CONTENTS

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      CHAPTER TWELVE

      CHAPTER THIRTEEN

      CHAPTER FOURTEEN

      EPILOGUE

      CHAPTER ONE

      ‘I DON’T want you to go.’

      Marina looked up from her suitcase and shook her head at the sulky expression on her fiancé’s face.

      ‘Please don’t start that again, Shane. I have to go. Surely you can see that?’

      ‘No, I can’t,’ he snapped. ‘It’s only three weeks till the wedding and here you are swanning off to the other side of the world on some wild-goose chase. There’s no guarantee that your bone marrow will save that little girl’s life. You’re probably just getting their hopes up for nothing.’

      ‘Firstly, I will only be away a week at the most,’ Marina pointed out, impatience only a breath away. ‘Secondly, I happen to be a near perfect match. Not only in blood, but in tissue type. Do you know how rare that is?’

      ‘I’m sure you’ll tell me,’ he said sourly. ‘You’re the smart one around here.’

      Marina frowned at his tone of voice, and at the indication behind his words. This was a side to Shane she’d never seen before.

      There again, she considered slowly, she’d never crossed him before. After her mother’s death a couple of months ago she’d been more than happy to accept the warm hand of friendship and support Shane had offered, more than happy to have someone there to make all the funeral arrangements and give her a shoulder to cry on. Her usually decisive and strong-willed character had failed her entirely during that grief-stricken time. Shane had been strong when she’d felt weak, kind and thoughtful when that was what she’d needed most.

      That his kindness had ended up in his bed had probably been inevitable. He was an attractive man and she was, after all, so terribly lonely. Her satisfaction with his lovemaking had not been quite so inevitable, given her uninspiring sexual history. The pleasure he’d given her had stunned her, so much so that she’d believed herself in love at last. When he’d asked her to marry him a month ago, she’d said yes.

      Now she stared at him. His face was not so handsome as he scowled at her. His eyes not so kind, either. They were cold and angry.

      ‘I had no idea how much you resented my being a teacher,’ she said, covering her distress behind a cool tone. ‘If you imagine I think you’re in any way inferior to me because you work with your hands, then I don’t.’

      Shane had been her mother’s right-hand man in the riding and dressage school she’d run on the outskirts of Sydney. Although a high school drop-out, Shane was far from dumb. When Marina’s mother had hired him a good few years back, the then twenty-five-year-old had known everything there was to know about matters equestrian. He’d got along with Marina’s mother like a house on fire because they had a passion in common: the passion for horses.

      Marina quite liked horses, and she’d learnt to ride adequately enough, but she’d never been obsessed by the showjumping scene, as her mother and Shane were. She’d always quite liked Shane too, but he’d been standoffish in her presence—till her mother’s illness and death had changed the status quo between them.

      After they’d become engaged, Marina had told Shane that the school and the horses were his to do with whatever he liked.

      She wondered now if he loved the school and horses more than he loved her.

      Or if he loved her at all…

      ‘Maybe our getting married is not such a good idea,’ she said quietly. ‘We did rush into it a bit.’

      He was around the bed and taking her in his arms before she could say boo. But his hard, hungry kisses left her cold. Shane stopped after a while and held her at arm’s length. This time his expression was full of apology and remorse.

      ‘You’re angry with me,’ he said. ‘And you’ve every right to be. I was being bloody selfish. Of course you have to go. Of course. It’s just that I’m going to miss you terribly, sweetheart.’ He released her arms to cup her chin and lift her mouth for him to kiss again. Softly this time. And sweetly.

      Marina had to admit to a moment of melting. These new sexual responses of hers could be very disarming. And perhaps not always in her best interests, came the astonishing realisation.

      ‘I’m really going to miss this beautiful mouth of yours,’ Shane murmured. ‘There again, everything about you is so beautiful. Your eyes. Your skin. Your hair. Your breasts.’ His hands lifted to stroke them through her shirt and she was dismayed at the way they responded, as though they weren’t connected with her brain.

      ‘I’ve always wanted you, Marina,’ he insisted, with a thickened quality to his voice. ‘From the first moment I saw you. But your mother warned me right from the start that I could look, but not touch. Her little princess was not for the likes of me.’

      Marina was not really surprised by this news. Her mother had been a very contradictory person. British-born and bred, she’d apparently defied her wealthy, upper-crust parents to run off to Australia with a colonial stablehand. She’d been told never to darken their doorstep again. Which she hadn’t.

      Her bitterness over their attitude had been such that she’d never spoken of her English ancestors to her daughter, and had forbidden Marina to ever seek them out.

      One would have thought she’d bring up Marina to despise this kind of snobbery and hypocrisy. And she had, in a way. But at the same time, perversely, she’d tried to turn her only daughter into a right little madam, with all the associated refinements and manners. Marina had been given ballet lessons, piano lessons and speech and drama lessons, not to mention the obligatory riding and dressage lessons.

      It hadn’t really worked. Marina might