CHAPTER ONE

      A LIGHT drizzle started falling soon after the road began its long winding route up the Blue Mountains. Hannah flicked on the windscreen wipers and glanced over at her passenger.

      He was still sleeping, thank heavens. The drive from Sydney up to the cottage was difficult enough at the best of times. On a Friday evening, in the dark and in the rain, it was downright dangerous.

      Her hands tightened on the steering-wheel, her stomach muscles following suit. What in hell was she doing? Common sense told her to turn round and go back, take Jack home, confess all and throw herself on his mercy.

      I’m terribly, terribly sorry, she could hear herself saying. I don’t know what came over me, but of course I’m not your fiancee. Just a very worried secretary who simply couldn’t let that cold-hearted ambitious bitch take you for another ride. When that tile fell on your head this morning and you lost the last six weeks from your memory—including your whirlwind romance—I thought at first that might be the end of Felicia. But then a nurse at the hospital said a fiancee had been mentioned and would I please call her. In my mind’s eye I saw Felicia swanning in and winning you all over again with her looks and her lies, so before I knew it I’d opened my stupid mouth and said I was your fiancee.

      Hannah’s heart almost jumped into her mouth when Jack shifted in his seat and muttered something under his breath. She sighed with relief when he settled back again, his head lolling to one side, his eyes still shut.

      God, for a second there, she thought she’d been speaking out loud instead of in her head. As much as common sense kept ringing warning bells over her reckless deception, no way was she going to heed them.

      She didn’t care if she lost her job over this.

      And she probably would.

      Hannah was determined that till Jack got his memory back—the doctor had said that that could happen at any time during the next few days—the only person with him would be herself. She was determined to keep that two-timing witch out of the picture till she could tell Jack the whole appalling truth about the woman he’d been going to marry at the end of the month.

      As it stood, dear Felicia was probably at this very moment fuming over the fax from Jack saying that he was having second thoughts about their engagement, and that he was going away for a few days to think things over. The fax also added that she was not to try to contact him, and that he would contact her when he returned.

      Any guilt Hannah felt over doing such an outrageous thing, including forging Jack’s name, was cancelled when she thought of what she had discovered last night. That woman deserved no consideration. None at all.

      Hannah shuddered to think how close she had come to not going to Jack’s engagement party and finding out the truth. She’d arrived home from work yesterday to be greeted by her final divorce papers in the mail, which hadn’t exactly put her in the mood for partying. She’d literally had to force herself to dress, then drive down to Kirribilli, where the party was being held in a fancy high-rise unit overlooking the harbour, courtesy of a property developer friend of Jack’s.

      Even before knowing what she knew now, Hannah had harboured misgivings about Jack’s choice of bride. She’d only met Felicia a couple of times in a very casual way at the office, but she had just known the woman wasn’t right for Jack.

      It wasn’t jealousy on her part. Hannah had only been Jack’s secretary for a little over a year, and there was nothing between them but a strictly work-related relationship. Her feelings for Jack Marshall stopped firmly at liking, respect and gratitude. Oh, yes.. .she was grateful to him. Very grateful.

      When she’d applied for the job as private secretary to the boss of Marshall Homes, Hannah had honestly thought she hadn’t stood a chance. Good Lord, it had been years since she had used her secretarial skills outside