The Heiress's Secret Baby

‘Just,’ she echoed.

Gabe looked at her curiously. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes, no.’ She gave a wry laugh. ‘I don’t really know. Raff’s engaged.’

‘Your brother? That’s amazing. We should celebrate.’

‘We should,’ she agreed.

The dark eyes turned to her, their expression keen. ‘You’re not happy?’

‘Of course I am,’ Polly defended herself and then sighed. ‘I am,’ she repeated. ‘It’s just he’s moving here, to Hopeford. He’s marrying my closest friend and joining the board at Rafferty’s.’

She shook her head. ‘I feel like I am being a total cow,’ she admitted. ‘It’s just, I have spent my whole life competing against him—and he wins without even taking part.

‘And now...’ she looked down at her hands ‘...now he’s moving to my town, will be on the board of my company and is marrying the one person I can confide in. It feels like there’s nowhere I am just me, not Raff’s twin sister.’

The silence stretched out between them.

‘I have three sisters,’ he said after a while. ‘I’m the youngest. It can be hard to find your place.’

Polly looked over at him. ‘Is that why you’re here? Not working at the vineyard?’

‘Partly. And because I needed to prove some things to myself.’ He walked over to Mr Simpkins, who was lying on the cushion-covered window seat set into the wall on the far side of the chimney breast.

Gabe should have been an incongruous presence in the white-walled, book-lined sitting room, the soft furnishings and details were so feminine, so English country cottage. He was too young, too indisputably French, too tall, too male for the low-beamed, cosy room. And yet he looked utterly at home reaching over to run one hand down Mr Simpkins’ spine.

He was wearing jeans, his dark hair falling over his forehead, his pallor emphasised by the deep shadows under his dark eyes and the black stubble covering his jaw. He worked so late each night, rising at dawn to fit in yet another session in the gym—and the lack of sleep showed.

Polly watched the long, lean fingers’ firm caress as her cat flattened himself in suppliant pleasure and felt a jolt in the pit of her stomach, a sudden insistent ache of desire as her nerve endings remembered the way his hand had settled in the curve of her waist, those same fingers moving up along her body, making her purr almost as loudly as Mr Simpkins.

‘Is that why you went away?’ he asked, all his attention seemingly on the writhing cat. ‘Because of your brother?’

Polly flushed, partly in shame at having to admit her own second-class status to a relative stranger—and half in embarrassment at her reaction to the slow, sure strokes from Gabe’s capable-looking hands.

‘Partly,’ she admitted. ‘I had to get away, learn who I was without Rafferty’s.’

‘And did you?’ He looked directly at her then, his eyes almost black and impossibly dark. ‘Learn who you are?’

Polly thought back. To blisters and high altitudes. To the simple joy of a shower after a five-day trek. To long twilight walks on the beach. To lying back and watching the stars, the balmy breeze warm on her bare skin. To the lack of responsibility. To taking risks.

It had been fun but ultimately meaningless.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I saw some amazing things, did amazing things and I had fun. But there was nothing to find out. Without Rafferty’s I don’t have anything...I’m no one.’

‘That’s not true.’ His voice was low, intimate.

‘It is,’ she argued. ‘But Raff? He is utterly and completely himself. I think I’ve always envied that. And now he has Clara—which is great, she’s lovely and I’m sure they’ll be very happy. But my brother and best friend getting married? It leaves me with no one.’

She heard her words echo as she said them and flushed. ‘I am the most selfish beast, ignore me, Gabe. I’m tired and fluey and having a pathetic moment. It’ll pass!’

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