He glared at her. More out of habit than intent.
She bit her lower lip and screwed up her face in repentance. ‘Oh, dear. I’ve done it again. Now I’ve really insulted you.’
‘I didn’t take it as an insult,’ he said through gritted teeth.
‘Do you invent games? That could be fun.’ Her attempt to feign interest in gaming was transparent and somehow endearing.
‘I have done,’ he said. ‘Have you heard of the Alana series?’
She shook her head and strands of her hair escaped her hat. They glinted gold in the morning sunlight. ‘I played some game with a little purple dragon when I was younger but, as I said, I’d rather be outside.’
‘Yet you read?’
‘Yes. And these days I listen to audio books if I’m working on a job on my own. I spend a lot of time by myself in this line of work. If I’m in a team it’s different, of course.’
‘Seems like a good idea,’ he said.
‘Oh, don’t think I don’t give one hundred per cent to the job. I do. And your garden is so interesting to me I’ll be fully engaged. I dare say I won’t get to finish another book until I complete my work here.’
‘I wasn’t criticising you,’ he said. ‘If you want to listen to books or music that’s fine by me. As long as you get the work done and don’t disturb me.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. She glanced at her watch. ‘I’m aching to see the rest of the garden. Tell me, is there a fountain there? I so want there to be a fountain.’
He smiled. Her enthusiasm was contagious. ‘There is a fountain. But it doesn’t work.’
She fell into step beside him as he headed around the side of the house. Her long strides just about matched his. ‘The pump for the fountain is probably broken. Or clogged. Or there could be a leak in the basin,’ she said.
‘All possibilities just waiting there for you to discover,’ he said.
She completely missed the irony of his words. ‘Yes. I’m so excited to get it working again. I love water features. They add movement to a garden, for one thing. And attract birds.’
He nodded thoughtfully. ‘I hadn’t realised that. About water adding movement. But when you think about it, it makes sense.’
‘A garden isn’t just about plants. There are so many elements to consider. Of course, being a horticulturalist, plants are my primary interest. But a garden should be an all-round sensory experience, not just visual.’
She stopped, tilted her head back and sniffed. ‘Scent is important too. There’s a daphne somewhere in this garden. I can smell it. It’s a small shrub with a tiny pink flower but the most glorious scent. It blooms in winter.’ She closed her eyes and breathed in. ‘Oh, yes, that’s daphne, all right.’ She sighed a sigh of utter bliss. ‘Can you smell it?’
Declan was disconcerted by the look of sensual pleasure on Shelley’s face, her lips parted as if in anticipation of a kiss, her flawless skin flushed, long dark lashes fanned, a pulse throbbing at the base of her slender neck. She was beautiful.
He had to clear his throat before he replied. ‘Yes, I can smell it. It’s very sweet.’
She opened her eyes and smiled up at him. How had he not noticed her lovely, lush mouth?
‘They’re notoriously temperamental,’ she said. ‘Daphne can bloom for years and then just turn up its toes for no reason at all.’
‘Is that so?’ Ten minutes in Shelley’s company and he was learning more about gardening than he ever wanted to know. ‘The name of the old lady who owned this house before me was Daphne.’
He thought Shelley was going to clap her hands in delight. ‘How wonderful. No wonder there’s daphne planted here. It’s great to have a plant to echo someone’s name. I often give friends a rose that’s got the same name as them for a present. A ‘Carla’ rose for a Carla. A ‘Queen Elizabeth’ for an Elizabeth.’ She paused. ‘I don’t know if there’s a rose called Declan, though. I’ll have to check.’
He put up his hand in a halt sign. ‘No. Please. I don’t want a Declan plant in this garden.’
‘Okay. Fair enough. I don’t know that Declan is a great name for a rose anyway. Fine for a man. Excellent for a man, in fact...’ Her voice dwindled. She looked up at him, pulled a self-deprecating face. ‘I’m doing it again, aren’t I?’
‘Declan is not a good name for a rose, I agree.’ She should be annoying him; instead she was amusing him.
‘I... I’m nervous around you,’ she said. ‘Th...that’s why I’m putting foot in mouth even more than usual.’ She scuffed the weed-lined path with her boot. It was a big boot; there was nothing dainty about this warrior woman.
‘Nervous?’
‘I... I find you...forbidding.’
Forbidding. Another label to add to the list.
He shifted from one foot to another, uncomfortable with the turn the conversation was taking. ‘I can see how you could think that,’ he said. What he wanted to say was he’d put a force-field around himself and it was difficult to let it down—even to brief a gardener. Especially when the gardener looked as she did—made him react as she did.
She looked up at him, tilted her hat further back off her face. Her brown eyes seemed to search his face. For what? A chink in his forbiddingness?
‘You see, I so want to do this job right,’ she said. ‘There’s something about the garden that’s had me detouring on my walks to and from the station just to see it. I’m so grateful to your neighbours for forcing you to do something about it and employ me.’ She slapped her thigh with a little cry of annoyance. ‘No! That’s not what I meant. I meant I’m so grateful to you for giving me this chance to spend the next few months working here. I... I don’t want to blow it.’
‘You haven’t blown it,’ he said. ‘Already you’ve shown me I made the right decision in hiring you for this job.’
Relief crumpled her features. ‘Seriously?’
‘Seriously,’ he said. If he was the man he used to be, the man for whom ‘forbidding’ would never have been a label, he might have drawn her into a comforting hug. Instead he started to walk again, heading to the back of the property where the garden stretched to encompass land of a size that had warranted the multimillions he’d paid for it.
She fell in step beside him. ‘So tell me about Daphne—the old lady who owned the house before you. I wonder if she planted the garden.’
‘I have no idea. It was my...my wife who was...was interested in the garden.’
How he hated having to use the past tense when he talked about Lisa. He would never get used to it.
‘Oh,’ Shelley said.
He gritted his teeth. ‘My wife, Lisa, died two years ago.’ Best that Shelley didn’t assume he was divorced, which was often the first assumption about a man who no longer lived with his wife.
The stunned silence coming from the voluble Ms Fairhill was almost palpable. He was aware of rustlings in the trees, a car motor starting up out in the street, his own ragged breath. He had stopped without even realising it.
‘I... I’m so sorry,’ she finally murmured.
Thank God she didn’t ask how his wife had died. He hated it when total strangers asked that. As if he wanted to talk about it to them. As if he ever wanted to talk about it. But Shelley was going