Read Online Lone Wolfe by Kate Hewitt - Free Book Online

was full . Full of poisoned
memories, treacherous regrets. Full of the truth of himself ,
of what he was capable of. He had nothing to give Mollie Parker. Nothing she
would want.
                 Except a rose.
                 ‘Why
are we going back here?’ Mollie asked, for Jacob had led her into the study.
The room still felt suffocating to her, despite the windows open to the night.
The smell of rain and roses carried on the breeze.
                 ‘I
found something when I was going through my father’s papers,’ Jacob said. He’d
dropped her hand and retreated behind the big oak desk, leaving Mollie with the
sweet memory of his touch. Her fingers tingled. He began to riffle through the
papers on his desk. ‘He had the most atrocious filing system,’ he continued. ‘ Which of course isn’t very surprising. ’
                 ‘I
didn’t know much about your father,’ Mollie said cautiously. ‘Except …’
                 Jacob
glanced up, his eyes flashing. He had stilled, again. Watchful
and wary. ‘Except what?’ he asked quietly.
                 ‘What
people said. Whispered about in the
village.’
                 ‘And
what did they whisper about in the village?’ Jacob asked, his tone deceptively mild.
                 ‘That
he was charming,’ Mollie answered hesitantly, ‘and a drunk.’
                 ‘He
was both. Unfortunately he wasn’t much of a father.’
                 He
spoke so dispassionately, as if it hardly mattered, that Mollie was compelled
to ask, ‘You must regret that.’
                 His
eyes narrowed as he looked up at her. ‘I do. I’ve regretted it my whole life.’
She heard something in his voice, a raw, jagged note she hadn’t expected; it
cut beneath his cold, composed exterior, hinted at the hurting man underneath.
‘I regret it for my brothers and sister,’ Jacob continued. ‘I wasn’t much of a
replacement.’
                 ‘But
you tried.’
                 He
lifted one shoulder in a dismissive shrug before turning back to the papers on
the desk, his manner brisk. ‘My father did, amazingly, have a few redeeming
qualities. Such as this.’ He held out a piece of thick
parchment paper, yellowed and crackling with age, towards her.
                 Hesitantly
Mollie took it. ‘What …’ she began, her breath coming out in a soft rush as she
gazed down at the paper. A dried rose, its petals
brown and faded yet still perfect, had been affixed to the parchment.
Underneath, in an unfamiliar hand, was written The Mollie Rose .
                 Her
throat thickened, unexpectedly, with tears, and her fingers clenched on the
fragile parchment.
                 ‘Careful,’
Jacob said, and he gently loosened her fingers’ death grip with his own.
                 ‘Sorry.
I—I didn’t— How did he—your father—get this?’
                 ‘As
far as I can tell, your father showed him.’ Jacob pointed to some more
handwriting, smaller and slanted, underneath the rose’s name.
                 A new hybrid Parker named after his
daughter. Sweet .
                 ‘It
must have touched my father in one of his more lucid moments.’
                 ‘My
father was always experimenting with roses,’ Mollie said in a voice she didn’t
quite recognise as her own. ‘Sometimes I thought—it seemed—as if he cared more
for them …’ She shook her head, not wanting to taint
her father’s memory with regretful recollections. Yes, he’d loved his beloved
roses, been obsessed by them even, but she’d always known he’d loved her more.
She’d never doubted that, even in the darkest moments of his disease. She
looked up at Jacob. ‘He never told me—I never knew he named one after me.’
                 Jacob
glanced down at the pressed petals,