PROLOGUE

      SOMETHING—the sight of his last living relative’s face, perhaps—brought Edmund back from the no-man’s land separating life from death.

      In an all too brief moment of lucidity the old man begged, ‘I don’t want to see it sold. Don’t let them take it away from me, my boy.’

      ‘Take what, Grandfather?’

      ‘The Spindrift Island property.’ Edmund clutched his grandson’s hand, agitation lending him fleeting strength. ‘Flora doesn’t understand what it meant to your grandmother. She’ll let them take it unless you put a stop to it.’

      It was Nick’s first inkling that such a possibility existed. ‘Who are “they”?’ he asked, appalled.

      But Flora, who he knew had been hovering outside the door, eavesdropping as she always did whenever he spent time alone with his grandfather, fluttered into the room and told him that it wasn’t good for Edmund to get so stirred up.

      ‘Stay out of this, Flora!’ Nick snapped, his patience at an end. “This isn’t any of your business.’

      ‘Yes, it is,’ she protested quaveringly. ‘I need to talk to you privately, Nick.’

      ‘Later,’ he snapped, and turned back to his grandfather. But it was too late. Edmund was already slipping back to that murky other world. ‘Politicians,’ he muttered vaguely, ‘they’re all crooks. Never trust them, my boy. They line their pockets on other men’s misery…’

      Nick waited until his grandfather slept again, then ushered Flora into the day-salon with rather less courtesy than was acceptable in her social circles. ‘What the hell is this all about, Flora?’

      She dissolved into fat tears on the spot, which merely increased his ire. He hated women who resorted to crying in order to blackmail a man and bring him to heel.

      ‘We’ve run out of money,’ she wailed.

      ‘Don’t be daft,’ he replied unsympathetically. ‘Even you can’t have gone through Edmund’s entire fortune.’

      But the devil of it was, she had. Almost to the last red cent. Certainly to the point that for over five years the property taxes hadn’t been paid on the Spindrift Island summer place.

      ‘The local council’s going to take it away from us unless we pay,’ Flora bawled. ‘And that’s not all. They’re going to sell it for just enough to cover the debt. But your grandfather gets so upset whenever I try to explain that I’ve stopped talking to him about it.’

      At first Nick didn’t believe her. Couldn’t believe that Edmund’s wealth had been depleted to the point where something as basic as tax had gone unpaid. But, when he started delving into the accumulation of papers on the desk in his grandfather’s study, the truth became woefully apparent. Poor old Edmund was on the brink of bankruptcy.

      Nick couldn’t stand idly by and let that happen. So he did the only thing he could to prevent it.