jacob’s implication that she’d been freeloading off
his family rankled just a little. Jacob, however, did not rise to the challenge
of her words.

 
          
‘How
did it feel to be invisible?’ he asked softly as he slid
her
a
sideways glance that managed to be all too knowing.

 
          
Surprised
by his perception, Mollie let out a little laugh and looked away. ‘I’m not sure
I knew anything else,’ she said. She didn’t want to sound selfpitying, so she
cleared her throat and added more robustly, ‘There are worse things to be, in
any case.’ She paused,
then
dared to add, ‘I’m sure
you wanted to be invisible on occasion.’

 
          
He
shrugged. ‘Not so much me,’ he said, ‘as everyone else.’

 
          
‘You
mean your father?’

 
          
He
gave a short laugh. ‘That might have been handy, but no.
My
brothers and sister.
If they’d been invisible …’ He lapsed into silence,
his fingers tightening on the wheel, and Mollie felt a little aching tug on her
heart. No one should have such regret in their voice, etched into the lines on
their face.

 
          
‘You
couldn’t save them all,’ she said quietly. She spoke the words from instinct;
what did she really know about Jacob and his family? Only what Annabelle had
told her, which wasn’t very much at all. Jacob had been her big brother; he’d
tried to protect her from her father’s blows which had ended in her scar and
William Wolfe’s death. He’d left just a year after William’s death; his absence
had created an aching void in the family. Those were the bare facts, yet Mollie
knew she had no idea what had gone on in the Wolfe family, day after day. How
had they endured their father’s drunken fits and rages? How had Jacob endured?
As the oldest and the most responsible, what had he suffered? What had he
felt?
And what had finally driven him to
leave?

 
          
‘I
didn’t save them all,’ Jacob said flatly, interrupting her tumultuous thoughts.
‘I didn’t save anyone.’

 
          
‘You
can’t save anyone,’ Mollie told him, her voice surprisingly fierce. ‘I learned
that with my dad. I couldn’t save him from dementia or death. I could only ease
the way.’ She laid a hand on his arm, the skin warm under her fingers. Warm and
tense. ‘You take too much on yourself, Jacob.’

 
          
She
felt the muscles leap and jerk under her hand and he threw her a scoffing
sideways glance. ‘You speak as though you have years of experience.’

 
          
She
knew he was trying to draw away from her, to hide behind mockery. She shrugged.
‘A few years, at least.’

 
          
Jacob
didn’t speak for a moment, and his silence felt like an acknowledgement. ‘You
don’t know anything about me, Mollie,’ he finally said, his voice quiet and a
little sad. ‘Or what I am. Our experiences are entirely different.’

 
          
‘Then
tell me. Tell me about yourself.’

 
          
He
pressed his lips together. ‘I’m not sure much bears repeating.’

 
          
‘Tell
me how you started J Design, then,’ Mollie said. She refused to be put off.
‘That’s a story worth telling, I should think.’

 
          
‘I
fell into it, more or less,’ Jacob said. He flexed his arms, his hands on the
wheel, and Mollie could tell how uncomfortable the whole conversation made him.
He wasn’t a man used to talking—or even thinking—about himself. ‘I did some
building work, and had a look at the designs. I thought I could improve them,
and so I tried. The developer liked my suggestions, and it sort of went from
there.’