Was that why he’d been able to walk away? To leave his brothers and sister, his entire family, without so much as a backwards glance?
And what of his father? Mollie felt a chilly ripple of remembrance. She’d only been eight, but she remembered the furore of the press, the gossip of the village, when Jacob had been arrested for the murder of his father. In the end he’d been let off; everyone agreed it was self-defence. And William Wolfe had been a brute in any case. The entire village had rallied around Jacob, and there had never been any doubt that he’d been simply protecting himself and his sister. Yet walking behind Jacob, Mollie could not keep herself from thinking: he killed a man.
Almost as if he guessed the nature of her thoughts, Jacob paused on the threshold of the house, turning around to give her the flicker of a cool smile. ‘I realise that as we’re the only two living on the estate, you might feel, at times, vulnerable. I want to assure you that you are completely safe with me.’
Mollie flushed with shame at the nature of her own thoughts. They were utterly unworthy of either her or Jacob. She might be a bit angry at him, and bitter about all the lost years, but she was not at all afraid. In fact, there was something almost comforting about Jacob’s steady presence, and she realised that despite the fact he’d broken into her cottage last night, she did feel safe with him. Secure. The thought surprised her, even as she acknowledged the rightness of it.
‘Thank you for that reassurance,’ she said a bit pertly, desperate to lighten the mood even a little bit, ‘but it’s really not necessary. I know I’m safe.’
Something flickered in Jacob’s eyes, and his mouth twitched. She might feel safe with him, but Mollie knew she had no idea what he thought. Felt. He gave a brief nod and led the way inside.
Outside, the manor was covered in scaffolding, and inside, Mollie could see how much work was being done. The floor was draped with drop cloths, and ladders lay propped against different walls; nearly all the furniture was covered in dust sheets. From somewhere in the distance she heard the steady rhythm of a hammer.
‘You’re hard at work, I see,’ she said, parroting his words back at him, and was rewarded with a tiny smile, one corner of his mouth flicking gently upwards. It was, Mollie realised, the first time he’d smiled since she’d seen him, and it did something strange to her insides; she felt as if she’d just gulped too much fizzy soda and was filled with bubbles.
Then he turned away from her and she was left flat.
Uh-oh. She didn’t want to be feeling like that, didn’t want to have any kind of ephemeral, effervescent reaction to Jacob Wolfe. She knew what that kind of feeling signified, what it meant.
Attraction.
Desire.
No way. Jacob Wolfe was not a man to dally with. Yes, he might exude a steady presence, but that control had a ruthless, unyielding core. He’d walked away from his family and responsibilities without a single explanation, had remained silent for nineteen years, letting his siblings fear and think the worst. She could not, would not, allow herself to be attracted to him even for an instant, even if he was incredibly good-looking, even if she’d always thought he had the same perfectly sculpted look as the prince in her old book of fairy tales, except with dark hair and no smile.
Even when he was younger he hadn’t smiled much—at least, not that she could remember. He’d always seemed serious, preoccupied, as if the weight of the world rested on those boyish shoulders. Of all the Wolfe children, Jacob had fascinated her the most. Something in his eyes, in his beautiful, unsmiling face, had called out to her. Not that he’d ever noticed.
He turned back to her again, and she took in the clean, strong lines of his cheek and jaw. She smelled his aftershave, something understated and woodsy.
‘Right this way,’ Jacob murmured, and led her into what seemed to be the only room that remained untouched by the renovations. William Wolfe’s study.
Mollie gazed around the oak-panelled room with its huge partners’ desk and deep leather chairs and a memory flooded over with her such sudden, merciless detail that she felt dizzy. Dizzy and sick.
She’d been four or five years old, brought here by her father, holding his hand. The office had smelled funny; Mollie remembered it now as stale cigarette smoke and the pungent fumes of alcohol. Of course she hadn’t recognised those scents as a child.
Jacob must have seen or perhaps just sensed her involuntary recoil as she entered the room, for he turned around with a wry, mocking smile and said, ‘I don’t particularly like this room either.’
‘Why do you use it, then?’ Mollie asked. Her voice sounded strange and scratchy.
Her father had been asking for money, she remembered. He was a proud man, and even at her young age Mollie had known he didn’t like to do it.
I haven’t been paid in six months, sir.
William Wolfe had been impatient, bored, scornful. He’d refused at first, and when Henry Parker had doggedly continued, his head lowered in respect, he’d thrown several notes at him and stalked from the room. Still holding her hand, Henry had bent to pick them up. Mollie had seen the sheen of tears in his eyes and known something was terribly wrong. She’d completely forgotten the episode until now, when it came back with the smells and the sights and the churning sense of fear and uncertainty.
She looked at Jacob now; he was gazing around the room with a dispassionate air of assessment. ‘It’s good for me,’ he said at last, and Mollie wondered what that meant. She decided not to ask.
She moved into the room, stepping gingerly across the thick, faded Turkish carpet, her notebook clasped to her chest as if she were a timid schoolgirl. The memory still reverberated through her, made her realise—a little bit—what Jacob and his siblings had endured from their father. She’d experienced only a moment of it; they’d had a lifetime. Annabelle had never really spoke of her father to Mollie, never wanted to mention the terrible night that had given her the scar she was so self-conscious about.
Mollie was starting to realise now just how much she didn’t know.
‘Here.’ Jacob held out a folded piece of paper. ‘This is yours, I believe.’ Mollie took it automatically, although she had no idea what it could possibly be. Nothing of hers had ever been at the manor. ‘I had the water and electricity turned back on at the cottage,’ Jacob continued. ‘So you should be comfortable there for however long the landscaping takes.’
Mollie barely heard what he’d said. She had opened the paper he’d given her, and now gaped at it in soundless shock. It was a cheque. For five hundred thousand pounds.
‘What …?’ Her mind spun. She could barely get her head around all those noughts.
‘Back pay,’ Jacob explained briefly. ‘For your father.’
Ten years of back pay. Her fingers clenched on the paper. ‘You don’t—’
‘Whatever you may think of me, I’m not a thief.’
Mollie swallowed. How did Jacob know what she thought of him? At that moment, she didn’t even know herself. And she was beginning to wonder if the assumptions and judgements she’d unconsciously made over the years about Jacob Wolfe were true at all. The thought filled her with an uneasy curiosity.
‘This is more than he would have earned,’ she finally said. ‘A lot more.’
Jacob shrugged. ‘With interest.’
‘That’s not—’
‘It’s standard business practice.’ He cut her off, his voice edged with impatience. ‘Trust me, I can afford it. Now shall we discuss the landscaping?’
What had Jacob been doing, Mollie wondered, that made half a million pounds a negligible amount of money? Stiffly she sat on the edge of the chair in front of the desk. She slipped the cheque into her pocket; she still didn’t