Falling for the Rebel Heir

Ally Blake

Falling for the Rebel Heir

For two of the loveliest women I’ve ever known.

Dell and Barbara: godmothers and friends.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

HUD hitched his dilapidated rucksack higher on to his shoulder as he stood staring at the façade of Claudel, the grand old house before him.

Ivy trailed over masonry outer walls, the front marble steps were steeped in mould, the delicately framed picture windows were layered in many years’ worth of storm-splattered mud, the multi-gabled grey roof was now missing tiles and the gutters were filled with rotting leaves.

But even a decade’s worth of invading shabbiness couldn’t stop the memories of sunny days spent with his aunt in the big house from melting into one another—a dozen summers during which his parents had taken off on adventures to far-flung lands to authenticate new discoveries about old civilisations, leaving him behind. He pictured himself lying in the cool grass at the side of the house reading Aunt Fay’s original editions of The Chronicles of Narnia, wishing himself a faun or a lion or, even better, one of the four Pevensie brothers and sisters taking part in adventures. Together.

He sniffed in deep through his nose, then, leaving the house and its deluge of memories for later, he hooked a sharp left to head into Claudel’s colossal garden, only to discover far sorrier disarray.

What had once been a perfect green lawn, littered with croquet arches and bordered by a dramatic garden boasting random marble sculptures worthy of any gallery, was now overgrown weed-infested chaos. Once immaculately clipped conifers were now untamed, with patches torn apart by storms leaving raw-looking wounds. Chickweed, blackberries and roses ran wild. Any patch of grass still visible through the shrubs was littered with wild daisies. Had Aunt Fay been alive to see how much he’d let the place go, she would have screamed bloody murder.

But, after the initial shock wore off, Hud began to notice that the air had been made pungent with a rich floral scent, and through the gaps in the undergrowth bees and wattle dust floated on the hazy summer air. As a photographer for Voyager Enterprises, for both their documentary TV channel and magazine, he’d shot the gardens of queens, rainforests which by now had been demolished and thick, viny, mystical swamps protected by rednecks with guns. But this place was so out of control, so uncontaminated and crazy beautiful, Hud’s throat clogged with unexpected emotion.

He cleared his throat, shoved the feelings down deep inside him where he’d kept every other come-from-out-of-nowhere and too-hard-to-deal-with-right-now feeling that had threatened to expose him over the past couple of months and moved on, forward through the undergrowth, not much caring that branches scratched at his hands or that his jeans collected spiky thorns. It only brought back more memories of trailing Aunt Fay’s crazy Irish wolfhound through the same gardens as the dog in turn had chased invisible air sprites.

Through a gap in the seemingly never-ending wilderness, Hud was blinded by a pinpoint of light. He held up a hand to shield his eyes and tugged his rucksack through the heavy undergrowth until he found himself face to face with the old pool house.

A half smile tugged at the corners of his mouth and pressed against the backs of his tired eyes as echoes of more long forgotten recollections tickled at the corner of his mind. Dive bombing. Performing pretty darned legendary back flips off the diving board. Lying on his back in the water for hours simply watching clouds shift past the pitched glass roof, wondering if his mum and dad looked up they would see the same clouds while trekking some thrilling spot on the other side of the world.

Back then he’d been full of hope and plans that when he grew up, when he was old enough to set out on his own life adventure, then he’d finally understand what the fuss was all about. Why it had been so easy for his parents to leave him behind. He wondered when all that impenetrable hope had become frustration. When anticipation had become cold knowledge. When he had grown up after all.

Had it been hiding with only his camera for company beneath a bush for eighteen hours in the middle of a shootout in Bosnia when he had barely been twenty-one? Waking to find that his team had been abandoned by their guide at Base Camp on K2 on his twenty-sixth birthday? Or when he’d woken in a London hospital less than two months earlier, barely strong enough to ask for a glass of water?

He levered his heavy rucksack to the ground and left it where it lay. Claudel was fifty metres off the road, behind a ten foot brick wall and a ten minute walk through a pine forest to the nearby township of Saffron. If anybody was lucky enough to find his shabby old khaki bag they were welcome to the raggedy clothes and just as threadbare passport within. It wasn’t as though he’d be needing them to head through a different kind of wilderness with his trusty Nikon camera slung over one shoulder and a hunting knife slung over the other with his team of documentary filmmakers at his back any time soon.

He cricked his neck, pressed his hands into the tight small of his back and glanced upwards to find brilliant red bougainvillea creepers seemed to have swallowed half the long building, leaving the hundred odd remaining white-framed glass panels that had survived the test of time thick with dust and mould. He could only hazard a guess how foul the inside might be after not having been blessed by a human touch for a good ten years.

‘If memory serves correctly…’ he said out loud, the sound of his voice raspy and deep in his ears after hours of non-use. Then he made his way around the back of the building to find the door was ajar, at an odd angle, askew on rusted hinges, as though it had been yanked open.

With instinct born of years spent stepping unannounced into dark, secret places, he stepped quietly—toe to heel—over a small pile of worn broken glass and inside the pool house where his feet came to a giveaway scraping halt of boot soles on tessellated French tiles.

The pool house was clean. The mottled green tiles around the margins sparkled and the dozen white marble benches were spotless. Miniature palm trees in plant boxes edging the length of the room were luscious with good health. And the water in the pool shimmered dark and inviting against the black-painted concrete bottom.

A sound broke through Hud’s reverie. A soft ripple as water lapped gently against the edge of the pool. And he was hit with the sense that something was about to break the dark surface. He held his breath, squared his stance, squinted into the shadows and watched in practised silence as…

A mermaid rose from the depths.

From there everything seemed to slow—his breathing, his heartbeat, the dust floating through shards of sunlight, as the nymph sliced through the water, away from him, leaving a trail of leisurely wavelets in her wake.

Water streamed over hair the colour of brandy. It ran adoringly over pale, lean, youthful arms. And, as she swayed up the steps, water gripped her willowy form as long as it could before cruel gravity claimed it back to the dark depths.

Hud felt as if he ought to avert his gaze. As if he was too old, too cynical, too jaded to be allowed such a vision. But those same qualities only meant that his curiosity far outweighed his humility, and his eyes remained riveted to the back of the exquisite stranger.

Once she was land bound her hair sprang into heavy waves that reached all the way to the small of her back, covering the expanse of skin left visible by her simple swimsuit. It was functional. Black. One piece. But, with its low-cut back and high-cut leg, the whole thing was just sexy enough that Hud’s pulse beat so loudly in his ears he feared she might hear it too.

Her feet made soft slapping sounds as she padded over to grab a soft peach-coloured Paisley-patterned towel draped over the far marble bench, revealing a bundle of clothes beneath.

She then lifted a foot and bent over to run the soft towel down one leg. One long lean leg. A drip of sweat slithered slowly down Hud’s cheek.

When she repeated the action with the other leg, her movements relaxed and unhurried, he closed his eyes and swallowed to ease his suddenly dry throat.

She lifted the towel and ran it slowly over her hair, wringing out the bulk of the moisture, kicking out her right hip as she did so. Several golden beams of light slicing through the windows above picked up the rich colour of her dark red hair. Dappled sunshine played across her milky skin like a caress. And all Hud could think was that if this wasn’t a moment that needed to be captured on film for all eternity, then he didn’t know what was.

He was so taken by the aesthetics, mentally calculating focal length and film speed, that he didn’t actually notice her begin to spin to face him until it was too late.

She turned. She saw him. And she screamed.

And he didn’t half blame her. He hadn’t shaved in a fortnight. He was wearing clothes better suited to a London winter than to the thirty degree Melbourne heat.

And she was trespassing on his land and, by the looks of the place, had been for some time.

Kendall yanked her towel to cover her bare legs in a movement that was pure instinct as her scream echoed around the lofty room, bouncing off the glass and back again before sighing to an embarrassing memory.

Unfortunately it hadn’t sent the intruder running for his life. He simply continued staring back at her. Tall, swarthy, fully dressed and all male.

As his eyes glanced from one end of her body to the other, she realised that clutching her towel like some maiden wasn’t going to help at all. She turned her left side away from him and swirled the towel around her body. Naturally it fought against her, wanting to ebb when she wanted it to flow, but eventually she managed to cover the bits that needed covering.

She then took a deep shaky breath before calmly informing the man to, ‘Get the hell out of here and right now, or I’ll scream again, this time so loud the whole town will come running.’

His dark eyes lifted to hers. Connected across fifteen metres of cool dark water. Every inch of skin his gaze touched vibrated as though he’d made actual physical contact. She decided it was a side effect of the shock of being half naked before a complete stranger. Nothing more.

‘Don’t scream again, please,’ he said, his mouth kicking into a pleasant kind of smile. He didn’t raise his voice, but he didn’t need to. The deep rumble carried easily across the wide space. ‘One perforated eardrum is quite enough excitement for one day.’

‘So leave, now, and you can save the other one.’ She spat a clump of wet hair from her mouth. ‘If you’re lost I can point you the way back to the main road or through the pine forest back into town.’ She glanced over her shoulder in that direction and when she looked back she could have sworn he’d moved closer.

‘I’m not lost,’ he said.

‘Well, you’re sure not where you’re meant to be. Everything within one hundred metres in each direction of this place is part of a private estate.’

He simply smiled some more, making her wonder if he knew that already. Everybody in Saffron knew. Claudel was owned by the descendants of Lady Fay Bennington, who hadn’t bothered with upkeep on the beautiful place since Fay had died a decade earlier. But everybody in Saffron also knew everybody else from Saffron, and she’d never seen this guy before. He was the kind of man one wouldn’t easily forget.

Tall and broad, with the kind of physique that could block out the sun. And dark. Dark clothes. Dark eyes. Dark curling hair in need of a cut. Dark stubble on his face that had gone past a shadow but had not quite been tamed into anything resembling a civilised beard. She would have thought him homeless in his battered coat, tattered jeans and scuffed boots but there was something in his bearing that made that seem a non sequitur. A kind of shoulders back, elegant stance, glint in the eye thing he had going on that negated every other potent signal bombarding her senses.

She tugged her towel tighter.

He sunk his hands into the pockets of an unseasonably heavy brown coat and definitely moved closer. ‘I’m thinking you’re the one who ought not to be in here, Miss…’

‘My name is none of your damn business, buddy.’

She’d taken self-defence classes since she’d come to town and moved in with Taffy. Two single girls living together, she’d figured better safe than sorry. So she knew it was better to run than to try to make an assailant see reason.

She dropped the towel in order to grab her clothes and then realised she was naked bar a sliver of Lycra covering not all that much skin. So she grabbed the towel again, then used it as a makeshift screen as she hurriedly pulled her long red sundress on over her swimsuit.

It wasn’t until her head popped through the neck hole and the dress dragged and twisted uncomfortably against her wet bathing suit that she realised it was inside out and back to front. Too bad. Too late. He was getting nearer.

She grabbed her wet hair and tossed it over her back and it instantly soaked right through to her skin, making her feel clammy as well as anxious and embarrassed and just a little bit intimidated.

‘Now, don’t come any closer,’ she insisted, grabbing her Doc Marten boots and holding them in front of her as if they were some kind of lethal weapon.

For whatever reason that seemed to work. The guy stopped. He held out his hands in front of him. Long-fingered hands. Clean hands. The hands of a gentleman, not a drifter.

‘There’s no need for any of that,’ he said. ‘Before you do anything foolish like knock me out with a flying shoe, you should know something.’

She wondered if perhaps he couldn’t swim and was worried about falling unconscious into the pool. She didn’t want him to come any closer, she didn’t want him to tell on her, but she also didn’t want to kill the guy. He was far too good-looking to die.

Feeling ridiculous for even thinking such a thing, she lifted her boots an inch higher. ‘And what’s that?’

‘This,’ he said, waving his arm to his left and taking another couple of slow steps her way, ‘is all mine.’

Her shoes dropped an inch. ‘Yours?’

He nodded. And came nearer. He was close enough now for her to notice a thin scar slicing through his stubble from the edge of his nose to his top lip. She knew about scars and the fact that it was still pink meant it was fairly recent.

Apart from that one flaw, it turned out he had a lovely straight nose and a strong jaw, like one of the statues to be found hidden beneath the dense foliage in Claudel’s grounds. Up close his dark hair curled with a delectable just-out-of-bed look. Like some sort of modern day Lord Byron.

But all that was swept aside when she glanced back into his eyes. They were hazel. Deep, dark, enigmatic hazel clashing against the whitest of whites she’d ever seen, framed by long dark lashes. And all that’s best of dark and bright meet in his aspect and his eyes, she thought.

The guy was in need of a shave and haircut and a shopping expedition, but he was utterly gorgeous. So gorgeous she realised she had spent the past twenty seconds staring, and paraphrasing Byron, as if she hadn’t seen a man this beautiful before. Up close. In the flesh.

A low, lazy hum of awareness settled in her belly.

No, she thought, feeling more panicky at that thought than any other so far, not now. Not like this. I’m not ready. Her mind shook back and forth vehemently, which her head would have done if she hadn’t wanted to keep both eyes on every move of Mr Tall, Dark and Dangerous-To-Her-Equilibrium.

She blinked and thought back to what they had been arguing about. Had he really just suggested…? She raised her shoes to a battle ready position again. ‘What do you mean it’s all yours?’

His enigmatic eyes narrowed slightly and she bit her lip, hoping he had no clue of the thoughts streaming unchecked through her obviously chlorine-addled head.

‘My name is Hudson Bennington III. Everyone just calls me Hud,’ he said, holding out his right hand and continuing to close in on her. ‘My Aunt Fay once lived here. I summered here as a child. And she left it all to me when she died. Ask in town if you don’t believe me. I’m certain there will be those who remember.’

She stared at his outstretched hand, then into his eyes, but she found them far too unsettling so she ignored both and bent to quickly pull her heavy boots on instead, the sudden movement jarring at the rigid muscles in her bad leg. She winced and straightened. She didn’t dare waste further time lacing them up.

‘Well then, I’d better head back to town right now and double-check,’ she said. ‘A girl can’t be too careful.’

She grabbed her towel and moved around the other side of the pool, away from Hudson Bennington III and his dark eyes, and bedroom hair, and rugged elegance, and gentleman’s hands, and disturbing Byronesque handsomeness, towards the exit.

If this guy was who he said he was, if he was back to claim the land as his own, her daily swims would be no more. No more revelling in the bliss of floating, of feeling unencumbered, light and vigorous. And if she’d felt panic earlier, it was nothing compared with the all-encompassing dread that filled her at that thought.

‘You don’t have to run off just yet,’ he said, his deep voice calling after her.

But Kendall spilled out into the bright light and walked as fast as her shaking legs would carry her.

She ducked into the pine forest and looked over her shoulder just the once to find Hud standing outside the pool house looking for her, hands on hips, eyes straining. But she knew this part of the world too well and by now she would be no more than one of a thousand shadows between the trunks.

As she picked up her pace, her persistent limp became more pronounced with each step back to town.

Hud ran a hand over his face and stared into the tree line. He had been hot on her heels as she’d left the pool house and then suddenly…she was gone.

A woman who lived locally. A woman with a mouth and an attitude pluckier than he would have expected in a mermaid if he’d ever given it any thought. A woman who up close had skin like porcelain, eyes the colour of the sky before a storm and hair the colour of red wine.

And a woman who, for the too few minutes she’d been near him, had put out of his mind every single thing he’d come back to Claudel in order to forget.

Kendall hit the edge of the pine forest and stopped to check if anybody was out in the main street of Saffron. She didn’t want anyone to see her in an inside out, back to front dress, unlaced shoes and sopping wet hair.

It had taken almost all of the three years she’d lived in Saffron for the locals to look past the limp and get over whispering behind their hands about how it had happened. The car accident. A young man’s death. Her missing months afterwards. Now she had become the steady, dependable, sensible fact checker for the local newspaper. And she was determined to keep it that way.

When she spotted a break in the dawdling morning traffic she looked right, then left, then right again, before darting across Peach Street, through the garden gate and into the two-storey cottage she shared with Taffy.

The noise she made kicking off her shoes and throwing her wet towel over the back of a chair in the hall was enough for Taffy to look up from her spot at the kitchen table. Her Sunday newspaper dropped in a show of slow motion dawning, her eyes grew wide as saucers and she coughed on her honey-covered English muffin. ‘What on earth happened to you?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ Kendall continued up the stairs. She wished she could take them two at a time, but she’d walked so fast into town her damn leg now thrummed.

‘Oh, no, you don’t.’ Taffy’s voice slunk up the stairs behind her, followed by thunderously healthy footsteps.

Kendall burst into her room. Her deaf schnauzer, Orlando, looked up at the flurry of movement and then dropped his sweet snout back on to his paws.

Taffy came into Kendall’s bedroom and leant against the door-jamb, hooking one bare foot along the other calf. ‘So,’ she said, ‘was there a sudden rainstorm? At the market? Because that’s where you told me you were going, remember. To the market to look for fresh meat for tonight’s dinner.’

‘And…’ Kendall said, twisting her damp hair into a low bun and searching madly through the pile of washing on the tub chair in the corner of her room for a fresh towel.

‘And…I see no evidence of meat. Only wet hair and a dress that seems to be inside out.’ Taffy spilled into the room, her hand to her heart. ‘Oh, Kendall! Please tell me fresh meat was code for—’

Kendall threw up her hands and screwed up her eyes to cut out the disturbing images in her head—images of a tanned forearm, a sinewy wrist with a smattering of dark hair and a watch that looked as if it had lived through three world wars. ‘Taffy! Stop!’

Taffy sat on the corner of Kendall’s bed and licked honey off her fingers. She then buttoned her lip and waited for Kendall to simply talk.

Sick of feeling like a bedraggled cat, Kendall tore her dress over her head and wrapped herself in the towel, feeling strangely as if she were back in the pool house again. On show. She didn’t like it. Once upon a time she’d revelled in it. Being the centre of attention. The class clown. Not any more. ‘Do you want to go out while I get changed?’

Taffy shook her head. ‘Tell me about the meat.’

Kendall’s instinct was for self-protection. But this was Taffy. Taffy who’d taken her in at the time in her life when she’d most needed a friend, when the family she’d come to love as her own had left her out in the cold. Besides, she’d already been sprung by the one person who meant her secret getaway couldn’t be a secret any more.

She slumped down on to the bed next to her friend. ‘I was swimming.’

‘At the falls?’

‘No. At Claudel.’

‘The old house? But how? The place is decrepit.’

Kendall shrugged. ‘Not so much. Not the pool house at least. Not any more.’

Taffy shook her head and half laughed at the same time. ‘What have you done now?’

Kendall leant over and buried her face in her palms. ‘I found it on one of my forest walks. It’s the most beautiful building, Taff. And it was just so sad seeing it falling apart like it was. I got this crazy compulsion to make it like new again. Now I’ve cleaned the place up, the floor tiles look like bottled glass. And the marble benches are like something out of a Grace Kelly movie.’

‘Whoa, back up a sec. You cleaned?’

Kendall laughed into her hands, then sat up straight, unpeeling her hands from her face. ‘I more than cleaned, Taff. I filled it. Chlorinated it. Kept it pristine. Perfect. And visited every day for the past two years. The moment I saw it, I kind of just…had no choice.’

‘But that still doesn’t quite explain this.’ Taffy grabbed a hunk of Kendall’s hair and let it slap against her back.

‘Today…’ Kendall said, then took a deep breath as she tried to find the words to explain the unexpected effect of tall, dark ruggedness without making an idiot of herself. ‘Today I was sprung. By Claudel’s owner.’