CHAPTER ONE

      IT DIDN’T even begin to look a lot like Christmas.

      In fact as far as Carly could see, when the outboard power boat which served as Conch Cay’s only ferry approached the boat dock, Christmas might as well not exist on the tiny palm-studded island with its haphazard rows of pastel-colored houses climbing the hills that made up the one small town on it.

      There were no Christmas trees for sale on every corner as there were back in New York City. There was no tinsel garland strung along the eaves of the custom house the way there was in the Korean grocery where Carly stopped every night to buy food for supper. There wasn’t even any Salvation Army bell-ringer calling out, ‘Mer-r-r-y Christmas,’ the way he did every morning right outside the publishing house where she worked so that she felt like Scrooge whenever she passed him. It might as easily have been June.

      And thank heavens for that, Carly thought. Actually it was exactly what she’d hoped for, the one—the onlygood thing that coming to Conch Cay was going to accomplish in her life: helping her forget Christmas this year.

      Most years she started December with fervent hopes for the holiday season. Most years she was a great believer in the seasonal joys espoused by popular songs, even if she’d rarely experienced them in her lifetime.

      But this year she didn’t want to think about them. Only three months after her mother’s death, she didn’t want to face Christmas with her stepfather and step-sisters out in Colorado, even though they’d invited her. She didn’t want visual reminders of how wonderful last year had been.

      Maybe in time she would be able to look back on that year without the bittersweet knowledge that her mother’s recent marriage to Roland had made her happy again, but that her happiness had been so shortlived. Maybe in time she could go see Roland and the girls without thinking about what might have been.

      Not now.

      ‘Come home with me,’ John, her sort-of-boyfriend, had suggested when she’d tried to explain her feelings to him.

      But she hadn’t wanted to do that either.

      John was far more serious about their relationship than she was. He wanted marriage.

      Carly had nothing against marriage. She wanted it too, someday. But she wanted love first. She didn’t love John yet. She wasn’t sure she ever would. And she certainly didn’t want to increase his expectations about her feelings for him by letting him take her home to Buffalo for Christmas.

      She didn’t want to be in Conch Cay either.

      But at the moment it seemed like the least of several evils. And, if her boss was to be believed, the one that would at least help her keep food on the table when the holidays were over.

      All she had to do, Diana had said simply, was ‘help Piran St Just finish his book’.

      The notion still had the power to stun her.

      She hadn’t believed it last week when Piran’s younger brother Desmond had showed up in the office. He hadn’t believed it when he’d found out that his ex-stepsister had turned out to be the assistant editor who’d done the line-editing on their last book.

      But it had taken him barely two minutes to turn the circumstances to his advantage.

      ‘Fate,’ Des had proclaimed, looping an arm around her shoulders and giving her a hug. Then he’d turned to Diana, the editorial director. ‘Don’t you think so? After all, who better than Carly to go to Conch Cay and work with Piran in my place? Our sister—’

      ‘Stepsister,’ Carly had corrected him quickly. ‘Exstepsister,’ she’d added.

      ‘Not really,’ Des said. ‘They didn’t get divorced. Dad died.’

      ‘That doesn’t make us related,’ Carly argued, not wanting Diana to misunderstand her relationship to the St Just brothers.

      But