The Billionaire's Convenient Bride Read online

  A long time but eyes never changed. She had dreamed about those eyes. Dreamed about his hand taking hers. Wanting so much. Seeing that same want echoed back at her even as he stepped back, turned and walked away.

  With an effort of will she removed her elbow from his hand and straightened, but as he took a step back she had to stop herself from reaching out, grabbing a handful of jacket to keep him close.

  It was ridiculous. It had been years ago. She had been a teenager with a crush. But in all those years, the hideous school proms with a ‘suitable’ date, the marriage market debutant parties, no one had ever come close to that moment when he’d reached out a hand...

  She swallowed, mouth dry, unable to think of anything appropriate to say.

  How unexpected.

  How wonderful to see him after all this time.

  How disturbing to still feel the same knee-weakening desire...

  That he’d reached out now meant nothing. It had been an automatic response when he’d thought she was going to fall. Nothing in his expression, in his manner suggested that this was a happy homecoming, that he was here to catch up with old friends. To catch up with her.

  His smile had been fleeting, ironic rather than warm, his voice cool. And why wouldn’t it be? She was the reason he and his mother had been banished from the castle, from their home. Which begged the question—why had he come back?

  ‘How is your mother?’ she asked, when the silence had stretched to breaking point. Desperately falling back on the conventional. Sounding like her grandmother talking to the youth who worked in the garden.

  ‘It’s a little late to be asking about my mother’s health,’ he said, giving her nothing back. Nothing to work with.

  ‘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 Drayc
ott, 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.

  ‘How long are you staying, Kam?’

  ‘As long as it takes.’

  What?

  Not her business. Her only interest was that he would be spending several days in their most expensive room. Whatever he might want from her, they would have extra money coming in.

  Double hooray...

  ‘Right... Well, if you need anything, Suzanna is here and will be happy to help.’

  ‘What I want, Suzanna cannot give me, Agnès, but that will keep until lunch.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  Kam Faulkner is back, staying in the Captain’s Suite ‘for as long as it takes’. It? What can he possibly want? It had better be an apology because that’s all I can afford.

  Agnès Prideaux’s Journal

  AGNÈS SLUMPED AGAINST the door, hugging Dora to her as she shut it against anyone else who felt like wandering in and shaking up her world.

  Kam Faulkner. She could hardly believe it.

  Dora whined and wriggled and she set her down and sat at her desk to give her wobbly knees a moment to recover.

  How many times had she dreamed of his return to Castle Creek? In her imagination it had always been a magical moment. He’d look, then do a double take as he saw that the skinny girl who’d once made a nuisance of herself trailing after him had become a desirable woman.

  Okay, that was a fairy-tale fantasy straight out of a romance novel and she’d had those romantic fantasies drummed out of her long ago. Her grandfather would probably have beaten them out of her, but you didn’t damage your only asset, the prize heifer.

  Marriage was for duty, to bring wealth to the family, to provide heirs.

  And forget desirable.

  Her hair, caught up in an elastic band, was way off the shampoo-ad standard, she was wearing overalls and she hadn’t stopped to put on make-up before her confrontation with the boiler.

  She’d felt more like kicking it than sweet-talking the wretched thing but had been afraid it would give up altogether and die on her.

  With all their guests hard at work in the barn, she’d felt safe enough coming straight to her office to call Jimmy.

  Her heart might have leapt at the sight of Kam Faulkner as she’d realised who he was, but his summons to lunch hadn’t sounded as if he was here for a friendly catch-up-with-the-family get-together.

  The idea was ridiculous. Why would he give a tuppenny damn what had happened to her or her grandmother? Why would he want to set foot in Priddy Castle ever again, unless, heaven forbid, he was looking for some sort of compensation for his mother from her grandfather’s estate?

  Her mouth dried on the thought.

  The fact that he’d chosen the Captain’s Suite, her grandfather’s old room, seemed somehow ominous—a statement of intent. She checked the computer for his booking and saw it was for single occupancy.

  She squashed the stupid heart-lifting response, knowing full well that a romantic weekend to show a partner where he’d grown up would be much better news, because she suspected that whatever the purpose of Kam’s visit, it did not bode well for what remained of the Prideaux family.

  His mother was entitled, no doubt, but she should have claimed for unfair dismissal when she was turned out of her home, lost her job, because of Agnès’s grandfather’s bigotry. Agnès’s stupidity.

  Now she would have to line up behind Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, whose claim for inheritance tax was outranked only by the account for her grandfather’s funeral and the legal expenses for probate.

  Dora, clearly sensing her mood, gave her a sympathetic lick.

  Agnès stroked a silky ear. There was no point going to meet trouble, it would come fast enough. ‘Come on, you little monster. Let’s get you cleaned up.’ And then she would give the boiler another jiggle.

  * * *

  Kam Faulkner looked around at the room that had once been Sir Hugo Prideaux’s bedroom, a room his mother had cleaned every day of her working life at Priddy Castle.

  A room strictly out of bounds to the likes of him. Not that he’d ever obeyed rules, never let one keep him out of somewhere he wanted to go. He’d been in here before, when Sir Hugo Prideaux had been away up to his own kind of mischief. He knew that Lady Jane hadn’t slept in here with her husband.

  This part of the castle had been built in the sixteenth century and had diamond-pane windows, linen-fold panelling and an ancient four-poster bed with heavily embroidered drapes. He hoped the mattress was a little more recent.

  He dropped his bag, tossed the old-fashioned room key on the dressing table and walked across to the window.

  The sun, finally breaking through the mist, lit the froth of fresh, bright spring leaves of the trees in the castle woods, sparkled along the creek and off the hulls of the yachts moored in centre of the creek. His playground as a boy.

  He’d known every nest, where to watch for badger cubs, wait quietly to hear a nightingale sing. He’d seen ospreys swoop for sea trout and dodged the warden to catch them himself without any fancy gear. There would have been a hefty fine if he’d been caught.

  These days he could afford the rods and the licence to fish legally but doubted there would be the same fun in it.

  He turned back to the room, but it wasn’t the impressive four-poster he was seeing. It was Agnès Prideaux’s face as she’d recognised him. Something in those grey eyes before the shutters had come down and she’d been back in control and asking, oh, so politely after his mother.

  That moment when she had seemed to lose her balance and he’d reached out and caught her arm. For a fraction of a second he’d had the feeling that all he had to do was draw her close, complete the circle, and his world would come right.

  Imagination, he knew. If there had been anything it had been uncertainty, embarrassment, fear, because she knew his return could mean nothing good. Nothing good for her, anyway.

  And there was absolutely nothing wrong with his world.

  His phone pinged, a text from his PA demanding his attention, and he left the past to give his full attention to the present.

  The future would wait until his lunch date with Agnès Prideaux.

  * * *

  Agnès washed and dried Dora, but when she took the dog back to her grandmother’s room she was asleep in her armchair.

  Agnès gently rubbed behind Dora’s ear. ‘It looks like it’s just you, me an
d the boiler, sweetie.’

  Dora gave a happy little yap as if she couldn’t think of anything she’d like better, and the boiler, having had time to think about it, finally juddered into life.

  She sagged with relief as the tension left her. The chances were that it would behave for a few days, but she urgently needed a heating system that didn’t lurch from one crisis to another.

  She needed a long-term solution and there was only one option left.

  Showered, changed into the silk shirt and dark trouser suit she wore as her work uniform, Agnès stopped at Reception to let Suzanna know that they had hot water, at least for today.

  ‘That’s a relief,’ she said, and meant it. Suzanna lived in and it wasn’t only her job but her home that depended on the viability of the castle. She wasn’t alone in that.

  There were other staff who might not find work easily if she lost the castle, herself among them. And there was her grandmother. She had become increasingly frail and there was no money for care-home fees.

  ‘Jamie is on top of your lunch. You won’t be embarrassed in front of your friend,’ Suzanna said, a question mark in the word ‘friend’.

  ‘He’s... Kam’s mother used to work at the castle.’

  ‘Oh, right. So he’s back to take a look at his old home...? Are you okay, Agnès?’

  No, she was not okay. She was far from okay, but she said, ‘I need some air after being stuck down in the boiler room.’ Space to come to terms with what she had to do.

  ‘Not a problem. Someone has to walk through the woods and check on the progress of the bluebells and it’s not going to be me.’

  Dora was at the door before Suzanna—who would do anything rather than step out of her high heels, pull on a pair of boots and walk a muddy path—handed her the pair of wellingtons kept behind the desk.

  Once upon a time, back in the days when gardeners came in dozens and were paid a pittance, the castle gardens had been open to the public by request only. If you wanted to visit Lady Anne Prideaux’s rose garden, you had to write and make an appointment.