Nick still said nothing about her plans, just set the perfect coffee down in front of her and carried on getting milk, butter and what looked like home-made jam for her. A plate of fresh scones came next.
‘Would you prefer a fry-up?’ he asked, as if he hadn’t already produced an entire breakfast for her far superior to what she’d normally eat.
‘This isn’t your j?—’
His voice was unexpectedly sharp. ‘Itismy job, Dr O’Neill. I manage the house and the estate. Mostly it’s the estate, obviously, but this is part of it. We have cleaners come in, but there isn’t anyone else. And this house needs someone to look after it. Not to scrape out the insides and make it into some soulless hotel like any other. And as for the grounds—’ His tone rose in anger for a moment before he caught himself. He glared at the table, took in a deep breath, and then looked up again, his temper – because thatwashis temper she’d seen – a little more under control again. ‘It doesn’t need landscaping. Itisa landscape. A beautiful one. Now if you’ll excuse me, I do have other things to attend to this morning.’
‘I can’t pay you,’ she blurted out, and wished she hadn’t.
His face went white and his eyes burned. For a moment he didn’t say anything and she thought she had mortally offended him.
He drew in another steadying breath. ‘That’s already taken care of. I’m paid from the estate. Theo arranged it. The income is more than you’d think. I can show you the books when you’re ready or you can sit down with the accountants. Farmland’s rented out and gives a good return. We even have bees and sell their honey. There are grants for the rewilding. It’s all a going concern, a living place, a rich ecosystem. No hotel chain is going to do right by it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.’
He grabbed a jacket hanging by the back door and left as fast as he could, slamming it behind him.
CHAPTER 8
NICK
His pulse was racing. It must be adrenaline. That last interaction had totally got his back up. She was just so…infuriating. This was not going as he had planned.Nothingwas going as he had planned, or as Theo had planned, or as it had been meant to go. It was a disaster.
But when had anything in his life gone to plan?
Nick stalked along the perimeter fence of the estate, ostensibly checking for any damage but in reality…just walking, furious, marking the boundary as best he could. It was an old tradition, one which drew the lines, strengthened the edge so that nothing could slip through that shouldn’t, as well as simply checking for damage and the like. It was part of his job.
Theo had given him purpose. Theo had been here for him when his world fell apart and helped him piece some semblance of it back together. Even if part of that loss, a very large part of it, was Theo’s fault. But Theo had never meant harm and Nick didn’t think Alex did either.
Perhaps she just reminded him too much of Theo. The man who had helped and comforted him when he’d needed it most. When all that was meant to be his, all he had dreamed of, hadsomehow slipped through his fingers. The man whose secrets he had promised to keep.
Alex was…like nothing he had expected. She was beautiful, all that fire and intelligence, that fierce mind, those eyes…
What was he thinking?
It was supposed to be easy. He’d be here when she arrived, would show her around the estate, and wow her with the work he and Theo had put in. She would have to understand. She was a de Wilde, part of it all.
Tied here, Theo had said. Well, Nick knew all about being tied here too, didn’t he?
The estate itself still made a fair income. Not a huge amount, possibly not as much as he had tried to make Alex believe and probably never quite enough overall, but still, it was something. It paid for him, for repairs, for the running of the place. It paid enough to keep the rewilding going. Theo had made him promise. And Sally had wanted it, so he didn’t have a choice there, did he? Her legacy, her dream. Preserve the woods, keep them strong…
He was failing. Failing both of them. Which made him so angry with himself it just spilled out.
No, Nick decided. He had to keep things together. Keep himself together. He had offered to go over the books with Alex and he would. Tomorrow. He would lay out the financing and the business plans he had agonised over with her brother, which he had continued to work on in the meantime. He’d make their point. Hell, theplanwould make the point for him.
And Wildewood could survive as it was, as it always had been.
He looked from the edge of the woodland, across the wildflower meadow that had once been a lawn, back towards the house. It was beautiful here now. It needed to stay that way.
Not become some bland hotel and golf course or whatever else those lawyers who had latched themselves onto her wanted to make of it. He could sense a charlatan when he saw one and, if the various dealings he’d had with them so far was anything to go by, this was an entire rookery of cheats. He’d been sure once he explained things to her, she’d see it too. That the estate was worth so much more in the long term if it was kept intact and preserved. Not sold off to investors and vulture funds or whatever else they had in store for it.
They’d try to pull it apart, and that would only end in disaster for everyone and everything. Through ignorance and little else. No one ought to want that. His job, hisonlyjob, was to hold it all together, the estate, the house and the woods. He had promised them, Sally, and then Theo. Both of them. It was a sacred vow. It was his whole purpose.
Instead…well, Alex had made it clear she didn’t want him here, didn’t need his help or his labour. She couldn’t wait to offload the estate, could she? It was just a means to an end. She clearly hated the place.
Frustrating, foolish, determined woman. She didn’t know what it meant. She’d never come here since their father died so how could she? She’d only been a teenager then. All she wanted was the money it would bring her. She didn’t care that it would be destroyed.
And why would she? It had taken her father from her. Theo had told him all about that. How they had visited and how one night, during a storm, their father had wandered out into the woods. Alex had found his body.
And now it had taken Theo too. From both of them.
