Table of Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

       CHAPTER SEVEN

       CHAPTER EIGHT

       CHAPTER NINE

       CHAPTER TEN

       Copyright

       CHAPTER ONE

      EDEN knew there was something wrong as soon as she joined her mother and stepfather for drinks before dinner, knew it by the tightness about her mother’s painted mouth and the way her stepfather kept trying to soothe her down. Poor Drew, he didn’t have an easy time of it with his fiery wife.

      She accepted the Martini he held out to her, smiling her gratitude as she waited for the explanation for her mother’s upset. Something was definitely wrong with her; Eden had never seen her so upset.

      ‘Where were you all afternoon?’ her mother demanded to know.

      ‘I was at Cheryl’s playing records,’ she replied dazedly. ‘Why?’

      ‘Because you had a visitor, that’s why.’

      ‘Anyone interesting?’ She sipped her drink.

      ‘Anyone interesting!’ Angela repeated shrilly. ‘Of course it was someone interesting, or I wouldn’t be in this state.’

      Eden frowned at her mother’s agitation. ‘Who was it?’

      ‘Jason Earle!’

      ‘Jason Earle? But I don’t know any Jason Earle.’

      ‘The newspaper man,’ Drew put in before his wife exploded.

      ‘That Jason Earle!’ she whistled through her teeth. To say he was a newspaper man was an understatement. He was one of the most powerful men in the world, controlling a vast section of the media. ‘And you say he came here to see me?’

      ‘Yes! And he looked down his haughty nose at me with his steely grey eyes, ripping me to pieces at a glance.’ The ice rattled in the glass where Angela’s hand trembled with anger. ‘He was so damned arrogant!’

      ‘Calm down, Angela,’ Drew advised. ‘There’s no point in working yourself up about this.’

      ‘No point——’

      ‘Why on earth should he want to see me?’ Eden interrupted her mother’s tirade. ‘I don’t know the man.’

      ‘We haven’t seen any of them since Eden was two years old, and now David Morton has decided——’

      Eden looked startled. ‘What does my grandfather have to do with Jason Earle being here?’

      ‘Everything!’ Angela paced the room in her agitation. ‘After eighteen years he’s decided he would like to see you again, and he’s sent that man over here to try and talk you into it. He says he’s a friend of David’s, but I’m sure he’s been going out with Isobel the last few years.’

      Isobel, Eden knew, was her father’s second wife. She knew the history of her parents’ broken marriage, knew that Graham Morton had been engaged to Isobel Dean until he had met and fell in love with her mother, and that within a few weeks of meeting, her parents had married each other, much to the disgust of Graham’s father, David Morton.

      David Morton had done everything in his power to break up the marriage, wanting his son to marry the daughter of his old friend Russell Dean. He had undermined Angela at every turn, ridiculed her until she could take no more and had issued her husband with an ultimatum—his father or her. He had chosen his father, and had married his former fiancée after his divorce.

      Eden had been two years old at the time of the breakup, and only three when her mother had married Drew. Consequently she had always considered him to be her father, and his family her own. It seemed incredible to her that her real father’s family should suddenly take an interest in her after all this time, that her grandfather should want to actually see her.

      ‘Perhaps he has,’ Drew acknowledged. ‘But he’s here for David Morton, not Isobel.’

      ‘Oh, I know that,’ Angela scorned. ‘Isobel and I never had any time for each other. She always made it clear that she would take my husband from me the first chance she had.’

      ‘That’s past history now,’ Drew said quietly. ‘It’s here and now we have to concern ourselves with. He’s sent this Jason Earle to see us because he would like to meet his granddaughter.’

      ‘Then he should have come himself, it would have made more sense than to send a stranger,’ his wife snapped.

      ‘He’s an old man, Angela, well into his seventies.’

      ‘He would never have come himself no matter what his age,’ she said disgustedly. ‘He wanted to get rid of me so that Graham could marry Isobel, and he had no interest in us once he’d managed to get Eden and myself out of his life. Of course, he had no way of knowing that Graham and Isobel wouldn’t give him any more grandchildren,’ she added with satisfaction. ‘That Eden would be the only true relative he has since Graham died. But I won’t allow Eden to go, Drew. I won’t allow it!’

      Eden frowned. ‘Won’t allow me to go where?’

      ‘To England, of course,’ her mother snapped irritably. ‘Haven’t you been listening to anything I’ve said?’

      ‘Well, yes, but——’

      Suzy, the maid, came in at that moment. ‘Mr Earle is here, Mrs Shaw,’ she informed her employer.

      ‘Well, show him in,’ Angela said abruptly, waiting until the girl had left the room before speaking again. ‘Now you, Drew,’ she hurriedly straightened his tie, ‘you are not to let him daunt you.’

      He gave a short laugh. ‘I have no intention of letting him——’

      ‘You haven’t met him,’ his wife interrupted, standing back to survey him critically. She turned her attention to Eden. ‘And don’t let him force you into agreeing to anything. We have to talk this over as a family.’

      Eden was curious to meet this man who had put her mother into such a fluster. It wasn’t easily done, so he must be quite something.

      ‘Mr Earle,’ Suzy gave a shy smile before disappearing.

      Eden’s first impression was of a tall lithe man, the focal point being a pair of steely grey eyes that flickered over them all with cool disdain. He wasn’t merely handsome, that was too weak a description, he was striking, breathtakingly attractive. Eden was struck dumb by the vitality, the magnetism he emitted.

      He was like no one she had ever seen before, had ever expected to meet, the black dinner suit tailored on to his powerful frame, his linen immaculate. In his mid-thirties, she guessed, with a muscular physique that showed no signs of