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      All about the author…

       Jacqueline Baird

      Jacqueline was born and raised in Northumbria, U.K. She met her husband when she was eighteen. Eight years later, after many adventures around the world, she came home and married him. They still live in Northumbria and have two grown-up sons.

      Jacqueline’s number one passion is writing. She has always been an avid reader and she had her first success as a writer at the age of eleven, when she won first prize in the Nature Diary of the Year competition at school. But she always felt a little guilty because her diary was more fiction than fact.

      She always loved romance novels and when her sons went to school all day, she thought she would try writing one. She’s been writing for Harlequin Presents ever since, and she still gets a thrill every time a new book is published.

      When Jacqueline is not busy writing, she likes to spend her time traveling, reading and playing cards. She was a keen sailor until a knee injury ended her sailing days, but she still enjoys swimming in the sea when the weather allows.

      She visits a gym three times a week and has made the surprising discovery that she gets some good ideas while doing the mind-numbingly boring exercises on the cycling and weight machines.

      CONTENTS

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      EPILOGUE

      CHAPTER ONE

      JEMMA BARNES, pencil in hand, doodled in the notebook in front of her on the table, paying little attention to the conversation going on around her. Her father, MD of the company Vanity Flair, had insisted that she attend this board meeting now that she was heir to her late Aunt Mary’s estate, and therefore now one of the principal shareholders in the company. She had no idea why he wanted her there—stock flotations and the like were a foreign language to her. In fact, she had enough trouble coping with the monetary side of her own business—as Liz, her best friend and partner in the florist shop they jointly owned in Chelsea, would readily confirm!

      ‘Jemma?’ The strident tones of her father’s voice cut through her reverie. ‘Do you agree?’

      Lifting her head, she realised the dozen or so people around the table were all staring at her. Her amber eyes clashed with the twinkling brown ones of the man opposite—a Mr Devetzi from Greece. Her father had introduced Jemma to him earlier and she rather liked the old man. Apparently he had once met her aunt Mary at her holiday home on the island of Zante—the same place that Jemma had spent her last holiday with her aunt. It wasn’t a holiday she liked to recall for a variety of reasons—one being that her aunt had died a few months later.

      Now a hint of a smile played around the old man’s mouth, and she knew he’d realised from her panicked expression that she had no idea of the question. His smile broadened reassuringly, and with a wink and a nod of his white head he gave her the answer.

      ‘Yes, of course, Father,’ Jemma agreed, and the meeting ended.

      ‘Why on earth didn’t you get in touch with me?’ Luke Devetzi demanded forcibly in Greek, and stared down at his grandfather, lounging back on the sofa with one heavily bandaged ankle propped up on a footstool. ‘You know I would have come the minute you called.’ He raked frustrated fingers through his dark hair. ‘And what are you doing in London anyway? After your last heart scare I seem to recall your doctor forbidding you to travel.’

      ‘Business,’ Theo Devetzi declared bluntly.

      ‘But you retired from the fish business years ago,’ Luke reminded him.

      ‘Not that business. As a matter of fact I did call you six days ago, but I was informed by some woman in your New York office that you had already left for a long weekend in the Hamptons and were not to be disturbed unless it was a dire emergency.’ The old man arched one sardonic eyebrow. ‘As it was only a courtesy call, to tell you I was going to use your London apartment for a few days, I saw no reason to bother you.’

      Luke stifled a grimace, but he had no defence; he had left just such instructions, and he felt guilty as hell. His grandparents had turned their lives upside down thirty-eight years ago when Anna, their only daughter, had got pregnant by a yachtsman visiting the Greek island where they lived. Unwilling to subject Anna and her unborn child to the censure of the small community, they had relocated to Athens, where no one knew them. Then, when Anna had died in childbirth, they had been left to bring Luke up on their own.

      Luke had never known who his biological father was until after he’d graduated from university at the age of twenty-one, with a degree in Business Studies. He had refused to follow his grandfather into the wholesale fish business, instead signing up as assistant purser on a luxury cruise liner. In a fit of temper Theo had declared he was just like his feckless French father—a so-called aristocrat who spent his life sailing around in his yacht seducing young girls. In the ensuing argument Luke had discovered his grandfather had known his father’s name all along.

      Luke had stormed out and gone to find his father. He had discovered the man living on a large estate in France—with his wife and two sons both older than Luke. When Luke had confronted him he had sneered and disowned him with the words, ‘I have had dozens of women in my life, and even if I had been single at the time I would never have married your Greek peasant of a mother.’ Then, with the help of his two equally obnoxious sons, he’d had Luke thrown off his land.

      Luke had gone ahead and joined the cruise liner. There he had struck up a friendship