CHAPTER ONE

      AMBER was preoccupied as she inserted the key in the front door. She was thinking of business, as was often the case these days. Amazing, really, how much she was enjoying running the family company. More amazing was the fact that she was pretty good at it.

      Okay, so she hadn’t quite filled her father’s shoes as yet, but their accountant had commented only today that Hollingsworths was looking healthier than ever.

      When Amber turned the key and pushed open the front door, she didn’t notice her stepmother standing there in the foyer, waiting for her.

      ‘Lord, Beverly!’ Amber exclaimed, once she did. ‘You gave me a fright. I didn’t see you there.’

      ‘Your father wants to see you,’ her stepmother announced, her tone terse. ‘Straight away.’

      ‘What about?’ Amber asked.

      ‘I have no idea.’ Beverly stared at her with cold eyes, blinked once, very slowly, then turned, just as slowly, and walked off.

      Amber barely resisted pulling a face. Instead, she smothered a sigh and strode across the spacious foyer and down the wide hallway which bisected the right wing of the house, stopping at the first door on the right.

      The room inside had once been her father’s study, an impressive and very masculine room which had suited its owner and occupier. Twelve months ago, after her father’s stroke, it had been converted into a bedroom with a private bathroom. The room opposite the study, once a billiard room, had also been converted—into quarters for her father’s live-in male nurse-cum-companion-cum-physio.

      Amber’s knock was hesitant. Not so the ‘come in’ which roared through the door. Surprisingly, her father’s stroke hadn’t affected his speech, or his deep, loud voice. Just occasionally Amber wasn’t sure if she thought this fortunate or not.

      Gathering herself, she opened the door and walked in.

      ‘Hi, there, Dad,’ she said breezily. ‘You wanted to see me?’

      Dear heaven, would she never get used to seeing his once strong, tanned face looking so gaunt and pale? Or the wheelchair at the foot of the bed? Or that thin, withered leg which Bill was at that moment massaging quite vigorously?

      ‘Hi, there, Bill.’ She directed her words towards her father’s minder. Bill was a big, bald, plain man in his late thirties. He had a placid nature, which was just as well. ‘How’s the patient?’ Amber asked him. ‘He’s sounding a bit grumpy.’

      ‘The patient’s spitting chips, girlie,’ her father jumped in, while Bill merely shrugged and continued the massage. ‘So don’t try talking around me. It won’t work. Leave it, Bill,’ he said irritably, and yanked his near-dead limb away from Bill’s hold. It dropped onto the bed with a hollow-sounding thud. ‘Go and get yourself a drink or something. I have serious business to discuss with Sunrise Point’s Businesswoman-of-the-Year, here.’

      Bill shrugged again and left the room. He was used to his patient’s irascibility. Edward Hollingsworth was not the sort of man to take meekly to inactivity. He was a mover and a shaker. A doer, even at sixty-two years old. Being partially paralysed and lying round in bed most of his day did little for his temper.

      ‘I take it you haven’t seen this week’s local paper?’ Edward Hollingsworth snarled, and leant over to snatch up the newspaper from where it was lying on the pillow next to him. ‘I dare say you haven’t, or you wouldn’t have been looking so pleased with yourself as you came in. Bill always gets me the first copy hot off the press, but shortly all the people in Sunrise will be taking their copies out of their postboxes and learning over their evening meals that Edward Hollingsworth is a ruthless, greedy bastard, and that his daughter is a chip off the old block!’

      ‘What?’ Amber gasped.

      ‘Here, read it yourself!’ he growled, and shoved the paper forward. She took it and sank down on the side of the huge bed. The headlines brought another gasp to her lips: ‘WIDOW DECLARES WAR ON HOLLINGSWORTHS!’ And then in smaller print...

      Mrs Pearl Sinclair, 79, of Sinclair Farm, Potts Road, told the Sunrise Gazette this week that Hollingsworths is trying to pressure her into selling her home and her land to them. ‘It’s a disgrace!’ she told the Gazette. ‘A scandal! I don’t want to sell. I’m a war widow. I came to live here as a new bride nearly sixty years ago. I had my son and daughter here. All my memories are here. This is my home. How can you put a price on memories? Or a home? Hollingsworths say they need it for the car park of their new shopping centre and cinema complex. That it’s the only suitable site. But I say that’s rubbish. Edward Hollingsworth owns half the coast around here. Let him build his shopping centre somewhere else. I am not going to be bullied into selling him my home!

      ‘And as far as that daughter of his is concerned—you can tell Amber Hollingsworth from me that I won’t be emotionally blackmailed into selling, either. I see now what she was trying to do when she came to my house the other day and sat here in my kitchen and drank my tea and pretended to be nice to me. She was just trying to soft-soap me, giving me all that rubbish about wanting to do good for the town. When did any Hollingsworth ever do good for this town? Edward Hollingsworth only ever cared about doing good for himself. I can’t see any daughter of his being any better!

      ‘I dare say they’ll offer me even more money now. But they can offer me the world and my answer will be the same. No! A resounding no! You tell the Hollingsworth family that from me. And if Amber Hollingsworth comes here again, trying to con me with her sweet smiles and pretty ways, I’ll set my dog onto her! I’ll have you know that Rocky here was banned from racing because he was a fighter, and he’s a very vicious