Bad Blood Collection

by Various Authors

  ‘You look beautiful.’ Jacob stepped forward so the candlelight flickered over his face. ‘And this is a special occasion, so you’re dressed as you should be.’

  ‘It feels very special,’ Mollie admitted. She was still a little overwhelmed. She walked towards the window, gazing in amazement at the City of Light spread before her. Even though she’d never been to Paris before, she could still pick out the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe. She felt Jacob come to stand behind her, and she leaned a little against him, revelling in his strength, and that it was hers. At least for now.

  They still hadn’t talked about the future, and she had a horrible, creeping suspicion that this whole surprise might be Jacob’s way of saying goodbye. Go out with a bang. Or was she just being terribly insecure, because their relationship was so new and untested?

  Jacob touched her lightly on the shoulders. ‘I have something for you.’

  ‘You do?’ Her stomach lurched, just a little bit. She turned, smiling up at him. His eyes glinted in the candlelight.

  ‘Yes … and it took a little doing.’ He moved away from her, and when he returned seconds later he was holding something. A flower, Mollie saw. A rose.

  Yet it wasn’t just any rose. She could tell that as she took it and inspected the deep red centre, the orange petals a creamy white at their tips.

  ‘It looked just as I imagined it,’ Jacob said, a smile in his voice. ‘Like your hair.’

  ‘My …’ Mollie gazed up at him in wonder. ‘This is my father’s rose.’

  ‘The Mollie Rose,’ Jacob confirmed.

  She gazed down at the flame-coloured flower again, tears stinging her eyes. ‘But how …?’

  ‘A lot of favours and pulling strings.’

  ‘I’m speechless.’ She laughed a little even as she blinked back tears. ‘Thank you, Jacob. This—it means a lot to me.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to make you cry,’ he said softly, and touched his thumb to the corner of her eye.

  ‘Good tears,’ Mollie managed. She could still feel the imprint of his thumb on her skin.

  ‘Then I might as well go ahead and give you all the surprises at once,’ he said, and Mollie’s heart bumped as he withdrew a small box of black velvet from his trouser pocket. She could only stare, speechless, incredulous and with dawning joy, as Jacob dropped to one knee in front of her. ‘Mollie Parker,’ he said, his voice a low, heartfelt caress, ‘will you marry me?’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ‘MARRY you?’ Mollie repeated, as if they were words in another language, and in a way they were. In all her distant dreamings of a possible future with Jacob, she had never been so bold as to imagine this.

  ‘Yes, marry me,’ he told her, and she heard a hint of laughter in his voice at her obvious surprise. ‘I’m deeply, desperately in love with you and I want you to be my wife. For ever.’

  For ever. What wonderful words. ‘I never thought—’ Mollie began, because she really never had.

  Jacob smiled. ‘I didn’t either,’ he told her softly. ‘I never thought such happiness could be mine. I never even dared to dream or hope for it. For the past nineteen years, Mollie, I’ve been living a half-life, or even less than that. I let myself become consumed with work because it was all I had, all that made me value myself. When I worked, I didn’t remember. Didn’t think. Didn’t dream.’ Jacob’s face had become serious, his gaze still holding hers, and Mollie knew he needed to say this. She needed to hear it. ‘I never let anyone close enough to find out who I really was, or at least who I thought I was, underneath.’

  She reached out to touch his cheek. ‘You aren’t though.’

  ‘And you made me realise that. You made me look at myself in a way I’d never been able to before. Do you know the night after I told you everything I had the old dream again? Only this time I saw it as I really was. I saw myself in a way I never had before, and I saw that I’d been tormenting myself for so long, for no purpose.’ He shook his head, his lips brushing her fingers.

  ‘Guilt has a way of getting right inside of you,’ Mollie said softly, ‘and keeping you captive.’

  ‘But you set me free from it,’ Jacob told her. ‘Loving you has set me free, and I want to keep doing that for the rest of my life, if you let me. Will you, Mollie? Will you marry me?’

  The answer was so wonderful, so easy and obvious and right. ‘Yes,’ Mollie said, and she held out her hand for Jacob to slip on the ring.

  He held her hand gently, and she gazed in wonder at the antique diamond flanked by two perfect sapphires. ‘The diamond is from my family,’ Jacob explained, ‘and the sapphires are new. Because we may not forget what we’re from, but together we can make—and be—something better.’

  ‘I love it,’ Mollie whispered, and both laughing and crying just a little, she drew Jacob up from his knees and stepped into the loving circle of his arms.

  The morning of her wedding dawned clear and bright. It had rained the night before, but now the last shreds of grey cloud were vanishing on the horizon, leaving nothing but pale blue sky.

  Mollie stood at the window of her childhood bedroom; she’d decided to spend her last night as a single woman here. After they were married, the little gardener’s cottage would be renovated and turned into an office space for her new landscaping business.

  After Jacob had proposed, he’d told her he wanted to live in Wolfe Manor and make it a home. ‘I don’t want to put it on the market, and walk away from it like it never existed. Just like that big stump of yours in the garden. Wolfe Manor is my home, and it’s yours too. I want to fill it with the new memories we’ll make, good ones. I want to hear the laughter of our children ring through the halls, if we should be so blessed.’

  Smiling, Mollie gazed out at the gardens, now touched with the gold of autumn. Staying at the manor had felt so right; she realised she couldn’t imagine living anywhere else, and she was filled with joy that Jacob felt the same.

  The past few months had been a whirlwind, preparing for what some magazines claimed was the ‘wedding event of the year’ as all the Wolfe siblings and their new spouses came back to the estate for Jacob’s marriage.

  Mollie had been amazed and overwhelmed to see them all together; she knew Jacob felt it too, even more than she did. Last night they’d all sat down to a catered dinner after the rehearsal, and the table had been full. The house was full. Her heart was full.

  Wolfe Manor was a home again.

  Mollie heard a light knock at her bedroom door and Annabelle, her matron of honour, peeked her head round the corner. ‘How are you doing? I came to help you dress.’

  ‘My stomach is full of butterflies,’ Mollie admitted as she turned away from the window. ‘Good ones though.’

  ‘It’s a big day,’ Annabelle agreed.

  ‘Are you feeling all right?’

  Annabelle patted her slightly rounded middle and made a face. ‘Fine, as long as I eat every few hours. The morning sickness is mostly gone now, but it strikes every so often.’

  ‘Well, you look amazing,’ Mollie said. She’d never seen her friend more radiant. Gone was the carefully applied layer of make-up to hide the livid red scar that cut across one cheek. Now Annabelle held her head proudly, her eyes shining with the love she had for her husband, Stefano. Gone also was the cool distance she’d cloaked herself in as a way to protect herself from the world. She smiled at Mollie and squeezed her shoulder.

  ‘Come on, then. We’d better get moving. The photographer wants you dressed and ready to smile in an hour.’

  It was going to be a big wedding. Mollie had, briefly, argued for a small, quiet affair, and Jacob would have gone along with it, but as she talked to his brothers and sister she came to accept that their older brother’s wedding was the perfect event to reunite the family, as Jacob had always wanted to. How could Mollie stand in the way of that?

  Now she slipped into her wedding grown, an ivory silk sheath that rippled over her skin. She wasn’t the kind of girl to do ruffles or
lace, and the gown made her feel sexy. Beautiful. Loved.

  Annabelle twitched the gossamer veil over Mollie’s bare shoulders. ‘Gorgeous,’ she murmured. ‘Jacob is going to fall over when he sees you. Either that or grab you and head to the nearest—’

  ‘Annabelle!’ Laughing, Mollie wagged her finger at her friend. ‘Actually, I think Stefano is far more likely to grab you and make a run for it. Every time he looks at you, I can see the love in his eyes. You both glow.’

  ‘We’ve both been blessed, haven’t we?’

  ‘And all your brothers too.’ For in the past year all the Wolfe siblings had found love, and Mollie saw the peace and happiness in each of their eyes. It was both a blessing and a bit of a miracle.

  ‘Jacob sent this over,’ Annabelle told her, reaching for a white box. ‘I think it’s your bouquet.’ Mollie lifted the simple arrangement of flame-coloured roses from its nest of tissue paper. Annabelle made a small sound of admiration. ‘I’ve never seen roses like that before.’

  ‘No,’ Mollie agreed quietly as she lifted the blooms to her face and inhaled their heady scent, ‘you wouldn’t have.’

  Jacob shifted from foot to foot as he stood at the front of several dozen rows of white folding chairs set out on the estate’s grand lawn. He still wasn’t used to being the centre of attention, the focus of so many pairs of eyes. He wanted Mollie to make an appearance just so people would stop looking at him so much.

  He also wanted to see her. Touch her. Hold her in his arms and promise to make her his for ever. The thought, even now, had the power to bring him to his knees, so utterly thankful for the mercy that had been shown him.

  From his position beside Jacob, Lucas murmured out of the corner of his mouth, ‘Don’t break down yet. She hasn’t even made an appearance.’

  Jacob gave his best man a rather crooked smile. He knew Lucas understood how big a day this was. All of his brothers knew, and his sister as well; they were all married. All in love. All happy.

  It was more, so much more, than he’d ever dared to dream of. Hope for. He straightened as the other groomsmen—Alex, Jack, Nathaniel, Sebastian, Rafael and Annabelle’s husband, Stefano—joined him at the front, radiating out from his side.

  The minister gave a tiny cough, and Jacob jerked his gaze to the back of the rows of chairs. The first bridesmaid, Aneesa, Sebastian’s wife, was coming down the aisle, waddling a little as her first baby was due any day now.

  Jacob’s gaze followed each lovely woman as she came down the aisle, smiling with the joy of the upcoming ceremony and the serenity of knowing she already had that happiness and love for herself. After Aneesa, came Alex’s wife, Libby, and then Nathaniel’s wife, Katie, now six months pregnant and utterly radiant. Jack’s wife, Cara, followed, and then Grace, Lucas’s wife. Rafael’s gorgeous wife, Leila, also very heavily pregnant with their precious twin babies, came next—somewhat slowly—and lastly Annabelle, smiling, her scar barely noticeable.

  And then Mollie. Gorgeous, loving, wonderful Mollie. Jacob could see the sparkle in her pansy-brown eyes from the front, felt the love radiating out from her in warm, giving rays. His face broke into the widest, most ridiculous grin.

  He was so happy.

  And as Mollie joined his side, her smile matching his own, the minister gave another little cough and said, ‘Shall we begin?’

  Two hours later Jacob was tired of smiling, yet somehow he still couldn’t stop. They’d been taking photographs for hours, and even though they’d already agreed on the deal to sell the snaps to a celebrity magazine for a huge sum, all of which would go to a charity for the prevention of child abuse, he was ready to be done with it. He wanted to eat. He wanted to dance. He wanted to go upstairs and make love to his wife.

  ‘You’re looking a little hot under the collar,’ Jack remarked as he came to stand beside Jacob. Jacob smiled wryly.

  ‘Just a bit tired of the photos.’ He glanced sideways at Jack, knowing that the rift that had grown between them had not yet truly healed. He hadn’t had a chance to speak privately with his brother, not since Jack had accused him of running away a second time by selling Wolfe Manor. He glanced up at the stately house he would always know as home.

  He was finished with running away. ‘Jack, I know the last time we spoke—’

  Jack shook his head. ‘I was angry….’

  ‘You had good reason,’ Jacob said quietly. ‘I’ll never take lightly how much I hurt you all by leaving.’

  ‘It’s finished, Jacob.’

  ‘I know it is.’ And he did, deep within.

  Jack gave him a crooked smile. ‘Look at us all now. We’ve made it through all right, I’d say.’

  ‘Thanks to some amazing women,’ Jacob half joked, although his eyes were on Mollie.

  ‘And one amazing man. I’ve never seen Annabelle look so beautiful.’ Jack clapped his brother on the shoulder. ‘The past really is finished.’

  Jacob nodded and pulled his brother into a quick, fierce hug before letting him go and nodding towards Mollie. ‘And now it’s time I claim my bride.’

  Jacob pulled Mollie away from the circle of guests, leading towards the sheltered privacy of the gardens.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ she asked, laughing a little. ‘Our guests, Jacob—’

  ‘I’m taking you away,’ he told her. ‘Somewhere. Anywhere. I just want to be alone with you.’

  Under an oak tree, in a pool of dappled sunlight, he drew her into his arms and kissed her thoroughly—although not as thoroughly as he wanted to, or as he certainly would later.

  Mollie tipped her head up, smiling into his eyes. ‘This kind of happiness almost doesn’t feel real. Like a dream.’

  ‘Not a dream,’ he assured her, tucking a stray tendril of hair behind her ear. ‘No more dreams, no more regrets, no more looking back.’ He kissed her again, filled with a deep sense of peace, overwhelmed with a lasting, buoyant happiness. ‘This is real. This is our future, Mrs Wolfe.’

  BEHIND THE SCENES AT WOLFE MANOR …

  Share a secret about Jacob or Mollie?

  I think all the big secrets come out by the end of the book! But something that didn’t make it into the actual story was that Mollie didn’t like her ginger hair—I’ve always wanted wavy auburn hair myself, so I was quite jealous of her.

  Who is the biggest, baddest Wolfe?

  I’d have to say William Wolfe, the father, is in many ways the real big bad wolf of the story, but all the Wolfe brothers seem to have their own tortured secrets.

  Which Wolfe brother did you most fancy?

  Jacob, of course! I explored his character so thoroughly that I fell in love with him myself. But I’m sure all the heroes are just as wonderful, and also very different from each other, which makes me look forward to reading all the books.

  Which is Jacob’s favourite room in Wolfe Manor?

  The nursery on the top floor of Wolfe Manor figures in the story as a place where Jacob and his siblings had some happy memories, and actually felt safe, so I think that must be his favourite room.

  How did Jacob pop the big question?

  On the penthouse terrace of a museum he designed in Paris, right at the end of the story!

  KATE’S WRITING SECRETS …

  What do you enjoy most about writing as part of a continuity series; how does it differ from writing a single title?

  I enjoy writing continuity books because I get such a lovely sense of being part of something bigger than just myself. Writing can often be a lonely enterprise, and I love hearing from editors and authors about all the elements that go into the continuity. And the moment when I crack open the “bible” that tells all the back story of the characters and their world is very exciting—and then I get to jump right into it!

  What do you think makes a great hero/heroine?

  I love heroes and heroines who are vulnerable in their weaknesses, and yet find their hidden strengths through loving each other.

  When you are writing, what is a typic
al day?

  After the morning school rush I usually sit down with a cup of coffee and answer e-mails and do more business-type things. Then I’m full on being a mum (my children are in school, except for my youngest daughter who is two) until nap time. When she goes down for a sleep, I grab the chance to write for a couple of hours before the other children come home and all becomes happy chaos once more.

  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

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