by Lynne Graham
Harriet had expected Rafael to put obstacles in her way. Instead he appeared to be offering her a free, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
‘I’d also like to discuss the possibility of exchanging the field you own in front of the cottage with one adjacent to the back lane. It would enable the replanting of some of the trees that were cut down.’
Harriet drew in a quick breath. ‘I could consider that.’
‘Excellent.’ Rafael strolled to the back of the car and reached in to emerge again with a bottle of vintage champagne and two glasses.
‘We’re celebrating?’ Once again Harriet was thoroughly disconcerted. She was starting to appreciate the strong streak of unpredictability that made Rafael Flynn such a powerful competitor in the business world. In old-fashioned parlance he was a law unto himself, for he had not once reacted as she’d expected him to. It was, she reflected headily, an incredibly unsettling attribute.
Breaking open the champagne, Rafael sent the golden liquid foaming down into the delicate goblets. ‘Let’s drink to mixing business with pleasure.’
‘But I don’t…’ Tiny bubbles burst and tickled Harriet’s upper lip as she sipped.
‘Neither do I, usually.’ Setting down his glass, Rafael moved lazily closer. ‘But I get a kick out of breaking rules.’
A tiny twist low in her tummy filled Harriet with restless heat.
‘Are you game?’ Without warning Rafael filched the glass from her hand. His eyes glittering with high-voltage energy, he eased her very slowly up against his lean, muscular physique.
Her heart started hammering like a clockwork toy that had been overwound. She knew she should match her words to her behaviour and break away, but her every urge fought that commonsense. ‘Last night I had been drinking…’
‘Don’t be so serious,’ Rafael censured with wry amusement.
Harriet flushed to the roots of her copper hair. ‘I just think—we’re partners—and then there’s Luke—’
Rafael lifted and dropped a broad masculine shoulder with careless cool. ‘That’s up to you. You have two weeks to agonise about it.’
‘Two weeks?’ Harriet gasped involuntarily. ‘You’re planning to be away that long?’
A raw smile of appreciation lit his hard dark features. ‘I’ll meet you here on the Friday, at six in the morning…we’ll go for a ride along the beach. I keep a mare here as company for my gelding. Try her out while I’m away.’
Rafael checked his watch and ran her straight back home. Indecision was cutting Harriet in two, and she felt foolish for having paraded it. To fling, or not to fling, she punned pathetically.
‘By the way,’ Rafael murmured levelly when she opened the passenger door to get out, ‘I’m not into one-night-stands.’
Her face flamed, and she almost fell out of the car in her eagerness to escape. ‘Neither am I.’
‘You could have fooled me.’
CHAPTER FIVE
HARRIET had supper with Fergal’s mother on Sunday evening. Treated like an honoured guest, it slowly sank in on Harriet that Mrs Gibson had decided that she would make a suitable girlfriend for her son. Cheerfully ignoring all the bossy older woman’s coy and encouraging comments, Harriet managed to extract herself again without causing offence.
Patrick Flanagan had also called round that afternoon, and asked her out to Dooleys. She’d turned him down as tactfully as she could.
It was the following week before she finally got the chance to visit the village gift shop and buy the earrings she had seen for her stepfather’s wife, Nicola.
Luckily for her the earrings were still unsold. While she waited for the sales assistant to remove them from the display, Harriet had the sensation that she was being watched, and turned her head. An elegant dark-haired woman rearranging shelves on the other side of the shop treated her to a stony-eyed stare. Harriet coloured, and then asked herself why she had somehow come to expect everyone local to greet her with a warm, welcoming smile.
‘Robert…weren’t you planning to set up the new exhibition in the gallery this morning?’ the brunette enquired acidly of the overweight older man who had emerged from the back of the shop with his arms wrapped round a large unwieldy carton. ‘You’ll need to get a move on if you want it finished in time.’
As Harriet confirmed that she would take the earrings, the same woman took over from the assistant and ran the purchase through the till in silence. ‘So, you’re Agnes Gallagher’s girl from England,’ she remarked when she gave Harriet her change. ‘Are you planning on staying here for long?’
‘For good, I hope.’ Harriet tucked the tiny package carefully into her bag and looked up with a smile. ‘Did you know my mother?’
The brunette shot her a scornful look of dislike. ‘Not as well as all the men knew her…if you know what I mean.’
Ludicrously unprepared for that unpleasant reply, Harriet stiffened with surprise and anger. ‘I think I’ll pretend I don’t.’
‘Do as you like.’
Her face burning, Harriet walked back out of the shop. That would be the last time she shopped there, she thought, appalled by the offensive crack. She wondered what, if anything, Eva had done to rouse such animosity. That woman could easily have gone to school with her mother. Eva freely admitted that she preferred male company to female, and often complained that her looks and her popularity with men made other women envious. The status and wealth her mother had acquired since she left Ballyflynn might also have provoked jealousy, Harriet reasoned ruefully.
‘Miss Carmichael?’ a gruff male voice called from behind her.
Harriet stilled and turned round to find a little man the shape of a tub with a round merry face and a beard struggling to catch up with her. ‘Yes?’
‘I’m Frank Kearney…’
Father Kearney, Harriet affixed inwardly, noting his clerical collar and shabby dark jacket.
‘I couldn’t help overhearing that exchange in the shop. Mrs Tolly must be having a very trying day,’ the priest asserted in an anxious and valiant attempt to smooth matters over. ‘I’m certain she could not have meant to say what she did—’
‘Tolly…’ Harriet frowned in surprise at that familiar name. ‘You’re referring to the woman in the gift shop? Is she related to Joseph Tolly?’
‘Why, yes,’ he confirmed. ‘Sheila is married to Joseph’s son, Robert.’
‘Tolly didn’t mention that he had a son.’
Father Kearney said only, ‘Will I be seeing you soon at mass?’
‘I wasn’t raised a Catholic, Father.’
‘Sure, you can’t help that.’ His round brown eyes twinkled. ‘The chapel is always open here, and you’ll be made very welcome.’
On the drive home Harriet stopped for a moment to admire the stylish sign below the chestnut tree which now advertised the Flynn Court Livery and pointed the way. The old lane that ran down to the back of cottage had already been opened up and freshly stoned. Mature beech trees lined the rough track, which curved round the base of the hill before reaching the superb stable yard. Parking outside the yard, she walked in through the first door past the entrance to where she had set up a convenient office, complete with computer and phone. The stone walls held on to the chill and she had already learned that it was wise to keep a little fire burning in the ancient iron grate. Peanut and Samson abandoned the rug there to subject her to a rapturous welcome.
The phone rang: it was Una, who had phoned Harriet almost every day since her return to boarding school. As usual the teenager was bubbling with questions about everything that was happening at the livery yard.
‘How does the new sign look?’ she demanded.
‘Totally fantastic. You were right…that guy is a real artist,’ Harriet enthused, since the teenager had given her the name of the signwriter. Asked, she then spelled several words for Una, who said she had lost her dictionary.
‘Have you heard from Rafael yet?’ Una asked eagerly.
‘No.’ Harriet smiled bright
ly, while wondering whom she was trying to impress with her chirpy show of indifference.
‘Whatever you do, don’t ring him,’ Una warned her very seriously.
‘If I was drowning I wouldn’t ring him.’ Harriet reddened at that less than cool comment and compressed her lips, hoping it had gone unnoticed.
‘You should get yourself another fella and flash him around Ballyflynn…not Fergal, though.’
‘Una…I don’t know where you get the idea that I’m desperate for your half-brother to phone me. He’s my business partner, and if he’s content to stay in the background and let me get on with running the yard on my own, I’m all for it.’
‘All right—pretend there’s nothing else going on if it makes you feel better.’ Una’s chagrin at what she had interpreted as a snub was perceptible. ‘Rafael’s playing the same game.’
But there was no game, Harriet reflected ruefully, finally surrendering to Peanut’s persistent blandishments and throwing a ball out on to the cobbles for the pig to chase. Rafael’s silence simply spelled out the truth that he was not that interested in the livery business…or in her. On the other hand he had barely left the country before experts on eighteenth century follies, landscape and thatching started rolling up at her door to perform detailed surveys and squabble with each other. How was her self-esteem supposed to survive the truth that a thatched roof had more instant pulling power than she had? After all, every one of the experts must have heard from Rafael.
A piggy squeal of rage made Harriet fly upright. One of the elderly wolfhounds from the Court had run off with Peanut’s ball. As the dog capered round the yard like a giant shaggy coat, Samson set off in enthusiastic and noisy pursuit. The wolfhound dropped the ball to lie down and play with the chihuahua. Little round eyes bright with superior porcine intelligence, Peanut trotted over and deftly recaptured her favourite toy.
A few minutes later the customer Harriet was expecting arrived, with her child’s pony in a trailer. Business was booming, and Harriet could not understand why she was feeling so edgy and unsettled…
*
Rafael strode out of the shower and snatched up a towel.
It was still dark. Would Harriet turn up? Or wouldn’t she? For the first time in his adult life he could not be confident of immediate success with a woman. That singular sense of uncertainty fascinated him. He didn’t even know why he had invited her to share a pleasure that he usually preferred to enjoy alone. Was the secret of her attraction her level of casual uninterest that he had never met with before? She was in love with someone else. No secret there, he thought with brooding exasperation.
Yet nothing else was so clear-cut. He had expected her to phone with regular updates on the livery yard. He had assumed that she would take advantage of his vast experience and ask for advice. He had been certain that she would play on their partnership connection to ensure that he didn’t forget her while he was away. But she had done none of those things and he was intrigued.
At the foot of the hill Harriet lay in bed, stiff with tension and wide awake, telling herself that she would drop back to sleep again at any minute. She wasn’t going. He wouldn’t be there. It had been a very casual arrangement. Even if he was there, it would be madness. They had a business relationship and, unlike him, she had great respect for following the rules. In any case she had stayed in bed too long, and now there wasn’t enough time for her to get ready.
A split second later something stronger than reason—indeed, something remarkably similar to an adrenalin charge—energised Harriet into a sudden frenzied leap out of bed. It was not a decision she consciously made. Her hair needed washing, and she endured a semi-cold shower before fleeing back to her bedroom to drag clean clothes over her still wet skin. If Rafael was a no-show she knew she would absolutely hate herself. She dragged a comb ruthlessly through her wet hair and slicked it back with an agonised grimace. Hauling on her riding boots, she hurtled out to catch and saddle Snowball, thanking her lucky stars that the elderly mare was so docile.
On the lane, her senses straining to pick up the slightest sound of other human activity, she heard the rattle of a bridle and the shifting of restive hooves ahead. Her heartbeat quickened and she pressed Snowball on round the last corner at greater speed.
A slow smile of acknowledgement illuminated Rafael’s lean, bronzed features. He mounted his big black gelding with the athletic ease of a confident rider.
Harriet grinned at him and found it hard to stop, for suddenly she felt incredibly exhilarated. ‘Sorry I’m late.’
‘I was about to come down and tip you out of bed,’ Rafael admitted. ‘I was determined to have your company today. Would you like to see the estate before we hit the beach?’
‘I’d like that.’
‘I believe you chose not to try out the mare I offered you. Don’t you like her?’
Harriet coloured up. Missy, the palomino mare he kept with his gelding, was really beautiful, and probably a dream to ride. Accepting endless favours, however, made her feel uncomfortable. ‘She’s lovely, but I just didn’t have the time—’
‘If you exercised her, I would consider it an act of kindness.’
‘OK…’ They rode past the walled kitchen garden which was Tolly’s pride and joy. ‘I’ve been in there to admire Tolly’s vegetables,’ Harriet confided, and then, having found that opening, tackled a subject that had been nagging at her all week. ‘I didn’t know that Tolly had a son in the village…I was surprised he hadn’t mentioned him to me and I didn’t like to ask him why he hadn’t.’
‘I can explain that. Tolly’s lucky if he sees Robert once a year,’ Rafael replied grimly. ‘His wife died when Robert was a child, and her sister insisted on taking the boy into her home. Tolly was kept at a distance and Robert learned to look down on his father because he was in domestic service.’
Harriet winced in dismay. ‘Poor Tolly…’
‘He was grateful to the couple for being so good to his son. He hoped that things would change when Robert grew up.’
‘But they didn’t…?’
‘No. Tolly still only sees his son if he runs into him in the village.’
‘That’s sad,’ Harriet sighed. ‘I’m getting very fond of Tolly.’
‘He gave unstinting support and service to my mother long after all her relatives and friends had stopped calling.’ The rare warmth with which Rafael spoke welded her attention to his darkly handsome profile.
Harriet frowned. ‘Why did they do that?’
‘She was addicted to prescription drugs and often incoherent and confused.’ Rafael gave Harriet’s shaken face a steady appraisal. ‘Tolly kept the household together and ensured that she had regular medical attention. I could never repay all that he did for her.’
‘How did she get in such a mess?’
‘My father systematically destroyed her.’ Rafael made that statement levelly, a chilling look in his eyes. ‘He met her in Dublin when she was still recovering from the death of her first husband. He wore down her resistance and she married him within the year.’
‘What went wrong?’
‘Valente began to suspect that he came a poor second to his predecessor in her affections. After I was born he accused her of marrying him for the money to save Flynn Court from ruin.’
Harriet was engrossed in the story of his background. ‘So what happened?’
‘My father invited his mistresses home to humiliate her. When she tried to object he became violent, and she ended up on medication. He then divorced her and retained custody of me by revealing evidence in court that, when she was at her lowest, she had had a brief affair. She never recovered from the public disgrace. I was only allowed to visit her for six weeks every summer. She died when I was fourteen…long before I was in a position to do anything to help her.’
The flash of bitter pain she saw in his eyes touched Harriet to the heart. She understood how much his inability to help his fragile mother must have marked him. He had been powerles
s, as children so often were, and the guilt and regret were still with him, even though it was hard to see what he could have done. Without hesitation she reached across to touch his arm in a quiet expression of sympathy. ‘I should think that your visits meant a great deal to her, so you did do something for her just by being there.’
Rafael was stunned by that gesture. For a split second his fierce pride threatened to make him react angrily, but the warm-hearted concern in her clear gaze was too open to cause offence.
Harriet, however, was thoroughly ashamed of her own blinkered vision. He was rich beyond avarice and she had naively assumed that he had always had everything he desired, and a wonderful childhood to boot. Now she could hardly credit that she could have been so superficial and prejudiced. She thought it very probable that his unhappy background had driven Rafael into becoming the high achiever and tough survivor that he was.
Eager to compensate, she matched his honesty with her own. ‘There’s another side to every coin. By the sound of it you didn’t like your father very much, but at least you knew his identity. My mother ran away from Ballyflynn as a pregnant teenager and still won’t tell me who my father is. But it seems obvious that he was nothing to write home about.’
That bracing observation, voiced in a wry tone of acceptance, almost made Rafael laugh out loud in appreciation. His own tension dissolved. Her lack of drama on the thorny issue of her parentage was refreshing. ‘You must be very curious.’
‘Yes, but I’m fast reaching the conclusion that I’ll have to live with being curious and that there are more important things.’
The scent of lily-of-the-valley hung heavy in the air. They were following a winding bridle path through ancient oak woods, which lay in a hidden valley sheltered from the wind. The silence filled her with a sense of peace. The twisted tree trunks of oak and holly and the weathered rocks were covered with a velvet carpet of green moss and lichens. Lush ferns interspersed with wood sorrel and red campion grew below the light canopy of the trees. It was very beautiful and unspoilt.