CHAPTER ONE

      CARO’S SEARCHING GAZE swept over the sea of happy faces as she left the baggage area at Heathrow Airport, looking for her brother Gavin. It was the day before Christmas Eve, and there were dozens of people waiting expectantly for family and friends to arrive for the holidays. Caro wasn’t in the least surprised when Gavin didn’t appear to be one of them; her absent-minded brother had probably forgotten she was arriving today!

      ‘I’ll take it from here, thanks.’

      Caro froze the second she heard that arrogantly forceful voice behind her, the colour fading from her cheeks, the blood in her veins turning to ice, and her excitement at being back in England again turning to cold dread.

      No!

      It couldn’t be…

      Not here. Not now!

      She had been in Majorca for over a year—

      ‘Have a good Christmas!’ called out the man, who had very kindly offered to push Caro’s luggage trolley through for her, happily as he hastened away to be greeted by a pretty blonde woman and two young children.

      ‘Could you get a move on, Caro?’ rasped that all-too-familiar voice. ‘We’re holding everyone up.’

      Caro turned sharply, eyes wide, feeling numb with disbelief as she looked up at the man who had now taken charge of the trolley and her luggage. It really was Jake! She took in everything about his face in that single glance. Aged in his mid-thirties, Jake had dark hair, green eyes—angrily accusing!—high cheekbones either side of an arrogant slash of a nose, and sculptured lips that at the moment were thinned with displeasure. His firm jaw was tightly clenched.

      Jake Montgomery.

      Caro’s estranged husband…

      Jake gave Caro a steely look—long enough to register the fact that, at ten years his junior, she was as beautiful as ever—before turning his hungry gaze to the baby she carried in her arms.

      The baby’s hair was the same red-gold as Caro’s, but eyes the same emerald-green as his own stared back at him with guileless curiosity. The nose was small and snub, and the mouth a perfect bow in a chubby face warmly golden from the Majorcan sun.

      Magdalena. His six-month-old daughter that Jake hadn’t even known existed until a few hours ago.

      The six-month-old daughter who had absolutely no idea that Jake was her father! Jake’s instinct—need—was to snatch the baby from Caro and hold her in his arms for the very first time. To bury his face in the baby’s silky red-gold curls. To breathe in the essence of her. To feel the solidness of her very existence.

      That was Jake’s instinct. Logic told him he couldn’t do that—that he was a stranger to Magdalena and she would probably scream the place down if he were to try and take her from the comfort and safety of her mother’s arms.

      Jake’s mouth thinned grimly as he thought of Caro’s year-long deception that had made him a stranger to his own daughter, and he clenched his fingers tightly about the handle of the trolley to stop himself from giving in to the temptation to reach out and shake Caro where she stood.

      ‘Let’s get out of here.’

      ‘I’m not going anywhere with you, Jake!’ Caro’s sky-blue eyes glittered with determination, her cheeks aflame with colour now as she stood her ground with her arms protectively about the baby.

      ‘Oh, yes, Caro, you most certainly are,’ Jake contradicted her, his long-held patience finally at breaking point. ‘Unless, that is, you would prefer to stand here in front of all these people and tell me the reason you didn’t inform me of the existence of my own daughter?’ he added with pointed challenge.

      What Caro wanted to do was to sit down and cry. Or scream and shout. But most of all she wanted Jake to just disappear. To not be here at all. ‘We have nothing to discuss,’ she told him firmly, unhappily aware that he easily towered over her five-feet-four-inch