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      CHAPTER ONE

      ‘SOMER, you’re sure you’ll be all right?’

      ‘Daddy, of course I will.’ Soft dimples showed briefly in the delicate, pale skin Somer had often been told was a true Celtic heritage, along with her fine black hair and eyes which changed from stormy grey to glowing amethyst, depending on her mood. Today they glowed an excited violet, her impatience with her father’s concern hastily suppressed as she tried to console him. It was barely three months since she had left school and come home to Scotland and her father was still very obviously bemused by her swift transition from girl-child to woman.

      He had been concerned when she first told him that she and Andrew wanted to get engaged, pointing out that she was only eighteen and knew nothing of life. Much as her own mother must have been at the same age, Somer had countered resolutely, and yet she had been a mother at nineteen. Her father’s face had clouded when she mentioned her mother. It was ten years since she had died, and Somer’s baby brother with her, but Sir Duncan MacDonald had never married again. He had been just another poor Highland laird when he had married Catriona Sefton, but now he was a very wealthy man; a large shareholder in the North Sea’s privately owned Sefton oilfield, named after his wife, and although he didn’t communicate them to Somer, he had all a wealthy father’s fears for his only daughter. He sighed, looking at her, her small, heart-shaped face glowing with excitement and anticipation. Six months ago at Christmas he had been away in the Middle East on business and she had not been able to come home from school. Instead she had accepted an invitation to stay with a school-friend and her family on Jersey and it was there that she had met Andrew Hollister—had met him and fallen wildly in love with him.

      Duncan MacDonald had not yet met his prospective son-in-law. Andrew was in hotel management and worked at an hotel in Jersey. He and Somer had corresponded when she went back to school and Somer had spent Easter with him, returning with the small solitaire engagement ring which she had worn ever since.

      She had wanted to be married straight away but her father had prevailed upon her to wait at least until she was nineteen. Because she loved him she had agreed, and now as she waited to board her plane Somer glanced worriedly at him. Although he had not said so, she sensed that her father did not entirely approve of her engagement. She knew that he thought eighteen was too young to commit herself to marriage, but she knew how she felt about Andrew; knew that their love would last for ever. Her father had forgotten what it was like to be eighteen and so deeply in love that every second apart was unbearable agony. She glanced down at her engagement ring, watching the prisms of light thrown off by the small diamond, remembering how tenderly Andrew had kissed her finger as he slid it into place.

      Boarding school had kept her rather more innocent than most girls her age; the only boys she had met prior to Andrew had been the brothers of school-friends, or boys from a neighbouring boys’ school. Andrew at twenty-four to her eighteen had dazzled her with his easy charm; his warm smile and the careless touch of his fingers against her skin, promising undreamed of delights and yet experienced enough to know that she wasn’t yet quite ready for the intimacies of lovers. They would wait until they were married, he had whispered at Easter, when his passionate kisses had made her take fright, and her heart had swelled with love and gratitude for his understanding.

      But now her father was insisting that they wait until she was nineteen—nine long months away and during that time Andrew could be posted anywhere by his company. The first time they met he had told her of his hopes and plans for the future, unburdening himself to her in a way which had made her feel very grown up. Andrew wanted to own his own hotel, a luxurious Eden catering for the wealthy, preferably in the Caribbean, but he had a long way to go before he reached that goal, he had told Somer ruefully. He had been acting Assistant Manager at the Group’s Jersey hotel for nearly eighteen months and was hoping for an early promotion.

      ‘Just think, we could start our married life in Barbados,’ he had told Somer at Easter, and although she had been thrilled to hear him talk of their life together, there had been pain as well in the knowledge that a posting to Barbados would take her far away from the father she was only just beginning to know. On her return from school her father had suggested that she might care to act as his hostess. His position as head of Sefton Oil involved a great deal of business entertaining, of visiting other oil-producing countries and of entertaining overseas visitors in return, and after her first month at home which had been filled with apprehension and fear Somer had discovered that she actually enjoyed her new role and that she seemed to have a talent for it. Her father’s Aberdeen home was large and gracious