CHAPTER ONE

      ‘WOULD all visitors please leave the ship immediately,’ came the call along the corridors of the SS Sea Countess. ‘We will be departing in five minutes.’

      ‘That means me, I guess.’ Carolyn sighed and stood up from where she’d been sitting in one of the cabin’s luxurious armchairs. She walked across the deep-pile blue carpet and bent to kiss the cheek of the very attractive blonde woman sitting on the side of the bed.

      ‘Have a wonderful honeymoon, Mum,’ she said softly. ‘You deserve it.’

      ‘Thank you, darling,’ Isabel murmured in return, and cast a shy, almost blushing glance at her husband of three hours.

      Carolyn smiled with approval as she turned to face her stepfather, who had also risen from his chair. Fifty-two and going bald, Julian Thornton was not a particularly handsome man. But he had a fine build and intelligent grey eyes, as well as a kind and patient nature. He was, in Carolyn’s opinion, just the sort of man to make her mother happy.

      ‘As for you, Step-papa,’ she said, giving him a kiss also, ‘I think you’re very naughty depriving me of my mother’s company for two whole months. Just as well you’re leaving me your lovely car to drive around in or I might have been cross.’

      He chuckled. ‘Mind you look after it.’

      ‘Carolyn?’

      The plaintive note in her mother’s voice had her swinging sharply around. ‘Yes, Mum?’ Hard to keep the worry out of her voice. Surely nothing was going to go wrong now!

      ‘Did... did I pack that new hairdryer we had to buy? I just can’t remember...’

      Carolyn tried to ignore the instant jab of dismay. She knew her mother’s memory could still be faulty, but she’d been so much better lately and Carolyn had hoped...

      Suppressing a sigh, she said brightly, ‘It’s safely packed. We put all your toiletries and accoutrements in here.’ Moving briskly, she picked up the smallest of the green leather suitcases lying against the wall and carried it over to place it gently on the bed beside her mother.

      Julian stepped up to the foot of the bed. ‘Why don’t you start unpacking, love,’ he suggested to his bride, ‘while I see my charming stepdaughter off the ship?’

      ‘All right.’ Isabel’s voice carried that vaguely resigned compliance Carolyn always hated hearing in her once strong-minded mother.

      Biting her bottom lip, she was unsure all of a sudden if her mother was in a fit state to be anybody’s wife, even a man as understanding as Julian.

      ‘Come along, Carolyn.’ His voice was firm. ‘We don’t want you sailing with us, do we? Honeymoons are meant for two, not three.’

      She glanced up and saw the bittersweet understanding in his face. ‘Coming. Bye, Mum.’ She gave her mother another parting peck, picked up her bag from the small table near the door and dashed from the room before she did anything stupid like cry.

      ‘Don’t worry about her so much,’ Julian urged as they walked along the corridor and up the narrow stairway. ‘She’s tired, that’s all. It’s been a long day.’

      Carolyn shook her head. ‘You’re so patient with her. So...good.’

      ‘I love her.’

      ‘Yes...’ Carolyn swallowed and tried not to think of her mother’s words when Julian had first asked her to marry him six months ago.

      ‘But I...I don’t love him. I mean, I like him a lot and he’s very kind, but...’

      Isabel had turned him down, but Julian was persistent, and Carolyn had to admit that her mother had sincerely warmed to him over the next three months, so much so that, when Julian had asked her again, she had said yes. Nevertheless, Carolyn was sure that their relationship had not yet become a sexual one; a fact which worried her slightly, in the circumstances...

      ‘Carolyn.’ Julian stopped beside the gangway and turned to take her hands in his. His grey eyes were steely as they peered down into her own frowning blue ones. ‘Let me give you a bit of advice. You’re only twenty-four years old, yet you’ve spent almost ten years being a mother to your own mother. And, while I admire what you’ve done enormously, it’s time you got on with your own life. Your mother’s my responsibility now. You have to let go of the apron strings, cut them or you’ll ruin your own life, as surely as Isabel once almost ruined hers with her exaggerated sense of responsibility.’