Falling for the Rebel Heir

Her head turned, only slightly, but enough for him to see her smile. It was only half the wattage of the one from earlier but still his chest constricted in response.

‘We haven’t known one another all that long, Hud, but I think you already know me better than that.’

The way his name sounded on her tongue made it feel as if they’d known one another a thousand years, though it was the first time he’d ever heard it. And suddenly he realised he had no idea what her name was.

‘Who are you?’ he called out, knowing his interest went far beyond just knowing her name.

She turned to walk backwards, not in the least fearful that she’d walk into a tree. Perhaps she was a wood sprite, after all.

‘The name’s Kendall York,’ she said. ‘The first.’ The half smile kicking up at one corner created a rosy cheek and a hollow cheekbone. Her bone structure was unbelievable. Photographable.

And, as she began to disappear back into the early morning shadows of the pine forest she seemed to know so well, she shot him one last smile and with it one last statement. ‘If you’d simply asked nicely I would have helped type up your story for nothing, you know. I’m that kind of girl.’

The smile hit dead centre of his chest. Burrowing, melting, until it was too late to get a handle on it and pull it out. He said, ‘And if you’d said no I still would have let you use my pool. I’m that kind of guy.’

Her steps faltered. Only slightly but enough for him to take a step forward, as though he’d be able to catch her if she fell, even though by now she was a good ten metres away.

‘See you tomorrow, Hud,’ was all she said.

‘Looking forward to it, Kendall.’

And with that she picked up her pace and she and her heavy boots and hippy clothes walked away.

Hud watched her until she was no more than a sweet memory which he would happily allow to slide unbidden into his mind any time that day or night.

At a couple of minutes before nine the next morning Kendall stood at the Claudel edge of the pine forest.

A large hemp bag containing her laptop, the notebook she never went anywhere without and a red tartan pencil case she’d had since primary school weighed heavy on her shoulder. The plastic bag carrying her bathers and towel felt lighter than air.

She stared at the grey canted roof of Claudel’s main house. And, as always when she stepped on these grounds, she closed her eyes and imagined herself surrounded by ladies in long white dresses and white hats playing croquet and gentlemen in linen suits drinking Long Island iced teas.

Her eyes flickered open and the view morphed into a garden on the verge of eating the house alive while she stood alone in one of her usual long layered skirts and heavy Doc Martens, rigid with the prospect of finding herself once again in the company of a man who made her feel…what?

Well, that was just it. He made her feel. Nervous. Clumsy. Funny. Feminine. With a flicker of those deep dark hazel eyes, a twitch of those sensuous lips, the rise and fall of that broad chest, he conjured feelings inside her she’d believed long since extinct.

And she’d been fine with them being extinct. For memories of a time when such feelings had been the centre of her life hadn’t faded in the years since the boy who’d shared them with her had gone. Memories that had taught her that being emotionally open to someone made a person vulnerable to a thousand different kinds of hurt.

Not that she felt anything for this guy like she had for George. She barely remembered a time in her young life when George hadn’t been there. The past three years without him she had felt as if she were walking through mist.

Two conversations with a stunning man did not a great love affair make, even for a girl who had studied romantic literature. But she still felt something. A flutter. A whisper. The beginning of something that could so easily turn into another thing. After having looked into Hud Bennington’s eyes—twice—her nerves jangled at the very thought of coming face to face with him again.

She wanted that pool, she needed that pool, but had the deal she had made been the worse of two evils?

If she turned around now and broke their bargain surely she could find another way. Another pool. There must be a hundred public pools this side of Melbourne. Where she would have to get into her bathers in front of people. People who would stare at her left leg, and point, and whisper and wonder.

Or what if she just went for a swim anyway? What could the guy really do? Call the police? Barricade the door? Set up a security barrier with lasers and cameras and snipers?

No. He’d asked for her help. Help she could all too easily give. She had the time, the skill and, beneath all of that, like a diamond-tough thread holding the whole deal together, she wanted to see him again. To know if the warm, delicious skittery feeling enveloping her as she’d fallen asleep the night before had as much to do with him as she thought it had.

Well, stuff it. She’d had a crush on Lord Byron when she was twelve and she’d survived it. Now she was three times the age and had learnt the value of self-control. So long as the flutter of her heart didn’t interfere with access to the pool, she could certainly appear all business. All the way.

She sucked in a long breath, allowing the clean scent of the forest to give her strength, and she strode up to the side door of the house. Her hand shook only slightly when she lifted it to rap on the big carved wooden door.

‘Good morning,’ a deep voice said from somewhere behind her.

Kendall spun to find Hud walking towards her, naked from the waist up. Well-worn jeans clung to his hips. Heavy boots caked in mud balanced out his impossibly broad shoulders. And, using his T-shirt as a pouch, he carried a pile of potatoes, tomatoes and carrots which he must have found in a vegetable garden that had survived the years.

The nearer he came, the harder she found it to swallow. Her neck suddenly felt warm and prickly. For it had been some time since she’d been this close to a wall of male muscle. If ever. George had been academic. A smart guy with the softest lips on the planet. But when his life had been snuffed with the slightest swerve of a steering wheel, he’d been a kid compared with the man who stood before her now.

She blinked rapidly, suppressing those memories and thoughts deep down inside.

Hud lifted his right arm to wipe it across his brow and Kendall caught sight of a tattoo etched on to his upper arm, spanning his large bicep. It was a word. A name. A woman’s name. Mirabella.

She nibbled at her bottom lip.

Was she some ex-girlfriend? Or maybe even a current one? Hud’s wife, even? An intrepid journalist still on the trail? Or a native of some far-flung exotic location who’d stolen his heart for ever, making it wretchedly untouchable.

His arm dropped and she glanced up to find him watching her with one of those faint half smiles that made her stomach tumble.

‘Busy morning?’ She dropped her hand to the strap biting at her shoulder and hitched it to a more comfortable position.

He shrugged and the half smile unexpectedly grew a matching blush, which on a guy of his size just made her feel all gooey inside. ‘Sorry about my state of undress. I’m still on London time. I’ve been up with the birds. I had no idea what time it was.’

‘I guess that means we’re even,’ she said. And then regretted bringing up the whole I was there without permission and naked bar my swimmers thing again when she saw understanding dawn. Understanding and a further darkening of his already unfairly dark eyes.

‘So we are,’ he said. ‘So have you been for a swim yet?’

‘Not yet. I thought I ought to work before claiming my prize. I have no intention of taking any further advantage of you…I mean, of your pool.’

‘Don’t worry about it. Swim in the mornings if it suits. Especially with the Olympics just around the corner and all.’

She felt her cheeks loosen and warm. She bit back a smile as she said, ‘I was pulling your leg about that.’

‘No. Really?’ Sarcasm dripped from his words and the smile spilled across her lips anyway.

‘Yes, really. I need the pool because I’m secretly a synchronised swimming choreographer by trade. I just don’t want it to get out or I’ll have people beating on my door.’

‘Right. Makes perfect sense.’

After a few long, loaded seconds in which the scent of pine needles and late roses mixed with the scent of warm male skin, Hud continued towards her. Kendall swayed back on to her heels.

He reached out to her at the last second. She felt all of her promises to brush off her infatuation melting away with the encroaching heat of day. Of him. Her breath clutched against the edges of her throat.

His hand caressed her shoulder, slid deftly beneath the strap of the too heavy bag, lifted it away from her grasp as though it weighed no more than a handful of feathers. And then he passed, bathing her in a whisper of sandalwood scent, pausing only slightly to throw a quick, ‘Coming?’ over his shoulder before disappearing into the belly of the house.

And if Kendall ever wanted to see her laptop again she had no choice but to follow.

As to finding an opportunity to discover who this Mirabella might be, well, she would just have to remind herself on a minute by minute basis why that was just none of her business.

CHAPTER THREE

THE neat elegance of the outside of the house had given Kendall little indication of the grandeur inside Claudel’s high walls.

Cream wallpaper embossed with pale gold roses drew her through the side hall and into a massive parlour where oak floors were inset with marble friezes in the shape of more roses. The ceiling there was so high she had to crane her neck to see up into the second level, which was bordered with a gallery all the way around. Through arched doorways she spotted hallways leading to rooms and wings in every direction with hints of curling staircases winding up into hidden alcoves. It was huge. Beautiful. Graceful. Like something out of an art history book.

But for all that she detected not an ounce of warmth. Every piece of furniture was covered in white sheets as though the house was closed up and the family still away. Hud’s return had not let any new air into the place.

‘Kendall,’ a dismembered voice said from somewhere to her right. She walked gently so that her clodhopper boots didn’t echo through the lofty entrance.

She soon found Hud in a large room, backlit by bolts of light angling through several arched windows with their gold velvet curtains drawn back. Thankfully he’d added a clean T-shirt to his ensemble. If she’d had to sit there with him shirtless she wasn’t quite sure she’d get through the morning without bursting a blood vessel or two.

She spied her hemp laptop bag at Hud’s feet just before he blocked her view by whipping a large white sheet from a piece of furniture between them. Great swathes of dust came away with the fabric, bathing him in a hazy golden light, haloing his dark curls.

‘No need for all this fanfare,’ she said, then cleared her throat when her voice came out a tad ragged, which had nothing to do with the dust. ‘I’m used to much more simple conditions. I usually work at a second-hand Formica desk beside the kitchen. Or, if Taffy kicks me off the big computer, then with my laptop on my lap in front of the TV.’

Hud curled the sheet into a ball and placed it beside a couch that looked as if it had only just been brought back out into the sunlight for the first time in years itself.

‘That table is second-hand too, you know,’ he said, turning suddenly to face her and catching her staring.

Kendall quickly dragged her eyes away from his and to the table to which he was referring. Bevelled edges, Queen Anne legs, antique as all get out. She looked back at him with a raised eyebrow. ‘I’d hazard a guess my Formica number was never named after, and certainly never owned by, royalty.’

‘You probably have me there.’ He watched her for a further few seconds, a gentle smile warming his face. She gave into a sudden need to breathe deep.

Then, easy as you please, he turned away and she rocked back on to her heels as though he’d had his finger curled into the front of her tank-top and had finally let her go.

Kendall plonked on to the velvet-backed chair behind the makeshift desk, knees together, back ramrod straight, still holding on to her swimming bag, not quite sure what she was expected to do while he set to, pulling more sheets off all the furniture in the room. It did look more welcoming when he was done, and made her feel less like they were little kids trespassing. One less tension to worry about.

Eventually Hud stood surveying the room, hands on hips, chest pushed forward, dark eyes flickering over every detail like a soldier casing an enemy camp. ‘So, this Taffy…’ he said, catching her unawares. ‘That can’t be little Taffy Henderson, can it?’

She blinked and let her pool bag drop to the polished wood floor at her feet with a swoosh. ‘Ah, yeah. Though she’s not so little any more.’

He shook his head. ‘I was sure she would have been living in New York by now, treading the Broadway stage. She was always a little drama queen.’

Kendall laughed out loud despite herself. ‘Ah, no. She is the receptionist for the local accountants.’ After a pause she added, ‘She saves the drama queen antics for when she’s at home.’

His gaze swung sideways to engage hers. A matching smile lit his eyes. Her stomach lurched, skidded and fell over backwards with a splat she felt reverberate through her whole body.

‘Lucky you,’ he said.

‘You have no idea.’

‘So she’s your…’ He let the thought carry on the air between them.

‘Friend. I rent a room in her house. We’ve known one another since we were in high school together. She was a couple of years above me. The rest is a long story.’

‘I have nothing but time,’ he said, ambling towards her.

Her head tilted higher the nearer he came. He was backlit, the hard planes of his face in shadow. And once again she felt a warning thump in the back of her head. Only now she knew it had nothing to do with the fear that came from being alone with a stranger in a secluded place. It came from finding herself alone with him.

‘I used to date her cousin,’ she said, so distracted she didn’t even feel the words until they spilled from her mouth.

Hud’s brow furrowed. ‘Another local? Would I know him?’

‘No,’ Kendall said, running a hand up the back of her neck to negate the sudden tightness constricting her muscles. ‘We all went to school in Melbourne. Taffy stayed with George’s family during the week and his family lived near mine. Anyway, I have about half a dozen articles due back at the paper by three, and a swim to fit in between, so…’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Sorry. I’d completely forgotten that’s the reason you’re here.’

She slid her battered old laptop from its case and with it her ubiquitous red notebook. She turned on her laptop, balanced her fingers over the keys, half the letters long since worn away, and purposely didn’t look at Hud any more.

But, after several drawn-out moments, she couldn’t help herself. Something about this place seemed to have her checking her will-power at the border of the pine forest.

She looked up to find Hud standing in the middle of the room, one hand on his hip, the other running up the back of his neck in a mirror image of her recent action, as though something heavy was bothering him too. His bicep strained against the cotton of his T-shirt, pale denim hung just so off lean hips, and he looked at her. Worse, he looked into her.

As though the well-built, well-tended, protective walls that normally kept her safe from a return of any kind of emotional disorder into her life were to him as transparent as cellophane. As though he knew the half a dozen articles she had due back to The Northern News weren’t the reason why she wanted to get on with their deal and quick.

She was here because she was drawn to him. But whether it was to his sad eyes or his beautiful face she had no idea. Either ought to have kept her strapped to her desk at home instead of sitting here becoming more and more familiar with every tempting facet, for both were so enticing she wasn’t sure quite how to escape their pull.

She let her wrists slump against the table and the breath she let go was juddery and hot, as if it had been pent up inside her for an eternity. Her skin began to itch as if a rash were crawling up her arm, as she waited for him to say something, to tell her what he saw. And her head spun as she tried to think of ways to not answer him.

‘So,’ he said, his hand dropping until his long arm rested at his side, ‘if you’re comfortable there, I’m happier to walk as I talk. Okay with you?’

Kendall licked her dry lips. She would have been more comfy on the couch by far, feet on the coffee table, laptop warming her thighs, but that would have put her nearer Hud and his sandalwood scent and that would have been tantamount to giving the guy the sledgehammer to knock down her walls for good.

‘Fine with me,’ she said.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Then let’s go ahead and get this thing done.’

This thing, Hud repeated in his head. As if getting the story of the last two months of his life out of his head and down on paper was some kind of distraction getting in the way of other things the two of them could be doing together.

But this thing was the reason he was here. While she was the distraction. No doubt about it. All that dewy skin and those great big eyes and complex personality were enough to keep a guy like him—a guy with an infamously short attention span—interested.

Over the years he’d found women the world over who were happy to be distractions to a man who wore his inherent resistance to settling in one place like a second skin. Somehow, more often than not, they sought him out rather than the other way around. As though a friendly ear and a warm pair of arms could get many an aimless soul through the night.

But he knew instinctively that this woman was not like the others. She wouldn’t take being a distraction lightly. Giving into such urges would only be taking advantage. Which he had to tell himself over and over again while she sat there, looking up at him expectantly, eyes dark against her pale skin, believing she was part of something bigger than just the slaying of the monsters inside of his head.

He began to pace. Trying to find a beginning point, a way in. For now he actually had to say the words out loud to begin to get this thing—this great, dark, hulking shadow hovering over his future like a storm cloud waiting to burst—out of him and through her. Not his most brilliant scheme ever, though when an excess of hormones became involved most men could be said to be less than at their prime.

Kendall slowly sucked her lips between her teeth and her hands fell to cradle the edges of her laptop. ‘Once upon a time is a tad clichéd,’ she said. ‘I was born has already been taken. But anything else would suffice.’

‘Thanks,’ he said, shooting her a wry smile. And deciding that perhaps the walking thing wasn’t helping. He sat on the couch, grabbed a velvet throw pillow, punched it a few times and tucked it into a corner of the couch before lying down and using it as a pillow. But then he felt far too much like he was on a psychiatrist’s couch.

He sat up, clasped his hands so tight around his kneecaps his knuckles turned white and figured he may as well start the day it happened.

‘Colombia,’ he said, the word shooting from his lungs as though it had to pass through an obstacle course. He closed his eyes and breathed through it, doing his all to control the images already starting to crowd in on him.

Bad idea. Bad idea, his subconscious chanted. Then, Just be a man, and do it.

He looked across and noticed that, while Kendall’s right leg was stretched out comfortably in front of her, she was kneading her left thigh. Her expression was absent-minded, her brow furrowed.

‘You okay?’ he asked, happy for the interruption.

She looked up. He motioned to her leg.

And then, quick as a flash, she straightened her skirt, a twin to the one from the day before, only this one was the colour of caramel, then folded both legs back beneath her. ‘All good,’ she said with an easy smile. ‘Keep going. So far it’s riveting. I can only hope the rest can live up to the promise so far.’

‘Smart alec,’ he said, but what he thought was, Be careful what you wish for…

‘Night,’ he continued. ‘A sky of dark blue. Market umbrellas like triangular black holes against the squat, square mud buildings surrounding the town centre. Their dark windows like empty eyes looking out over the noisy milling crowd. I pass a group of young men leaning against a building, smoking, laughing, telling dirty jokes.’

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