Well, Jackson, not Jack, she supposed. Today he was all man, and Jackson fitted. When she’d first met him he’d been vulnerable in a way she couldn’t imagine the grown-up version being. On the periphery of the group, Jack had only been involved at the last minute, getting roped in to drive when they’d found themselves a man short. She knew he had been reluctant, and though he would never have admitted it, frightened. He had always been the quietest of the group, private and brooding. Amory hadn’t known how to be someone else and had been floundering. These days she didn’t know how to be herself, but back then his quiet nature had been exactly what she had needed to cope with her new life.
They had been sitting in the kitchen on what she knew would be their last night together. The rest of the gang had been toasting their brilliance in what would have been the lounge, if they’d had anything resembling proper furniture. At the time neither she nor Jack had realized he would have any involvement with the next day’s activities. Jack had reached his hand out and held hers. Even now she could remember the heat from his palm as he stroked the inside of her wrist with his fingers. She could feel it as if he was touching her now. She could see him as he had eased out of his chair and moved around the table. Her heart beat harder, just as it had then, as she remembered him kneeling in front of her, his face closing in on hers painfully slow. He had gazed into her eyes as he had gently, almost tentatively, pressed his lips against hers.
What began softly, a kiss filled with uncertainty, with insecurity over how she would react, had rapidly deepened. Fueled by both of their need, he had kissed her with an all-consuming passion she had never experienced before, or since, and reason had flown out the window. That kiss had felt like coming home, like he was touching her soul. What would it feel like to kiss Jackson the man, rather than Jack the boy?
A frantic banging on the door dragged her from the memories and back to the present. She rose from the bed to open the door, frowning as William pushed his way past her into the room. Trepidation rising, she closed the door behind him and watched as he moved to the foot of the satin-draped bed and began pacing, his face red.
“Jackson thinks he knows you, what are we going to do?” he blurted out, getting straight to the point.
She released the breath she hadn’t even realized she was holding. Sitting down, she relaxed into one of the antique-looking wooden-framed chairs next to the fireplace and instructed William to do the same. It was weird having him in her bedroom, especially when her body had been so heated just moments before, but this was her job. This she could handle.
“Calm down, William, or Jackson will know something is going on. He can’t know me and he certainly can’t know why I’m here. You need to relax.”
“His name is Lord Jackson Halland, not Jackson. I may have been obliged to permit you liberties with my title due to my circumstances, but you will refer to my brother appropriately.”
She sat still, willing herself not to betray her shock. Until today she hadn’t known he was related to William, but even then she hadn’t connected the fact that being the brother of a duke would give Jackson a title. Damn, a lord. Well, even if they’d had the slightest chance of being together, that tidbit of information would have killed it. She wasn’t given to feeling beneath anyone but was pretty certain lords didn’t end up with the working-class daughters of policemen.
She’d been adamant that she wasn’t about to spend the whole of this mission bowing and scraping to William, but like it or not, she accepted that this was a small concession she could make to keep William on track. It might actually give her the weapon she needed to hold herself at a distance from Jackson. She nodded her acquiescence to his request and he continued.
“We have a challenging relationship so he does not know about any of this, but I do not doubt he will try to discover the true reason for your presence. I cannot deal with that. It is imperative he remains unaware of these events.”
Smiling to herself, Amory realized this was what she had sounded like earlier, well, without the posh accent and the fancy words.
“Listen to me carefully, William. This is my job. I know what I’m doing. He will just think that I am your assistant, and that you hired me for something other than my typing skills. With your reputation, he won’t be surprised.”
William spluttered as he tried to dispute it, the already red hue of his face turning almost purple. Amory held up her hand to stop his efforts to deny it.
“We knew that’s what people would think when we started this. We deliberately used that to give me a reason to be here.” She leant further back into the chair, getting comfortable. “So stop with the indignation. If anyone should be bothered by it, it’s me.”
“Perhaps I should tell him. I do not want him to know but surely it would be better for him to hear it from me,” William said, rubbing his hand on the arm of the chair.
She stared at him for a moment. He obviously didn’t want to do that, and she sure as hell didn’t want him to.
“We can’t trust your brother to play along if you tell him, and I can’t do my job if he doesn’t. That means the deal will be off. I’m sure you don’t want your actions to become fodder for the gossip columns, or for this house to fall into someone else’s hands because you’re banged up,” she said, her voice steely. She paused to make sure her words had sunk in. She wouldn’t normally be so crude and blunt about his situation, but she wanted to shock him into remembering just what was at stake. “If he seems suspicious, tell him we’re arguing or something. It’s in both our interests to pull this off.”
William sat back, his bluster fading as he absorbed her words. Walking to the door, she opened it.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said in a tone that made it very clear he needed to leave. She’d already learned that there were times it was better to lay it on the line and then leave him to process his thoughts alone.
As William was about to step out of her bedroom, a creak made her look up and her gaze met Jackson’s. His eyes flickered around, taking in William’s flushed face as well as her disheveled hair and bed. At least she didn’t have to worry about him believing she was William’s girlfriend anymore. Yet, along with the satisfaction that she’d pulled that off without even trying, she felt a flicker of something else. Shoving the unnamed emotion firmly down, she resisted the urge to hurry William out of her room so she could shut herself away from them both. She kept her expression blank, watching Jackson spin on his heel and stalk away from them, only closing the door on William once Jackson was out of sight.
****
Scowling, Jackson shoved his bedroom door closed. His suspicions about his brother’s new assistant had been on the money, but for once he felt sorely disappointed to be right. He needed to get a grip, he thought, mentally shaking himself. It wasn’t as if she was any different from the other society girls his brother always dated. Their high maintenance grooming and sleek bodies made them look almost interchangeable. If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought he was jealous, but he did know better, he didn’t do jealous. He didn’t do anything that required his emotions.
Sighing, he decided it had been too long since he’d been naked with a woman. If he could just put his finger on how he knew Olivia, that would sort out his head, which, despite helping Ed out on the estate for the last hours of the afternoon, had been running in overdrive since he’d seen her that morning. He’d been unable to stop himself from imagining what her hair would look like if he had tugged it out of that ridiculously prim style. What it would feel like to run his hands through it as it spilled across her shoulders.
The sound of his door slamming into its frame reverberated through his room, giving him a degree of satisfaction. He rested his palm on the pale blue wall and let the cool feel of the ancient plaster seep into his skin as he looked around, attempting to clear his mind. A bare minimum of furniture and trinkets made it starker than the room he’d just witnessed his brother and Olivia arguing in, or any of the other bedr
ooms for that matter. Yet he felt more at home in this room than surrounded by the grandeur that William and his women seemed to prefer.
He shifted his weight and moved to open the window. The air was cold but he didn’t mind the cold, and the air in his room had the dry musty quality that came from being shut up for weeks with the heating on. Pressing hard on the left side of the sash frame, he used his right hand to pull the cord. The mechanism had been temperamental for as long as he could remember but he’d figured out the knack to open it as a boy. Sucking in a lungful of icy cold air, he let the sensation push away the swirl of emotions that had been flickering through his mind all afternoon. He’d always loved the wild nature of the untamed beauty at the back of the house far more than the sculpted view out the front. Despite now fully appreciating the work involved in maintaining such “natural” beauty, he was still in awe of it.
After taking a couple more deep breaths of the cleansing air, he sat on the edge of the large wooden-framed bed that, with a little help and lots of advice from Ed, he had made himself when he was fifteen. Rubbing his temples, he called the office. It was hard to be away, especially when the seasons were transitioning and the challenges that came with that, but he needed to make an effort to connect with William. Doing it now while he could use the excuse of helping Ed was worth it. Their burgeoning truce would be over before their relationship was properly on track, if they didn’t make time for each other.
“Everything is fine,” Celia said. His office manager’s amusement came through loud and clear.
“Did the delivery of saplings arrive okay?”
“Yes, and we checked them all before we signed for them.”
He frowned. He should have been there to check the delivery and he certainly should be there to sort out the allocation of them to the array of customers.
“I’ll come back after tomorrow so we can get on with the planting. It doesn’t do them any good to sit around.”
“There’s no rush. Mark made sure the team put them in the refrigerated storage unit to keep them fresh, and you know he can sort out allocation for planting.”
Jackson smiled. She was right of course, it was just hard for him to let go of the day-to-day stuff, no matter how great his team was.
“Sounds like you have it all under control.”
“Of course I do. I know how to keep everyone in line, including you.”
He laughed at that. “As if you have to do anything to keep any of us in line. Every one of us would do anything for you without a single word.”
“You’re good people,” she said.
And that, thought Jackson, was the very reason everyone cared for her so much. She saw the best in everyone and everything. If only things could be so simple here.
Chapter Seven
Sitting, elbows on the dark wood dressing table, Amory rested her face in her hands and stared at the reflection frowning back at her. She’d grown so used to being other people she struggled to recognize herself in her own reflection. She felt like she’d lost sight of who she really was.
Wiping off the makeup, she sighed. The look of disdain Jackson had shot her as she’d stood in her bedroom doorway with William had been cold, but she thought there had been a flash of something else. Quickly dismissing her wishful thinking, she instead focused on what he’d been doing. Having made sure she’d explored the house fully on her first day, she knew there were only bedrooms on this floor. That Jackson had gone to a room on this floor could only mean one thing—he was staying.
After changing into comfy grey jogging pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt, she laced up her beloved if somewhat grubby running shoes and scrapped her long hair back into a ponytail with her fingers.
As she stepped outside she sucked in a lungful of the sharp air. She would have to make this quick or she’d find herself out in the woods when the last of the weak afternoon light disappeared. After a brief stretch she began to run toward the lake, the rhythmic thud of her feet hitting the ground and the beauty of the surroundings relaxing her body, if not her mind. After half a mile she hit the wall she always experienced when out of practice and forced herself through until the pain begin to ease. Endorphins rushed through her body, loosening her up.
By the time she returned to the house she was feeling much better about the world. The physical effects of exercise and the slightly self-satisfied feeling of having managed to talk herself into completing a run blended together, reassuring her that she could cope with anything, including Jackson. Everything would work out okay, he would never figure out who she was.
William was out for dinner with his friends so she’d be able to avoid Jackson fairly easily tonight. She should probably start thinking about him as Lord Halland, but hopefully he’d be gone before she had to come to grips with that. Despite everything that had happened during the last few hours, she was looking forward to the next day, working on the final plans with the estate’s first photoshoot customer. Alice was a lovely woman. She and her friends had formed a reading group a number of years earlier and had jumped at the opportunity to spend an afternoon just like the characters from their favorite genre.
Alice’s admission that, other than the occasional Jane Austen, the group never read anything had made her immediately likeable, and over the last couple of weeks they had become friends. That was something Amory hadn’t experienced since leaving the academy. The fact it was a friendship with no future didn’t matter, the novelty of connecting with someone was a joy in itself. It wasn’t what she was here for, but she was determined to make sure Alice and her friends had a great day, one they would reminisce about with a smile on their faces for years to come.
On her way through the kitchen Amory grabbed a bottle of water from the big American fridge and rubbed her nose in an effort to warm up the tip. The heat of the house after the now dark and freezing outdoors meant her face would be a beaming red. Closing the door she grinned at the fridge, definitely an item for the wish list if she ever lived anywhere big enough. Swigging a big gulp of water, she pushed the escaping wisps of hair back from her face and wandered into the hallway.
Living in a house where the fridge was always well-stocked was definitely a huge benefit of this job. If she’d been at home she’d have been lucky to find a bit of furry cheese and lettuce, never mind lovely chilled bottles of water. Although she had to admit that the size of her fridge wasn’t actually the problem, it was more that she was never there long enough to stock up, or even to finish what little she did buy.
The natural high that came from exercising, or more specifically the feeling of satisfaction that she had managed to do something that was good for her, put a spring in her step. Today might have gone to hell but tomorrow would be a good day.
She was convinced that Alice’s idea had legs and would provide a steady stream of income, something that the estate and the people who depended on it for their livelihoods desperately needed. Organizing this type of activity wasn’t in her comfort zone, but after some of the things she had experienced in the last decade, it should be a walk in the park. It wasn’t her job to worry about the estate, but the bond between the people here meant she was glad she could use her time to help in a small way.
****
Jackson sighed to himself as he viciously shoved the mental image of Olivia’s long legs out of his mind. It really had been too long since he’d slept with a woman. Not that he hadn’t had more than his fair share until recently. Thinking of Crystal, with long blonde hair and a body that had men tripping over their own tongues, he ruefully conceded that he missed the sex, even if her continual hints for an engagement and high-profile wedding had driven him insane. She’d been funny and great company, but was too much of a city girl for them to have any real future.
She hadn’t been pleased when he’d ended their relationship, but he had sensed her relief that she wouldn’t be stuck in what she considered the wilderness, waiting around for him every weekend. He wasn’t good at relationships, and knowing
he couldn’t be relied on meant he was always careful to avoid anything that smelled of commitment.
Deciding to grab a beer before settling at the desk in his room to run through the day’s emails, he threw a dusky blue t-shirt over his boxers and wandered down the stairs, stretching. He had built his own home next to the office just a couple of years earlier and he missed the sense of peace he felt there. Yet despite all the difficulties with his parents, or more precisely his father, which with the benefit of hindsight and a now relatively adult perspective he could understand were often created by him, along with the frosty relationship he and William had in the years that followed, this house still felt like home whenever he visited.
He had made his way to the bottom of the stairs when he noticed Olivia coming through the kitchen doorway. Watching her move he took in the well-used running gear and baggy t-shirt which, damp with sweat, had molded to her incredible body. The long hair, despite being scraped back from her face, had made a pretty successful bid for freedom. As if a horse had kicked him in the chest, a jolt of recognition shook his entire body and he froze.
How had he missed it before? The beautifully styled woman who had puzzled him was Amory, the only girl he’d ever loved, the girl he’d let down so badly all those years ago, and the girl he had loved with all of his heart and soul. Amory. Her name echoed in his head, pushing out all other thoughts. He finally remembered to breathe, and without any instruction from his brain, felt his legs stride toward her. His arm reached out to grab hold of her before she could walk out of his life again.
As he reached out for her she gasped and took a step back. Taking in her frozen expression, he realized that not only had he frightened her, but she knew exactly who he was.
Shadows of Our Past Page 3