MYRNA MACKENZIE never meant to be a writer. Writing was something that mysteriously famous people did, and she didn’t qualify. Still, fate came calling in the form of a writing assignment in sixth grade, so Myrna got out her trusty blue pen, her lined notebook paper, and penned a murder mystery. It was titled something suitably gory and … um … embarrassing (Mackenzie doesn’t remember the title, but thinks The Terrible Mystery of the Bloody Glove would have been about her style back then). The story was a mess, and the box containing that story eventually went missing somewhere between moves (hurray!). But the experience of writing a story turned out to be amazing and wonderful and fun and … you get the picture. She was hooked.

      Years later Mackenzie discovered her true love: writing romances. An award-winning author of over thirty novels, Myrna was born in Campbell, a small town in the Missouri boot-heel. She grew up just outside Chicago, and she and her husband now divide their time between two lakes in Chicago and Wisconsin—both very different and both very beautiful. In addition to writing she loves coffee, hiking, cruising the internet for interesting websites and attempting gardening, cooking and knitting. Readers (and other potential gardeners, cooks, knitters, writers, etc.) can visit Myrna online at www.myrnamackenzie.com, or write to her at PO Box 225, La Grange, IL 60525, USA.

       CHAPTER ONE

      “I HATE to discourage you, but you’re not going to be able to convince Meg to come work for you. And I’m afraid…I’m sorry, but I’m not at liberty to tell you why.”

      That small bit of information was all Etienne Gavard had been able to glean from one of Meg Leighton’s former coworkers. It echoed in his head as he drove his sleek black Porsche into a rundown Chicago neighborhood, located the apartment building he was looking for and pulled into a parking spot two doors down. Not an especially promising situation, but Meg Leighton was the expert he needed to help him complete the near impossible task he’d taken on.

      “So, this is what it’s come to.” He muttered the words as he stared at the dingy building where Ms. Leighton apparently lived. He had crossed the Atlantic and had been driven to following questionable women he’d never met to even more questionable neighborhoods. Do you even know why you’re here or what you’re doing? he wondered.

      Of course, he did. His calendar said that it was June first. Six weeks from the anniversary of the worst day of his life, the day that would haunt him forever but which especially haunted him in June and July. And for the past two summers he’d handled things badly. He’d closed himself off from the world and tried to drink himself into oblivion to forget the death of his wife and the unborn child she had agreed to bear only because she’d thought he needed and wanted a Gavard heir. Not this year. This year he wouldn’t allow himself to sully their memories that way. If he could just get through this one year without losing it…if he could just do one good thing to replace the bad memories…then maybe…

      Well, never mind the maybes. The truth was that he’d built an empire saving dying companies and he was good at what he did, maybe even better since the tragedy and what had followed had led him to decide that this job would be his only life and love, his only world from now on. And this year, to keep himself sane, he would attempt the impossible. He’d located a company so far gone that it seemed beyond saving, one where no one cared that it was going under other than the people who worked there. Attempting to breathe life into it would take up all his time. He wouldn’t have time to think about the past.

      One