1

      IN HEELS AND A BUSINESS SUIT, with two monstrous suitcases in her sweaty grip and her computer bag slung over her shoulder, Ariel Adams stood on the stone stairs that led down to the beach cottage she’d just acquired. She blinked against the silver flash of California sun on gentle waves and wondered what she’d done to deserve this hell.

      Okay, so most people would consider the rippling ocean and white-sand beach where a man juggled driftwood for a rapt retriever and seagulls dipped and cried, to be picturesque and enticing—perfect for sunset strolls, refreshing swims and building sand castles. But Ariel Adams was not most people.

      To her, the beach was too…beachy. A giant cat box with a shifty surface tough to walk on and a fishy smell. The beach meant grit and mildew and sea salt that scoured, stained and bleached everything.

      No, Ariel did not like the beach. And now she had to live there. Her left eyelid twitched from exhaustion. Terminally jet-lagged after the flight from London, all she wanted was to sleep for a week. But she couldn’t afford that luxury. She had to figure out how to start her solo consulting business two years earlier than she’d planned. She sagged against the rusted guardrail, demoralized, until she repeated her mother’s motto in her head: Keep on keeping on.

      Job one of keeping on was to cross this beach without ruining the high-dollar silk panty hose she’d bought in honor of her new life in London—the life her partner Trudy had thrown out the window. The twenty-seventh-floor office window of their client Paul Foster to be precise. That high up, the windows didn’t even open.

      Paul and I are in love, Trudy had breathed, airy as a romance heroine, as if that were enough to explain how a perfectly sensible woman—Ariel’s mentor in this very male business—had turned into a doe-eyed fool.

      Ariel had reasoned with her. Give it six months. Be certain your feelings will last. But no. Two days of harangues hadn’t cleared one iota of the sentimental glaze from Trudy’s face. Paul was taking a world tour of his holdings before he retired and Trudy was going with him. When love comes, you accept it, wherever it may lead, Trudy had said in that feminine trill she’d adopted. Had her hormones gone wonky? Had she been hypnotized? Slipped a cog? What?

      This was not the plan. And planning was king at Business Advantage, Trudy’s company, into which she’d invited Ariel six months ago. They’d met when Trudy had been hired to assist with a business consolidation and Ariel had been working in-house for one of the merging companies. Trudy had been so impressed by Ariel’s talent that when Paul Foster retained Business Advantage to go to London to help the Foster