Lone Wolfe (7 page)

 
          
Yet
why shouldn’t she? Mollie asked herself. He’d been thoughtful to the tune of
half a million pounds already. Yet somehow his thoughtfulness in the little,
hidden things meant even more than a scrawled cheque. She picked up the grey
T-shirt, worn to softness, and held it to her face; it smelled like soap. It
smelled like Jacob.

 
          
He’d
been in here, just a few metres away from the bathroom, while she’d been
soaking in the tub.
Naked.
Groaning a little, Mollie
buried her face in the T-shirt. Why was she thinking this way? Feeling this way
about
Jacob Wolfe?
He was
so
inappropriate as boyfriend material it was laughable. She
couldn’t even believe she’d mentally put
boyfriend
and
Jacob Wolfe
in the same sentence.
She did
not
still have a stupid
schoolgirl crush on him, she told herself fiercely. She didn’t even want a
boyfriend, or husband, or lover of any kind. Her business was going to take up
all of her time and energy, and after five years of caring for her father, her
emotional reserves were surely at an all-time low. She didn’t need the
complication of caring for another person.

 
          
But what about desire?

 
          
She
couldn’t ignore the fact that Jacob Wolfe was quite possibly the most
attractive man she’d ever seen, or that her body responded to him in the most
basic, elemental way.

 
          
Still,
Mollie told herself as she slipped Jacob’s T-shirt over her
head,
she didn’t have to act on that attraction. She didn’t have to do anything about
desire. And she wouldn’t have the opportunity anyway, because as far as she
could tell Jacob didn’t even like her very much.

 
          
She
slipped on the track bottoms, which engulfed her, and rolling up the cuffs, she
cinched them at the waist with the belt. She looked ridiculous, she knew, but
it was better than wearing clothes that were two sizes too small and a decade
out of date.

 
          
Taking
her torch, Mollie started down the corridor, in search of the kitchen.

 
          
There
was something a bit creepy about walking through the darkened, dust-shrouded
manor
on her own
. She wondered how Jacob felt living
here. Surely a hotel or rented flat would be more comfortable. As she made her
way downstairs she peeked into several rooms; some looked as if they’d been
cleaned but others were frozen in time, untouched save for dust and cobwebs.
She pictured Jacob in the manor, moving about these rooms, haunted by their
memories, and suppressed an odd shiver.

 
          
She
finally found the kitchen in the back of the house, a huge room now flickering
with candlelight. Jacob had brought in several old silver candelabra and
positioned them in various points around the room so the space danced with
shadows.

 
          
‘You
made it.’ Jacob turned around and in the dim light Mollie thought she saw his
teeth flash white in a smile. ‘I hope you didn’t get lost.’

 
          
‘Almost.’
She smiled back. ‘Actually, I just had a good long
soak in the tub. It felt amazing.’ She gestured to the clothes she wore. ‘Thank
you. This was very thoughtful.’

 
          
‘I
realised Annabelle’s clothes were undoubtedly musty. They haven’t been worn or
even aired in years.’

 
          
‘It’s
strange,’ Mollie murmured, ‘how forgotten everything is. I haven’t been inside
the house in years. I didn’t realise how much had been left.’

 
          
Jacob
stilled, and Mollie could feel his tension. She knew the exact moment when he
released it and simply shrugged. ‘Everyone made their own lives away from
here.’

 
          
‘I
know.’

 
          
He
reached for two plates, sliding
her a
sideways glance.
‘Yes, you must know better than anyone, Mollie. You watched it all happen. You
were the one who was left last of all, weren’t you?’ He spoke quietly, without
mockery, and yet his words stung because she knew how true they were. She’d
felt it, year after year, labouring alone.

 
          
‘Yes,’
she said quietly. ‘I was.’

 
          
‘Have
you stayed here the whole time?’ Jacob asked. He laid the plates on the
breakfast bar in the centre of the kitchen. ‘Did you never go anywhere, except
for Italy?’

 
          
He
made it sound as if she’d just been waiting, a prisoner of time and fate. Even
if it had felt that way sometimes, to her own shame, she didn’t like Jacob
Wolfe remarking on it.

 
          
Yes, I was waiting.
Waiting
for my father to die
.

 
          
‘I
went to university,’ she told him stiffly.
‘To study
horticulture.’

 
          
‘Of course.
But other than that … you waited. You stayed.’
He glanced at her, his eyes dark and fathomless, revealing nothing, but she
felt his words like an accusation.
A judgement.

 
          
‘Yes,’
she said in little more than a whisper. ‘I stayed.’
Even if I didn’t want to.
Even if sometimes …
She swallowed and
looked away. ‘Something smells delicious,’ she said, trying to keep her voice
light and bright and airy.
Trying desperately to change the
subject.

 
          
Jacob
opened the oven and removed a foil pan. ‘I’m afraid I’m not much of a cook.
It’s just an Indian takeaway, but at least the oven runs on gas so it’s warm
still.’

 
          
‘Thank
you,’ she replied, her voice still stiff. ‘It’s very generous of you to share
your meal.’ As Jacob pried off the foil lid from the chicken dish, Mollie
realised she was starving. She’d been so involved in going through her father’s
things that she’d completely forgotten about dinner.

 
          
Jacob
ladled the fragrant chicken and rice onto the two plates and then gestured to one
of the high bar stools. ‘Come and eat.’

 
          
Sliding
on a stool opposite of him, Mollie was conscious of how intimate this felt.
Was
.
All around
them the kitchen flickered and glimmered with candlelight. The house yawned
emptily in several acres in every direction; they were completely alone.

 
          
She
took a bite of chicken. She knew that now was the time to ask Jacob what he’d
been doing all these years, why he’d left, if he’d ever spared a single thought
for any of the people he’d left behind—all the questions she wanted answers to,
deserved answers to, for that supposed clarity and closure. So she could move
on from this place, just as all the Wolfes had, just as Jacob would again.

 
          
Yet
the words stuck in her throat, in her heart. Did she really have a right to
ask—and know—such things? She wasn’t even part of the Wolfe family. She might
have spent her whole life on the Wolfe estate, in the family’s shadow, but
she’d never been one of them. She knew that, had always known that. She’d been
an observer, a silent witness, a peeping Tom. Never part of the family, not
even remotely close. Her friendship with Annabelle and her father’s faithful
service were the only links to the family whose actions had played such havoc
with her own life. Why should she have ever expected the Wolfes to feel any
sense of obligation or responsibility to her or her father? Annabelle’s offer
to let them stay at the cottage had been a kindness, an act of charity that no
one else had known about.

 
          
And
yet Jacob obviously felt responsible; he’d shown her with that cheque. Yet she
didn’t want money, even if it was deserved. So just what
did
she want from Jacob Wolfe?

 
          
‘So
what have you been doing all this time?’ she asked. Her voice sounded too loud,
too bright. Jacob stilled. He was good at that, Mollie thought. She knew she’d
caught him off guard only when he became more cautious, more careful, his
movements both precise and predatory.

 
          
‘Many things.’

 
          
‘Such as?’

 
          
‘Work.’

 
          
‘What
kind of work?’

 
          
‘This and that.’

 
          
Mollie
laid down her fork, exasperated by his oblique answers. ‘Why don’t you want to
say? Was it something illegal?’

 
          
Jacob’s
brows snapped together in a dark frown.
‘No, of course not.’

 
          
She
shrugged. ‘Well, how am I supposed to know? You never sent a letter or left a message.
Annabelle waited—’

 
          
‘I
don’t,’ Jacob told her, his tone turning icy, ‘want to talk about my sister.’

 
          
Mollie
refused to back down. ‘She’s my friend too.’

 
          
‘So
I gather from the photographs plastered on her wall.’ Now he sounded mocking,
and Mollie flushed. She hated the thought of Jacob seeing those photos, gazing
at her in so many awkward and emotional stages.

 
          
‘Well,
if it’s not something illegal, I don’t know why you can’t tell me,’ she resumed
after a second’s pause. Jacob’s eyes flashed blackly.

 
          
‘And
I don’t know why you’re so curious, Miss Parker,’ he drawled, his tone soft.
Yet there was nothing soft about his body or expression; everything was hard.
Hard and unrelenting and cold.

 
          
Mollie
swallowed. Suddenly this had stopped being a conversation. It had become a
battle, and one she wasn’t sure she wanted to fight. She had a feeling Jacob
would win. She lifted her shoulder in a shrug and lightened her tone. ‘Of
course I’m curious. You mentioned yourself how I’m the one who has been here for
so many years. How I
waited
. And I
did. I waited and I watched everyone leave, one by one, starting with you. So
yes, I’d like to know what started the exodus.’ Somehow, as she’d started
speaking, her tone had hardened and darkened. Mollie stopped, her lips still
parted in surprise at just how bitter she sounded. She felt a little flicker of
shame.

 
          
‘So,’
Jacob said after a moment, his voice still sounding soft and yet so very hard,
‘you don’t just want to know what I’ve been doing, but why I went.’

 
          
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.