Lou shook his head defiantly. “I’m not comfortable with that volume of shit, thanks.”
Wolfie stretched out his hands. “If you could just—”
“No, I won’tjust.” Lou shook his head fervently and backed away to his car, a low-slung Maserati in lurid green. “This isn’t it. Not for me.” And without so much as a goodbye, he slid behind the wheel and gunned the engine ostentatiously, all the while eying Wolfie balefully.
As the car screeched off the property, Wolfie propped his hands on his hips and spun slowly on his heel to look at Pippa. “Mind telling me what that little act was about?”
“What do you mean?” Pippa did her best to look affronted.
“You know we don’t have a rat problem,” he said.
“To be fair, I never said we did,” she replied truthfully. “I just said we have a lot of traps.”
“Grantham keeps a few around the place and in the wine cellar as a precaution,” Wolfie snapped, although he clearly wasn’t certain. “That’s hardly a lot.”
“Well, I’ve never lived in a house with even one trap,” Pippa said. “So just one trap to me is a lot.”
“Didn’t you work on a farm?” Wolfie said, eyes blazing. “How can you be so clueless about rats?”
“How canyoube so clueless about your own home?” Pippa retorted.
Wolfie went rigid. “I know what I need to know,” he said. “And I know I need to sell it.”
“Don’t you even feel a little bit sad about that though?” she asked.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he shot back. “Let me tell you something, you’re just like everyone else in Hurst Bridge. All you see is a beautiful house and the way my father flaunted his wealth. But that’s not everything.” He swallowed and, for a moment, Wolfie Squires looked hauntingly, achingly sad. “You have no idea.”
Pippa reached out and touched his arm. She knew something about deception. About homes being not what they seemed. “So tell me.”
Wolfie stilled. His gaze landed upon where her hand touched him and then strayed to her mouth. Unthinkingly, Pippa licked her lips. That one act, small as it was, changed something in the man before her. His eyes narrowed in on her mouth and she could feel the tension radiating off his powerful body as his breath hitched. She was assaulted by a sudden urge to reach up and rake her fingers through his hair, to put her lips to his neck to see how he would taste there.
Zing!
Pippa’s phone’s ludicrous chirp went off, because of course it did. The air eased; their breathing slowed. Wolfie stepped back murmuring something vaguely regretful and Pippa reached into her pocket, grimacing an apology she wasn’t sure was needed. It was a picture of her father proudly holding a fat, silvery fish about a foot long.
“Sorry, it’s my dad,” she murmured.
Your dad caught himself a largemouth bass!her mother’s text read.His biggest ever catch. He insisted I send this to you and to let you know he put it right back in the water.
“My dad’s such a goof,” Pippa said with a laugh.Congrats to Dad,she messaged back with a smile.
When she looked back up, Wolfie had gone.
ChapterEleven
The next few days were ferociously busy. Pippa found that beating all the rugs and curtains took an entire day and the amount of silverware that needed looking after was crazy. She’d spent an entire morning carefully cleaning each piece, wondering why on earth anyone needed five different kinds of soup spoon. But it was Friday at last and although her job wasn’t exactly the typical nine-to-five, it had been a challenging week. The emotional upheaval of finding out about the sale, plus the tumult of being in Wolfie’s orbit, had really taken it out of her. Everything about him inspired a curiosity in her that bordered on alarming. It was clear that under that thick layer of dour superiority was a well of vulnerability and emotion, but he struggled to show it, even in his own home, and Pippa couldn’t help but wonder what held him back.
She’d paused for lunch – tuna mayo sandwiches the size of her head, so hungry was she – then, as she made herself a cup of tea, she looked out of the kitchen window and there in the garden was Juniper. The pig was rooting around in the same spot as the last time she’d broken into the garden.
Laughing to herself, Pippa headed outside.
“Juniper!” she called. “This isn’t your garden.”
The pig gave her a disdainful look and then resumed her foraging.
“What have you found?”
Juniper snorted in response.
