Shirley Jump - A Forever Family - Falling For You

‘Don’t worry. I’ve got it covered.’ He picked up the bike. ‘Tell Katie that she can come down for the half term if she likes. She’ll enjoy the deer.

‘You’re staying down here?’ she asked.

‘For a week. Maybe two. The roof needs immediate attention. It’s getting me out of the office,’ he pointed out, when she would have protested. ‘Something you’re always encouraging.’

‘Creating barriers for footpaths and dealing with a leaky roof wasn’t quite what I had in mind. And thanks for the invitation but we’re headed to Italy and guaranteed sunshine. Lying by the pool beats picking up rubbish hands down. There’s plenty of space if you fancy a change of scene,’ she said.

‘I’ll think about it,’ he said, but they both knew he wouldn’t. Travel was something he did because he had to, for business. Right now all he wanted to do was get on his Harley and ride around the estate the way he used to, although it wouldn’t be as much fun without some furious gardener or gamekeeper chasing him on a quad bike.

Nothing was as much fun these days.

He blocked out Robert Cranbrook’s mocking voice, and looked around. He had more than enough to get out of bed for. Everything was shabby, worn out. There were weeds growing out of what had once been perfectly raked gravel, and water stains on the walls where broken guttering hadn’t been repaired.

When he was a kid this had been gleaming, cared for. A place where only the privileged few—and their staff—were allowed. Forbidden territory for the likes of him. Not that he’d taken any notice of that.

Ignoring the rules, going where he wasn’t allowed, dodging the staff to explore the seemingly endless empty rooms had been a challenge.

He’d never taken anything, not even as much as a polished apple from a bowl; he’d simply wanted to tread the centuries-old floors, finger the linen-fold panels, look at the paintings, absorb the history that he’d been denied as he’d wandered through the empty, unused rooms.

There had been a moment of elation, triumph when he’d picked up the deeds and tossed them casually to his company lawyer that even Robert Cranbrook’s outburst couldn’t sour. But while he was now the proud owner of the Hall with its leaking roof and crumbling fences, ironically, the only place on the estate where the paintwork was glossy and well cared for was the house he’d once lived in.

And it was Claire Thackeray’s unexpected response to his ill-advised kiss that was burning a hole in his brain; the memory of her slim foot, her ankle resting in his hands, playing havoc with his senses.

CHAPTER FIVE

CLAIRE stared at the screen.

Hal North had been turned off the estate by Sir Robert with nothing to his name but a motorbike and a bad attitude on his nineteenth birthday. Now he was back, the chairman of an international company. A millionaire. A millionaire she’d accused of fishing without a licence. A millionaire to whom she’d offered her last ten-pound note.

He must be laughing fit to bust.

Well, let him laugh, she thought, as she clicked furiously on the links, determined to find out all she could about where he’d been, what he’d been doing since he left. How he’d made his money.

She’d teach Hal North to make sarcastic comments about working for a local paper.

Human interest?

This was human interest in letters ten feet high. A story that she could write because she’d been there at the beginning. One that she knew hadn’t been told because it would have been a sensation in Cranbrook. A sensation in Maybridge.

Headline material.

Prodigal returns, buys up the big house and has hot, sweaty sex with the girl he left behind…

Whoa, whoa!

She didn’t write fantasy, she dealt in reality.

And she didn’t write gossip. She had been told to stay at home for the rest of the week and she’d use the time to get ahead on the G&D blog.

She was taking photographs of a particularly large slug—planning a piece on organic control—when her phone rang.

She took it out of her pocket, checked the caller. So much for putting her feet up…

‘Hello, Brian,’ she said.

‘Claire… How are you feeling now?’ he asked, all sympathy.

Having insisted that she was ready to come into work, she could hardly say she was hors d’combat. Not that he waited for an answer.

‘Any chance you could do a bit of research on the new owner of Cranbrook Park? Nothing you’ll have to leave the house for.’

Yes, well, she was the one who’d insisted that the Park was her territory.

‘What do you want to know?’

‘General background. Where he comes from, family, that sort of thing. I’ll send you what we’ve got. Unless it’s too much trouble?’ he added, apparently picking up on her lack of enthusiasm.

‘No, no, of course not. I was using the down time to catch up on my gardening blog, but it can wait.’

‘Good girl.’

‘Patronising oaf,’ she muttered, but only when he’d hung up.

Back in her office, she checked her email and, just in case she was in any doubt, there was the press release, embargoed until Monday, telling the world that Henry North had bought Cranbrook Park.

The moment it emerged he was local—and there would be plenty of people who remembered him—it would become obvious to Brian that she would have known him. He’d want specifics, details.

She opened up a new document and began to makes notes. Everything she knew about Hal. His parents, school.

She fired off an email to the recently retired headmistress of the village school to get a quote, called Maybridge High and spoke to the school secretary who pointed her in the direction of teachers who would remember him. She left messages for them to call her back. That done, she hit the internet in order to find out what he’d been up to since he’d left Cranbrook. How he’d transformed himself from disaffected youth to millionaire. That was the big story.

She ran into a blank wall.

When Ms Webb said that Mr North did not speak to the press, she hadn’t been kidding.

Hal wasn’t one of those CEOs who courted publicity. He didn’t date supermodels, big himself up on television talk shows, or appear in Celebrity magazine attending showbiz parties. Of course he didn’t. If he’d done any of those things she would, undoubtedly, have seen him. And if he was happily married with a parcel of children he’d kept that to himself, as well.

The kiss that still burned on her lips suggested otherwise. Or, if he was married, the relationship was clearly more of a hobby than a full-time occupation.

No.

Despite the endless stream of girls who had made his life sweet when he was a youth living on the estate, she didn’t see him as a man who’d play the field once he’d found his mate.

‘Oh, get real,’ she muttered.

She knew nothing about him. Only that he made the air sizzle. Made her pulse race, her heart pound. Which was as ridiculous now as it had been when she was a pre-pubescent fantasist who would have fainted if he’d as much as winked at her.

Okay. She had the boy, the youth and by the time she left to pick up Ally from school, she had school photographs, anecdotes from teachers and enough general background to email Brian and ask him if she could go to London on a quest to fill in the more recent past. The fact that he agreed so readily, suggested he had already drawn a blank himself.

She’d just opened the back door when she heard the crunch of gravel. Gary with her bike.

Not Gary.

Like iron filings, a gazillion cells turned in one direction as if someone had switched on an electro-magnet. That had to explain the sudden dizziness as Hal North rounded the corner of the cottage, stopped as he saw her.