An Indecent Proposal
Margot Early
Mills & Boon Silhouette
Bronwyn Davies is furious. Widowed, penniless and desperate, she came to Fairchild Acres looking for work–and to confront stockbroker Patrick Stafford, her son's real father. Sure, she wasn't expecting the red carpet rollout from her ex-lover…but insults and rudeness? Well, she'll show him exactly what she's made of–and what he's missing!Even after all these years, Patrick still hasn't forgiven Bronwyn for marrying another man for money.Now Bronwyn can see what life could have been, with him. Sure, he'll step up and acknowledge his son.But the cost will be far dearer than Bronwyn could ever have imagined….
Dear Reader,
It has been a real pleasure to take part in the THOROUGHBRED LEGACY continuity series. I love working with characters who are interconnected, whose lives branch out in so many ways. It echoes life, in that everything we say and do matters and touches others.
Though I enjoyed getting to know Patrick, Bronwyn and especially Wesley, the character who most intrigued me was matriarch Louisa Fairchild. I love that she is able to share her life experience with Bronwyn—and that this influences the choices Bronwyn makes. Also, it was fun to be able to introduce Marie LaFayette, whom you will get to know better in the next book. She is a woman of heart; I can’t wait to know her secrets.
I wish you great joy in reading the last books in this series—as much delight as I hope you experienced reading the earlier stories. To you, all good things.
Sincerely,
Margot Early
An Indecent Proposal
Margot Early
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
MARGOT EARLY
has written stories since she was twelve years old. She has sold 3.6 million books published with Harlequin. Her work has been translated into nine languages and sold in sixteen countries. Ms. Early lives high in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains with two German shepherds and several other pets, including snakes and tarantulas. She enjoys the outdoors, dance and spinning dog hair.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks to Catherine Cockburn, who read this manuscript for Australian authenticity; also to Catherine and her husband Keith for being lovely hosts to me here in Colorado. All errors in this fictional work are mine.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter One
It was hot, a March hot where the heat came up from the bitumen in visible waves. Bronwyn and ten-year-old Wesley rode in the front of an ancient Toyota truck— no air-conditioning—and it was broiling. Bronwyn’s straight dark red hair blew dankly around her face, her skin stuck to her khaki slacks and the ripped vinyl upholstery, and Wesley was crying.
He was crying about Ari of course. Because Ari was dead. The only father Wesley had ever known had been in prison for his involvement with a crime syndicate. He’d been murdered in prison.
Sweltering, and certain the Vietnamese driver of the Toyota had emigrated too recently to have much English, Bronwyn spoke freely. “Please don’t waste another tear on him, Wesley,” she told him, which wasn’t something she would have said if her once-white blouse hadn’t been pasted to her body with sweat, if they hadn’t spent almost an hour crawling behind another ute on the winding road with no chance to overtake. Instead, she couldn’t restrain the impulse to tell her only son not to mourn Aristotle. “In fact,” she added, “it’s his fault we’re in this fix. It’s his fault you have to move away from your friends and go to a new school.” Once again, nothing she’d have said most days.
She spared a look at the tearful boy and past him to the driver. Mr. Le at the Asian market in Sydney had found this man for her and imparted the information that his name was Nam and he would drive the three hours to the Hunter Valley, her destination. Wesley sat wedged in the middle of the front seat between Bronwyn and Nam, head down. His hair was lighter than Ari’s and without even a hint of Bronwyn’s auburn. Nor were his eyes like Ari’s dark chocolate ones; they were hazel, not Bronwyn’s green. Just those wild recessive genes, Ari.
Yes.
Wesley held his soccer ball in his lap. He wore his shin guards and cleats and a child-size Socceroos jersey. He had others, as well, other teams, other countries. His dream was to be a professional soccer player. Better than a footballer, in Bronwyn’s opinion, even if Ari had owned a football team. Wesley had picked up the soccer thing from Ari, who had bought him a child-size Manchester United uniform. In any case, Bronwyn had never wanted to discourage her son’s dreams and now regretted that he was going to have to experience practicality the hard way. Not as hard as the way she’d learned as a child, though.
“And,” she continued, forgetting that she’d meant to comfort him, “your last name is Davies.”
“It’s not.” He spoke under his breath, but Bronwyn heard.
“Look, Wesley,” she burst out. “I know this isn’t fun, but we’re going to a place full of people who are probably willing to die for their horses, and I’d rather not share the last name of a man who is known to have been involved with doping them.”
“What does doping mean?”
“Giving them drugs. So they’ll lose or win or—I don’t know. But I do know that the name Theodoros is not going to be a passport to anyone’s friendship at Fairchild Acres.”
Wesley bounced his soccer ball on his knee, and Bronwyn put her hand on top of it. “Don’t do that. You’ll cause an accident.”
“Daddy doesn’t have anything to do with the horses at the racetrack. He told me.”
“Yes, well, I don’t mean it was him personally, and that’s only one aspect of his business. Ari was a criminal. He stole money, he cheated the government and he was involved in a lot of unpleasant things you don’t need to know about.” Bronwyn sincerely hoped Wesley would give up his hero worship of Ari without further examples of his perfidy. If it had been possible, she would have made a priority of protecting her son’s image of the man he regarded as father.
However, there had been too many explanations to make. How they had lost their home, cars, planes, bank accounts as law enforcement officials tried to untangle the web of criminal activity in which Ari had been involved. She didn’t hate Ari. She didn’t mourn him, either. Not now. She hadn’t the leisure. Leisure was gone, replaced with indigence.
And she’d sworn she would never be poor again.
Well, the joke was on her, but she’d grown up learning to survive on nothing. If she was angry now it was at herself for ever depending on anyone but Bronwyn Davies.
Now she was back to her maiden name but with complications she’d never had before she was married. Ari was dead, and Bronwyn Davies was glad for the simplification that offered in her own life. She was no longer married, need not obtain a divorce. Which was good. She barely had money to feed herself and her ten-year-old son. She did not have money for attorneys, for messy court battles. When Ari had first been arrested weeks earlier, she’d never considered divorce. In sickness, in health, in deceit and all that. But she’d grown tired of trying to offer Wesley meaningful explanations for things she would never understand: Why is my father a criminal? Why did he do bad things?
Just the thought of these questions made her tired.
I can’t think about Ari. I can’t think about some lag sticking him in prison. I can’t think about his face. Too many lies, not all of them his.
“I’m sorry, Wesley. I know you hate this, but you’ve got to trust me. This is how we need to keep ourselves safe. I know you love Ari—” the words your father definitely stuck in her throat “—and that’s fine, but we have to be practical.”
“We have to lie,” Wesley clarified.
Bronwyn wanted to swear. Now she was providing the duplicitous example. Also, it alarmed her how rapidly Wesley was becoming a cynic. It was one thing for her to be cynical; she had grown up sometimes literally homeless in Sydney because of poverty and had just discovered after ten-plus years of marriage that her husband’s actual job description was “gangster.” It was different when the cynic was Wesley, who was such a brave kid, ultimately, who wasn’t a whiner or a crybaby.
“This is going to be an adventure,” she told him. “You’ll like it.”
Bronwyn could have said, What would your dad think if he saw you crying? That would have stopped those tears in their tracks. Because, of course, Aristotle Theodoros had not tolerated tears in his male child. The child he’d believed to be his flesh and blood.
Well, Bronwyn had been repaid for her own deception now. Touché and all that. Which, after all, was the bigger marital betrayal? Maintaining a double life as a mobster or telling your husband that he was the father of a child who, even at birth, looked eerily like Patrick Stafford? A child who was Patrick Stafford’s son, not Aristotle Theodoros’s.
Then, Bronwyn spotted the first of the white fences and long green fields. Horse country, the Hunter Valley, home of Fairchild Acres, home of Louisa Fairchild and current residence of her great-nephew, Patrick Stafford.
“Wesley, look at the horses. Look how beautiful it is here. You’ll see. You’ll like living out here. Look at all that grass.” She cast a meaningful glance at his soccer ball, though she had no idea if her son would be allowed to play on the grass.
Beside her, Wesley said, for at least the tenth time that day, “I don’t like horses.”
Patrick Stafford gazed out the French doors of Louisa Fairchild’s blue brick Colonial house. Most of the homes in the valley were lowset, but not Fairchild Acres. The sprawling, graceful homestead was very different from the penthouse apartment where he’d grown up in Sydney with his parents. They had been stockbrokers, and Patrick had vowed to do something more meaningful with his life. Yet he’d ended up…a stockbroker. That was all right. He’d lost some romantic ideals along the way, become more pragmatic in general, and he was glad to be able to help people with their finances, as he was helping Louisa.
“Patrick, are you listening to me?” his great-aunt said now.
“Yes, yes.” Of course he was. When he’d first come to Fairchild Acres a month earlier, he’d been keen to confront Louisa, to demand answers; he’d wanted to know why she’d mistreated her sister, his grandmother. But gradually, he’d grown to love this elderly woman, as had his sister, Megan. When Louisa had been accused of murdering Sam Whittleson, he’d been outraged. An eighty-year-old woman kill a man she knew, a neighbor? He hadn’t believed it. And Louisa had been proven innocent, though the stress of her arrest had sent her into cardiac arrest, something she was quicker to forgive than he was.
His sister, Megan, now planned to spend her life with the arresting officer, Dylan Hastings. Yes, Patrick saw that both Dylan’s own misconceptions about Louisa and the orders of his superiors had led to his persecution of the older woman. But still! And now Megan was living with Dylan and his daughter and was planning to open a gallery and artists’ retreat.
So his own struggle was to release the last of his anger over offenses against Louisa that she herself had already forgiven.
In any case, this morning he had other preoccupations. While ordinarily he was the most attentive of listeners, today he kept thinking of the morning’s news. Just a recap of the events of the past month. Aristotle Theodoros had been murdered in prison two weeks earlier, and speculation was rife that he’d been killed to prevent him testifying against the Syndicate.
It had nothing to do with Patrick—not really. He’d met Ari briefly once, after Bronwyn had told Patrick of her engagement. It seemed a hundred years ago now. To Patrick, Ari had been the man Bronwyn chose over him. The man whose money she’d chosen over his lack thereof, no matter what else she’d claimed. Her rejection had put an end to his plans to do some graduate work in history, some writing, nebulous dreams.
He realized now he’d never been a writer.
He’d been born with his parents’ fine-tuned instincts for the stock market. They’d died when he was eighteen, but they’d left him and Megan comfortable. His university goals had reflected that ease, he supposed. It had taken a shallow woman’s ridiculing his dreams to make him see his own future clearly.
Well, hers certainly hadn’t worked out. Aristotle Theodoros’s assets had been seized, and Patrick would have needed the soul of a saint not to enjoy the irony. Weeks earlier, he had caught one glimpse of Bronwyn on the news, her auburn hair in a French twist, Chanel sunglasses, white linen suit, Italian sandals, looking unfamiliar, haughty and distant as she left the courts after Ari’s arraignment. Inadvertently, he was sure, the mercenary woman he’d once believed he loved had married a crook; and now the crook’s money was lost to her.
“I want to know what you think,” Louisa repeated, “about how this will affect the ITRF election.”
How what will affect it? Patrick didn’t want to admit just how inattentive he’d been. Andrew Preston, the American candidate for the presidency of the International Thoroughbred Racing Federation, had publicly supported Louisa when she’d been arrested. His generosity had set the stage for a tentative but positive relationship between his family and hers, but Louisa still seemed to prefer media giant Jacko Bullock. Patrick couldn’t share her predilection. The Bullocks, Jacko and his father, Mezner, were in the pocket of people like Ari Theodoros—or so Patrick believed.
A Toyota turned down the driveway, then stopped at the gatehouse. The guard spoke briefly with the driver before the truck continued its approach. It was ancientlooking—and sounding. A muffler would be a good idea. The driver was Vietnamese, Patrick thought, maybe one of Louisa’s gardeners. He considered speaking to the man about getting the four-wheel drive fixed, and then he saw it draw to a stop outside the entrance to the kitchen. A woman with long, very straight auburn hair climbed out, followed by a boy in a soccer uniform, who promptly began playing with a soccer ball he’d brought with him, dribbling, popping it in the air, regaining control, until the redhead told him to stop.
“Perhaps if you looked at me, Patrick, you would hear what I’m saying.”
“What?” He spun around.
His great-aunt turned sympathetic eyes upon him, an unusual move for Louisa, who was straitlaced and not given to sympathy for herself or anyone else. “Are you worried about Megan being with Dylan?”
“Of course not,” he said, though that wasn’t strictly true. Dylan had regarded Louisa as the chief suspect in Sam’s murder, but he had also been the one to track down Sandy Sanford, the real killer. And he had to admit, in comparison to some of the men Megan had dated in the past, Dylan Hastings was a dream come true. And Dylan’s teenage daughter seemed to add new dimensions to Megan’s life; the two were quite a pair with their shared interest in art and fashion, among other things. “No, I’m sorry. I was thinking about this morning’s news. I apologize.”
“Aristotle Theodoros,” Louisa said with a snap in her voice. “Lower than a snake’s belly. I’m tired of hearing about the man.”
“You’ve met him?” Louisa was a wealthy and powerful woman. It didn’t surprise Patrick to learn she may have met Theodoros at some point.
“Well, of course,” she replied irritably. “His television show sold racing predictions. I was not at all surprised to learn he was involved in doping horses. I’m glad someone finished him off. It will save the country the money that would have been spent prosecuting him.”
“Do you think he was murdered,” Patrick asked, “to keep him from telling what he knew?”
“Probably.” She gave a small snort. “People like that just give the sport a bad name. I know it’s a cliché to say so, but it’s a fact. Then people think racing is populated by underworld characters. Or they think it’s all about money. Some people don’t understand what it is to love horses and to love to see them run, especially an animal who loves running, a great horse whose heart will spend itself to win, win, win. An Indecent Proposal, for instance. That’s a horse. There’s spiritual beauty in horseracing, Patrick, and then on the other side are people like Aristotle Theodoros. Parasites.”
Patrick turned his mind firmly to matters of the present. “How can you be sure Jacko Bullock isn’t one of those?”
“I can’t be. But I trust him more than I do Andrew Preston.”
“What do you have against Preston?” Patrick tried to keep his voice neutral.
Louisa’s face tightened slightly. “I don’t like change, Patrick. That’s all. And I don’t like situations I can’t control.”
Patrick agreed with the sentiment that Andrew Preston wasn’t about to be controlled by anyone. His mind’s eye, however, continued to see the long, straight auburn hair of the woman who’d gotten out of the Toyota, reminding him of another woman with long, straight auburn hair.
“Wesley,” Bronwyn hissed at her son as she finally persuaded him to sit on a stone wall outside the head housekeeper’s office. “I’m trying to get a job,” she said, moving her full-size backpack—one that had belonged to Ari—and Wesley’s smaller tote bag so that they sat together. Bringing everything she owned to Fairchild Acres hadn’t been practical. Instead, she’d hired a small—very small—storage unit in Sydney and prayed that she’d find a way to pay the monthly rentals until she could collect the rest of her belongings, belongings for which she was pretty sure there would be no room in the Fairchild Acres employee bungalows.
“It’s important that you are quiet and stay out of the way here,” she continued whispering to her son. “I have to have this job. Don’t you see that? We have no money since your— Anyhow, we have to make our own way, Wesley, and that means I have to work.”
“Why couldn’t you get a job in Sydney?”
“It’s expensive to live in Sydney.” This wasn’t the whole reason for her calling about the job she’d seen advertised at Fairchild Acres, however, and Wesley seemed to know it.
He said, “You always think you’re smarter than everyone else.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Like Nam. You thought he couldn’t understand English.”
Bronwyn’s cheeks burned anew. When she’d bade their driver farewell, he’d said in perfect English, “He must have caused you a lot of trouble.”
Ari.
Well, that was one way of putting it.
Yes, it was easy to blush, remembering her mistake.
“Wesley, could you please sit here quietly while I go in for my interview?”
“What if you don’t get hired?”
Bronwyn didn’t want to think about that. “I’m going to get hired. Now stay here. Don’t wander around.”
She approached the door of the estate manager’s office, which was labeled Office, as she’d been told it would be. She knocked, and as she did, a small, extremely pretty young woman with short blond hair looked out of the next door, which stood open. It appeared to be the door to the kitchens, though also part of the main house.
“She’s not here,” the woman called.
“What?” Bronwyn turned.
“Are you here about the dishwasher’s job?” the blonde asked.
Bronwyn nodded, noting the perfection of her skin and thinking that Patrick Stafford had no shortage of beautiful women at Fairchild Acres. But he probably had a girlfriend, for all Bronwyn knew. She certainly wasn’t here to resume any romantic relationship with him after a ten-year separation. Nonetheless, this pretty female made Bronwyn want to find the nearest sink and mirror so she could clean up after the hot, dusty truck ride. How could anyone come out of that obviously steaming kitchen looking so good?
“Well, Mrs. Lipton is gone for the day. She’ll be back tomorrow. You’ve come on her day off.”
“But I have an appointment.” This was impossible.
“You’re the woman who’s supposed to be coming tomorrow?” the blonde asked, her eyebrows drawing together.
How could there be such a mix-up? Bronwyn wondered. It was late in the afternoon and Nam had already headed back to Sydney. Not that she could have afforded to have him make the trip again the next day. Were there hotels nearby? Bronwyn wasn’t destitute, but she didn’t want to spend any of the little cash she possessed. She could live on the smell of an oily rag better than most, but there was no point in depleting her resources unnecessarily.
“Look, I’m Marie,” said the blonde, sticking out her hand, which Bronwyn took, grateful for the offer of friendship which the woman seemed to be making.
“Bronwyn Davies.”
“Yes, now what you want to do is go over to that door and go in and find Agnes. She’s the assistant housekeeper, and I dare say she’ll find you a place to sleep tonight. Is that your boy there?”
“Yes, that’s Wesley.”
Marie nodded, smiling. “He’s a handsome one, isn’t he?”
“Too handsome for his own good,” Bronwyn admitted. “He’s been known to get away with plenty.” She hesitated. “Which door?”
Marie pointed, and Bronwyn turned to see where she’d indicated.
“Right. Well, thank you.”
“No worries.”
As Marie ducked in the kitchen, Wesley said, “Brilliant, Mum. Wrong day.”
Bronwyn nodded in resignation. “Well, you better come with me.” She stooped to shoulder her heavy pack then fastened the hip belt. Wesley picked up his tote, swinging the strap over his shoulder. Bulging with his most prized possessions, the bag seemed to dwarf him, and Bronwyn thought how very young he was to have to go through all that he had in the last months—culminating, of course, in Ari’s murder.
I’ve got to stop saying nasty things about Ari, she thought.
After all, Wesley loved the man, loved his memory still.
Bronwyn, too, had loved Ari. Once.
I can’t think about it, about any of it. Unlikely as it might have seemed that she had loved a man twenty years older than her, that had been the case. Probably her attraction to him had something to do with the fact she’d never known her own father, who’d died before she was born, leaving Bronwyn’s mother to fend for herself and her infant in urban Sydney.
Bronwyn would do a better job of that than her mother had. She and Wesley were not going to do any sleeping under bridges—or in shelters, for that matter.
She said, “Wesley, you’re the best, y’know?”
“Mmm,” he answered.
She led the way up a red stone path to the door Marie had indicated. As she turned up the path, the door at the end opened, and a man stepped out.
Her breath caught, and she stumbled on the walk. Graceful, Bronwyn.
She would have known him anywhere, and already her eyes were seeking out that cleft chin, the jaw and delicate yet prominent bones she remembered in his face. His medium brown hair was a little too long, parted on the side, and still had a tendency to dash across his hazel eyes.
The eyes Wesley had inherited.
Patrick Stafford stopped in his tracks. He paused, gave her one derisive look, and said, “Why doesn’t this surprise me?”
Chapter Two
Patrick Stafford wasn’t surprised to see her? Well, Bronwyn wasn’t surprised to see him, either. After all, wasn’t seeing him part of her purpose in coming to Fairchild Acres? Hadn’t she subtly quizzed college friends about the old crowd until they’d gotten around to Patrick, until finally she’d learned where he was? He was Wesley’s father, and both father and son deserved the chance to meet, to get to know each other.
But now, face-to-face with Patrick, Bronwyn remembered how angry and hurt he’d been when she’d refused his proposal. We were so young, she thought. She definitely intended to let him know that Wesley was his son, but not in front of Wesley.
He paused, seeming to take in the heat, sweat, dirt, backpacks, soccer ball, everything.
“I’m looking for the assistant housekeeper,” Bronwyn said.
“And here I was sure you were looking for me.”
He had a fine nose, perfect for looking down at her, Bronwyn thought.
“Let me fill in the blanks,” he added, “to save you the trouble.”
He stood over her, and Bronwyn felt the weight of the burden on her hips and shoulders and wished she could set down the huge pack, but it was too much trouble to get it back on.
“Sugar daddy is gone,” he said, “so you tracked down Patrick Stafford to see if he might step in.”
The presumption floored Bronwyn. On top of the heat, the truck ride, the mix-up over the days, this was too much. Patrick thought she hoped he would support her? How ridiculous. “Even I,” she said, “don’t have such an inflated opinion of my own charms.”
“Your arrival here on the tails of Theodoros’s untimely demise strikes me as more than coincidental.”
As it was. The job opening at Fairchild Acres had been pure serendipity, but Bronwyn had hunted job ads in the Hunter Valley in the hope of finding something. She was hanged if she’d admit so now, especially with Wesley listening.
“Do you mind?” she said, her eyes indicating that a child was present, a child who regarded Aristotle Theodoros as his father. For the first time she wondered if maybe Wesley might be better off without Patrick in his life. How insensitive could the man be, talking so casually about Ari’s “untimely demise”? “You could actually point us in the right direction. I have an appointment with Mrs. Lipton for tomorrow about a job in the kitchens. I thought it was today, and we’ve arrived too early.”
“Then, you ought to trek out to the highway and get a lift to the nearest hotel.”
After Marie’s kindness, Patrick’s callousness stung. Suddenly, Bronwyn felt close to breaking down. But she managed to repeat, “If you could let the housekeeper know I’m here or tell me where to find her.”
Patrick saw that her lips, lovely lips against that honey-colored skin he remembered so well, trembled. You ass, Patrick, he thought. There wasn’t a chance in the world that Bronwyn’s showing up here was coincidence, but she had no chance of worming her way into his good graces. So why not behave decently toward her? She was, after all, a widow accompanied by a young child, and the kid didn’t deserve to suffer for his mother’s—not to mention father’s—crimes.
The boy would be mourning the loss of his dad; that would be natural.
Turning, he nodded toward the door in the big house through which he’d just come. “Go on in. Agnes is inside, first door on the right.” Then, looking again at the kid, whose gaze had now turned cold—toward him, Patrick realized—he sighed and pulled open the screen. “Come in. We have room for you for the night.”
Bronwyn marveled that Patrick even smelled the same. It wasn’t a strong scent, and she hadn’t been terribly close to him, yet he smelled familiar, from that years-ago time when they were lovers, back when she’d been a waitress in the campus coffee shop and he one of those lucky students who didn’t have to work his way through uni.
“Agnes, this is Bron Theodoros—”
“Bronwyn Davies,” Bronwyn corrected. Bron. Many people naturally shortened her name to Bron. Ari had hated it. Like “brawn.” You’re not brawny. And Bronwyn had begun to insist upon the use of her whole name—even in the last weeks she’d retained friendship with Patrick before their horrible parting.
Patrick cast her a quick look, but didn’t argue. “Bronwyn Davies and her son…”
“Wesley,” Bronwyn supplied.
“Bronwyn has an appointment with Mrs. Lipton tomorrow, and she arrived on the wrong day. I’m sure we can put these two up for the night in the house.” He put subtle emphasis on the last three words. “Bronwyn and I are old acquaintances from uni.”
“If there’s room in the employee cottage,” Bronwyn put in, “I’m sure that will be fine.”
“Well, the available room got painted out there, and I know it’s no good tonight because of the fumes,” Agnes told her. Agnes was a fiftyish woman who wore her hair in a neat French twist. Her black-and-white uniform was spotless. Bronwyn remembered that Marie, in the kitchens, had worn a T-shirt with Fairchild Acres on it, so Bronwyn supposed that would be her uniform in the future. “We can put you up in the western corner.”
Hot, Bronwyn thought. But the house was air-conditioned, blessedly so, so even the west part would be lovely. A roof over her head would be terrific.
“Is the room ready?” Patrick asked.
“Certainly,” said Agnes, with an air of being vaguely insulted at his suggestion that it might not be.
“Then I’ll show them the way,” he said, surprising Bronwyn again. Nonetheless, she couldn’t believe that he was doing so as a gesture of hospitality. No doubt he planned to tell her again that he wasn’t going to support her. As if she would let him. She’d only wanted to give him the chance to know Wesley. But now she’d begun to wonder if that was such a good idea.
She and Wesley followed Patrick down the hall to a stairway, which, though clearly not the main set of stairs, was wide and led to an upstairs open hallway that looked down on what appeared to be a conservatory below. The upstairs hall was lined with photographs of horses, horses covered with blankets of roses, horses in the winner’s circle. Accompanying many of them was the same tall, straight-backed woman at different stages throughout her life. Bronwyn had seen her before— from a distance at one or two events she and Ari had attended—and in photographs, as well. Louisa Fairchild. Bronwyn half hoped she would never come face-to-face with the Hunter Valley matriarch. Would Louisa meet any prospective employee? Bronwyn could just imagine the reaction of this seemingly indomitable woman at the news that Aristotle Theodoros’s widow was on the premises. Did she dare ask Patrick not to mention the fact?
No. He would scorn her for asking him to help her cover up for…for what?
For having been married to a criminal.
There were two upstairs bedrooms in the south corner, and they shared a bathroom. The actual corner room with its four-poster bed was to be Bronwyn’s, and a smaller room looking out on one of the paddocks was Wesley’s.
“No soccer inside, mate,” Patrick told Wesley as he showed him into the room, which contained a silky oak double bed.
“He knows that,” Bronwyn said. She felt like a grease spot, but however miserably hot and sweaty she looked—and Bronwyn was far less sensitive to this question than any other woman she knew—Patrick shouldn’t be assuming that Wesley hadn’t been raised right.
“No doubt,” Patrick answered coolly, “but Louisa wouldn’t like it, so I thought I’d err on the side of caution.”
“In that case, thank you,” murmured Bronwyn.
“There are towels in the bathroom. If there’s anything you need, please ask Agnes. The staff eats in the dining room attached to the kitchens, and I’m sure you’ll be welcome there,” he continued. “Maybe Wesley would like to spruce himself up a bit first.”
Wesley looked baffled by the suggestion, but Bronwyn read the undercurrent in the words. Patrick wanted to speak with her alone. “Wesley,” she said, “we did have a hot sweaty trip, and I’m definitely going to take advantage of the shower. Why don’t you run yourself a bath first?”
“Okay,” said Wesley, eyeing his mother and Patrick suspiciously.
Patrick stepped out of Wesley’s room, and Bronwyn followed, closing the door behind her.
He said, “Please come and join me in my study. It’s just down the hall.”
Bronwyn knew it would be churlish to argue, so she followed him, remembering the breadth of his shoulders beneath the chambray shirt he wore, admiring his long legs in cream moleskin pants. Yes, he looked affluent and secure, yet he was also stiff, remote, serious, quite different from the Patrick she remembered from school. Of course, that Patrick hadn’t been serious enough for her. A history major who’d wanted to travel and to write. Nothing specific, of course, and no sign of a genuine enthusiasm for writing. Just impractical plans. And then he’d asked her to marry him. And that proposal had suddenly accentuated for her how immature he was, how unready for marriage. She’d broken up with him and soon met Ari. A whirlwind courtship and another proposal of marriage, this one from a more mature man.
Of course, Ari’s proposal had seemed to come from a legitimate businessman, not a mobster.
When had she begun to suspect the truth about Ari, the indecent truth that the person he seemed to be with his family was not at all the person he was in his business dealings? She shut the door on the question, a question she’d spent too much time examining over the months since Ari’s arrest.
Patrick’s study was a large, comfortable room, the furniture polished cherry, with a desktop computer which looked as though it could communicate with a space station and a separate rolltop desk complete with a banker’s lamp. Prominently displayed on the small desk was a photo of Patrick and his sister, Megan, whom Bronwyn easily recognized. She stepped over to examine the photo. Megan’s sense of style, her comfort with fashion, was apparent even in the head-and-shoulders photo, simply from her choice of earrings. But what Bronwyn remembered was the kindness of her eyes, eyes very much the shape of Patrick’s, and the mouth that had always been so quick to laugh.
But Bronwyn also remembered the slight chip she’d had on her own shoulder when she’d first gotten to know Patrick’s sister, whose childhood had been the antithesis of Bronwyn’s. Megan was the product of exclusive private girls’ schools, an affluent upbringing. Bronwyn, in contrast, had always been a survivor. “How is she?” she asked.
Patrick paused at the side bar, where several bottles sat on a silver tray. “Great. She’s met a very nice man, a detective, actually, with a fourteen-year-old daughter. A cocktail?”
Bronwyn hesitated, reluctant to accept so much as a glass of water from this man who had accused her of coming to Fairchild Acres in search of a new sugar daddy. But a drink was what she very much wanted right now. That and the shower she’d told Wesley she planned to take before dinner. “Thank you,” she said.
“Cognac?” he asked.
Bronwyn had never tasted cognac in her life until Patrick had ordered her some one evening when they were out together. It’s not exactly in my budget, she’d pointed out.
He’d said, Maybe if you get used to the finer things, they’ll find you.
That was before Aristotle Theodoros had appeared on the scene, a rival, an older man who was attractive to Bronwyn as a suitor and also filled the role of the father she’d never had—or something like that.
“Thank you,” she said again.
Two snifters. He handed Bronwyn hers, and their fingers brushed. He lifted his glass. “Around here,” he said, “we usually drink to horses. So, to Louisa’s hopeful for the Outback Classic—An Indecent Proposal.”
Bronwyn slid her eyes sideways, her mouth twisting in near amusement, and lifted her glass. “As long as you realize that I’m not here to make one.”
They both drank.
“Then why are you here?”
The question was spoken quietly, and Bronwyn found herself watching his lips, his mouth, and thinking how unchanged he was and yet how completely different. He remained a very attractive man—one who had once been madly in love with her. He had walked away without looking back after she’d told him she was marryingAri— that is, he’d left the coffee shop where she was working, hurried out into the parking lot. She’d been horribly worried then, her stomach tensing up, and had hardly been able to finish her shift. She’d been afraid Patrick would simply go out of his mind, but that wasn’t all.
Part of her had feared that she was making a terrible mistake, that she was letting go of something she’d never find again and that she was foolish to marry Ari, that she and Ari could never be together what she and Patrick might have been.
Now Patrick had asked why she’d come to Fairchild Acres. Now was the moment to tell him about Wesley.
But to do so suddenly seemed rash. Patrick was rich, powerful. She had nothing. What if he tried to take Wesley from her? It wasn’t as though the possibility hadn’t occurred to her before; but the old Patrick hadn’t been the kind of person to do that. This new Patrick? She wasn’t sure. She had no way of defending herself, and the widow of a mobster wouldn’t look so great in the courts. “I came for the job,” she said.
“Knowing I was here?”
“Yes,” she admitted. “I knew you were here. But I’m here because I need the work. The government has seized Ari’s assets. I must support Wesley.”
She could tell from the look in his half-closed hazel eyes that he didn’t think her story credible.
Well, too bad. If he wanted to cherish conceited notions that she fantasized about getting back together with him, so be it.
Patrick wished he could read minds. He would gladly open Bronwyn Davies’s head and see what had really brought her to Fairchild Acres. Whatever she said—and, face it, she’d just admitted that she’d known she would find him there—he had to believe she’d come here looking for him.
“Then let’s get a few things straight,” he said.
Bronwyn buttoned her lip, knowing what was coming.
“You’re not going to get any special treatment from me. And don’t entertain dreams about you and me picking up where we left off. If you haven’t acquired any new job skills since you worked in that coffee shop, it’s time you developed some.”
Bronwyn took a drink of cognac, wanting to tell him a few home truths but knowing that doing so might influence her ability to secure the job in the kitchens.
Instead she said, “Please believe that it’s with the greatest reluctance I accepted the offer of sleeping in this house tonight, let alone enjoying this drink with you. I would be a fool if I believed any man whom I’d once rejected would come back for more.”
“Ouch,” Patrick murmured.
She shrugged. “I don’t think you’re giving me this charming lecture because you’ve forgotten I once decided to marry someone else.”
Ouch again, he thought. But Patrick knew that her ability to stick up for herself, the integrity that had never made him think everything he did was perfect, were part of what had attracted him to her in the first place. The women he’d known before Bronwyn had all been afraid of losing his favor by being less than agreeable; they’d seemed to worship him. But Patrick hadn’t wanted that. He’d wanted a partner, an equal.
And just now—well, she was probably being snotty because he was letting her know how things would be if they were both around Fairchild Acres. “Can you imagine my not being suspicious of your motives under the circumstances?”
“No,” Bronwyn replied, but she wasn’t about to relieve him of his suspicions. She decided to distract him. “What did bring you here, Patrick? As I recall, you weren’t on the best terms with your great-aunt.”
“We weren’t on any terms with her, good or bad,” he admitted. “But she invited Megan and me to Fairchild Acres, and I wanted to hear what she had to say. I have to admit, I’ve grown fond of her. And protective.”
Bronwyn managed not to say that of course Patrick would be protective of Louisa Fairchild’s money, especially if he hoped to inherit part of it.
Instead, she asked, “And what are you doing with yourself these days?” She knew the answer; the same friends who’d mentioned where he was had supplied that information.
“The stock market. Must be in the blood.”
Bronwyn well remembered when he’d seemed allergic to the possibility of doing anything so practical.
He turned from where he stood by the bar, and Bronwyn felt him assessing her. She knew he was examining her clothing, her figure, her general appearance. The thing about growing up on the streets was that she’d become used to other people being her mirror. She’d also learned to base her feelings of self-worth on things other than her physical appearance. How she treated people, her competence in life, a whole host of things were more important. But Patrick was a cipher. She couldn’t guess his reaction to anything about her. Except the suspicion that he hadn’t needed to put into words.
“Should I express condolences?” he asked.
“That’s entirely up to you. I’m a widow, and that’s considered good manners.” The callous way he’d spoken of Ari’s death—more than once—upset her, but she wanted to make as few waves as possible. She finished her cognac then and said, “In any case, I think I’ll go see if Wesley is done with his bath.”
Wesley had filled the huge claw-foot tub with as much water as he would have used at home, the home they didn’t have anymore in Sydney, the home they didn’t have anymore in Greece, the home they didn’t have anymore in Queensland, any of the homes that weren’t theirs anymore.
Why had his mother brought him here? Why couldn’t she have gotten a job in Sydney so that he could have stayed at his school?
Then he remembered the past few months, the friends who wouldn’t come over anymore because of who his father had turned out to be, the friends whose houses he couldn’t go to because his mother had found out things about their parents. All right, she’d managed to convince him that moving away from Sydney would make him happier in the long run. But it sure wasn’t happening yet. The Hunter Valley was full of rich kids, too, he knew, and he was not a rich kid any longer; his mother had made that pretty clear.
And who was that man who had finally introduced himself as Patrick, a friend of his mother’s from uni? Obviously, he didn’t want them here, but his mother must have known Patrick would be here when she decided to come to Fairchild Acres.
He had to admit there were some very nice lawns here, perfect for kicking a soccer ball, but his mum had said he couldn’t play on them till she found out if it was all right with the owner.
Yes, he was just going to be an employee’s kid, and there weren’t any other kids here that he could see. His life was horrible.
And his father was dead.
Did his mother hate his father because she’d found out he was a criminal? She’d become so brusque all of a sudden, always in a hurry, constantly issuing orders. She’d told him, I’m just concentrating on surviving, Wesley. That’s what we’ve got to think about now. Making sure we have a place to live.
His father used to be free with money, but his mum never had been. She used to get mad if she came in his room and found change on the floor. Don’t you understand how important money is, Wesley? I hope you’ll always have enough, but you need to treat it with respect.
Did they have enough money now? His father had said his mother worried too much about money; she’d always have plenty. Well, now he was worried about money.
And his father was dead.
After a brief discussion with Wesley on the necessity of conserving water, especially in the country, Bronwyn left him occupied in his temporary bedroom, reading a manga comic book he had brought with him, and headed for the bathroom herself. There, she stood under the spray of the shower, praying, begging. Begging a divinity by any name to give her the job she’d come here to obtain.
But was getting this particular job so important anymore? Patrick had been so rude, so presumptuous, that the thought of telling him that Wesley was his son held no appeal whatsoever. Bronwyn knew men, understood them. Patrick’s ego was obviously still smarting from her rejection of his proposal almost eleven years before. Bronwyn didn’t flatter herself that any attraction remained on his side, but a man like Patrick… Yes, the bitterness would remain.
How would he treat Wesley, then? It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that he would completely reject his son.
And what was all this stuff about her coming to get money from him? Did he think she was that devious? Or just insane? In any case, it offended her to be perceived as a gold digger. When had she ever not worked for a living? Even when she’d lived with Ari, she’d contributed to caring for all of his homes, working right alongside the staff whenever a dinner party or other entertainment was planned. Ari hadn’t wanted her to hold an outside job, or even to finish her degree in sports nutrition and physiology, wanting her instead to manage his homes and devote herself to Wesley. And she’d thrown herself completely into the role of mother, volunteering at Wesley’s school, going to soccer and rugby and cricket practices. Shutting off the water to soap her hair, Bronwyn wondered if being a mother counted as work to someone like Patrick Stafford.
Like Patrick?
What was Patrick actually like? He seemed so different, even dressed differently, from the way he had as a student. Now he was a stockbroker, and the wild, romantic dreamer was gone. Bronwyn knew that there was a steadiness and self-confidence to Patrick now that hadn’t been there when he’d been fantasizing different futures for himself. But there was an aloofness and distance, too. And Bronwyn was curious. Because of Wesley.
But it wasn’t because of Wesley that she noticed that Patrick was still a very attractive man, more attractive, if possible, than he had been at university.
Well, that was natural. There was probably even some biological reason for her being interested in Patrick that way, something to do with his being Wesley’s father. In any event, she wouldn’t be seeing much of Patrick, once she started work in the kitchens.
If she was hired at all.
Patrick was not sleeping. He resented that he wasn’t sleeping, that seeing Bronwyn should keep him awake. What was she up to anyway? Why had she come to Fairchild Acres, knowing he was there, to get a low-paying job in the kitchens? The answer had to be him. She denied wanting money from him, but Patrick wasn’t sure he believed that. Did she want to take up where they’d left off? Crazy. But she was here for a reason. Everything Bronwyn did was deliberate. Coincidence did not stretch far enough to explain her winding up in the same place as him.
But the question troubling him was whether the puzzle of her being here was what was really keeping him awake. Or was it just Bronwyn? She was, if anything, more beautiful than before. It was easy to believe she’d been living in luxury for the past ten years. Her honey-colored skin showed no sign of age.And that hair, the long red hair, the green eyes, whose color struck so forcefully. Lying awake in the dark, he saw not a money-grubbing widow with schemes in her heart; he saw Bronwyn. Bronwyn, Bronwyn, the only woman who’d ever broken his heart. The only woman he’d truly loved.
Chapter Three
“My only trouble with giving you this job,” said Mrs. Lipton the next day, “is that you’re overqualified. I haven’t had much luck keeping people from the city, let alone university-educated workers, here.”
“I didn’t finish,” Bronwyn said, because this was an important distinction as far as she was concerned.
“Nonetheless. Well, we’ll give it a try. We have a room in the employee bungalow for you and another for your son. Ordinarily he would have to share with the other children, but there are none living in the bungalow. Only a few of the staff actually live at Fairchild Acres. Most of them are local.”
Bronwyn nodded. “Thank you very much. I’m glad for the chance to do this job.”
The housekeeper, a middle-aged woman whose hair was neatly styled in a short cut, studied her. “Are you a horse lover?”
“Not especially,” Bronwyn admitted. Then she realized her error.
Mrs. Lipton said, “What brought you from Sydney? I would think, with your background, you could have found a better job there.”
Bronwyn was ready. She’d known this question would come up. “I wanted a change of scene for my son. I was searching for the kind of place where I wanted him to grow up and decided that the Hunter Valley looked perfect.”
“But it’s expensive to live here, dear, if you’re looking to own your own home sometime.”
Bronwyn tried again. “My husband died recently, and it was painful to remain in Sydney.” That much was certainly true. Reading the housekeeper’s sympathetic look, she decided this would be her main story from now on.
“Well, let’s get you your Fairchild Acres shirts, and then I’ll take you out to the kitchens. Or perhaps first we should settle your boy into the cottage.”
“Thank you,” Bronwyn said again.
Wesley was her worry now, Wesley with too much time on his hands while she was in the kitchens. The sooner she could register him in the local school the better.
“Lipton!”
The voice came from outside. The housekeeper stood up, and so did Bronwyn. They went outside, and Bronwyn hung back as an elderly woman in trousers and a button-down shirt said, “There is a dog in the kitchens. We can’t have that. Not around the food preparation area. It’s a stray, I think. It would be best if you could call someone to take it away.”
Wesley, sitting on the stone wall outside the office, peered up at Bronwyn, and she gave him a small wave, but kept her attention on the figure who was giving instructions about a dog. This was Louisa Fairchild, and Bronwyn couldn’t help staring. The woman radiated confidence and charisma, and Bronwyn could tell that Mrs. Lipton genuinely liked her employer. Bronwyn could think of no finer recommendation for a human being.
Louisa Fairchild glanced over at her. Mrs. Lipton said, “Bronwyn Davies, our new dishwasher. Bronwyn, this is Miss Fairchild.”
Bronwyn tried hard to meet the older woman’s eyes as Louisa gave her a curt nod, seeming preoccupied.
“The dog, Lipton,” Louisa Fairchild repeated.
Bronwyn was glad to escape the matriarch’s piercing gaze.
If only she never finds out who I am or that I was married to Ari.
Doping horses. Racing fraud. Damn it, Ari. Why didn’t you think about Wesley and me, about what would happen to us if you were caught?
She blinked the thought away.
All her recollections of Ari were now tinged by what she hadn’t known about him. Or had part of her known? No, not really, Bronwyn answered herself honestly. She’d assumed that not all his investments were politically correct, but she’d never believed he’d do something criminal.
Maybe you didn’t want to know, Bronwyn.
If she hadn’t loved him, all of it would be easier now. But she’d loved him all right. Fallen for him hard since he was the antithesis to Patrick’s youthful romanticism. Ari was steady, responsible, so appreciative of her. She’d loved her life with him.
But now, how could she mourn a crook? Who would care that he was dead or that she missed any part of him? He’d left her so isolated. She hadn’t maintained one friendship separate from her life with him. Couples. They’d known other couples, Ari’s business associates. If these friends weren’t implicated in Ari’s fraud, they’d been hurt by association with him.
Yes, she’d needed to get out of Sydney, had even considered leaving the country, starting over where no one knew her, where no one would see her as a wife who’d turned a blind eye to her husband’s criminal activities.
Marie dragged the animal in question out of the kitchens. He was just a puppy and looked half-starved.
Louisa Fairchild said, “Looks like a dingo to me.”
Marie watched her employer with an apprehensive expression, then told the dog, “You stay out.”
The puppy, who was gray with black spots, sat down and scratched one oversize black ear.
“Part heeler,” Mrs. Lipton pronounced.
“Well, let’s get him out of here.”
“I can watch him and make sure he doesn’t go back inside.”
Bronwyn stared. It was Wesley who’d spoken. He had jumped up from the stone wall where he sat beside the baggage they’d lugged from the house. Today he wore his child-size Manchester United uniform, and it struck Bronwyn how small he was, how young, as he marched up to Louisa Fairchild. Bronwyn wanted to tell him to stop, to sit down again, but her mouth wouldn’t work.
The elderly woman gazed at him as though she’d never seen a child before. “Where did he come from?” she asked Mrs. Lipton.
Bronwyn stepped forward, her hand on her throat.
The estate manager gave her a reassuring smile. “He’s your son, isn’t he, Bronwyn?”
“Wesley,” Bronwyn supplied.
“Theodoros,” said Wesley, too softly to be heard by anyone but his mother, who considered infanticide.
He went over to the puppy and crouched down beside it, and the dog licked its lips, sticking out his tongue, lifting his head.
“All right, Wesley,” said Louisa Fairchild. “I’m Louisa. Your job is to keep that animal out of the kitchens. We’ll see if we can find him something to eat. Welcome, Bronwyn,” she finally said, and Bronwyn detected no sign of recognition in the other woman. “We’re glad to have you.”
As she hurried away, toward the big house, Bronwyn released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Louisa’s attitude put to rest both her greatest fears, that she would be identified as Ari’s widow and that Wesley would be in the way and unwelcome.
“Let’s go see where we’re going to be living, Wesley,” she told him. “I guess you better bring the dog. You can keep him outside, though.”
“There have been dogs in the employee quarters before,” Mrs. Lipton said. “In fact, there’s a Lab mix who considers himself part of the place. You’ll meet him. His name is Sergeant.”
Things were looking up, Wesley decided as his mother went off to her job. The puppy wasn’t his, but he would get to look after him, because the big boss had told him to. Wesley decided to call him Beckham, and he played with him outside the house where he and his mother were now going to live.
Halfway through the afternoon, a blond woman he’d seen the day before strolled back to the bungalow. She stopped beside the steps, where Wesley sat, bored from watching the dog. “I’m Marie,” she said. “Your mum already told me you’re called Wesley.”
“Yes.”
“So it looks like this is your dog now. He’s a nice little guy. What are you going to call him?”
Wesley told her.
She took in his soccer uniform and smiled. “Very appropriate. Well, let’s see if we can find Beckham a collar. If you take him over to the stables, you can ask Mike, the head groom, if he has something that will work.”
“Thank you,” Wesley said, keeping in mind that he had to be polite so that his mother didn’t lose her job.
Marie squinted at him. “You remind me of someone.”
“My dad always said I looked like my mum.”
He saw her face soften into a curious and sympathetic expression. “Are your parents divorced?”
“No, my dad died,” Wesley said. His mother had instructed him not to tell anyone who his father was. Still, he couldn’t help saying, “He was murdered.”
Marie exclaimed, “Oh, I’m so sorry. I had no idea, Wesley. You must miss him.”
Wesley nodded, glad that someone, at least, understood how he felt. Not that his mother didn’t understand.
Just before he went to sleep last night, she’d said, “I know you miss him, and I’m sorry, Wesley. I know it hurts. I’m really sorry.” But his mother was also preoccupied and worried, anxious about money. He liked this sympathetic stranger.
He patted Beckham, and the dog huddled against his legs.
Patrick didn’t see Bronwyn in the morning. He imagined she’d gone to her job interview. He hoped she wouldn’t be hired. He hadn’t slept well. In fact, he wasn’t sure he’d slept at all. Bronwyn was the reason. He didn’t need some woman scheming around him, and her intentions, whatever they were, couldn’t be good. It must be money she wanted, no matter what she said to the contrary. Nothing else made sense.
At the breakfast table, Louisa talked about An Indecent Proposal’s recent win at Warrego Downs and about Jacko Bullock’s upcoming campaign gala. She did not talk about the murder investigation or her relief that Dylan Hastings had finally found Sam Whittle-son’s true killer. Patrick knew his great-aunt had a gift for holding a grudge, but she held none against Dylan for suspecting her. After all, he’d helped save Fairchild Acres from a recent fire, and he loved Megan.
“Patrick, did you hear me?” she said.
“What?”
She barely suppressed a look of irritation. “If you’re not going to bother listening, I won’t bother talking.”
“I’m sorry. I was preoccupied.”
“I noticed.”
He found himself smiling, feeling terribly fond of her. “I was marveling over your attitude toward Dylan. You’ve certainly managed to forgive and forget.”
“Well—forgive, anyway,” she said tartly. “I’ve spent too much time harboring grudges.”
Patrick lifted an eyebrow. People who’d known Louisa longer than he had remarked on the way her recent illness seemed to have changed her.
“Why should I expend energy thinking about someone who has wronged me?” she demanded. “If it’s past, it’s past. Dwelling on it just makes me a prisoner.”
This made sense to Patrick. So why should he expend energy thinking about Bronwyn Davies Theodoros? Because she’d jilted him and accepted another man’s proposal of marriage just weeks later? She’d said, “I’m marryingAri, Patrick. I couldn’t marry you because you’re still planning a future that’s incompatible with marriage— marriage to me, anyhow. You and I have different priorities, different values. Ari’s and mine are the same.”
Their values, Bronwyn’s and Ari’s? Money, money, money. When he’d said that, Bronwyn had shot back with unforgettable words. Wrong, Patrick. Ari is a grown-up. And I’m in love with him.
“Patrick, did you hear me?”
“I’m sorry, Louisa.”
“I said that Megan called this morning. She and Heidi are coming up today to ride, and Dylan is coming with them. Will you have time?”
“Time for what?”
“To get to know the man your sister plans to marry.”
“I do know him.”
“Megan wants the two of you to be friends.”
Patrick made a quiet, inarticulate sound.
Louisa sighed.
“He’s fine,” Patrick said. “She can marry who she likes.”
“You know that he thought I’d covered up for the man he believed murdered his brother. When they were both children.”
“I do know it,” Patrick agreed.
“I know that must have prejudiced him against me, but it’s all in the past now. At least make an effort, Patrick. For Megan.” Then, before he could reply, she changed the subject. “There’s a stray dog around,” Louisa said, “and I’ve encouraged the son of one of our employees—a new hire—to look after him. Though I suppose he’ll be going to school. The boy, I mean.”
Patrick felt the force of all his unreasonable prejudice against Bronwyn, and he wanted to warn Louisa to watch out for the woman’s machinations. Yet he wasn’t sure how to broach the subject. And how would Louisa react to having Ari Theodoros’s widow at Fairchild Acres? Surely she wouldn’t like it, and perhaps he had a duty to tell her who Bronwyn was. But it seemed unfair. Bronwyn certainly wasn’t going to dope horses.
Or was she? Was that what had brought her to Fairchild Acres, some scheme cooked up with the help of her late husband’s nefarious business associates? And had she chosen this venue because he, Patrick, was here and she hoped for more leniency? Surely her college boyfriend would never suspect her of doping—or otherwise harming—horses.
The possibility alarmed him. She’d applied for work in the kitchens, but wasn’t that an ideal place from which to influence operations in the stables? If something happened to a horse, who would think to question the kitchen staff?
But Bronwyn, hurt an animal?
“About the new hire,” he began, uncertain what he was going to tell Louisa.
His cell phone vibrated on his hip. He looked at it, recognized the number of a client, and excused himself from the table to take the call.
“Patrick,” said the man, a Sydney attorney. He and his wife had recently engaged Patrick to help them with some investment decisions. That morning, during his usual initial look at the stock exchanges, he’d seen how well those choices had paid off. “You’ve done terrifically, mate. Do we sell now?”
“I don’t think so. You’re in a very solid market. Let’s sit on it and let things grow,” Patrick replied. He knew that this client’s satisfaction would become word-of-mouth advertising and that he himself would gain more clients because of it. Yet today, it was hard to feel satisfaction about that—or about his own wealth, which certainly would never rival the empire Ari Theodoros had commanded.
It was as though Bronwyn’s arrival had changed everything, making Patrick question who he even was. It shouldn’t have that effect. Wasn’t it her rejection of him and his youthful dreams that had galvanized him into pursuing finance?
After Patrick concluded the call, he found Louisa had finished her breakfast and gone out somewhere, probably to the stables. The horses of Fairchild Acres were her lifeblood.
I can’t imagine Bronwyn hurting an animal, Patrick told himself again. Surely life with Ari Theodoros couldn’t have changed her that much. But if something happened to one of the horses at Fairchild Acres, and if Bronwyn turned out to be responsible…
He was borrowing trouble. But he also realized he was protecting Bronwyn from possible consequences of Louisa’s learning that she was Ari’s widow. She didn’t deserve his protection.
I’m going to tell Louisa, he thought. Bronwyn wasn’t cut from the same cloth as Ari, and Louisa would take his word on that.
“This should do for a collar,” said Walt, one of the grooms. He had found a leather piece of bridle, complete with a buckle, which fitted Beckham and left some room to grow. “And I know we’ve got leads you can use. Let’s see.” He sorted through the older tack hanging on the wall and pulled out a blue nylon one. “See how this suits you, mate.”
Wesley took the lead and fastened it onto the collar Walt had found him. “Thanks. It’s perfect.”
Beckham, however, obviously didn’t know the first thing about walking on a leash. As Wesley tried to lead him out of the barn, he preferred to sniff the straw and everything he could find.
“That’s a sign,” Walt said, “that he probably needs to go outside.”
“Yes.” Wesley managed to drag the puppy out of the barn. Then Beckham sat down in the dirt and scratched himself.
Louisa Fairchild walked toward Wesley, making her quick, precise way. “It looks like he’s all set now,” she said.
“His name’s Beckham.”
“That’s an interesting name.”
“For David Beckham, the soccer player.”
“I don’t know much about soccer.”
Wesley expected the older lady to move off. She wouldn’t be interested in the things he was.
But she said, “Do you like horses, Wesley?”
“I haven’t been around them much. My dad—” Abruptly he remembered that he wasn’t supposed to talk about his father. But that seemed so silly. Wesley knew that his father hadn’t drugged any horses himself. He knew this because he read the papers, though his mother had tried to keep them out of sight. He used to find and take them from the garage and take them to his room.
“Yes?” Louisa Fairchild arched her eyebrows.
“He knew about horses,” Wesley decided to say.
“Where is your father?”
“He died.”
The look of sympathy the old lady gave him made Wesley feel warm inside, and suddenly he felt tears come to his eyes. He turned away so that she wouldn’t see.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Perhaps you’d like to learn about horses, too. You can remember your father that way, by doing something which interested him.You can be like him. Our loved ones, after they die, live on in us.”
You can be like him.
Wesley wasn’t sure he wanted to be like his father. Once, he would have said that, yes, he wanted to be just like him. But everything had gotten confused when his father went to jail. It didn’t seem okay to want to be like him, because he had stolen people’s money, basically, or cheated them out of it. Just regular people, too, not especially bad people. Just…anyone.
His mother had said once, “He was weak, Wesley.”
Weak? Or bad? He’d asked his mother, and she’d said, “The hell of it is, I don’t know and I can’t tell you. Only your father could answer that question.”
But, in any case, the old lady was being nice, and maybe she was one of those lonely old people his mother sometimes talked about, people with no one left who loved them.
So he said, “I’d like to learn about horses.”
“I’ve just got to lose some weight,” said Helena, one of the prep cooks, as she chopped carrots by the sink where Bronwyn was washing dishes.
Helena was more than heavy, Bronwyn could see, with almost three chins. Pity stirred in her heart, along with an old urge—it felt very old, pre-Ari—to do something to help. It was, in fact, the desire to help obese people that had led Bronwyn to study sports nutrition and physiology at university. She had done this because her own mother had been obese. Not back when they’d been homeless and living on the streets. Later, when, because of Bronwyn’s first job, they were finally safe. Suddenly, her mother had experienced a weight gain of almost a hundred pounds, then diabetes and health struggles and sudden death.
Bronwyn had vowed to always stay in good shape herself. But she’d really wanted to do something for other people like her mother.
“I wasn’t always like this,” Helena volunteered. “I used to be closer to your size.”
Bronwyn eyed the diet soft drink at Helena’s elbow and said, “You might try drinking some juice instead of those.”
“But the calories!”
“The thing is, if you eat something with nutritional content you’ll probably be less hungry. In fact,” she added, “studies have linked diet soft drinks with weight gain. They seem to make people crave more calories.”
“You think? I sure wish I could lose weight. But every time I diet, I just end up putting it right back on.”
“For me, anyhow,” Bronwyn said, “nutritious food makes me feel better than things that are bad for me. So I’d rather have fresh fruit or vegetables or whole grains than things that have a lot of nonfood junk in them.”
“You might be right about that.”
“She’s right!” chimed in Howard, the sous-chef. “You eat too many crackers, Helena.”
“But they’re low fat!”
“And there’s nothing in them,” he told her. “No nutritional value.”
“I bet you work out, too,” Helena said to Bronwyn.
“Not now. Back when I was married—” Bronwyn stopped abruptly.
“Wesley told me your husband died,” said a woman’s voice beside her.
Bronwyn started, but it was just Marie, sticking her hands beneath the tap to wash them.
“Oh, you poor thing,” said Helena. “How did that happen?”
Omitting to tell her employer that she was Ari Theodoros’s widow was one thing. But she didn’t want to lie to coworkers, to people Bronwyn hoped would become her friends. After all, both Marie and Helena lived in the employee cottage where Wesley and Bronwyn would be staying. So Bronwyn said quietly, “He was murdered.”
“Oh, God. I’m so sorry I asked you about it!” Helena exclaimed. “How terrible for you. But you don’t have to talk about it anymore.”
They were probably curious—Australia had few murders—but no one asked more.
Howard changed the subject. “You know, I think we should have an exercise class here, for employees. Do some yoga or something.”
Howard was American. Besides working in the kitchen he was apprenticing to a local farrier. Louisa had a large kitchen staff for the size of her business, but Helena had explained that she did a fair amount of entertaining.
Marie asked, “Where could we have a yoga class, and when?”
“Before work in the morning or after we finish up at night,” Howard suggested. “I bet Louisa would find some place for us.”
“Yeah, you ask her,” François, the chef, suggested, with the air of baiting him.
“All right, I will.”
“But who’s qualified to teach something like that?” Helena asked.
Bronwyn hesitated. Her leisure activities, while married to Ari, had been Iyengar yoga and running, things she’d done at university as part of her own physical fitness regimen. She’d also played on several teams at university and had volunteered coaching a girls’ hockey team. She certainly had a strong sports background, and the course of study she’d pursued at school made her better qualified than most.
“I suppose I could,” she said.
“I think Louisa has been surprised by what a fine horsewoman Megan is,” Dylan Hastings told Patrick as the two men sat on Louisa’s veranda late that afternoon.
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