Snowbound with the Heir Read online

  Tori shook her head. She’d never be a guest at the Moorside. It was too much a part of her. ‘I want to help. And so does Jasper.’ She nudged him with her elbow until he nodded.

  ‘In that case, if you could set up the dormitory in the restaurant, like we did that time they closed the roads and we had the—’

  ‘England rugby team staying,’ Tori said along with her. ‘Absolutely.’

  As she turned away to go and find blankets and pillows, she could hear Jasper talking as Aunt Liz showed him to the kitchens. ‘The England rugby team? Now, that I want to hear more about...’

  Tori stepped through to the empty restaurant and breathed in the silence. Perfect.

  This was going to be a very long night. She could feel it. And she needed a little personal space before she faced it.

  Especially before she had to talk to Uncle Henry.

  * * *

  Tori’s Aunt Liz led Jasper through the mass of people gathered in the main bar, behind the bar itself, and through a door that took them along a narrow passageway and down a short set of stairs into the kitchens. Jasper took in everything as they walked, especially the dramatic paintings that lined the walls—all slashes of dark greens and browns and purples, showcasing the landscape of the moors at its most impressive.

  This place felt almost a part of the landscape itself, he realised. As if it had been here as long as the rocks and rises.

  He ached to know what could have driven Tori away from it. What secrets she was hiding behind those emotional battlements.

  Were they as all-consuming as his own?

  And another, niggling question that had been at the back of his mind for five long years, before emerging for re-examination tonight: Did she already know his secrets? She and Felix had always been friendly, far more than she had been with him. Felix had known. Had he told her?

  Jasper had to admit to himself that it seemed unlikely. But Tori was good at keeping secrets, that much was obvious. If she did know about Felix, Jasper was sure she was very capable of keeping it from everyone—including him.

  ‘Henry?’ Liz called out as they entered the kitchens. ‘Brought you some help.’

  A large, grey-haired man, broad at the shoulder and his head almost grazing the lower of the ceiling beams, ducked out from a side room that, from what Jasper could see, appeared to be full of freezers and fridges. He was wiping his hands on a clean tea towel.

  ‘Help? Think I’m too old and slow to do this on my own?’ He smiled as he said it, though, so Jasper was almost sure it was a joke.

  ‘Not me.’ Liz jerked her red curls in Jasper’s direction. ‘He arrived with Vicky. She thought he might be able to give you a hand down here.’

  Henry stilled, the tea towel taut between his hands, his white knuckles giving away his reaction to Liz’s news even though his expression didn’t change. ‘Vicky’s here?’ The words were barely more than a whisper.

  ‘We, uh, got caught up in a road closure on the moors,’ Jasper explained. ‘A crash behind us and a chance of the snow bringing down rocks on the valley ahead.’

  ‘I know the place.’ Henry’s words were clipped. ‘Police direct you here with all the others, did they?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Henry sighed. ‘Too much to think she’d come back of her own accord, I suppose. So, what are you, then? Fiancé? Boyfriend?’

  ‘Colleague,’ Jasper corrected him quickly. He could just imagine Tori’s face if he let her family believe there was anything more between them.

  However much he might enjoy remembering the night when there was.

  ‘Humph.’ Henry sounded faintly disbelieving. Oh, well, that was Tori’s problem. He’d told the truth. She hadn’t told him anything.

  ‘So, what can I do around here? Tori’s setting up beds somewhere, I guess.’

  ‘Tori, is it?’ Henry asked. ‘Well. You can help me pack up these ploughman’s boxes for our unexpected guests. Each one gets one of each of the things set out on the table. Should be simple enough.’ The words ‘even for you’ were unspoken, but Jasper couldn’t help but hear them anyway. He got the feeling that, arriving in Tori’s company, there was nothing he could have done to make a good impression on her uncle.

  But that wasn’t going to stop him trying, all the same. After all, how else was he going to uncover some of those secrets Tori was still hiding? If there was even a chance she knew his—and even if she didn’t yet, she would soon if his father got his way—he wanted to know some of hers too. That was only fair, right?

  ‘I’m sure I can,’ he said with a grin, and picked up the first of the plastic boxes and started work.

  Each ploughman’s box got a hunk of bread, some cheese, a thick slice of ham, a small pot of chutney, an apple and some celery.

  ‘I’ve got a giant pot of soup heating too,’ Henry explained. ‘We can take that up and dish it out in cups, to help people warm through. It’s not much, but—’

  ‘It’s more than any of us would have got stuck out on the roads in this snow,’ Jasper interrupted. ‘And I’m sure they’ll all be as grateful as I am for it.’ Even if he still lusted after the steak and ale pie Tori had promised was the best in the county. Maybe he could come back another time and try it. In better weather.

  ‘Humph,’ Henry said again, but this time he sounded more mollified. ‘So. If you’re Vicky’s “colleague” what sort of work have the two of you been up to?’

  He was in tricky waters here, Jasper realised suddenly. If Tori hadn’t been home for who knew who long—maybe since she first showed up at Flaxstone—then her aunt and uncle probably didn’t know she was working for the earl. Or that she had stayed so close to home. How much would she forgive him for giving away?

  ‘We were visiting a property that our...boss is looking to invest in, up at the north of the moors.’ That was neutral enough, wasn’t it? ‘Tori didn’t mention that she had family so close though, or I’d have suggested we stop by without the snow forcing us on you.’

  Henry barked a laugh at that. ‘Which is exactly why she wouldn’t tell you, I’d wager.’

  ‘She does like to keep her cards very close to her chest.’ Jasper watched Henry carefully, looking for the right way in, to get the man to tell him something, anything, that would explain the strange feeling that had settled over the place since they’d arrived.

  There was so much to this story that he didn’t know. And Jasper hated not being in full possession of all the facts, always had. Especially since everything had gone down with Juliet, and he’d discovered that everyone else in his world had known a lot of truths about her that he, as her boyfriend, also should have known—but hadn’t. How could he possibly make good decisions if he didn’t know what he was basing them on? Telling Juliet he loved her, for instance, had been a spectacularly bad one.

  Especially since it had turned out she had been in love with his friend Fred, and everyone else had known it. At nineteen, it had seemed the worst thing that could possibly happen to a guy.

  But right now, he wasn’t thinking about the past. He was trying to decide how far he could push Tori to tell him her story. To let him in.

  Maybe it was just the residual instinct to push at those walls of hers, that instinct that had plagued him since they were both barely more than teenagers. Or maybe it was something more—the sadness in her eyes that he’d only really noticed since his return. Or the way she bristled whenever he said anything at all...

  Whatever it was, he needed to solve the puzzle of Tori Edwards. And here was her uncle, holding the key.

  But all Henry said was, ‘She has her reasons. Heaven knows the girl has never talked when she doesn’t want to. She’d always run away instead, even as a child. Hide in the strangest of places, until...well, until someone found her. Now, are you done with those boxes?’

  Jasper nodded, his mind occupied
with Henry’s words. And the certainty that he’d been about to say a name there, when he was talking about who usually found her. What had stopped him?

  Or rather, who?

  ‘Let’s carry these up, then.’ Henry hoisted the first, heavy tray of ploughman’s lunch into his arms, and Jasper followed suit with the second. ‘We’ll come back for the soup.’

  ‘If my arms can take it,’ Jasper muttered, staggering a little on the stairs. But he knew he’d do whatever Henry told him to, really.

  He’d do whatever it took to unravel the mystery of Tori Edwards.

  * * *

  The advantage of being on home turf was that Tori knew all the best hiding places. Add in the associated chaos of having far too many people crammed into the building, all needing something all the time, and keeping busy enough to avoid any difficult discussions with Aunt Liz and Uncle Henry, or questions she didn’t want to answer from Jasper, was almost too easy.

  Henry had sought her out as she’d laid down bedding in the restaurant. He’d watched her from the doorway for a moment or two, she suspected, before she’d turned around and spotted him. Then, he’d thrown his arms around her and held her tight, whispering into her hair that it was good to have her home.

  He’d smelled of spicy vegetable soup and the Moorside kitchens, and the scent was so familiar she could almost believe that she’d never gone away at all. Then he’d stepped away and headed back to the bar without another word, and suddenly she felt every inch of the gulf between her and her family all over again.

  A gulf created by her own secrets, and their shared loss.

  It had been eight years. Eight years since Tyler died, eight years since she left. Was it time to tell them the truth about why? Tori knew in her heart she wouldn’t. Too many painful memories for them all. The best outcome she could hope for if she did tell them about the last few months of Tyler’s life was that she’d end up tarnishing their memories of him, as well as giving them more reasons to be angry with her. Nobody won anything that way.

  Better to keep all those secrets inside, where they couldn’t hurt anyone but her.

  At least, with so many people crowded in eating their soup and ploughman’s, there was no need for a sit-down family meal and all the awkwardness that would follow—as much as Tori would have loved one of Henry’s home-cooked meals. She smiled at the sight of Jasper handing out soup from behind the bar, for all the world like one of the college students Liz and Henry used to hire to help out over the summer, before Tyler and then Tori were old enough to take their place.

  There were about nine groups of people staying at the Moorside, she counted, watching over the bar. Mostly families of three or four, although there was one multigenerational set of seven, too. A couple of couples, and two sole business people—and Jasper and Tori.

  She hoped they had enough beds.

  As one of the children in the family nearest to her started yawning, then nodding off into her apple slices, Tori crouched down next to them and asked if they’d like to be taken through to get settled in one of the bedrooms. The largest guest room at the front of the inn would just about fit them all, she decided, and it made sense for those with younger kids to have the actual bedrooms.

  The parents smiled gratefully and, clearing their dishes to the bar, followed her up the rickety stairs to the guest rooms.

  Tori made a point of not looking down the narrow corridor that led to the family rooms as they passed. For all she knew, Liz and Henry might have converted her tiny single room—and Tyler’s slightly larger room, for that matter—into more guest accommodation, or even an office for Liz to do paperwork in. She’d never know, because she wasn’t going to ask and she definitely wasn’t going to go and look.

  Too many memories down that corridor.

  By the time she made it back downstairs, Liz had already shown most of the other guests to rooms upstairs, or to the makeshift dormitory in the restaurant. Jasper was wiping down the bar, and Henry was pouring himself a pint.

  Tori’s heart contracted at the familiar sight of her aunt and uncle going about their evening, as if nothing had changed in the last eight years. Or even the last day, as the inn had been invaded by stranded travellers. Even Jasper seemed strangely at home in a place she could never even have imagined seeing him before today.

  ‘Well, I’d better go grab a bedroll in the restaurant before they’re all gone,’ Tori said, as cheerfully as she could. It was late, they were all tired. Surely no one would call her out on wanting to avoid Awkward Question and Family time right now, would they?

  But Liz, glancing up from wiping down tables, gave her an odd look. ‘I’ve kept your old room free for you and Jasper,’ she said. ‘I know it’s not big, but it’ll be more private than sleeping with the hordes in the restaurant.’

  ‘Quieter too,’ Henry added. ‘Some of those kids had a real set of lungs on them.’

  Tori had heard. She’d hoped that if she couldn’t sleep, as she often couldn’t, the sound of the kids’ shrieks would at least distract her from her own thoughts.

  But now it seemed all she’d have to distract her was Jasper. And she knew from past experience that he could be far too distracting by half.

  ‘Jasper and I are just work colleagues, Aunt Liz,’ she said, in case her family had got the wrong idea. Whatever else they’d shared once, briefly, it was long gone. And whatever she thought she’d seen in him that night, she knew now she’d only imagined it. She was pretty certain he’d have spent the last five years flirting with any woman who caught his eye, seducing plenty of them and then moving on. Just as he’d done with her, and plenty of others before her.

  Her love life was depressing enough without adding ‘fell for Jasper’s seduction line and got abandoned twice’ to her romantic résumé.

  ‘That’s what I told them,’ Jasper said, with a shrug. ‘But to be honest, at this point, a bed is a bed and I’m knackered.’ He tossed his towel over the rail on the bar, raised the section of wood to let himself out, then crossed towards her. ‘So, lead on, roomie.’ He flashed her an obnoxious grin that was both annoying and weirdly reassuring. Everything else felt wrong and out of step tonight, but at least Jasper was still Jasper.

  Tori wasn’t sure she should find that as comforting as she did.

  She just hoped that when Liz and Henry had renovated the room they’d added bunk beds, or something. Otherwise they were in for a very awkward night indeed.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘I COULD SLEEP on the floor,’ Jasper said, eyeing the bed with annoyance. Was it even a full single? It didn’t look it. To be honest, it didn’t look all that much more comfortable than the wooden floor beside it, but he supposed at least with shared body heat it might be warmer. The ancient stone walls of the Moorside Inn didn’t seem to do much in the way of retaining heat, this far from the fire roaring in the grate downstairs in the bar. Even this tiny bedroom—not much wider than the bed itself, and with space for just a small bookcase and chair at the end, by the door—was icy cold.

  ‘If you freeze to death on my watch your father will fire me,’ Tori said, ever practical.

  ‘Nice to know my well-being is of such great personal concern to you,’ Jasper replied. At least she was still being snarky. He’d be really worried about her, otherwise.

  Oh, who was he kidding? He was worried about her anyway.

  Back home at Flaxstone Tori was always aloof but in control. Here, at the Moorside Inn, she seemed...jumpy. As if she was dashing from one thing to the next so she didn’t have to stop and look around, take anything in.

  Or talk to her family.

  Yeah, he could totally get that part of it. It was pretty much exactly what he’d been doing since he came home, too. His father didn’t deserve his time or attention. And as for his mother...he just didn’t know what to say to her. How much she already knew, or, if she did know, how she felt
about the discovery that her husband’s illegitimate son had been living under her roof since he was born. He needed to have a proper conversation with her, soon, but his mum had always lived stubbornly in her own world, one that was extinct outside her mind, and Jasper knew he had to time it properly.

  Which only really left him Tori to talk to at all. Well, Tori and Felix, but one of those two had lied to him for the last decade and a bit, so he was fine with ignoring him too.

  But he couldn’t exactly ignore Tori. Not when they were sharing a bed the size of a postage stamp for the night.

  ‘I mean it,’ he said, not meaning it at all. ‘I can take the floor.’

  Tori looked over her shoulder at him, halfway through stripping off her suit jacket. ‘Look,’ she said, with a weary sigh. ‘Nothing that has happened since we left Stonebury has been exactly...optimal, but it’s where we are. Let’s just get through it, get out of here tomorrow, and pretend this whole day never happened, okay? Even the part where we have to share my childhood bed to make sure neither of us catches pneumonia.’

  Okay, now he was really worried about her. She wasn’t even protesting at the idea of having to share the bed with him. This was not the Tori he knew.

  The Tori he knew would have stolen his coat as an extra pillow then shoved him onto the floor.

  This was actually getting a bit unnerving now.

  Cautiously, Jasper stripped off his jumper, shirt and jeans, leaving his T-shirt and boxers on for Tori’s sake. And warmth. In fact, he was reconsidering the jumper; it was absolutely freezing in this room.

  ‘How did you make it through childhood without freezing to death in here?’ he asked, turning back to find Tori already tucked up under the covers, holding them close to her chin.

  She shrugged, the brightly patterned duvet moving with her shoulders. ‘Mum and I didn’t move in until I was eight. I guess I was past the delicate stage by then.’

  Jasper wasn’t sure if she realised it, but that was the most she’d ever told him about her life before Flaxstone.