Hired by the Brooding Billionaire
Beauty and the reclusive billionaire…When billionaire Declan Grant decides his estate’s enormous garden needs taming, he hires idealistic horticulturalist Shelley Fairhill to take on the challenge. Since losing his wife, Declan has adjusted to a life of self-imposed isolation—he wants Shelley to tackle the weeds, then leave.But as Shelley gradually restores order and unexpected beauty to his garden, her caring nature also begins to thaw the ice encasing Declan’s heart. Can he let Shelley's light in and finally let his second chance at love blossom?
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Something deep and long unused inside him had turned upside down in the face of her grief.
To comfort her became more important than the inhibitions he had imposed upon himself.
He reached out and clasped her hand in his. It was slender and warm but he felt calluses on her palm and fingers. Warrior calluses.
She returned the pressure on his hand, not knowing what a monumental gesture it was for him to reach out to her. For a very long moment his eyes met with hers in a silent connection that shook him. What he felt for her in this moment went way beyond physical attraction.
In the quiet of his kitchen, with the ticking of the clock and the occasional whirring of the fridge the only noise, this one room of many in the vast emptiness of his house suddenly seemed welcoming. Because she was here.
KANDY SHEPHERD swapped a career as a magazine editor for a life writing romance. She lives on a small farm in the Blue Mountains near Sydney, Australia, with her husband, daughter and lots of pets. She believes in love at first sight and real-life romance—they worked for her! Kandy loves to hear from her readers. Visit her at www.kandyshepherd.com.
To my daughter Lucy for her invaluable help in “casting” my characters.
Contents
SHELLEY FAIRHILL HAD walked by the grand old mansion on Bellevue Street at least twenty times before she finally screwed up enough courage to press the old-fashioned buzzer embedded in the sandstone gatepost. Even then, with her hand on the ornate wrought-iron gate, she quailed before pushing it open.
The early twentieth-century house was handsome with peaked roofs and an ornate turret but it was almost overwhelmed by the voracious growth of a once beautiful garden gone wild. It distressed her horticulturalist’s heart to see the out-of-control roses, plants stunted and starved of light by rampant vines, and unpruned shrubs grown unchecked into trees.
This was Sydney on a bright winter’s afternoon with shafts of sunlight slanting through the undergrowth but there was an element of eeriness to the house, of secrets undisturbed.
In spite of the sunlight, Shelley shivered. But she had to do this.
It wasn’t just that she was looking for extra work—somehow she had felt compelled by this garden since the day she’d first become aware of it when she’d got lost on her way to the railway station.
The buzzer sounded and the gate clicked a release. She pushed it open with a less than steady hand. Over the last weeks, as she’d walked past the house in the posh inner-eastern suburb of Darling Point, she’d wondered about who lived there. Her imagination had gifted her visions of a broken-hearted old woman who had locked herself away from the world when her fiancé had been killed at war. Or a crabby, Scrooge-like old man cut off from all who loved him.
The reality of the person who opened the door to her was so different her throat tightened and the professional words of greeting she had rehearsed froze unsaid.
Her reaction wasn’t just because the man who filled the doorframe with his impressive height and broad shoulders was young—around thirty, she guessed. Not much older than her, in fact. It was because he was so heart-stoppingly good-looking.
A guy this hot, this movie-star handsome, with his black hair, chiselled face and deep blue eyes, hadn’t entered into her imaginings for a single second. Yes, he seemed dark and forbidding—but not in the haunted-house way she had expected.
His hair lacked recent acquaintance with a comb, his jaw was two days shy of a razor and his black roll-neck sweater and sweatpants looked as though he’d slept in them. The effect was extraordinarily attractive in a don’t-give-a-damn kind of way. His dark scowl was what made him seem intimidating.
She cleared her throat to free her voice but he spoke before she got a chance to open her mouth.
‘Where’s the parcel?’ His voice was deep, his tone abrupt.
‘Wh-what parcel?’ she stuttered.
He frowned. ‘The motherboard.’
She stared blankly at him.
He shook his head impatiently, gestured with his hands. ‘Computer parts. The delivery I was expecting.’
Shelley was so shocked at his abrupt tone, she glanced down at her empty hands as if expecting a parcel to materialise. Which was crazy insane.
‘You...you think I’m a courier?’ she stuttered.
‘Obviously,’ he said. She didn’t like the edge of sarcasm to the word.
But she supposed her uniform of khaki trousers, industrial boots and a shirt embroidered with the logo of the garden design company she worked for could be misconstrued as courier garb.
‘I’m not a courier. I—’
‘I wouldn’t have let you in the gate if I’d known that,’ he said. ‘Whatever you’re selling, I’m not buying.’
