Liz Fielding: The Billionaire's Convenient Bride

‘She’s—?’ She left the question unasked. ‘Grandfather...’ Kam’s face darkened. ‘He died last year.’

‘I heard.’

He didn’t say he was sorry and his face was shadowed in the windowless little room. Unreadable. Not like the last time she’d seen him.

She’d raced to the quay desperate to tell him how sorry she was, to tell him that she’d begged her grandfather to change his mind, but she had been too late.

She’d tried to shout his name as his mother drove the van onto the ferry. The raw anger in the look he’d given her had dried the words in her mouth and she’d just stood there, a painful lump in her throat, helpless, hopeless, too miserable even to cry.

He’d learned to hide his feelings, but he had not forgotten.

Reminding herself that she was running a hotel, that he was a guest, she gathered a breath and dug deep for her professional smile.

‘Well, it’s lovely to see you after all this time. I hope you’ll enjoy your stay.’

‘I know I will. With or without hot water.’

There was a certainty in his reply, a suggestion that it had not been a passing fancy to stay at the castle.

‘It will be sorted by this evening,’ she said, with more confidence than she felt. ‘Suzanna should be back at her desk by now. Would you like coffee? Tea? A sandwich,’ she added a little desperately, when he didn’t reply.

‘Bacon?’ he suggested, his mouth twisting in a parody of a smile as he reminded her of all the times she’d brought him her breakfast bacon in a sandwich. ‘You offered the heating engineer lunch.’

She swallowed. He wanted lunch? With her? She didn’t believe it for a minute and banished the butterflies.

‘Jimmy is a lot more than a heating engineer, he’s a boiler whisperer and I was asking him to surrender his lunch hour.’ Clearly he’d heard every word and there was no point in pretending. ‘Of course, if you know anything about boiler maintenance...?’

‘I’ll pay for my own lunch but reserve a table for two in the Orangery, Agnès, and I’ll tell you exactly what I know.’

There was no upward inflection, no warmth to suggest this would be a cosy catch-up with an old friend but then Kam had never been cosy. He’d been a dangerous lad; she’d adored him on sight. As a three-year-old she couldn’t do more than watch as he’d climbed trees where he could barely reach the branches.

She’d followed him relentlessly as a five-year-old, trying to copy him, wanting to catch fish and swim in the river, spend the night out in the hides he’d built to watch owls and badgers. Wanting to be a boy like him. Taking no notice when he told her to clear off.

At six she’d cracked it with the bacon sandwich.

By the time she was fourteen she didn’t want to be a boy but knew that if she went all girly on him he wouldn’t want her around. But when she’d come home from school for the summer just before she’d turned sixteen, it hadn’t just been her. The tension had been palpable. She’d expected him to be waiting for her that evening in the hide, but he hadn’t been there, hadn’t come. He’d looked and his eyes had said yes, but he’d kept his distance and she’d thought that because of who he was, who she was, she had to make the first move...

She’d got it so wrong. Even now, the thought of what had happened brought a hot flush to her cheek.

He had been dangerous then and he was dangerous now, to her peace of mind if nothing else. Every cell in her body warned her that he wasn’t here on some sentimental pilgrimage. To relive his boyhood memories, the good ones before everything had gone splat. Whatever he wanted, she was pretty sure it wasn’t a trip down memory lane.

Before she could make an excuse, tell him that she had meetings, Suzanna arrived at his shoulder and, making an apologetic face from behind his back, said, ‘Mr Faulkner? I’m so sorry I wasn’t in Reception when you arrived.’ As he half turned to see who was talking to him, Agnès spotted the small bedraggled dog she was holding at arm’s length to keep the mud from her uniform. ‘I’m afraid Dora has been down by the lake.’

Down by the lake and rolling in duck poo from the smell.

‘I’ll take her while you show Mr Faulkner to his room,’ Agnès said, tucking the dog firmly under her arm, glad of an excuse to escape, catch her breath.

‘Would you like coffee, Mr Faulkner?’ Suzanna asked.

‘No. Thank you,’ he replied, his voice noticeably warmer as he spoke to the receptionist, but he still hadn’t moved, hadn’t taken his eyes off her. ‘One o’clock, Agnès,’ he repeated.

Kam and his mother had been treated shamefully by her grandfather and he clearly had things he needed to get off his chest. Telling him that she was sorry would be meaningless but maybe hearing him out would help him draw a line under the past so that he, at least, could move on.

It would be painful, humiliating, but he deserved that courtesy from her.

‘One o’clock,’ she agreed. ‘Suzanna, will you call Jamie and let him know? Mr Faulkner is a special guest,’ she added, knowing that the chef would ensure that he offered them something a little more interesting than the basic fare. ‘I’m sure Grandma will want to catch up with your news if you can spare the time, Kam,’ she added, as if this were a perfectly normal social event, ‘but if you’ll excuse me, I need to give this little monster a bath.’

‘It looks like the same dog,’ he said, ‘but it can’t be Daisy.’

He remembered the name of her grandmother’s dog? That should have reassured her but, on the contrary, it felt ominous.

‘Daisy crossed the rainbow bridge years ago,’ she managed, through a throat that felt as if it were stuffed with straw. ‘This is Dora. Her granddaughter,’ she added, very conscious of Suzanna’s interest. ‘They have the same colouring, but she’s smaller. The runt of the litter.’ Desperate to escape his intense gaze, she turned to Suzanna. ‘Where have you put Mr Faulkner, Suzanna?’

‘He’s booked into the Captain’s Suite.’

‘Oh.’

The suite had been named for the smuggler, Henri Prideaux. According to the legend on the castle website, he’d fallen in love with the daughter of Sir Arthur Draycott, baronet and local magistrate, charged by the Crown with the task of guarding the creek from those illegally running brandy and silk into the country. Sir Arthur, far from doing his duty, had been using his position to make a fortune as their accomplice.

Henri, so it was said, having fallen in love with Elizabeth, had given up his life of crime to marry her and settle down in Castle Creek.

It was the story she was using to sell the castle as a wedding venue. Take your vows in the pretty chapel where Henri and Elizabeth were wed, then seal your love in the four-poster bed where they created the Prideaux dynasty. She’d had a couple of enquiries, but if she didn’t get the boiler sorted her big plans would be going nowhere.

‘Well, you’ll be comfortable,’ she assured him, even while thinking that the Captain’s Suite was an odd choice for a man on his own, assuming he was on his own.

Why was he here?

She made an effort to look no more than professionally interested but the corner of his mouth lifted in an ironic smile and she felt her cheeks grow hot.

She needed to focus...

The B & B, the wedding business, were her last chance to save the castle and the good news was that Kamal Faulkner had taken their most expensive room. Hooray! If her conscience was prodding her to offer it to him as her guest, she refused to listen.

If he wanted to indulge himself by sleeping in the Tudor four-poster, alone or with a partner, he would have to pay the going rate because she couldn’t afford the gesture.