Chapter Four
Bo went back to her little summer house — and it truly was her summer house now, in every sense of the word — and stared outside the windows to her garden she now owned.
She was still too stunned to think clearly. Never in a million years had she ever thought Geoffrey would leave her anything, let alone something so valuable as a prime piece of London real estate.
“You’ll be crawling with offers from developers,” Hugo promised her. “Don’t accept any offers straight away though, take time to think it through. And when you do decide to sell, don’t take a penny under three million pounds.”
“Three million pounds?!” Bo had audibly gasped. “But it’s just . . . just a garden.”
“Exactly.” Hugo had nodded knowledgably.
“All the houses on Orchard Drive are Grade-II listed, and developers can’t touch them without serious restrictions.
Your land never had anything built on it, so it’s ready to go.
There’s room for at least nine flats, which a developer could sell for two million each, easily. Make sure you get your cut.”
Staring at the garden now, Bo couldn’t imagine anything worse than nine flats sitting upon it.
Geoffrey’s garden, large and sprawling, had a sumptuous lawn of soft green grass, with wildflowers scattered about.
Established cherry and apple trees were dotted throughout, with beds for azaleas, dwarf pear trees, lavender and herbs to the side.
Her summer house sat at one end of the garden, hidden by a line of hazel trees, while a pond with a running water feature sat at the other.
Madelief, Geoffrey’s prized camellia, stood near the azaleas, with leaves the colour of emeralds sitting against the red-brick wall.
This garden represented years of Geoffrey’s work and devotion.
It encompassed years of effort, years of roughened fingers and worn-down nails.
It was a garden where every flower had been earned, where every shrub had been claimed from the clutches of sharp bramble thorns and patches of stinging nettles.
This wasn’t just land. No, this was a testament to the man who had quietly shaped it, tended it and left something of himself behind in it.
This was hours of patience and love. To think of a developer coming in and flattening it all made Bo’s skin crawl.
There was the money to consider though. All three million pounds of it.
With that kind of money, I’d be free forever, Bo thought, a thrill of excitement running through her. No more auditions. No more headshots. No more men looking over every inch of my body for a flaw or imperfection.
Bo wasn’t sure exactly what it was she wanted to do with her life, but she knew it wasn’t acting. Acting had been her mother’s choice for her, and Bo couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been pushed onto a stage to dance or paraded down a catwalk to model.
“You weren’t born this beautiful for nothing.
You were born to be admired by others,” her mother always told her, and for a long time, Bo believed her.
She’d been a child model and then a teenage beauty queen before making the leap into full-time acting, and it never occurred to her to do anything else.
With her mother’s blessing, Bo had dropped out of school for a part in a play and never gone back to finish her education.
With her mother’s encouragement, she’d moved to London to chase acting roles that never materialized into anything other than disappointment and a lingering sense of rejection.
Now, at twenty-six, she was qualified for nothing.
At twenty-six, all she had was her beauty and its ability to foster a superficial sense of admiration from others to depend upon.
It wasn’t enough, Bo realized despairingly.
Maybe it would have been different if she’d loved her chosen career, but she didn’t.
She was different to Willa, who got a thrill from acting that Bo never felt.
Willa loved to inhabit the lives, thoughts and feelings of others, enjoyed imagining herself as other people and channelling them into being through her body.
Bo, on the other hand, always felt slightly awkward pretending to be anyone other than who she was: herself.
She hated having to change her voice or manner, just as she hated having to think about how she walked and talked.
She hated the false smile she wore to auditions and downright despised the male directors and producers who peered at her body with eyes that were at once both lustful and critical.
Yes, Bo hated everything about the career she’d sleepwalked into and was now too unqualified and unemployable to leave, but with three million pounds in her pocket . . .
With three million pounds, she could do whatever she pleased.
It was no wonder Max had looked at her with undisguised fury as she’d left Cavendish, Crags and Clerk earlier that day.
It was no wonder he’d sat with clenched hands and tightly drawn brows as she’d walked past him.
He’d woken that morning expecting to inherit everything from the uncle he’d clearly hated, only to learn before lunchtime that he had to share that inheritance with a woman he hardly knew — well, aside from biblically, Bo thought with a nervous swallow.
If their roles had been reversed, she would probably have been furious too.
The look on Max’s face had been thunderous, so much so that Hugo Crags had passed her his card as he’d seen her to the elevator.
“Mr Fitzroy may decide to challenge the will,” he explained to her. “If he does, give me a call. Sir Geoffrey’s wishes were made very clear to me and it’s my duty to see they’re enacted, and while I couldn’t represent you, I can still give you the details of good lawyers who can.”
Bo couldn’t even think about that possibility right now.
Still shellshocked, she decided to put her nervous energy to use in the garden.
It was a bright June afternoon, the good weather at odds with the turmoil she felt within.
Pulling on her gardening gloves, she dug out her shears and went over to the herb garden, where a patch of brambles was threatening to strangle her thyme bed.
She attacked them with a single-minded determination that was surprising even to her, putting the offending weeds to one side to go on the compost heap.
The sun was warm on her back, bird call broken only by the rhythmic purr of airplanes in the sky above on their landing approach to Heathrow.
It was satisfyingly mindless work, and by the time the thyme bed was cleared, Bo’s hands and legs ached in the best possible way.
She stood, stretching out towards the sky, relieving the kinks in the tired muscles of her body.
It was then that she had the distinct feeling of being watched.
She turned, hands still raised to the sky, only to find Max standing by the sliding glass doors of the kitchen, arms crossed over his chest, looking at her intently.
For a moment she looked right back at him, before she lowered her arms, crossing them over her chest and matching his pose.
If he wants to have it out with me, I’m ready, she thought. I’m not going to sit here and let him bully me about.
Surprisingly though, Max began to walk towards her, though he stopped at the end of the patio, where a box hedge divided the garden.
Bo had never really thought about the hedge much before, aside from trimming and watering it, but with a start she now realized that it marked the border between the two properties Geoffrey owned.
In fact, it was so clearly a dividing line Bo wondered how she’d never noticed it before.
If I dug beneath the hedge, I bet I’d find old fence posts, she thought curiously.
Not that she was going to start digging now.
Not when Max was still standing next to the hedge, his arms still crossed, gazing at her with a look that was at once both sullen and weary.
Bo knew he already thought her a heartless gold-digger, so to be in his presence and immediately searching for a shovel was not the vibe she should be going for.
“I’d knock,” Max told her shortly. “But there isn’t a door.”
She shrugged. “Well, that’s because I’ve never needed one before.”
Behind Max’s eyes, Bo swore she could see the glimmer of an amused twinkle. It was just a glimmer however, before his gaze hardened, and he gestured to the house behind him.
“We need to talk. Come over,” he said, and although it was a suggestion, to Bo it sounded like an order. Her defences were up, her nerves were on edge and she couldn’t help but to bristle at his words.
“Why? So you can tell me in person that you plan on challenging Geoffrey’s will?”
He frowned. “I don’t plan on challenging the will.”
“Then why do we need to talk?”
He made a noise of pure frustration. “Because we do. We need to work out this . . . this situation.”
“There’s nothing to work out,” Bo replied easily. “I own the garden; you own the house and patio. We have it all in writing. Geoffrey worked it out for us.”
“That may well be, but you haven’t thought out the logistics of Geoffrey’s gift yet, have you?”
“Logistics?” Bo repeated. “What logistics?”
“Well, for one thing, your summer house.”
“What about it?”
“Well, I can only assume you plan on continuing to live there,” Max began easily.
“You own it now, after all, so that would be within your rights. Unfortunately for you, the electricity supply that was installed a few years ago runs on power from the house I now own. I could cut you off, and that would be within my rights.”
Bo’s mouth dropped open. It had never occurred to her, not for a minute, that Max might cut off her access to power, and by default, to warmth too.
“You wouldn’t,” she stuttered. “I can . . . can pay you for the power.”
“I’m sure,” Max replied. “But what about the water? That also runs from my plumbing. The council tax is linked to my property too and I’m sure you don’t want to get into trouble with them.
That’s if they could even contact you, of course, because your mail comes to my door too, right?
Oh, and the last time I was here, you said you were reliant on access to Geoffrey’s bathroom.
Your summer house doesn’t have a shower, right? ”
It was like all the breath was being sucked from Bo’s lungs and she stood there, temporarily rendered quiet while she weighed up Max’s admittedly correct words.
He has me, she realized, dumbstruck. I need water and power. I need access to the house for showers. Fuck, I can’t even get into my garden without going through Max’s gate.
In her silence, Max continued heartlessly. “Like I said, logistics. Look, I’ve had time this afternoon to think this over, and I think I have a plan that will work for both of us. Come over, and let’s talk it through.”
“But I’m covered in soil and bramble thorns,” Bo replied, still reeling. “I can’t sit in Geoffrey’s house like this.”
For a moment, Max looked at her, and Bo shifted awkwardly under his gaze.
“I mean, I can’t sit in your house like this,” she corrected herself. “Geoffrey has — I mean, you have some nice things. I don’t want to drag muck from the garden across the antique carpets.”
For another long moment, Max stared at her, and Bo blushed.
She was standing in front of her new nemesis, a man she shared not only sexual history but now also a border dispute with, talking about antique carpets.
“All right,” he finally said slowly. “Bring a towel, and you can shower first. Then we’ll talk. ”
She swallowed. “The last time I showered in Geoffrey’s house with you around you walked in on me.”
“That was a mistake,” Max assured her. “I won’t do it again this time. Trust me.”
Still, Bo was wary. “How can I trust you? You must hate me.”
“How I feel about you is irrelevant right now. I mean, am I thrilled that you’ve cut my inheritance in half today?
No, not especially. Would I make you bear the brunt of my anger against Geoffrey for that slight by walking in on you while you shower though?
Also no, because I’m not a monster. Think what you want of me — everyone does, and I couldn’t care less — but don’t put me in the role of sexual predator. I’m not.”
Bo nodded mutely, staring at the floor.
“Bring a towel, change your clothes and then you and I will talk,” Max carried on. “We have a lot to get through. And Bo?”
She looked up at his use of her name. “Yes?”
The look in his eyes was suddenly and inexplicably gentle. “You can trust me. I promise.”