CHAPTER ONE

      LAUREL SOMMERS STEPPED back from the road as a London taxi sped past through the puddle at the edge of the kerb, splashing icy water over her feet, and decided this was all her father’s fault, really.

      Well, the fact that she was stuck in London, waiting in the freezing cold for a car to take her back to where she should be—Morwen Hall, the gothic stately home turned five-star hotel in the countryside an hour and a half’s drive out of the city—was clearly Melissa’s fault. But if their father hadn’t wanted to have his cake and eat it for their entire childhoods then her half-sister probably wouldn’t hate her enough to make her life this miserable.

      Sighing, Laurel clasped the bag holding the last-minute replacement wedding favours that Melissa had insisted she collect that afternoon closer to her body as a stream of cars continued to rush past. It was three days after Christmas and the sales were in full swing. London was caught in that strange sense of anticipation that filled the space between December the twenty-fifth and New Year’s Eve—full of possibilities for the year ahead and the lives that might be lived in it.

      Any other year Laurel would be as caught up in that sense of opportunity as anyone. She usually used these last few days of the year to reflect on the year just gone and plan her year ahead. Plan how to be better, to achieve more, how to succeed at last. To be enough.

      Just last year she’d plotted out her schedule for starting her own business organising weddings. She’d been a wedding planner at a popular company for five years, and had felt with quiet optimism that it was time to go it alone—especially since she’d been expecting to be organising her own wedding, and Benjamin had always said he liked a woman with ambition.

      So she’d planned, she’d organised, and she’d done it—she had the business cards to prove it. Laurel’s Weddings was up and running. And, even if she wasn’t planning her own wedding, she did have her first celebrity client on the books...which was why this year that optimism would have to wait until January the first.

      All she had to do was make it through her half-sister’s New Year’s Eve wedding without anything going terribly wrong and she would be golden. Melissa was big news in Hollywood right now—presumably because she was a lot nicer to directors than she was to wedding planners—and her wedding was being covered in one of those glossy magazines Laurel only ever had time to read at the hairdresser’s. If this went well her business would boom and she could stop worrying about exactly how she was going to earn enough to pay back the small business loan she’d only just qualified for.

      She might not have the husband she’d planned on, and she might not be a Hollywood star like Melissa, but once her business went global no one would be able to say she wasn’t good enough.

      But of course that meant rushing around, catering to Melissa’s every whim—even when that whim meant a last-minute trip back to the capital to replace the favours they’d spent two weeks deciding on because they were ‘an embarrassment’ all of a sudden.

      And, as much as she’d been avoiding thinking about it, a peaceful wedding also meant dealing with seeing Benjamin again. Which was just the cherry on top of the icing on top of the wedding cake—wasn’t it?

      Another car—big and black and shiny—slowed as it reached the kerb beside her. Lauren felt hope rising. She’d asked the last of the cars ferrying wedding guests from Heathrow to swing into the city and pick her up on its way to Morwen Hall, rather than going around the M25. It would mean the passenger inside would have a rather longer journey, but she was sort of hoping he wouldn’t notice. Or mind having company for it.

      Since the last guest was the groom Riley’s brother—Dan Black, her soon to be half-brother-in-law, or something—she really hoped he didn’t object. It would be nice at least to start out on good terms with her new family—especially since her existing family was generally on anything but. Her mother still hadn’t forgiven her for agreeing to organise Melissa’s wedding. Or, as she called her, ‘That illegitimate trollop daughter of your father’s mistress.’

      Unsurprisingly, her mother wasn’t on the guest list.

      Dan Black wasn’t a high-maintenance Hollywood star, at least—as far as Laurel could tell. In fact Melissa hadn’t told her anything about him at all. Probably because if he couldn’t further her career then Melissa wasn’t interested. All Laurel had to go on was the brief couple of lines Melissa and Riley had scribbled next to every name on the guest list, so Laurel would understand why they were important and why they’d been invited, and the address she had sent the invitation to.

      Black Ops Stunts. Even the follow-up emails she’d sent to Dan when arranging the journey and his accommodation had been answered by the minimum possible number of words and no extraneous detail.

      The man was a mystery. But one Laurel really didn’t have time to solve this week.

      The car came to a smooth stop, and the driver hopped out before Laurel could even reach for the door handle.

      ‘Miss,’ he said with a brief nod, and opened the door to the back seat for her. She slid