CHAPTER ONE

      COURAGE just managed to stop herself making the betrayingly nervous gesture of smoothing down the skirt of her suit—a copy of a Chanel design she had had made up in Hong Kong for a tenth of the cost of the original—not that there was anyone else in the room to witness any potential breach in her composure. She was, it seemed, the final candidate to be interviewed for the post of household comptroller to the millionaire businessman Gideon Reynolds.

      In normal circumstances she would not have been anything like this nervous; she had faced far stiffer interviews than this one in her career. But she had never wanted a job—any job—as desperately as she did this one. And it made no difference reminding herself that she was qualified for it—too well-qualified in many ways. The talents and training of an award-winning management executive of a chain of prestige European conference-centre hotels did not transfer very well to the job opportunities of a sleepy Dorset market town.

      She had spent the last week working part-time stacking the shelves at a local supermarket and very glad of the money she had earned there she had been, as well.

      The trouble was that the hotel trade, even at her relatively high level, did not pay particularly well. In the past that had not mattered; in the past her love of her work and the perks that went with it—free travel, the opportunity to meet new people, rent-free accommodation—had more than compensated for her smallish salary, but then in the past she had not had to worry about supporting anyone other than herself. In the past she had not had hanging over her the fact that her darling, beloved grandmother was soon going to be desperately in need of her help, not just financially but potentially physically as well.

      Her employers had been very understanding, allowing her to terminate her employment with them without any notice—trust Gran not to let her know what was going on, not to want to worry her. It had been her GP—an old family friend—who had got in touch with Courage privately. Not even Gran knew the real extent of the damage to her heart and the frailty of her health.

      ‘But there must be something you can do,’ Courage had frantically protested to her grandmother’s doctor, her body taut with shock and fear.

      ‘Yes. We can operate to replace the damaged tissue, but the waiting-list for that kind of operation is at least two years. Your grandmother is a very strong woman, but she is in her sixties. Her condition is extremely severe, and another two years…’

      Courage bit her lip. She couldn’t bear the thought of losing her gran—or of seeing her in pain, suffering… Not Gran, who had always been so full of energy and optimism, who had been the steadfast rock of her own life, holding her close and safe, giving her the gift of self-worth, of knowing how much she was loved at a time when…

      ‘What do you mean you’ve come home?’ her grand-mother had demanded when she had arrived unannounced. ‘What about your work—your career?’

      ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ Courage had fibbed breezily, fingers crossed behind her back. ‘I had quite a bit of leave owing to me, and to be honest with you, Gran, I was already thinking about taking a break, giving myself some thinking time to evaluate where I’m going and what I want. The company have offered me the job of running their new Hong Kong conference centre and…’

      ‘And what?’ Her grandmother had demanded fiercely. ‘It’s the opportunity you’ve always wanted, what you’ve worked for…’

      ‘In some ways,’ Courage had agreed. ‘And had it been anywhere else but Hong Kong they