The Rebel and the Heiress

He finished the cupcake and stared hungrily at the plate. Would she mind if he had another one?

Rick stared at the three remaining cupcakes with so much hunger in his eyes that something inside Nell clenched up. It started as a low-level burn in her chest, but the burn intensified and hardened to eventually settle in her stomach. It was one thing to feel sorry for herself for the predicament she found herself in, but she’d never experienced the world as the harsh, ugly place Rick had. And you’ll do well not to forget it.

She had to swallow before she could speak. ‘Scoff the lot.’ She pushed the plate closer. ‘They’re leftovers from the orders I delivered earlier.’

He glanced at her and the uncertainty in his eyes knifed into her. He’d swaggered in here with his insolent bad-boy cockiness set off to perfection in that tight black T-shirt, but it was just as much a show, a fake, as her society girl smile. Still… She glanced at those shoulders and her mouth watered.

In the next instant she shook herself. She did not find that tough-guy look attractive.

He pushed the plate away, and for some reason it made her heart heavy. So heavy it took an effort to keep it from sinking all the way to her knees.

‘How…when did you learn to cook?’

She didn’t want to talk about that. When she looked too hard at the things she was good at—cooking and gardening—and the reasons behind them, it struck her as too pathetic for words.

And she wasn’t going to be pathetic any more.

So she pasted on her best society girl smile—the one she used for the various charity functions she’d always felt honour-bound to attend. ‘It appears I have a natural aptitude for it.’ She gave an elegant shrug. She knew it was elegant because she’d practised it endlessly until her mother could find no fault with it. ‘Who’d have thought? I’m as surprised as everyone else.’

He stared at her and she found it impossible to read his expression. Except to note that the insolent edge had returned to his smile. ‘What time did you start baking today?’

‘Three a.m.’

Both of his feet slammed to the ground. He leant towards her, mouth open.

‘It’s Sunday, and Saturdays and Sundays are my busiest days. Today I had a tower cake for a little girl’s birthday party, four dozen cupcakes for a charity luncheon, a hen party morning tea and a couple of smaller afternoon teas.’

‘You did that all on your own?’

She tried not to let his surprise chafe at her. Some days it still shocked the dickens out of her too.

His face tightened and he glanced around the kitchen. ‘I guess it does leave you the rest of the week to work on this place.’

Oh, he was just like everyone else! He thought her a helpless piece of fluff without a backbone, without a brain and probably without any moral integrity either. You’re useless.

She pushed her shoulders back. ‘I guess,’ she said, icing-sugar-sweet, ‘that all I need to do is find me a big strong man with muscles and know-how…and preferably with a pot of gold in the bank…to wrap around my little finger and…’ She trailed off with another shrug—an expansive one this time. She traded in a whole vocabulary of shrugs.

A glint lit his eye. ‘And then you’ll never have to bake another cupcake again?’

‘Ah, but you forget. I like baking cupcakes.’

‘And getting up at three a.m.?’

She ignored that.

He frowned. ‘Is that why you wanted to see me?’

It took a moment to work out what he meant. When she did, she laughed. ‘I guess you have the muscles, but do you have the know-how?’ She didn’t ask him about the pot of gold. That would be cruel. ‘Because I’m afraid I don’t.’ She bit back a sigh. No self-pity. ‘But no, that’s not why I asked you to drop by.’

His face hardened. ‘So why did I receive the summons? If you knew I was at Tash’s, why couldn’t you have dropped by there?’

She heard what he didn’t say. Why do you think you’re better than me? The thing was, she didn’t. He wouldn’t believe that, though. She moistened her lips. ‘I didn’t think I’d be welcome there. I don’t believe Tash thinks well of me.’

He scowled. ‘What on earth—?’

‘A while back I went into the Royal Oak.’ It was the hotel where Tash worked. Nell had been lonely and had wanted to connect with people she’d never been allowed to connect with before. For heaven’s sake, they all lived in the same neighbourhood. They should know each other. She was careful to keep the hurt out of her voice. She’d had a lot of practice at that too.

There you go again, feeling sorry for yourself.

She lifted her chin. ‘I ordered a beer. Tash poured me a lemon squash and made it clear it’d be best for all concerned if I drank it and left.’

Rick stared at her, but his face had lost its frozen closeness. ‘And you took that to mean she didn’t like you?’

She had no facility for making friends and the recent downturn in her circumstances had only served to highlight that. ‘Yes, I did.’

‘Princess, I—’

‘I really wish you wouldn’t call me that.’ She’d never been a princess, regardless of what Rick thought. ‘I much prefer Nell. And there’s absolutely no reason at all why Tash should like me.’ Given the way her parents had ensured that Nell hadn’t associated with the local children, it was no wonder they’d taken against her. Or that those attitudes had travelled with them into adulthood.

He looked as if he wanted to argue so she continued—crisp, impersonal, untouchable. ‘Do you recall the gardener who worked here for many years?’

He leant back, crossed a leg so his ankle rested on his knee. Despite the casual demeanour, she could see him turning something over in his mind. ‘He was the one who chased me away that day?’

That day. She didn’t know how that day could still be so vivid in her mind. ‘Come and play.’ She’d reached out a hand through the eight-foot-high wrought iron fence and Rick had clasped it briefly before John had chased him off. John had told her that Rick wasn’t the kind of little boy she should be playing with. But she’d found an answering loneliness in the ten-year-old Rick’s eyes. It had given her the courage to speak to him in the first place. Funnily enough, even though Rick had only visited twice more, she’d never felt quite so alone again.

That day John had given her her very own garden bed. That had helped too.

But Rick remembered that day as well? Her heart started to pound though she couldn’t have explained why. ‘Yes, John was the one who chased you away.’

‘John Cox. I remember seeing him around the place. He drank at the Crown and Anchor, if memory serves me. Why? What about him?’

‘Did you know him well?’

‘I’m not sure I ever spoke to the man.’

‘Right.’ She frowned. Then this just didn’t make any sense.

‘Why?’ The word barked out of him. ‘What has he been saying?’

‘Nothing.’ She swallowed. ‘He died eight months ago. Lung cancer.’

Rick didn’t say anything and, while he hadn’t moved, she sensed that his every muscle was tense and poised.

‘John and I were…well, friends of a kind, I guess. I liked to garden and he taught me how to grow things and how to keep them healthy.’

‘Cooking and gardening? Are your talents endless, Princess?’

She should’ve become immune to mockery by now, but she hadn’t. She and Rick might’ve shared a moment of kinship fifteen years ago, but they didn’t have anything in common now. That much was obvious. And she’d long given up begging for friends.

She gave a shrug that was designed to rub him up the wrong way, in the same way his ‘Princess’ was designed to needle her. A superior shrug that said I’m better than you. Her mother had been proficient at those.

Rick’s lip curled.

She tossed her hair back over her shoulder. ‘John kept to himself. He didn’t have many friends so I was one of the few people who visited him during his final weeks.’

Rick opened his mouth. She readied herself for something cutting, but he closed it again instead. She let out a breath. Despite what Rick might think of her, she’d cried when John had died. He’d been kind to her and had taken the time to show her how to do things. He’d answered her endless questions. And he’d praised her efforts. The fingers she’d been tapping on her now cold coffee cup stopped.

‘Nell?’

She dragged herself back from those last days in John’s hospice room. ‘If the two of you never spoke, then what I’m about to tell you is rather odd, but…’

‘But?’

She met his gaze. ‘John charged me with a final favour.’

‘What kind of favour?’

‘He wanted me to deliver a letter.’

Dark brown eyes stared back at her, the same colour as dark chocolate. Eighty per cent cocoa. Bitter chocolate.

‘He wanted me to give that letter to you, Rick.’

‘To me?’

She rose and went to the kitchen drawer where she kept important documents. ‘He asked that I personally place it in your hands.’

And then she held it out to him.

CHAPTER TWO

EVERY INSTINCT RICK had urged him to leap up and leave the room, to race out of this house and away from this rotten city and to never return.

He wanted away from Nell and her polished blonde perfection and her effortless nose-in-the-air superiority that was so at odds with the girl he remembered.

Fairy tales, that was what those memories were. He’d teased them out into full-blown fantasies in an effort to dispel some of the grim reality that had surrounded him. He’d known at the time that was what he’d been doing, but he’d wanted to hold up the promise of something better to come—a chance for a better future.

Of course, all of those dreams had shattered the moment he’d set foot inside a prison cell.

Still…

The letter in Nell’s outstretched hand started to shake. ‘Aren’t you going to take it?’

‘I’m not sure.’

She sat.

‘I have no idea what this John Cox could have to say to me.’ Did she know what was in the letter? He deliberately loosened his shoulders, slouched back in his chair and pasted on a smirk. ‘Do you think he’s going to accuse me of stealing the family silver?’

She flinched and just for a moment he remembered wild eyes as she ordered, ‘Run!’

He wanted her to tell him to run now.

‘After all, I didn’t disappoint either his or your father’s expectations.’

Those incredible eyes of hers flashed green fire and he wondered what she’d do next. Would she frogmarch him off the premises with his ear between her thumb and forefinger. And if she tried it would he let her? Or would he kiss her?

He shifted on the chair, ran a hand down his T-shirt. He wasn’t kissing the Princess.

‘If memory serves me correctly—’ she bit each word out ‘—you went to jail on drug charges, not robbery. And if the rumours buzzing about town are anything to go by, those charges are in the process of being dropped and your name cleared.’

Did she think that made up for fifteen months behind bars?

A sudden heaviness threatened to fell him. One stupid party had led to…

He dragged a hand down his face. Cheryl, at seventeen, hadn’t known what she’d been doing, hadn’t known the trouble that the marijuana she’d bought could get her into—could get them all into. She’d been searching for escape—escape from a sexually abusive father. He understood that, sympathised. The fear that had flashed into her eyes, though, when the police had burst in, her desperation—the desperation of someone who’d been betrayed again and again by people who were supposed to love her—it still plagued his nightmares.

His chest cramped. Little Cheryl who he’d known since she’d started kindergarten. Little Cheryl who he’d done his best to protect…and, when that hadn’t been enough, who he’d tried to comfort. He hadn’t known it then, but there wasn’t enough comfort in the world to help heal her. It hadn’t been her fault.

So he’d taken the blame for her. He’d been a much more likely candidate for the drugs anyway. At the age of eighteen he’d gone to jail for fifteen months. He pulled in a breath. In the end, though, none of it had made any difference. That was what really galled him.

Nell thrust out her chin. ‘So drop the attitude and stop playing the criminal with me.’

It snapped him out of his memories and he couldn’t have said why, but he suddenly wanted to smile.

‘The only way to find out what John has to say is to open the letter.’

He folded his arms. ‘What’s it to you, anyway?’

‘I made a promise to a dying man.’

‘And now you’ve kept it.’

She leaned across, picked up his hand and slapped the letter into it. She smelled sweet, like cupcakes. ‘Now I’ve kept it.’

A pulse pounded inside him. Nell moved back. She moved right across to the other side of the kitchen and refilled their mugs from the pot kept warm by the percolator hotplate. But her sugar-sweet scent remained to swirl around him. He swallowed. He blinked until his vision cleared and he could read his name in black-inked capitals on the envelope. For some reason, those capitals struck him as ominous.

For heaven’s sake, just open the damn thing and be done with it. It’d just be one more righteous citizen telling him the exact moment he’d gone off the rails, listing a litany of perceived injuries received—both imagined and in some cases real—and then a biting critique of what the rest of his life would hold if he didn’t mend his ways.

The entire thing would take him less than a minute to read and then he could draw a line under this whole stupid episode. With a half-smothered curse he made deliberately unintelligible in honour of the Princess’s upper class ears, he tore open the envelope.

Heaving out a breath, he unfolded the enclosed sheet of paper. The letter wasn’t long. At least he wouldn’t have to endure a detailed rant. He registered when Nell placed another mug of coffee in front of him that she even added milk and sugar to it.

He opened his mouth to thank her, but…

The words on the page were in the same odd style of all capitals as the envelope. All in the same black ink. He read the words but couldn’t make sense of them to begin with.

They began to dance on the page and then each word rose up and hit him with the force of a sledgehammer. He flinched. He clenched the letter so hard it tore. He swore—loud and rude and blue—as black dots danced before his eyes.

Nell jumped. He expected her to run away. He told himself he hoped she would.

‘Rick!’ Her voice and its shrillness dive-bombed him like a magpie hostile with nesting instinct. ‘Stick your head between your knees. Now!’

And then she was there, pushing his head between his knees and ordering him to breathe, telling him how to do it. He followed her instructions—pulling air into his lungs, holding it there and releasing it—but as soon as the dizziness left him he surged upright again.

He spun to her and waved the balled-up letter beneath her nose. ‘Do you know what this says? Do you know what the—’

He pulled back the ugly language that clawed at his throat. ‘Do you know what this says?’ he repeated.

She shook her head. ‘I wasn’t there when he wrote it. It was already sealed when he gave it to me. He never confided in me about its contents and I never asked.’ She gave one of those shrugs. ‘I’ll admit to a passing curiosity.’ She drew herself up, all haughty blonde sleekness in her crazy, beautiful Hawaiian dress. ‘But I would never open someone else’s mail. So, no, I haven’t read its contents.’

He wasn’t sure he believed her.

She moved back around the table, sat and brought her mug to her lips. It was so normal it eased some of the raging beast inside him.

She glanced up, her eyes clouded. ‘I do hope he hasn’t accused you of something ridiculous like stealing my grandmother’s pearls.’

He sat too. ‘It’s nothing like that.’

‘Good, because I know for a fact that was my father.’

He choked. Father. The word echoed through his mind. Father. Father. Father. In ugly black capitals.

‘And I’m sorry I’ve not tracked you down sooner to give that letter to you, but John died and then my father’s business fell apart and…and I wasn’t sure where to look for you.’

He could see now that she hadn’t wanted to approach Tash to ask how she might find him.

He wasn’t sorry. Not one little bit.

‘But when I heard you were home…’

He dragged a hand down his face before gulping half his coffee in one go. ‘Did he say anything else to you when he gave you this?’ The letter was still balled in his hand.

She reached out as if to swipe her finger through the frosting of one of the cupcakes, but she pulled her hand back at the last moment. ‘He said you might have some questions you’d like to ask me and that he’d appreciate it if I did my best to answer them.’

He coughed back a hysterical laugh. Some questions? All he had were questions.

Her forehead creased. ‘This isn’t about that nonsense when we were ten-year-olds, is it?’

He didn’t understand why she twisted her hands together. She wasn’t the one who’d been hauled to the police station.

‘I tried to tell my parents and the police that I gave the locket to you of my own free will and that you hadn’t taken it. That I gave it to you as a present.’

She stared down into her coffee and something in her face twisted his gut.

‘I thought it was mine to give.’ She said the words so softly he had to strain to catch them. He thought about how she’d handed her apartment, her car and her trust fund all over to her father without a murmur. So why refuse to hand over Whittaker House?

She straightened and tossed back her hair. ‘That was the moment when I realised my possessions weren’t my own.’

But for some reason she felt that Whittaker House was hers?

‘I told them how I wanted to give you something because you’d given me your toy aeroplane.’

It was the only thing he’d had to give her.

‘Which, mind you, I absolutely refused to hand over when they demanded me to.’

That made him laugh.

She met his gaze squarely and there wasn’t an ounce of haughtiness in her face. He sobered. ‘I’ve never had the chance to say it before but, Rick, I’m sorry. My mother and father were so angry. And then the policeman frightened me so much I…I eventually just told them what they wanted to hear. It was cowardly of me and I’m truly sorry if that episode caused a lot of trouble for you.’

It’d caused trouble all right. It was the first time he’d come to the police’s attention. It hadn’t been the last time he’d been labelled a thief, liar and troublemaker by them, though.

They’d just been two kids exchanging treasures and trying to forge a connection. Her father, the police and his background had all conspired to blow it out of proportion.

But none of it had been Nell’s fault and he’d always known that. ‘Don’t sweat it, Princess.’ He used the nickname to remind himself of all the differences between them, to reinforce them.

She sat back, her chin tilted at that unconsciously noble angle that made him want to smile. ‘Don’t worry. I was let off with a caution, but I didn’t know the police had questioned you too.’ The poor kid had probably been terrified. He had been.

She nodded to the letter balled in his hand. ‘But John hasn’t hassled you about any of that?’

He shook his head and her shoulders slumped in relief. She straightened again a moment later. ‘So…do you have any questions?’

She looked as puzzled and bewildered as he felt. He wondered if she was counting down the minutes until this interview ended. Did she find it awkward and wrong for him to be sitting across the table from her? Or did it feel weirdly comfortable?

He shook off the thought and set the crumpled letter on the table and did what he could to smooth it out.

‘I won’t beat around the bush,’ he read, ‘but you might as well know that I’m your father.’

Nell’s mug wobbled back to the table. She stared at him. Her mouth opened and closed. ‘But he chased you away.’ And then her eyes filled.

Rick knew then that she’d had no notion of what John’s letter contained.

He glanced back at the letter and continued reading. ‘I may be better served taking this knowledge to the grave as it’s brought me no joy. I don’t expect it to bring you any either.’

Nell’s intake of breath reverberated in the silence.

‘I have no faith in you.’

Her hands slapped to the table.

‘But you might as well know you have a sibling.’

She practically leapt out of her chair. ‘Who?’ she demanded, and then forced herself back down into her seat. ‘Really?’ She frowned. ‘Older or younger?’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘I think I’m the one who’s supposed to be asking the questions.’

‘Oh, yes, of course.’ She sat back and folded her hands in her lap. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I’m not going to tell you who it is. If it matters to you then you’ll have to prove it.’

Her jaw dropped. ‘But that’s… How…how can he be so hard and cold? He’s supposed to have looked after you and…’ She swallowed and sat back again. ‘Sorry.’ She smiled, a weak thing that did nothing to hide her turmoil. She made a zipping motion across her mouth.

Rick shrugged. ‘He ends by simply signing it John Cox.’

She shook herself, frowned. ‘I know the questions belong to you, but, Rick, I have no idea how to answer any of them. I haven’t a clue who your sibling could be. I had no idea John was your father. I’ve never seen him with either a woman or a child. I—’

He handed the letter to her. He watched her face as she read the remaining lines. It darkened, which gladdened his heart.

And then it went blank. Rick eased back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling, not knowing whether to be relieved or disappointed.

Nell ignored the first lines John addressed to her in the letter. Miss Nell, if you think Rick is in any way redeemable and you can find it in yourself to help him… She snorted. What kind of nonsense was that? What kind of father just turned his back on his child? She thought about her own father with all of his demands and bit back a sigh.

‘You’ll find a clue where the marigolds grow.’ She turned the letter over, but there was nothing written on the back.

‘Any idea what that might mean?’ Rick asked, slouching back in his chair as if they were discussing nothing more interesting than the weather.

She opened her mouth. She closed it again and scratched her head. ‘My best guess is that, as he was a gardener and this is where he gardened, it refers to a garden bed somewhere on the estate, a garden bed where he grew marigolds, but…’

‘But?’

Rick sounded bored. She glanced at him, tried to read his face, but couldn’t. She lifted one shoulder. ‘The thing is, I don’t recall John ever growing marigolds. Apparently my mother didn’t like them.’

She stabbed a finger into the Passion Fruit Delight cupcake, glowering at it. ‘Why couldn’t he have just told you who your sibling is?’ She stabbed it again. ‘Why couldn’t he have told you the truth from the start and been a proper father to you?’ Stab. Stab. ‘I’d never have guessed any of this in a million years and—’

She pulled herself up and collected herself. None of this was helping. She wiped her finger on a napkin. ‘Okay, so what else could marigold mean?’

Rick picked up the Strawberries and Cream cupcake and pushed nearly half of it into his mouth. She watched, mesmerised, at the way his lips closed around it, at the appreciation that lit his eyes and the way his mouth worked, the way his Adam’s apple bobbed…the way his tongue flicked out to seize a crumb from the corner of his mouth.

She wrenched her gaze back. ‘It could be a girl’s name.’ Her voice came out strangled.