Secret Millionaire

by Kitty Alexander

  Mark forgot about the kettle and came to sit with her. ‘No, that’s silly. You can’t blame yourself. Bert has been in pubs lots of times before – he told me once it was a way of proving to himself that he was over his problem.’

  ‘I still shouldn’t have done it though. And now he’ll have to go home, and then he’ll have to start all over again. Who’s going to give him a job now?’

  You could, Mark told himself. He could work here. This place is going to need someone to maintain it after it’s finished. But then he remembered Bert’s dislike of him and kept the thought to himself.

  ‘Why does he need to go home?’

  She looked up at him, tears making her eyes seem huge and very blue. He wanted – badly – to put his arm around her, but knew that if he did so, he would end up kissing her again. And that wasn’t what she needed right now.

  ‘Well, you won’t want him here now, will you?’

  Mark shrugged. ‘You’re his team leader, Alexia, not me. It’s for you to decide what happens to Bert.’

  Alexia plucked at the sleeve of her dressing gown. It was pink with white spots. Had it been hanging on her bedroom door, that night in Nottingham? He’d been too absorbed to notice. God, he might have to ask her to leave before the tea was ready. He wasn’t sure he was going to be able to maintain this level of self-control.

  Bosun suddenly slumped down on the bench with an enormous yawn, and Alexia smiled. ‘Actually, I think I’ll skip the tea. Someone needs their beauty sleep.’ The lightness of her tone was all a bluff – he knew very well she would lay awake agonising about Bert. He was a very lucky man to have someone like her to care for him.

  ‘Bert will be okay, Alexia,’ he said, and she got up quickly.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘For everything. Good night.’

  ‘Good night.’

  Around five a.m., he heard Bert stir. Instantly, Mark got up, to find Bert in the sitting area, looking confused. When he saw Mark, he didn’t look reassured.

  ‘Does the boss know how I was last night?’ he asked, and Mark nodded.

  ‘Yes, she was worried about you.’

  Bert groaned. ‘I let her down good and proper, I did,’ he said, and began to head for the door. ‘Best go and pack my things up.’

  ‘You’ll only wake Peter and Derek up if you do that now. Stay and have a cup of tea. Nobody wants you to go anywhere.’

  Bosun sauntered in from the bedroom. After a good stretch, he trotted over to Bert with his tail wagging. ‘He’s a friendly bugger,’ said Bert, reaching down to stroke the dog.

  Not for the first time, Mark marvelled at Bosun’s ability to break down barriers. ‘Yes, he is. Go on, take a seat. The kettle’s nearly boiled.’

  There was silence as Mark made the tea. Then, when Mark took it over, Bert asked, ‘So, how comes I ended up in here along with you?’

  ‘You needed someone to keep an eye on you.’

  ‘And you decided that person should be you?’

  ‘That’s about the size of it, yes.’

  ‘You don’t strike me as a particularly caring person, you don’t.’

  Mark knew he could choose to be offended by this statement, but his impulse was to smile. He had, after all, arrived at The Heath Centre all eagle-eyed and determined to find a reason not to invest. And instead he’d stumbled upon something amazing. But Bert wasn’t to know how changed he was by the whole process.

  ‘Care for the boss, you do, don’t you?’ continued Bert. ‘Seen the way you looks at her.’

  Mark didn’t bother to deny it. ‘You care for her too,’ he said. ‘Which is why you need to stay here, work hard and keep away from the drink. Last night she was in here, sitting exactly where you are now, in tears because she blames herself for this lapse of yours.’

  Bert looked stricken. ‘Got nothing to do with her! Why, she’s been nothing but good and patient to me, over and over again.’ His gaze dropped. ‘Going to feel too ashamed to look at her now, letting her down like that.’

  Mark remained silent, drinking his tea. Who would ever have thought he would feel a sense of empathy for tricky, prickly Bert? He felt he’d let Alexia down too, even though he was giving tens of thousands of pounds to The Heath Centre, and even though he’d seen her in the arms of her so-called ex. Something in his gut was telling him he needed to try to sort it out; that he was somehow a disappointment to her. Logic and the evidence of his own eyes didn’t seem to have a lot to do with it.

  ‘Why did you have a drink last night?’ he asked Bert. ‘Alexia thinks it’s because you didn’t get that job. Is she right?’

  Bert lost his fingers in the long fur around Bosun’s neck. ‘I s’pose so. Get tired of trying to be someone I’m not sometimes. Best behaviour Bert, saying what they want me to say, being who they want me to be.’

  Mark thought of some recent job interviews he’d been involved in a few months previously. Somebody with Bert’s defensive attitude wouldn’t have stood a chance of success.

  ‘Reckon you know all about that though, don’t you?’ Bert was saying. ‘Coming across all starch and freezer, when underneath you’re all soft centre.’

  Mark wasn’t sure why all his conversations with Bert got so out of hand. He was used to being the one in control. ‘Do you need to get some alcohol counselling, Bert?’ he asked.

  Bert drained the rest of his tea. ‘Had so much of that rubbish, I reckon I could set up as a counsellor myself.’ He looked at Mark, his dark eyes glittering. ‘What about you? Think you need relationship counselling?’

  There was a knock at the door. Bosun barked. Mark went to see who it was, grateful for the interruption. If he did give Bert a job here, would he have to put up with him giving him the benefit of his advice all the time?

  Alexia was on the caravan step, dressed in jeans and a fleece jacket, the light from the caravan picking out dark smudges beneath her eyes.

  ‘Morning,’ said Mark, drinking in the sight of her.

  ‘Good morning. How’s Bert? Is he still here?’

  ‘Yes. Come in. I was just going to take Bosun out.’

  When Mark left with the dog a few moments later, Alexia was sitting on the bench next to Bert with her arm around him. Bert’s face was lowered, and he was crying.

  Yes, he could put up with Bert’s daily doses of advice. Maybe he could even take that advice now and then.

  Later, Mark dropped Bosun off with Iris and drove in to work, just as if it were a normal day. Well, it was, wasn’t it?

  It was still early, and Charlotte was just arriving. ‘Coffee, Mark?’

  ‘Yes please, no rush. When you’re ready.’

  He went into his office, put his briefcase down on his desk and hung his jacket on the back of his chair. Everything as normal. But then, instead of sitting down to get straight on with the business of the day, he went over to the window and stood looking out at the view of the city laid out before him. He’d chosen this office partly because of the view, but he never looked at it. He was always too busy to look. Or to think.

  Charlotte came in with his coffee. ‘Everything all right, Mark?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’ He didn’t want to be here today. Normally, he found his work completely absorbing, but today he was thinking about an overgrown garden. ‘Anything urgent?’ he asked without turning around. He could see Charlotte reflected in the window, putting his coffee down on his desk. He turned. ‘Sorry, Charlotte, I haven’t asked you recently. Is everything all right with you?’

  Charlotte looked alarmed, even embarrassed. God, was he normally so unconcerned about his staff’s welfare? ‘Er …yes, thank you, Mark,’ she said.

  ‘Your husband’s still happy in his new job?’ he persisted.

  ‘Well, yes, thank you for asking. He’s been there almost a year now, so he’s well settled in.’

  Mark stood there, smiling and nodding, racking his brains to think of something else to say, but it seemed Charlotte had had enough of his polite interest, as she smile
d briefly then left the office.

  Mark picked up his cup of coffee and took it over to the window. This was the wrong view. He wanted to see fells, heather and hair the colour of copper beeches in the autumn. The company had managed perfectly well without him for the week he’d been away filming. Perhaps it was time to delegate more, cure himself of his tendency to micromanage. Stop burying himself in work quite so much. Putting his coffee cup back onto its saucer, he smiled to himself. He had the idea Bert would approve.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Alexia was speaking to Laura on the phone.

  ‘So, I’m sending Julia up with the papers Mark needs to sign,’ Laura told her. ‘I was going to send her to his offices, but that PA of his said he was taking some time off to help with the garden restoration work. What’s her name, his PA?’

  ‘Charlotte,’ Alexia said, her mind whirring. Mark was taking time off to help them? Since when? He hadn’t mentioned anything about it this morning.

  ‘Yes, that’s it. Charlotte. She seemed nice – very helpful. So, everything’s going well then? The boys are all being co-operative and working hard?’

  Her boss’s sudden switch of subject threw Alexia. She didn’t want to give Laura any cause for concern or to rat on Bert. But nor did she want to tell another lie. The last time she’d done that, it had gone abysmally. And it had caused her a lot of stress.

  ‘We’re working on the old vegetable patch today,’ she said. ‘The boys have been a great team, getting it cleared. We’re going to use the rotivator this morning. Then we can start improving the soil.’

  Laura, who wasn’t in the least bit interested in horticulture, quickly switched off – which had been precisely Alexia’s plan.

  ‘Good, good. And the weather’s okay?’

  ‘Gorgeous, yes.’

  ‘Great. Well, I must go. Julia will be with you around lunchtime with the paperwork, okay. Bye for now.’

  ‘Bye, Laura. Give your gorgeous girl a kiss from me.’

  Alexia pocketed her phone, feeling slightly anxious. While she hadn’t lied to Laura, she had withheld information. She ought to have told her about Bert’s lapse, and now she faced an awkward conversation with Mark about it. As the Project’s benefactor, he was well within his rights to mention it at some future meeting.

  But she would think about all that later. For now, the four of them needed to get this project back on track.

  Derek and Peter both seemed rather subdued this morning – she wondered if Bert’s relapse had knocked their confidence in their own recovery. As for Bert, he was grey-faced and obviously shaky, but as usual, he was throwing himself whole-heartedly into his work. Alexia had had a conversation with him about it all, and he swore that the bottle of vodka he’d consumed had been the only one he’d bought at the pub the other night. Short of searching his belongings, she had no choice but to accept what he said.

  Around eleven a.m., Alexia went into the house to make tea for them, and carried it out to the garden on a tray. They were sitting on the safer bits of a broken down wall, drinking it, when they heard the sound of a car.

  ‘It’s boss Brown,’ said Bert, and Alexia looked up. He was right, it was Mark. And he wasn’t going into the house or the mobile home; he was coming over to them. Hastily, Alexia put down her tea and stood up.

  ‘You come to check up on us?’ Bert asked, and Alexia looked at him in dismay. She’d thought he might be chastened by last night’s events, but here he was, being as acerbic and cheeky as ever.

  ‘That’s about it, Bert,’ replied Mark. He had his suit jacket flung over his shoulder, causing his white shirt to stretch tautly over his chest. When her gaze went to his face she saw, to her surprise, that he was smiling. ‘Thought I’d better check you weren’t smashing up any more precious planters.’

  Alexia promptly flushed bright red. Bert gave a grim smile. ‘Couldn’t be doing with the sound of all that tinkling glass today, I couldn’t,’ he said, and instantly Mark stopped smiling.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose you could.’ Then he looked at Alexia. ‘Actually, I thought I’d help you out today, if you can use me?’ He began to walk away before she could answer. ‘I’ll just go and get changed.’

  Alexia wanted to shake her head. It was all very difficult to believe. But the surprises hadn’t quite stopped coming. Bert cleared his throat. ‘Before you go, I just want to say – to you all – well, sorry. Shouldn’t have done what I did. Won’t happen again.’

  There was silence for a moment. While Bert had been talking Derek had been shuffling his foot, kicking at some loose stones on the ground. Now he looked up. Alexia saw he was looking emotional. ‘Right pleased to hear that, I am, Bert. You’re a model to me and Peter. Not one of the fashion type; you know what I’m saying.’

  ‘A role model,’ Alexia supplied, feeling emotional herself.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Derek. ‘That’s the one. A role model.’

  Bert stood looking at the ground. Alexia sensed it was time to move things along. ‘Thank you, Derek; that was a really nice thing to say. Right, I think we’d better get on. Unless we want to give Mr Brown the impression that all he’s got to do to help us out is to stand around chatting all morning.’

  Everyone smiled at that, and in no time Mark – dressed in an elderly pair of jeans and an old T-shirt – was at the helm of the rotivator. ‘How come you get the best job?’ Bert teased him, having to shout over the noise of the machine.

  ‘Boss’s privilege,’ Mark shouted back, and Alexia laughed. She was doing what she loved the most – hard, physical work that would result in a productive vegetable patch and inspiring flower garden. And just for now at least, the five of them were working as an effective team.

  Mark was very good with the rotivator. When she remarked on this, during a rare quiet moment, he grinned. ‘I didn’t own a haulage company straight from leaving school,’ he said. ‘I did plenty of lorry driving and forklift truck operation. In fact, it’s good to be back doing something like this.’ He had a dirty finger trail across his forehead where he’d wiped a hand across his face, and there were patches of sweat on his T-shirt. He couldn’t have looked more different to the business executive who’d recently returned from the office.

  What had made him decide to pitch in? And did it matter anyway? For once, Alexia just wanted to live in the moment, to enjoy it. As she dug her spade into some hard, unyielding soil to break it up, she thought about the way she’d reacted to Mark concealing his true identity from her. Had she been too quick to condemn his behaviour? After the way her father and Chris had treated her all those years ago, she knew she was inclined to be oversensitive where honesty was concerned. But even if she were to concede that the decision to keep his identity hidden had been out of Mark’s hands, it didn’t change the fact that he had stood her up the evening after they’d made love. Could it have been some sort of misunderstanding?

  If she asked him about it and she didn’t like his answer, then this sweet period of harmony would be over. But if she didn’t ask him about it, then what was the harmony based on? It would be false. But no, no, no, she wouldn’t think about all of that. Hadn’t she decided to just enjoy this moment?

  They were all working so hard, the time flew past. Next time she looked at her watch, it was one-thirty, and lunch was well overdue. ‘Goodness, sorry, guys,’ she said. ‘We’d better break for something to eat.’

  The three trainees headed off towards their caravan. Alexia walked towards the house, feeling very aware of Mark just behind her. ‘Would you like to join me for a sandwich?’ he asked. ‘I can offer you cheese or ham. And some fruit and a packet of crisps.’

  If you go, you could ask him about that night, she told herself. Or you could just enjoy a pleasant lunch, another part of her argued back.

  ‘That would be nice, thank you.’

  Nice? The sudden chugging of her heart told her that exciting, terrifying, nerve-wracking, and crazy were all far better adjectives to descr
ibe the prospect of eating lunch with him. There was no Bosun to break the ice – no cold, wet animal nose to nuzzle its way under her hand, providing an excuse to look away from him. Nothing to prevent her eyes from appreciating the breadth of his shoulders and the long sweep of his back as he washed his hands at the sink. The night they had made love, she had run her hands down the whole muscular length of him, clamping him close to her heart. She knew that if they were to make love again, her body would still remember everything it had learnt about him. The knowledge of him coated her skin, and no amount of washing or time would make it leave.

  ‘How do you think Bert seems?’ Mark asked her.

  She watched him as he buttered some slices of bread and tried not to think of those confident hands stroking her body.

  ‘He seems okay, I think. I hope he is. I…I haven’t said anything to Laura about it yet. I’m not sure whether I ought to or not. Actually, I was wondering what you thought about that?’

  He went to the fridge to get the cheese and the ham. ‘I won’t dob him in, if that’s what you’re worried about,’ he said. ‘Cheese, ham or cheese and ham?’

  ‘Cheese, please.’

  He opened the cheese and began to grate it onto the bread. ‘No, I think Bert deserves another chance. In fact, I was thinking about offering him a job here.’

  As he spoke, outlining his idea, Alexia forgot to feel self-conscious. What he was saying was potentially so wonderful for Bert, she wasn’t sure whether she felt like bursting into tears or jumping up to do a little dance. ‘Oh, Mark!’ she said. ‘That would be amazing! Completely amazing!’

  He smiled, handing her a plate with her sandwich, a small bunch of grapes and a bag of crisps. ‘Good, I’m glad you approve. We’ll have to work out the finer details, and obviously, we’ll need to see if Bert’s interested.’

  ‘I’m sure he will be. Last week he couldn’t stand you, but after last night, I think you’ve got a convert.’

  ‘Something good came out of it all then,’ he said.