MILLS & BOON

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      CONTENTS

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER ONE

      ‘THINGS are really that bad? But why on earth didn’t you tell me?’ Georgie’s sea-green eyes were wide with shock as she stared into her brother’s troubled face. ‘I could have helped in some way.’

      ‘How?’ Robert Millett shook his blond head slowly. ‘You couldn’t have done anything, Georgie, no one could, and there was still an element of hope before that last contract was pulled out from under our feet. Old man Sanderson really ducked and dived for that one. But, as he’s so fond of saying, all’s fair in love and war.’

      Georgie’s smooth brow wrinkled in an angry frown. Mike Sanderson was a mean old man and she wouldn’t trust him as far as she could throw him, and as she was a tiny, slender five foot four to Mike’s burly six foot that wouldn’t be far! ‘He’s an out-and-out crook,’ she stated tightly. ‘I just don’t know how he can sleep at night with some of the tricks he pulls.’

      ‘Georgie, Georgie, Georgie.’ Robert pulled his sister into his arms and hugged her for a moment before pushing her away and looking down into her flushed face. ‘We both know Mike’s not to blame for the mess I’m in. I had to make some choices over the last months when Sandra was so ill, and even now I know I made the right ones. I don’t regret a thing. If the business fails, it fails.’

      ‘Oh, Robert.’ This was so unfair. When Robert had discovered his beloved wife, Sandra, was suffering from a rare blood disorder that meant she only had a few months to live, he had devoted himself to making her last days happy ones, and taking care of their seven-year-old twins, David and Annie, and trying to shield them from as much pain as possible as their mother slowly faded away. Sandra and Robert had told no one the true state of affairs—not even Georgie had known Sandra’s illness was terminal until four weeks before she had died.

      That had been six months ago, and immediately she had understood what was happening. Georgie had packed her bags and left her wonderful, well-paid job in advertising and high-tailed it back to the family home to take some of Robert’s burden in the last traumatic weeks of Sandra’s illness.

      She hadn’t had to think twice about such a step—Robert and Sandra had opened their arms to her when, as a bewildered little girl of ten and newly orphaned, she had needed love and care. Now, thirteen years later, it was her turn to repay the tenderness and warmth they had lavished on her, which hadn’t diminished a jot when their own children were born.

      ‘What about the de Capistrano deal? They’ve already offered us the contract, haven’t they? And the rewards would be brilliant.’ Sandra had run the office side of Robert’s building firm before she had become ill, and after a succession of temps had muddled through Georgie had had her work cut out the last few months to make sense of the paperwork. It didn’t help that after the funeral Robert had retreated into a world of his own for some time, the strain of being Sandra’s mainstay and support, as well as mother and father to the children, telling at last.

      ‘De Capistrano?’ Robert ran a tired hand through his thick hair, which immediately sprang back to its previous disorder.

      Georgie noticed, with a little pang in her heart, that there were several strands of grey mixed with the honey-gold these days. But then that wasn’t surprising after all her big brother had been through, she thought painfully. They were all of them—David, Annie and herself—missing Sandra like mad, but Sandra had been Robert’s childhood sweetheart and her brother’s grief was overwhelming.

      ‘We’d need to take on more men and hire machinery to make it viable, and the bank’s screaming blue murder already. I had relied on the profit from this other job to finance de Capistrano’s.’

      ‘But we can go and see them and ask at least?’ Georgie’s small chin stuck out aggressively, as though she was already doing battle with the pinstriped brigade. ‘They aren’t stupid. They’ll be able to see the potential, surely?’

      ‘I’d have thought you were dead against the de Capistrano deal after all your “green” rallies and such at uni?’ Robert remarked quietly. ‘Animal rights, save the hedgerows, Greenpeace… You were into them all, weren’t you?’

      Georgie stared at him, her heavily lashed eyes narrowing. Robert had been sixteen years of age when she was born, their parents having long since given up hope of ever having another child. Consequently his attitude had always been paternal, even before the car crash which had taken their parents, and she had often rebelled against his staid and—Georgie considered—prosaic views about a million and one subjects dear to her heart. But now was not the time to go into all that, she reminded herself, as she looked into the blue of his worried eyes.

      ‘That’s a separate issue,’ she said very definitely. ‘If it’s a case of the de Capistrano contract or virtual bankruptcy for you, I’ll take the contract.’

      ‘If they could hear you now…’ Robert summoned up something of a grin—his first one for days—which Georgie took as a good sign.

      ‘They can’t.’ It was succinct. ‘So,