Hired by the Brooding Billionaire (4 page)

The stunned silence coming from the voluble Ms Fairhill was almost palpable. He was aware of rustlings in the trees, a car motor starting up out in the street, his own ragged breath. He had stopped without even realising it.

‘I... I’m so sorry,’ she finally murmured.

Thank God she didn’t ask how his wife had died. He hated it when total strangers asked that. As if he wanted to talk about it to them. As if he
ever
wanted to talk about it. But Shelley was going to be here in this garden five days a week. If he told her up front, then she wouldn’t be probing at his still-raw wounds. Innocently asking the wrong questions. Wanting to know the details.

‘She... Lisa...she died in childbirth,’ he choked out.

No matter how many times he said the words, they never got easier.
Died in childbirth.
No one expected that to happen in the twenty-first century. Not in a country with an advanced health-care system. Not to a healthy young couple who could afford the very best medical treatment.

‘And...and the baby?’ Shelley asked in a voice so low it was nearly a whisper.

‘My...my daughter, Alice, died too.’

‘I’m so, so sorry. I... I don’t know what to say...’

‘Say nothing,’ he said, his jaw clenched so tightly it hurt. ‘Now you know what happened. I won’t discuss it further.’

‘But...how can you live here after...after that?’

‘It was our home. I stay to keep her memory alive.’

And to punish himself.

CHAPTER FOUR

S
HELLEY
DIDN
’
T
KNOW
where to look, what to say.
How could she have got him so wrong?
Declan was a heartbroken widower who had hidden himself away to mourn behind the high walls of his house and the wild growth of his garden. And she had called him Mr Tall, Dark and Grumpy to her sister. She and Lynne had had a good old laugh over that. Now she cringed at the memory of their laughter. Not
grumpy
but
grieving.

She couldn’t begin to imagine the agony of loss the man had endured. Not just his wife but his baby too. No wonder he carried such an aura of darkness when he bore such pain in his soul. And she had told him he was
forbidding
. Why hadn’t she recognised the shadow behind his eyes as grief and not bad temper? There’d been a hint of it the night of her interview with him but she’d chosen to ignore it.

Truth was, although she was very good at understanding plants—could diagnose in seconds what was wrong with ailing leaves or flowers—she didn’t read people very well. Somehow she didn’t seem to pick up cues, both verbal and non-verbal, that other more intuitive folk noticed. No wonder she had believed in and fallen in love with a man as dishonest and deceptive as Steve had been. She just hadn’t seen the signs.

‘Shelley excels at rushing in where angels fear to tread.’
Her grandmother used to say that quite often.

She was going to have to tread very lightly here.

‘So it...it was your wife who realised this garden needed to be set free?’

He didn’t meet her eyes but looked into the distance and nodded.

‘Only she...she wasn’t given the time to do it,’ she said.

Mentally, Shelley slammed her fist against her forehead. How much more foot in mouth could she get?

Declan went very still and a shadow seemed to pass across his lean, handsome face and dull the deep blue of his eyes. After a moment too long of silence he replied. ‘The reason I hired you was because you said much the same as she did about the garden.’

Think before you speak.

‘I... I’m glad.’ She shifted from foot to foot. ‘I’ll do my best to...to do what she would have wanted done to the...to her garden.’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘She would have hated to have it all dug up and replaced with something stark and modern.’ He took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘No need to talk about it again.’

Shelley nodded, not daring to say anything in case it came out wrongly. If she stuck to talk of gardening she surely couldn’t go wrong.

He started to walk again and she followed in his wake. She wouldn’t let herself admire his broad-shouldered back view.
He was a heartbroken widower
.

Even if he weren’t—even if he were the most eligible bachelor in Australia—he was her employer and therefore off-limits.

Then there was the fact she had no desire for a man in her life. Not now, not yet.
Maybe never
.

After the disastrous relationship with Steve that had made her turn tail and run back to Sydney from Melbourne, she’d decided she didn’t want the inevitable painful disruption a man brought with him.

She’d learned hard lessons—starting with the father who had abandoned her when she was aged thirteen—that men weren’t to be trusted. And that she fell to pieces when it all went wrong. She’d taken it so badly when it had ended with Steve—beaten herself up with recrimination and pain—she’d had to resign from her job, unable to function properly. No way would she be such a trusting fool again.

As she followed her new boss around the side of the house, she kept her eyes down to the cracked pathway where tiny flowers known as erigeron or seaside daisies grew in the gaps. She liked the effect, although some would dismiss them as weeds. Nature sometimes had its own planting schemes that she had learned to accommodate. If there was such a thing as a soft-hearted horticulturalist that was her—others were more ruthless.

She was so busy concentrating on not looking at Declan, that when he paused for her to catch up she almost collided with his broad chest. ‘S-sorry,’ she spluttered, taking a step back.

How many times had she apologised already today? She had to be more collected, not let his presence fluster her so much—difficult when he was so tall, so self-contained,
so darn handsome
.

‘Here it is,’ he said with an expansive wave of his hand. Even his hands were attractive: large, well-shaped, with long fingers. ‘The garden that is causing my neighbours so much consternation.’ He gave the scowl that was already becoming familiar. ‘The garden I like because it completely blocks them from my sight.’

‘That...that it does.’

There must be neighbours’ houses on either side and maybe at the back but even the tops of their roofs were barely visible through the rampant growth. But, overgrown as it was, the garden was still a splendid sight. The front gave only a hint of the extent of the size of land that lay behind the house.

She stared around her for a long moment before she was able to speak again. ‘It’s magnificent. Or was magnificent. It could be magnificent again. And...and so much bigger than I thought.’

Declan’s dark brows drew together. ‘Does that daunt you?’

He must be more competent than she at reading people—because she thought she had hidden that immediate tremor of trepidation.

‘A little,’ she admitted. ‘But I’m more exhilarated by the challenge than worried I might have bitten off more than I can chew.’

‘Good. I’m confident you can do it. I wouldn’t have hired you if I wasn’t,’ he said.

Shelley appreciated the unexpected reassurance. She took a deep breath. ‘Truly, this is a grand old garden, the kind that rarely gets planted today. A treasure in its own way.’

‘And the first thing you see is the fountain,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s very grand.’

‘And very dry,’ he said.

The fountain she’d so hoped to see was classical in style, three tiers set in a large, completely dried-out rectangular pond edged by a low sandstone wall. It took quite a stretch of the imagination but she could see water glinting with sunlight flowing into a pond planted with lotus and water iris interspersed by the occasional flash of a surfacing goldfish.
She could hardly wait to start work on it.

And, beyond her professional pride in her job, she wanted Declan’s approval.

Behind the fountain, paved pathways wound their way through a series of planted ‘rooms’ delineated by old-fashioned stonework walls and littered with piles of leaves that had fallen in autumn. Graceful old-style planters punctuated the corners of the walls. Some of them had been knocked over and lay on their sides, cracked, soil spilling out. The forlorn, broken pots gave the garden a melancholy air.
It was crying out for love.

And she would be the one to give this beautiful garden the attention it deserved.
It would be magnificent again.

She turned to Declan. ‘Whoever planted this garden knew what they were doing—and had fabulously good taste. Everything is either really overgrown or half choked to death but the design is there even at a quick glance. It will be a challenge, but one I’m definitely up for.’

He nodded his approval. ‘It’s like anything challenging—take it bit by bit rather than trying to digest it whole. In this case weed by weed.’

She was so surprised by his flash of humour she was momentarily lost for words. But she soon caught up. ‘You’ve got that right. Man, there are some weeds. I’ve already identified potato vine—it’s a hideous thing that strangles and is hard to get rid of. Morning glory is another really invasive vine, though it has beautiful flowers. It’s amazing what a difference a lot of Aussie sunshine can do to an imported “garden invader”. The morning glory vine is a declared noxious weed here, but they nurture it in greenhouses in England, I believe. And there’s oxalis everywhere with its horrible tiny bulbs that make it so difficult to eradicate.’

‘Who knew?’ he said.

She couldn’t tell whether he was being sarcastic or not. Was that a hint of a smile lifting the corners of his mouth and a warming of the glacial blue of his eyes?

Okay, maybe she’d gone on too much about the weeds.

‘That’s the nasty stuff out of the way.’ It was her turn to smile. ‘And now to the good stuff.’

‘You can see good stuff under all the “garden invaders”?’ he said, quirking one dark eyebrow.

‘Oh, yes! There’s so much happening in this garden—and this is winter. Imagine what it will be like in spring and summer.’ She heaved a great sigh of joyous anticipation.
She was going to love this job.

And it seemed as if Declan Grant might not be as difficult to work with as she had initially feared. That hint of humour was both unexpected and welcome.

She pointed towards the southern border of the garden. ‘Look at the size of those camellia bushes shielding you from your neighbours. They must be at least sixty years old. More, perhaps. The flowers are exquisite and the glossy green leaves are beautiful all year round.’

He put up his hand in a halt sign. ‘I don’t want you getting rid of those. The woman who lives behind there is particularly obnoxious. I want to screen her right out.’

‘No way would I get rid of them,’ she said, horrified. Then remembered he was the client. ‘Uh, unless you wanted me to,’ she amended through gritted teeth. ‘That particular white flowering camellia—
camellia japonica
“Alba Plena”, if you want to be specific—is a classic and one of my favourites.’

‘So you’re going to baffle me with Latin?’ Again that quirk of a dark eyebrow.

‘Of course not. I keep to common names with clients who don’t know the botanical names.’
Uh-oh.
‘Um, not that I’m talking down to you or anything.’

‘Both my parents are lawyers—there was a bit of Latin flying around our house when I was a kid.’

‘Oh? So you know Latin?’ She understood the Latin-based naming system of plants, but that was as far as it went.

He shook his head. ‘I was entirely uninterested in learning a dead language. I was way more interested in learning how computers talked to each other. Much to my parents’ horror.’

‘They were both lawyers? I guess they wanted you to be a lawyer too.’ His mouth clamped into a tight line. ‘Or...or not,’ she stuttered.

There was another of those awkward silences she was going to have to learn to manage. He was a man of few words and she was a woman of too many. But now that she understood the dark place he was coming from, she didn’t feel so uncomfortable around him.

She took a deep breath. ‘Back to the camellias. I think we’ll find there’s a very fine collection here. Did you know Sydney is one of the best places to grow camellias outside of China, where they originate?’

His expression told her he did not.

‘Okay. That’s way more than you wanted to know and I’m probably boring you.’
When would she learn to edit her words
?

He shook his head. ‘No. You’re not. I know nothing about gardening so everything you tell me is new.’ His eyes met hers for a long moment. ‘I guess I’m going to learn whether I want to or not,’ he said wryly.

‘Good. I mean, I’m glad I’m not boring you. I love what I do so much but I realise not everyone else is the same. So just tell me to button up if I rabbit on too much.’

‘I’ll take that on board,’ he said with another flash of the smile that so disconcerted her.

She looked around her, both to disconnect from that smile and hungry to discover more of the garden’s hidden treasures. ‘I want to explore further and think about an action plan. But the first thing I’ll do today is prune that rather sick-looking rose that’s clambering all over the front of the house. Winter is the right time of year to prune but we’re running out of time on that one. It’s dropped most of its leaves but in spring it must be so dense it blocks all light from the windows on the second floor.’

‘It does,’ he said. ‘I like it that way.’ His jaw set and she realised he could be stubborn.

‘Oh. So, do I have permission to prune it—and prune it hard?’

He shrugged. ‘I’ve committed to getting rid of the jungle. I have to tell you to go ahead.’

‘You won’t regret it. It’s a beautiful old rose called “Lamarque”. If I prune it and feed it, bring it back to good health, come spring you’ll have hundreds of white roses covering the side of the house.’

He went silent again. Then nodded slowly, which she took for assent. ‘Lisa would have loved that.’

Shelley swallowed hard against a sudden lump in her throat at the pain that underscored his words. It must be agony for him to stand here talking to her about his late wife when he must long for his Lisa to be here with him.
Not her
.

She forced herself not to rush to fill the silence. No way could she risk a foot-in-mouth comment about his late wife. Instead she mustered up every bit of professional enthusiasm she could.

‘When I’ve finished, the garden will enhance the house and the house the garden. It’s going to be breathtaking. Your neighbours should be delighted—this garden will look so good it will be a selling point for them to be near it.’

‘I’m sure it will—not that I give a damn about what they think,’ said Declan with a return of the fearsome scowl. He looked pointedly at his watch. ‘But I have to go back inside.’ He turned on his heel.

Shelley suspected she might have to get used to his abruptness. It was as if he could handle a certain amount of conversation and that was all. And her conversations were twice as long as anyone else’s.

Think before you speak.

‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Can you show me the shed first? You know, where there might be garden tools stored.’

He paused, turned to look back to her. A flicker of annoyance rippled over his face and she quailed. He seemed distracted, as if he were already back in his private world inside the house—maybe inside his head.

He was, she supposed, a creative person whereas she was get-her-hands-dirty practical. He made his living designing games. Creative people lived more in their heads. She was very much grounded on solid earth—although she sometimes indulged in crazy flights of the imagination. Like wondering if he was a criminal. Or an incognito movie star—he was certainly handsome enough for it. But she’d been half right about the Miss Havisham-like Daphne.