Falling for the Rebel Heir
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Kendall hit the edge of the pine forest and stopped to check if anybody was out in the main street of Saffron. She didn’t want anyone to see her in an inside out, back to front dress, unlaced shoes and sopping wet hair.
It had taken almost all of the three years she’d lived in Saffron for the locals to look past the limp and get over whispering behind their hands about how it had happened. The car accident. A young man’s death. Her missing months afterwards. Now she had become the steady, dependable, sensible fact checker for the local newspaper. And she was determined to keep it that way.
When she spotted a break in the dawdling morning traffic she looked right, then left, then right again, before darting across Peach Street, through the garden gate and into the two-storey cottage she shared with Taffy.
The noise she made kicking off her shoes and throwing her wet towel over the back of a chair in the hall was enough for Taffy to look up from her spot at the kitchen table. Her Sunday newspaper dropped in a show of slow motion dawning, her eyes grew wide as saucers and she coughed on her honey-covered English muffin. ‘What on earth happened to you?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ Kendall continued up the stairs. She wished she could take them two at a time, but she’d walked so fast into town her damn leg now thrummed.
‘Oh, no, you don’t.’ Taffy’s voice slunk up the stairs behind her, followed by thunderously healthy footsteps.
Kendall burst into her room. Her deaf schnauzer, Orlando, looked up at the flurry of movement and then dropped his sweet snout back on to his paws.
Taffy came into Kendall’s bedroom and leant against the door-jamb, hooking one bare foot along the other calf. ‘So,’ she said, ‘was there a sudden rainstorm? At the market? Because that’s where you told me you were going, remember. To the market to look for fresh meat for tonight’s dinner.’
‘And…’ Kendall said, twisting her damp hair into a low bun and searching madly through the pile of washing on the tub chair in the corner of her room for a fresh towel.
‘And…I see no evidence of meat. Only wet hair and a dress that seems to be inside out.’ Taffy spilled into the room, her hand to her heart. ‘Oh, Kendall! Please tell me fresh meat was code for—’
Kendall threw up her hands and screwed up her eyes to cut out the disturbing images in her head—images of a tanned forearm, a sinewy wrist with a smattering of dark hair and a watch that looked as if it had lived through three world wars. ‘Taffy! Stop!’
Taffy sat on the corner of Kendall’s bed and licked honey off her fingers. She then buttoned her lip and waited for Kendall to simply talk.
Sick of feeling like a bedraggled cat, Kendall tore her dress over her head and wrapped herself in the towel, feeling strangely as if she were back in the pool house again. On show. She didn’t like it. Once upon a time she’d revelled in it. Being the centre of attention. The class clown. Not any more. ‘Do you want to go out while I get changed?’
Taffy shook her head. ‘Tell me about the meat.’
Kendall’s instinct was for self-protection. But this was Taffy. Taffy who’d taken her in at the time in her life when she’d most needed a friend, when the family she’d come to love as her own had left her out in the cold. Besides, she’d already been sprung by the one person who meant her secret getaway couldn’t be a secret any more.
She slumped down on to the bed next to her friend. ‘I was swimming.’
‘At the falls?’
‘No. At Claudel.’
‘The old house? But how? The place is decrepit.’
Kendall shrugged. ‘Not so much. Not the pool house at least. Not any more.’
Taffy shook her head and half laughed at the same time. ‘What have you done now?’
Kendall leant over and buried her face in her palms. ‘I found it on one of my forest walks. It’s the most beautiful building, Taff. And it was just so sad seeing it falling apart like it was. I got this crazy compulsion to make it like new again. Now I’ve cleaned the place up, the floor tiles look like bottled glass. And the marble benches are like something out of a Grace Kelly movie.’
‘Whoa, back up a sec. You cleaned?’
Kendall laughed into her hands, then sat up straight, unpeeling her hands from her face. ‘I more than cleaned, Taff. I filled it. Chlorinated it. Kept it pristine. Perfect. And visited every day for the past two years. The moment I saw it, I kind of just…had no choice.’
‘But that still doesn’t quite explain this.’ Taffy grabbed a hunk of Kendall’s hair and let it slap against her back.
‘Today…’ Kendall said, then took a deep breath as she tried to find the words to explain the unexpected effect of tall, dark ruggedness without making an idiot of herself. ‘Today I was sprung. By Claudel’s owner.’
After a long silence, Taffy said, ‘Don’t tell me you mean Hud?’
Kendall looked her friend in the eye for the first time since she’d got home. ‘Hudson Bennington. The third, no less.’
Taffy slapped her on the arm. Then once more for good measure. ‘Get out of here.’
‘I would love to, but you won’t let me. You know him?’
‘God, yeah. I had the hugest crush on Hud Bennington when he was eighteen and I was thirteen. It was his last year of boarding school and he was here for the summer, staying with Fay while his folks scooted off to Latvia in search of leprechaun remains or something. He was my teen idol if it’s possible for a real life human to be such a thing. So what was he like? All feisty and charming? Cheeky? Pathologically flirtatious? Dry wit? Still as big and gorgeous as ever?’
‘He…he looked like he needed a shave.’ And more, Kendall thought. He looked like he needed a hug.
‘Ooh,’ Taffy said. ‘Stubble on Hud Bennington. That I just have to see. Now hurry up and get dressed and you can go right back over there and reintroduce me.’
The thought of coming face to face with all that undomesticated manhood sent a warning note through Kendall. ‘Did you not hear me?’ she said. ‘He caught me. In his pool. Without his permission. Or prior knowledge. While I was naked bar…my…swimmers.’