THE WEDDING CHALLENGE

Chased to the altar—three independent cousins swept off their feet by the most eligible Englishmen!

Pepper, Izzy and Jemima Jane are cousins—with nothing in common except the gorgeous red hair they’ve inherited from their grandmother! They even grew up on different continents: Pepper is heiress to an American business empire, Izzy and JJ shared their very English childhood as adopted sisters….

But do they have more in common than they realize?

For the first time in their lives, the three cousins find themselves together: as a family, as friends, as business partners. And they’re about to discover that they’re not so different from each other after all!

Pepper, Izzy and JJ are thoroughly modern women, determined to be ruled by the head, not the heart. Now their lives are turned upside down as each meets a man who challenges them to let love into their lives—with dramatic consequences!

Pepper has an unexpected encounter in The Independent Bride.

Look out for Izzy’s story in The Accidental Mistress and JJ’s in The Duke’s Proposal.

Dear Reader,

This book was born in a wine bar. I was with two friends who I really thought had got life sussed. Then a smoky-voiced singer started singing about fields of barley, and we all went quiet. Yes, we could run our lives, pay our bills, have fun. But….

Modern women can handle anything. Well, that’s what we tell ourselves. Most of the time it’s true, too. But when you’re in love you’re on your own in a strange country without a compass. And everyone else looks as if they know exactly what they’re doing.

Cousins Pepper, Izzy and Jemima Jane are young, vibrant, successful—and when love strikes it doesn’t make a blind bit of difference. Though they’re not admitting it, of course. Especially not to each other!

I really love these women. And I sympathize with them. Been there, done that; still wince when I think about some of it. And I am so glad they get their happy ending. Hope you are, too!

Best wishes

Sophie Weston

The Independent Bride
Sophie Weston

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

THE last of the overnight flights out of JFK to London was about to board. The departure lounge was crowded to overflowing, but even so one alert journalist was scanning the faces carefully. Rewarded, he caught his breath with excitement.

He nudged his companion in the ribs. ‘Did you see who that was?’

The companion was a generation older than the keen young television correspondent; it took a lot to get him excited. Besides, he had made a career out of not being impressed by anyone. ‘If you mean Steven Konig, I saw him on the main concourse.’

The younger man swung round. ‘Really? Konig—the food for famine guy? He’s here? Where?’

‘They boarded him first,’ said the other, bored.

‘Oh, that’s who it was! I thought it must be royalty.’ The younger man had a point to prove, too. ‘You do know it was the top brass escorting him?’

His companion got even more bored. ‘If you mean David Guber, he and Konig go way back. They were students at Oxford together.’

That would silence the upstart, he thought.

But it didn’t. Amazingly, the younger man’s chagrin lasted only a few seconds before he was bouncing back, eager as a puppy.

‘I didn’t catch Konig, but I did catch someone a lot more interesting.’ He paused expectantly.

The older man yawned.

‘The Tiger Cub,’ said up-and-coming television financial newsman tantalisingly. And sat back, waiting to be asked ‘Who or what is the Tiger Cub?’

It did not come.

It would be too much to say that the older man sat bolt upright and looked keenly round the lounge. Excitement, after all, was not his bag. But there was no doubt his journalist’s antennae twitched.

‘The Calhoun girl?’ he said, after a moment.

‘Pepper Calhoun, yes,’ said his companion, disappointed but still fighting. At least he knew that Penelope Anne Calhoun was called Pepper by her intimates.

The older man stared into the middle distance, his eyes narrowed. ‘That’s interesting,’ he said at last.

‘Yes, that’s what I thought. Do you think Calhoun Carter are going on the acquisition trail in the UK? I can think of a couple of retail companies ripe for acquisition.’ He smacked his lips at the thought, especially as he could be the first back to London with the news. At least, he could if Sandy Franks was as indifferent as he seemed.

But Sandy Franks was still thinking aloud. ‘The last I heard, the girl wasn’t working for Calhoun Carter. Mary Ellen Calhoun has been telling people that her granddaughter is going to gain experience in the outside world before coming back into the company for good.’

‘You believe that?’

‘It’s possible.’ He sucked his teeth, pondering. ‘Maybe Pepper Calhoun has decided to do her own thing. Visit the sights. Have a fling with the boyfriend. What is she? Twenty-six? Twenty-seven? She’s got a right to party a bit before she settles down to a life of corporate greed.’

‘The Tiger Cub?’ Young and eager Martin Tammery laughed heartily at the naïveté of experience. ‘She doesn’t party. Her idea of a good time is an eighteen-hour day topped off by a night of conference calls. And she hasn’t had a boyfriend since business school.’

‘Then she’ll be ripe for a romantic interlude,’ said experience with conviction.

His companion stayed unconvinced. ‘The one thing that is absolutely certain about Pepper Calhoun is that she doesn’t do romance. Never has. Never will.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘She’s going to inherit one of the retail giants. I’ve been keeping a file on her since she went to her first prom. Believe me, she is her grandmother’s heir in every way there is. Brain like a computer, tongue like a razor, heart like outer space.’

The older man blinked. ‘Run that past me again? What’s outer space got to do with Pepper Calhoun?’

‘They’re both cold and empty,’ said the other with feeling. ‘And totally inaccessible.’

CHAPTER ONE

WHAT a difference a week makes!

Penelope Anne Calhoun rested her tired red head against the wall of the departure lounge and tried to be philosophical.

Exactly a week ago today she had thought she was nicely on track for the rest of her life. She’d had friends she trusted, a new project she believed in, and the best address in New York.

There had been just the one tiny cloud on the horizon, and Pepper had been sure she could deal with that. Well, eventually. When she had to. When the final funding for Out of the Attic was in place and she could go to her grandmother and say, This is what I’m going to do.

It was not as if they hadn’t tried to warn her.

‘Pepper, are you sure this is a good idea?’ her old mentor from business school had asked. ‘I mean—concept shopping! Love the idea. But what happens when your grandmother finds out?’

And she said, so airily, so positively, ‘Nothing will happen.’

She could see the professor was dubious. ‘Are you sure of that?’

And she was. She was. ‘Absolutely,’ Pepper said with total assurance.

‘Mrs Calhoun won’t see it as a rival to Calhoun Carter?’

Pepper laughed heartily. ‘CC has branches in every major city in the US and five overseas countries. Beside CC, Out of the Attic is a minnow. No—less than a minnow. It’s plankton to a whale.’

‘That’s not quite what I meant,’ said her teacher dryly. ‘I was thinking more of a rival suitor.’

And, heaven help her, she had even laughed at that.

‘Okay. Maybe she’ll kick up a little at first. But she’ll see it my way eventually. She knows I have to prove myself.’

‘Does she?’

‘Yup,’ Pepper had said, with the total confidence of a woman who had been Mary Ellen Calhoun’s little princess since she was eight. ‘My grandmother wants what’s best for me. You see, she loves me.’

The guy hadn’t said any more. Pepper had felt quite sorry for him, out-argued by his own pupil like that. She had taken him out to a spectacular gourmet dinner to make it up to him.

And how wrong she had been. How wrong.

She first realised that things weren’t going to plan the day that Ed kidnapped her.

She wasn’t scared. Of course she wasn’t. She had known Ed Ivanov all her life. Anyway, Calhouns didn’t scare easy. Pepper was a Calhoun right the way through to that cool business brain of hers.

So she kept her head and stayed calm.

‘What’s this about, Ed?’

But he just shook his head. The noise in the helicopter made a great excuse.

Pepper looked down at unfamiliar rolling countryside and tried to guess where they were. A long way from New York by now. Ed had got her into the ’copter, saying he wanted her to meet some potential investors. Ed was one of the tiny group of trusted friends who knew about Out of the Attic.

So she’d gone with him without a second thought.

By the time they were well out of the metropolitan area, following a river valley, she was having second thoughts all right. Ed hadn’t mentioned investors again. In fact Ed wasn’t talking much at all.

When Pepper had walked off with the Year Prize at business school, it had been for a paper on problem solving. So she said to herself, Right, Pepper, solve this.

She tapped him on the arm, and when he turned mouthed at him carefully, ‘There are only three reasons for you to do this. Ransom. Ungovernable passion. You’ve gone mad. Which is it?’

But he waved a hundred-dollar manicure to indicate the noise of the rotor arms and did not answer.

Pepper shook her head. Unless he had been fired in the last twenty-four hours, Ed did not need money. He was a successful Wall Street analyst. And the idea of passion was laughable. They had dated briefly at business school but it had ended peaceably and neither of them had a broken heart.

Or, Ed’s beach readings, she remembered, ran to highly coloured adventure stories. Maybe he was whisking her off for a secret weekend as a prelude to another proposal of marriage? She looked at him. He was peering at the valley below the helicopter, nibbling at a nail.

Romantic? Ed? Nah!

She considered him from under her long lashes. They were surprisingly dark compared with her flame-red hair. One of her few good points, she always said. Pepper was realistic about her lack of attractions.

Which was another reason why she didn’t think passion had driven Ed to enforced seduction. He did not look at her. He did not touch her. In fact, he was behaving more like a transcontinental courier with an awkward package than a man in love.

Anyway, surely even Ed wouldn’t think that kidnapping a woman was a good way to persuade her to marry him?

And then the helicopter came down in the middle of a clearing and Ed started talking again.

‘This is my father’s fishing cabin,’ he said and helped her out.

Keep it light, she told herself. Keep it light. ‘Since when do I fish?’

He did not look mad. He gave her a slightly harassed smile. ‘We’re just up here for a meeting. I told you.’

That was when Pepper started to get a really bad feeling about the trip.

She hid it. ‘Do I need my visual aids?’ she said dryly. She had brought all the stuff with her for a really great presentation of Out of the Attic.

He shook his head.

‘Somehow, you don’t surprise me,’ she said with irony. ‘Okay. Lead on.’

It was really quite a simple cabin—single storey, in need of repair. The way down to it was full of puddles, too. Her shiny black city pumps, discreetly plain and shockingly expensive, were never going to be the same again. Still, at least she didn’t take a tumble—unlike Ed.

Rain dripped through the trees. It soaked Pepper’s hair until the elegant auburn pleat turned black and flattened on the top of her head. It darkened the shoulders of her designer label navy jacket. She felt an uncomfortable trickle down the neck of her pearl silk blouse. But it wasn’t the spring rain that sent chills up and down her spine.

‘If the CIA are trying to recruit me, you can tell them now—no dice.’

But it was not the CIA, any more than it was the nonexistent investors. Or Ed in romantic excess.

It was someone who was coming out onto the rough stoop at the sound of their approach.

It was her grandmother.

All desire to find humour in the situation left Pepper abruptly. She stopped dead. The look she turned on Ed was hot enough to melt asbestos.

Bad conscience made Ed peevish. ‘No need to be so dramatic. It’s just business.’

Pepper was very pale. ‘No, Ed. It’s my life.’

He looked down his nose. ‘Now you’re talking like a teen queen.’

She looked back at the cabin. Mary Ellen Calhoun was watching them attentively. Even in the wet spring woods she was wearing Paris design and diamonds. Pepper saw the gleam of Venetian earnings under her grandmother’s cap of skilfully tinted dark hair. Mary Ellen Calhoun was seventy-three but she would go to her grave a brunette.

Pepper said, ‘What did my grandmother promise you to get me here?’

He looked genuinely shocked. ‘Nothing. She just wanted me to stop you making a big mistake.’

‘It’s a mistake to back my own idea? I thought that was why we went to business school.’

‘Look, Pepper,’ he said patiently, ‘Out of the Attic is a retail start-up. That’s five years of your life, minimum. Mary Ellen doesn’t want to wait five years to get you back on board at Calhoun Carter.’

‘Since when do you call her Mary Ellen? You been talking to her a lot recently, Ed?’

He winced. ‘Not really. We—er—bumped into each other at a charity reception a couple of weeks ago…’

‘My grandmother doesn’t go to charity receptions for fun,’ said Pepper dispassionately. ‘And she never bumps into anyone.’

He looked at her, half-defiant, half-ashamed. Pepper squared her shoulders.

‘Oh, well, it had to happen some time, I guess. Wait here,’ she told Ed quietly. ‘This is not going to be pretty.’

The moment she came face to face with her grandmother Pepper knew what was going to happen. One look and she just knew.

It was there, in Mary Ellen’s black currant eyes. Mary Ellen wanted the last of the Calhouns back on the board. Like now.

Not that you could tell that from her behaviour. Mary Ellen came forward, hands out, smiling, just as she always did. Glutinously innocent. Pepper had learned to distrust that innocence the way she would distrust a basking snake.

Of course, Mary Ellen was not your average grandmother. She had been President of Calhoun Carter since her husband had died thirty-three years ago. That sort of thing gave you an edge. Pepper might distrust her, but she respected her, too. And she was realising that she was fighting for her life.

She did not take the hands held out to her. She said quietly, ‘Hello, Grandmother.’

Mary Ellen looked startled. It was a voice she did not recognise.

Not surprising, thought Pepper. She didn’t recognise it herself.

‘It’s good to see you, honey,’ Mary Ellen said in her soft, deceptive, ladylike tones.

‘No, it isn’t. It’s business,’ said Pepper grimly. ‘Spare me the fancy stuff. Get on with it.’

The two women’s eyes locked.

Then Mary Ellen gave the tinkling laugh she had perfected in the days when she was a popular debutante; before she’d married her way out of impoverished gentility; before she’d hijacked her husband’s company and became a ruthless tycoon.

‘Then you’d better come in out of the rain,’ she said with a charming pout.

‘And Ed?’ Pepper was mocking. ‘Do you want him in out of the rain as well?’

Mary Ellen frowned. ‘He’s a man. A little rain won’t kill him.’

‘Thought you wouldn’t want any witnesses.’ Pepper nodded.

Mary Ellen did not deign to answer that. She stalked inside like an empress. And the moment the door closed behind her granddaughter she abandoned innocence, ladylike charm and the pout all in one go. Suddenly she looked what she was, thought Pepper. Seventy-three years old and mean as a snake.

Pepper drew a deep breath. ‘Okay. Fire away. I can see that you’ve heard about Out of the Attic. What do you think can do to stop me?’

Mary Ellen smiled. ‘I’ve already done it.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Really, you are such a child. I told the finance department to put it around that anyone who lent money to you could kiss goodbye to Carter Calhoun business. For ever.’

Pepper went very still. ‘I see. I suppose they were doing that this morning? That’s why you had Ed get me out of town? So I wouldn’t be there if anyone wanted to call me to check?’

Mary Ellen shrugged. ‘What’s to check?’

But Pepper knew she was right. Mary Ellen had made sure Pepper was out of the way when the news broke in case she found a way to fight back.

‘You always did fight dirty,’ Pepper said. ‘Why didn’t I remember that?’

Mary Ellen was impatient. ‘I want you back in the firm. You know that. This little idea of yours is just a waste of time.’ She opened her electronic organiser. ‘Shall we say—middle of next week? That will give you time to move out of that nasty apartment and get yourself home, where you belong. I’ll tell Jim to organise you an office.’

‘No,’ said Pepper quietly.

Mary Ellen extracted the stylus and tapped in a deliberate note. ‘Seven forty-five on Wednesday,’ she said, as if Pepper hadn’t spoken. ‘Go to the plant and ask for Connie. She’s the Human Resources Manager now. She’ll find—’

Pepper raised her voice. ‘I said no.’

The inside of the cabin was very dusty, but Mary Ellen had cleaned up a corner for herself. Typically it was the best chair in the room. And it was set at the desk. She sat down now and steepled her fingertips.

‘You don’t have a choice,’ she said calmly. ‘Your little business is a busted flush. Who else but me would employ you?’

Pepper stared. Her thoughts whirled like a rising storm.

I thought she loved me. She doesn’t. She just loves making everyone dance to her tune. How on earth did I miss that?

It hurt. It really hurt.

‘Let me spell it out for you,’ said Mary Ellen. She sounded almost motherly.

That truly sickened Pepper. For a moment she could not speak.

Mary Ellen misunderstood her silence. Mary Ellen thought she had won. But then Mary Ellen always did win.

‘Look at it this way. You’re the last Calhoun. Anyone in the retail business is going to think you’re a spy. A business in any other sector will just think you have to be a liability or you’d be in the family firm where you belong. It’s a nobrainer.’

Pepper was shaking. ‘A no-brainer,’ she agreed with heavy irony.

Mary Ellen gave her famously charming, naughty child smile. ‘Sure,’ she agreed. ‘Glad you see it so clearly. Your little idea is dead. You won’t get funding from anyone in North America.’ She tapped the organiser. ‘See you Wednesday.’

Pepper drew a deep breath. Get a grip, she told herself feverishly, get a grip. Lose your temper and she’s won. She already thinks she’s won. This is your last chance…

And she said quietly, ‘No.’

She was right. Mary Ellen had been quite sure that she had won. She did not believe that Pepper would hold out. Startled, furious, disbelieving, she went on the attack. Mary Ellen Calhoun on the attack did not take prisoners.

Pepper just stood there, under an assault of words like hailstones. In the end they all came back to the same point. Pepper was Calhoun Carter Industries’ property, bought and paid for over years. The very best education money could buy had seen to that. Along with the house in the South of France, the condo in New York, the South Sea Island mountain retreat, her suite in the Calhoun mansion…

Pepper hung on to cool reason but it was an effort. ‘But they aren’t mine.’

Mary Ellen showed her teeth in a shark’s smile. ‘Got it at last!’

Oh, Pepper got it. Slowly. Reluctantly. With disbelief. But she got it.

‘You mean that all the stuff you’ve given me over the years—’

‘Invested,’ corrected Mary Ellen coldly. ‘You are an investment. Nothing more.’

If Pepper had been pale before, she was ashen now. This was the woman who had introduced her at parties as ‘my little princess’?

Mary Ellen smiled. ‘Think about it. The European schools. The year in Paris. Seed corn. I even arranged for you to go to business school five years younger than everyone else, so you wouldn’t want time out when the company needed you.’

Pepper was outraged. ‘The business school took me on my own merits. I won a prize, for God’s sake.’

Mary Ellen mocked that, too. ‘Problem solving! When did you ever solve a problem? All your problems have been bought off by Calhoun money.’

That was when Mary Ellen listed them. Not just the right schools, the right clothes, the right apartments, the right friends. The senior businessmen who had taken her calls and talked to her like an equal. The junior businessmen who had dated her…

Dated…?

Pepper gulped. Her blouse was not just damp and cold any more. It was icy. A cascade of icicles was thundering down her spine. She was shivering so much she could hardly speak.

‘What do you mean? What have my dates got to do with this?’

Mary Ellen saw that she had scored a hit. Her eyes gleamed.

‘You have no idea what it cost me to get you a social life,’ she went on with that trill of laughter that was her trademark. It was very musical, very ladylike. But the eyes that met Pepper’s across the dusty old cabin were not ladylike in the least.

Even so—dated?

‘You’re nothing but a potato,’ said Mary Ellen, light and cruel and suddenly horribly believable. ‘Who would bother with you if you weren’t my grandchild?’

Pepper was the first to admit that she was not fashionably slender, but she had always thought she was good company. That her friends liked her for that. She said so.

Mary Ellen’s hard little eyes snapped. ‘And I suppose you think that one day you’ll meet Prince Charming and get married, too? Grow up!’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You have only one chance to be a bride,’ said Mary Ellen, showing her teeth like a shark. ‘And that’s if I buy you a husband. After all those mercy dates I paid for, I’ve got a good long list of candidates.’

That was when Pepper knew that she could not take any more. There was no point in even trying. With a superhuman effort, she told her icy muscles to stop shaking and move. And she walked out.

Mary Ellen was not expecting it. ‘Where are you going?’ she yelled, suddenly not even pretending to be ladylike any more.

Pepper did not stop. She went running, scrambling up the soggy path, to where Ed was sitting.

Her grandmother ran after her, but halted at the point where the path began to climb.

‘You get back here this minute,’ she yelled.

Pepper did not stop. Not even when she fell to one knee. Not even when she felt her pantyhose tear and blood trickle down her shin. She didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything but getting away from the grandmother whose affection had been a lie right from the start.

By the time she reached Ed, she was panting. ‘Take me back to New York,’ she said. ‘Take me back now.’

He hesitated, but only for a moment. It would have taken a braver man than Ed Ivanov to face Mary Ellen in this mood. He took Pepper’s arm and hurried her towards the clearing where the helicopter was waiting.

Ladylike, five foot two, Mary Ellen had a voice like a bass drum when roused. It reached them easily. So did the fury.

‘You’ll never make it on your own, Penelope Anne Calhoun, do you hear me? I own you.’

A week later, Pepper knew exactly how true that was. So she leaned against the wall, skulking down as a party of VIPs swept onto the London plane in advance of everyone else. She did not care about VIPs, but there was an outside chance that they might recognise her. After all, Mary Ellen was a VIP. As the Calhoun heir, Pepper had been one too for most of her life.

Well, that was all over now. A good thing, too, she told herself.

She would get to London. She would put together a new life. And she would survive.

All she had to do was keep clear of VIPs.

‘Professor Konig?’ The flight attendant had obviously been waiting for them. She was instantly alert, full of professional smiles. ‘Welcome on board, sir. This way.’

The VIP and the airline director followed her.

‘So that’s what you get in first class,’ Steven Konig muttered to David Guber. ‘Instant name-check and personal escort to your seat.’

The attendant took his jacket and the ticket stub to label it, and left her boss to do the formal farewells. Steven looked after her.

‘Is it enough to justify the cost, I ask myself?’

The other man smiled. ‘You old Puritan! Still working on the principle I’m uncomfortable therefore I am?’

Steven laughed. ‘You may be right.’

Dave punched his arm lightly. ‘You’re important enough to fly the Atlantic without having your knees under your nose any more, Steven. Live with it.’

‘Can I quote you?’ Steven was dry.

Dave Guber was not only a long-standing friend, he was a main board member of this airline. He grinned, ‘If you do, I’ll sue.’ He shook hands and added soberly, ‘I mean it. I’m really grateful, Steven. You saved our butts.’

Steven shook his head, disclaiming.

‘Yes, you did. If you hadn’t come through for me we’d have had a conference and no keynote speaker. Great speech, too.’

Steven shrugged. ‘I was glad to do it. I’ve wanted to do a think piece on the subject for a long time.’

‘Yeah, sure. Like you haven’t got enough to fill your time already.’

‘No, I mean it,’ Steven insisted. ‘It makes a change.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘It seems like all I do these days is meetings, meetings, meetings. It was really nice just to sit down and think for once.’

Dave Guber looked quizzical. ‘Wish you were only doing one job again?’

‘Chairman of Kplant is my job,’ Steven told him drily. ‘Being Master of Queen Margaret’s isn’t a job; it’s a vocation. Ask the Dean.’

They both grinned. They understood each other perfectly. They had first met at Queen Margaret’s College, Oxford, as students years ago. And they had both been fined by the Dean regularly for standard student bad behaviour.

Dave cocked an eyebrow. ‘He isn’t glad to see you back?’

‘Spitting tintacks,’ agreed Steven, amused.

‘That must make life peaceful.’

‘Hey, if I wanted peace I’d have stayed in the lab. You say goodbye to peace the moment you open your own company.’

Dave’s career had been with big international corporates. He looked at his friend curiously. ‘Is it worth it?’

‘It’s great,’ said Steven. There was no mistaking his enthusiasm.

‘You never want to slow down?’ Dave asked tentatively.

Slowing down was heresy in business, of course. But he remembered the gorgeous blonde whom Steven had dated all those years ago. No one mentioned her any more. Nobody linked his name with anyone else, either. Dave thought he had never met anyone as lonely as Steven Konig.

‘Do you never think about—er—a family, maybe?’

Steven’s face changed. He didn’t frown exactly. He just withdrew—very slightly, very politely. Suddenly Dave wasn’t talking to his old buddy any more. He was taking formal leave of an international figure.

Dave sighed and gave up.

‘Well, don’t forget you’re going to come and stay with us the very next vacation you get. Marise and I are counting on it.’

Vacation? Steven managed to repress a hollow laugh.

‘Sure thing,’ he said. It was vague enough not to count as a promise. Steven always kept his promises, so he didn’t hand them out lightly.

‘I’ll hold you to that.’

Steven gave his sudden smile, the one that made him look just like the student who had once worked out how to set off fireworks by remote control from Queen Margaret’s venerable tower. His eyes were vivid with amusement.

‘I’ll put it in the five-year plan.’

Dave flung up his hands in mock despair. ‘You’re crazy.’

‘You said it yourself. I’m a Big Name,’ Steven said crisply. ‘For that, there’s a price.’

David Guber was an important man, with stock options and the power to hire and fire. But he wasn’t Steven Konig, who had single-handedly taken his food research business from the small companies sector to the big time. The press fell over themselves to interview Steven Konig in five continents. Of course there was going to be a price.

Dave sighed. ‘Well, if you ever get off the carousel come see us,’ he said. And to the glamorous flight attendant, who still hovered, ‘Make sure Professor Konig has the journey of his life. We owe this man, big time.’ He pumped his hand again. ‘You’re a great guy, Steven. Have a good flight.’

Steven was already opening his briefcase before Guber had left the plane.

‘Can I get you anything, Professor?’ the attendant asked.

Steven bit back a wry smile. So Dave Guber thought he ought to date, did he? How was a man to do that when every woman he met called him Professor? Or Chairman? Or even, God help him, Master?

‘A drink?’ The flight attendant knew her duty to the friend of a boss so big she had only ever seen him on video before. ‘Coffee?’

Steven gave her his ordinary smile, the one he used when more than half his mind was elsewhere. ‘No, thank you.’

‘A warm towel?’ pressed the flight attendant, trying hard.

‘Nothing.’ He corrected that. ‘You’ll give me everything I need if you just keep other people away.’

He had caught sight of several British delegates from the conference in the airport. He could just see them grabbing the chance of a transatlantic flight to buttonhole him. Experience had taught him that someone always wanted advice they didn’t listen to or the name of contacts whom they misused.

He said with feeling, ‘I’d really appreciate some peace.’

‘You’ve got it,’ said the flight attendant, relieved.

Steven worked until long after the attendants had put out the cabin lights and his fellow passengers had composed themselves for sleep. He finished making notes on the monthly statements of Kplant, dictated two memos and a letter, and then skimmed the agenda for the next college meeting. Finishing that, he looked at his watch. Space for two hours’ sleep if he was sensible.

And I’m always sensible, thought Steven wryly. With two jobs, three titles and more responsibilities than he could shake a stick at, he had to be.

He stretched out on the wonder of a first-class transcontinental airline bed and clicked off his overhead light. He was asleep in seconds.

Pepper had never flown coach before. It was an experience, she thought grimly.

The seat was uncomfortably tight. The woman in the next seat kept jabbing her in the ribs and maintained an agitated monologue until she finally fell asleep. And in the row behind a party of young entrepreneurs were drinking and laughing loudly about some conference they had been to in New York. By the time the cabin crew had finally settled them down Pepper knew that sleep was hopeless.

Suppose that’s the price of running away, she told herself, with an attempt at humour. No more business class for you.

Only it didn’t make her laugh. Not even smile. In fact she felt her stomach clench as if she had just swallowed a glassful of ice. And not because of the loss of luxury.

I am not running away. I am not running away.

Pepper winced. Even in her head she sounded defensive.

Who are you kidding, Pepper? Of course you’re running away!

She shivered—then pulled the thin flight blanket up to her chin. It made her feel a bit warmer but it did not stop the inner turmoil.

She had always known that crossing her grandmother was a risk. But she had never suspected the lengths that Mary Ellen would go to.

Because I still thought I was her little princess! I thought she loved me. What an idiot I was. What a blind, naïve idiot. And I thought I was so street-smart!

Mary Ellen’s revenge had not been subtle. It had been fast.

Within two days of their secret meeting Pepper had notice to quit her apartment. Well, she had expected that; her grandmother had rented it to her in the first place. She had not expected to find her appointment diary suddenly emptying. Or the company that rented her office space suddenly demanding that she pay a year’s rent up-front or leave in a week. Or to have her platinum credit card suddenly withdrawn.

She had tried to speak to Mary Ellen. But her grandmother had refused to take her calls. So Pepper had gone to the Calhoun Carter building.

Mary Ellen refused to see her. More, she’d kept her waiting for half an hour, then had the security force escort her from the building under guard.

Pepper had not believed it. ‘Why?’ she had said to Mary Ellen’s PA. She had known Carmen all her life.

Carmen had tears in her eyes but she did not stop the uniformed guards.

‘Everyone will think I’ve been stealing from her,’ Pepper said, still too bewildered to be indignant.

Carmen looked as if she were going to cry in earnest. ‘That’s why.’

‘You mean—’ Pepper struggled with it. ‘This is a publicity stunt?’

‘Mrs Calhoun says you want independence, you’ve got it.’ Carmen sounded as if she had learned it off by heart. And as if she were eating glass.

‘You mean she wants to destroy my credibility,’ said Pepper slowly. ‘Oh, Carmen!’

The PA blew her nose. ‘Better go quietly, Pepper. You don’t want to make the evening news.’

So Pepper went.

She went back to her apartment, sat down and made a list of what she had got going for her. It was frighteningly little—a good business brain, a wardrobe of executive suits, enough money to live for six months if she was careful, and the ability to speak three languages. Oh, and a really good project in Out of the Attic. Only her grandmother was going to make sure that Out of the Attic never came to market.

She was packing when the doorbell rang. She checked through the spy hole. Ed?

She opened the door. ‘What do you want, Ed?’ she said wearily.

He divested himself of his overcoat and sat down on the sofa, taking her with him. He took her hand and held onto it.

Pepper snatched it back. ‘You don’t have to look like that. Nobody died.’

But Ed went on looking honest and remorseful.

‘Not yet. But your career is damn nearly gone,’ he said frankly. ‘Why don’t you make it up with Mary Ellen? It’s crazy to throw away Calhoun Carter for a whim. You were born for business.’

Pepper flinched. ‘And not for Prince Charming,’ she said savagely.

Ed was disconcerted. ‘What?’

She took a deep breath. ‘Will you tell me something, Ed?’

‘If I can.’

‘When we went out together—was I a mercy date?’

He hesitated just a fraction too long.

So her grandmother had not lied. Pepper had hoped against hope that it was one of Mary Ellen’s snaky tricks. But clearly it was the simple truth.

‘Thank you,’ she said quietly. ‘Goodbye, Ed.’

It was a night when Pepper despaired. She had never felt more lonely in her life.

It was also the night that she decided. She had to go somewhere nobody would care that she was Mary Ellen Calhoun’s granddaughter. And if that looked like running away, tough.

She put her life in order faster than she would have believed possible. She got rid of furniture. Gave away her books and CDs. Said goodbye to the two or three people who would care and was out of the apartment before Mary Ellen could send in someone in uniform to evict her.

So this was where she found out whether she deserved her prize for problem solving, Pepper thought wryly now, as one by one even the partying entrepreneurs in the row behind fell asleep.

If she did, she would survive in London. She would set up Out of the Attic in England instead of the States.

And find Prince Charming?

Pepper closed her eyes. No need to get over-ambitious, she told herself. I think you can say goodbye to that one. There, at least, Mary Ellen had proved to be right.

And I never want another mercy date if I live to be a hundred.

In the first-class section, Steven Konig came awake the moment the smell of coffee began to waft through the cabin. Everyone else was still slumbering under doused lights. But the flight attendant saw him stir. She came over.

‘Professor?’

He sat up, rubbing his eyes.

‘It starts with my alarm call now, does it?’

She was bewildered. ‘I’m sorry, Professor?’

Steven said wearily, ‘Could you just lay off Professoring me until I’ve had my orange juice?’

She did not understand. ‘No need to move just yet if you don’t want to, sir,’ she said softly. ‘We’ve got more than an hour until we land.’

He smiled at her, shaking himself free of the airline blankets and pillows. ‘No, that’s fine. I’ve got work to do. And I always like to see the sunrise.’

She nodded and went back to her galley. No one else in the business class cabin stirred. The smell of coffee intensified.

When did I last wake up to the smell of coffee? Steven thought. That holiday in Tuscany with the Cooper family when I’d just got the Chair of Business Innovation? Five years ago? Six? Become a success—give up someone making you coffee in the morning!

He gave a dry smile and ran his hand over his chin. He had a heavy beard. Years ago, Courtney had told him that she went to bed with Don Juan and woke up with the Pirate King. That was when she’d still been in his life and they were laughing about their secret love affair. Before she’d decided that rich kid Tom Underwood was a better bet than a man who had to put himself through his PhD as a petrol pump attendant. It hadn’t mattered to Courtney that Tom was his best friend. But then it hadn’t mattered to Courtney that Steven loved her, either.

Well, all that was a long time ago. These days he tried to look like a smooth businessman at all times. He went to the softly lit first-class bathroom to freshen up.

But on the point of shaving off the morning’s beard he stopped. He’d been on duty at that damned conference for over a week. All that time he had been shaving twice a day, listening to boring papers, making small talk with elliptical officials and never, ever exchanging a word with anyone that wasn’t about business. He was tired of behaving.

Arrested, Steven considered his mirrored image. He ran a thoughtful hand over the dark stubble. He looked like a gunslinger in an old movie, he thought, amused. Not a chairman. Never a master of an Oxford college. Above all not a professor. No one who met him for the first time today would think of calling him Professor.

‘Go for it,’ he told himself.

He put on a clean shirt but left it hanging defiantly outside his trousers. The piratical look would give the perfect flight attendant a shock, he thought. Excellent!

He was grinning as he came out of the small washroom. In fact, he was so distracted that he walked straight into another body.

‘Oh, excuse me,’ said the body, flustered, and dropped a washbag.

Steven dived for it chivalrously. The body was a tall woman with an untidy bush of hair and a tired face. As he handed the bag back to her he thought that she looked as if she had not closed her eyes since they left New York.

‘My fault,’ he said compassionately. ‘Sorry about that.’

She shook her head, hugging the bag to her breast. ‘Don’t be. I shouldn’t be up here anyway.’

The aroma of coffee had been joined by the smell of hot rolls. Passengers in the first-class cabin were still resting peacefully, but presumably other people were being shaken awake. A continental breakfast was clearly imminent somewhere. He made the obvious deduction.

‘Do I take it you’re an invader from economy class?’

‘Yes.’ She eyed him warily.

Steven was impatient. Did she think he would call an attendant and complain? So much for his piratical appearance! It obviously took more than a missed shave to make him look like a free spirit.

He said ruefully, ‘Good luck.’

He realised that he was blocking her path. He began to move aside with a word of apology—and the plane banked.

Two things happened simultaneously. The jet-enhanced sunrise lit the cabin with gold. And the woman staggered. Her eyes flared, as if she had suddenly been recalled to herself, but it was too late. There was nothing to hold on to. She tipped forward, dangerously off balance, and began to tumble.

Steven caught her. Well, of course he caught her. He was a gentleman. And anyway, that was what he was good at, thought Steven wryly. It was what he was designed for, with his rugby player’s build and his judo-honed muscles. Strong and stable. He was not charming, and he had never been handsome, but by golly he had always been good at stopping women falling on the floor.

So good that he almost managed to repress the leap of the senses that hit him fair and square.

For in the blazing dawn she was suddenly amazing—no longer a tired woman with tangled hair. She was a golden-skinned goddess with a wild red mane. More than red—flame and scarlet and crimson and bronze, flickering like living fire. As it brushed his mouth it smelled of leaves. In his bracing arms her body felt unbelievably soft…Steven swallowed.

Ouch! One rejection of the morning razor, one lurch of a plane, and he was into seriously politically incorrect territory.

Hold on, there, Steven Konig. You’re not Captain Blood and never have been.

He restored her to her feet fast.

‘I’m so sorry,’ said the goddess, flustered.

She did not seem to have noticed his reaction.

‘My pleasure,’ said Steven. He could have kicked himself the moment he said it. It sounded as if he had been hanging around just waiting to get his hands on her.

But the goddess did not seem to be on political correctness patrol just now, thank God. In fact the goddess was looking adorably remorseful.

‘Did I hurt you?’ The soft voice had an accent he did not recognise, and Steven was good at accents.

‘Of course not.’

Steven was charmed that she should ask, though. It was a long time since anyone had asked if they’d hurt him. The brilliant and influential Steven Konig was not supposed to have any vulnerabilities at all.

But his golden Venus was still worried about him.

‘That was so clumsy of me. I just wasn’t concentrating.’

‘I was standing in your way. Don’t worry about it.’

She gave him a shy, grateful smile. His flame-haired Venus was shy?

‘No, it was my fault. I had stuff on my mind. Sorry.’

‘I know the feeling.’ And for some reason he found himself telling her a truth, suddenly. ‘I end up taking stock of my life when I’m on a plane. Coming down can be a shock. Brace yourself for landing; here comes your life again!’

She laughed. She had exactly the right sort of laugh for a goddess. It was a warm gurgle, as warm as that amazing hair and full of delighted surprise. Steven felt as if he had been given a prize.

‘You are so right,’ she said with feeling.

He beamed at her. Flustered and rumpled and honest, she was the sweetest thing he had seen in a long time. He had a sudden urge not to let her go.

‘Is this your first time in England?’

And at once thought, How stupid; that accent could even be English.

She was shaking her head but she did not crunch him. ‘No. But I haven’t been here for years. I’m going to have to do the Tower of London and St Paul’s Cathedral all over again. If I have time.’

‘Time? It’s really a business trip, then?’

‘You could say that.’ She had a dimple at the corner of her mouth when she wanted to smile and was trying to repress it. Steven stared, fascinated. All goddesses should have dimples, he decided. Made them more human. More approachable.

He said on impulse, ‘If you’re doing the sights, you should certainly take a trip out to Oxford. The old colleges are pure fairytale.’

She let herself laugh aloud then, and the dimple disappeared. He would have objected but her dancing eyes made up for it.

‘That’s a great marketing job you’re doing. Has the town got you on a retainer?’

‘City,’ he said automatically. ‘No, but I live there.’ He smiled into those warm brown eyes. It was a heady feeling. ‘The place is a jewel. You ought to see it if you haven’t.’

She shook her head. ‘No. Well, not that I remember.’

He was intrigued. ‘Amnesia?’

‘I wish.’ This time the dimple flickered only for a moment. She gave a sharp sigh. ‘I was born in England, but my mother died when I was five and my father took me to Peru.’

He was fascinated. ‘And you’ve never been back?’

‘Well, not seriously. Once with the school for a few days, a long time ago. But it wasn’t easy—’ She stopped. Then said explosively, ‘Hell, why cover it up any more? There was a family feud. The Other Side lived in England.’

He pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. ‘Big stuff. I didn’t know people still had family feuds. Not having a family myself, I suppose I wouldn’t.’

The dimple reappeared. ‘Congratulations.’

He laughed aloud, enchanted. ‘So, this trip is of the nature of a peace summit?’

She jumped. ‘Not really. Though I’ve thought about it,’ she admitted cautiously. ‘But I’d have to do a lot of tracking down. I don’t know where to start.’

The goddess had a chin that Napoleon would have been wary of—and a voluptuous, vulnerable mouth.

Distracted, Steven said, ‘I bet you’ll find a way. I bet you could do just about anything you set your mind to.’

She gave him a smile like sudden sunshine. ‘That’s what I’ve always been told.’

‘Well, then—?’

She laughed. ‘They may not want to see me,’ she pointed out. ‘People have been brooding on this feud for a long time.’

He found his mouth widening into his wickedest grin. ‘Montagues and Capulets,’ he said. ‘They’ll be fascinated. Trust me.’

She was doubtful. ‘Do you think so?’

‘Positive. What’s more, it makes you much more than a tourist. So you must definitely come to Oxford.’ He felt in his pocket for a business card. ‘It’s your heritage. You’re coming home.’

‘Home!’ She flinched as if he had kicked her. The wonderful smile died as abruptly as if someone had flung a switch. ‘I don’t think so.’

A man, thought Steven at once. It had to be. In his experience, a woman only flinched like that at the word ‘home’ if there was a man involved. Was she fleeing an unhappy relationship? Or was there a man she wanted who wouldn’t make a home with her? For some reason Steven hated the idea of that.

He stuffed his business card back and took his hand out of his pocket.

Or maybe the man wanted her to move in with him. Anyway, her reaction to the word ‘home’ had nothing to do with a load of long-lost relatives. Oh, yes, it was a man all right.

He stopped his thoughts right there. Either way, it made no difference to him, did it? He was not the sort of man to pick up women in mid-air. And his shy golden goddess did not look like the sort of woman to let herself be picked up anywhere.

Nice idea, Steven. Not practical. You’re not Captain Blood and you haven’t got a pirate ship to carry her off to. Get yourself a shave and a tie and get back to normal!

He stepped back and gave her one of his public smiles—courteous, regretful, remote as the moon. He was invulnerable Steven Konig again.

‘Well, have a good one, whatever you decide to do. Safe landing!’

‘Th-thank you.’

Or he thought that was what she said. He did not wait to hear her reply.

See that fantasy; let it go. He said it to himself savagely as he made his way back to his seat. He was thirty-nine years old and far too many people depended on him to keep his head. Fantasising about goddesses was for teenagers.

CHAPTER TWO

PEPPER brushed her teeth and did what she could to get her tangled hair back into order. She must have looked like a complete zombie. The man had stared at her so hard. Then again, poor guy, she had nearly knocked him over. It wasn’t surprising he’d stared. He would have the bruises to show for the impact tomorrow, she thought, wincing.

Oh, well done, Pepper! Your first encounter with someone who won’t connect you with the Calhoun millions and you do your best to cripple him!

At least he had not looked at her as if she was a potato.

But he hadn’t asked her for a date either.

Pepper shook her head at her image in the tiny restroom mirror. So what? Who ever heard of someone asking a woman for a date in the middle of a plane? Especially when she had literally bumped into him only two minutes before. But there was a moment when she had almost thought he might. There had been something—

Her eyes flared, remembering that moment when his hands had closed round her. Surely it wasn’t just her imagination? She had hardly been able to see his face, the dawn light had been so strong in her eyes. But she’d sensed that his expression had become intent, as if he had suddenly touched live power. She had noticed because it was the exact same thing she had felt herself. Raw energy. Magnetic attraction. Sex.

Her mouth dried, thinking about it. She was not used to feeling uncontrollable sexual attraction to complete strangers. She gave herself a brisk mental shake.

Okay, you may have had an adolescent moment, Pepper. But, let’s face it, you’re not at your best right now. That’s no reason for him to start lusting back at you.

Concentrate on the evidence. You walked into him and he was nice about it. He didn’t yell and he didn’t threaten to sue. Isn’t that enough to start with?

It was. It had to be. Anyway, it was the first hopeful thing that had happened for weeks. Give thanks for a civilised Englishman’s good manners and don’t ask for the moon, Pepper told herself practically.

Still, she made her way back to her seat with a smile on her face. And when the chatty passenger in the next seat started a conversation again, she even replied.

The woman was a grandmother from Montana who had never been to London before. In fact, she confided, she had never flown long distance before. She refused Pepper’s invitation to change seats, but she did crane across her to look out at the landscape below as the plane came in to land.

‘It’s big, isn’t it?’ She sounded awed.

The flight was early. Very early. The sun was barely up as they came in to land at London Heathrow. It glittered on buildings and planes. To Pepper, leaning her forehead against the bulkhead, even the runway looked as if it was studded with diamonds. On the ground nothing moved.

In the cabin, there was that air of suppressed excitement that came from being woken too early, fed croissants and orange juice you didn’t want, and throttling down from five hundred miles an hour. And being about to step out into a new country.

Or, in Pepper’s case, a new universe.

Maybe the Englishman was right. Maybe she should try looking for her cousins. How hard could it be? And she was going to have plenty of time.

Grandma Montana swallowed. Suddenly, after all the hours of chat, she blurted out the cause. She was going to meet her unknown English son-in-law and her two English grandchildren for the first time. She was real nervous, she confessed.

Pepper did not know what to say. ‘That’s a new concept for me. My grandmother has never been nervous in her life.’

‘She must be very brave.’

Pepper was crisp. ‘If people never cross you, there isn’t that much to get nervous about,’ she said tartly.

It felt good to say it. She sat straighter in her seat.

The airbus hit the runway and there was a loud rushing noise of giant brakes. Grandma Montana gave a little gasp. She was very pale.

To her own surprise—well, she was Mary Ellen Calhoun’s granddaughter, and, until a week ago, designated heir to Calhoun Carter; she didn’t do emotion—Pepper took the older woman’s hand.

‘Everything’s fine. It always makes a noise like that.’

Grandma Montana’s smile wavered. ‘Thank you. I was sure it was really. But—’ She gave Pepper’s hand a squeeze, as if Pepper were her own family and entitled to that intimate little gesture. ‘I’m being silly. You’re very kind.’

It hit Pepper like a ten-ton truck. Kindness! Outside Calhoun Carter, people were kind to each other without expecting a return. The man she’d knocked into had been kind about it. Now this woman was thanking her for a gesture that her grandmother would have laughed at.

She nearly said, No, I’m not. I’ve never been kind in my life. There’s no room for kindness in business. And I’m a business woman to my toenails. I’ve got three degrees and my own biography at Fortune to prove it.

Nearly.

Only somehow she didn’t. Somehow she thought—But I don’t have to stay like that. I can change. The unshaven man with the sexual force field around him had said she could do anything she set her mind to. And she could. She could.

So she said slowly, ‘You’re not silly. Doing anything for the first time is scary.’

‘I suppose so.’ The woman sounded doubtful.

The brakes were off and the airbus had come out of its wild thrash down the runway to a stately prowl. She let go of Pepper’s hand. For a moment Pepper nearly took it back again.

She said abruptly, ‘Are your family meeting you?’

‘I sure hope so. But they might not have got here yet. We’re so early.’

‘Tail wind across the Atlantic. Happens a lot. They’ll probably allow for it.’

Pepper’s companion began to look more hopeful. ‘Do you think so?’

‘People do,’ said Pepper, who had been met by chauffeurs all her life. Astonishing herself, she said, ‘Look, would you like me to stay with you until your daughter gets here?’

The woman looked as if she had won a lottery. ‘Would you?’

‘Sure. No problem.’

‘But you must have people meeting you—’

‘No,’ said Pepper steadily. ‘Nobody meeting me.’ Ever again. ‘I’ll be glad to stay with you. Really.’

But in the airport her good intentions hit a setback. A voice behind her called, ‘Ms Calhoun? Ms Calhoun?’

She turned instinctively. It was a financial journalist for an international press agency. She knew him slightly.

‘I thought it was you,’ he congratulated himself. ‘I was sitting behind you.’

Oh, one of the partying entrepreneurs. He wouldn’t have believed his eyes, seeing her travelling outside business class. Pepper bit her lip. Having avoided the financial pages so far, she really didn’t want to be caught out in London.

But he seemed unsuspicious enough. ‘What are you doing here? Are Calhoun’s thinking of taking over a British company?’

After only a momentary pause, she held out her hand.

‘Not a business trip,’ she said firmly. ‘How are you, Mr Franks?’

His eyes were shrewd. ‘Just back from New York. I’ve been covering the sustainable trade talks. What are you doing in London?’

Pepper remembered her conversation with the unshaven pirate. ‘I’ve got family here,’ she said, inspired.

He was sceptical. ‘Really?’

‘Really.’ She took rapid stock and told him part of the truth. ‘I haven’t had a holiday in quite a while. I’m told London in spring is beautiful.’

He pursed his lips, clearly unconvinced. But handling inquisitive journalists was all part of a day’s work for Pepper. She gave him a bland smile. He gave up.

‘Have a good time. If you could do with some company any time, give me a call.’

He fished a business card out of his wallet and handed it over. She managed not to wince. There had been a moment when she’d thought the pirate was going to give her his card. Now that would have been a triumph indeed. A man who didn’t know she was an heiress giving her his number!

‘Thank you,’ said Pepper, not looking at it. She thought wryly, Now, this is much more the sort of pick-up I’m used to.

The journalist was offering a classic bargain—dinner, or a night on the town, maybe a bit of inside information, in return for an exclusive on Calhoun Carter’s next move on the acquisition trail. He wouldn’t have bothered to say a word to Pepper if he had known that Mary Ellen had kicked her out.

The luggage carousel began to turn. She gave him a nod of farewell.

‘Excuse me. I’m going to be walking someone who’s new to London through Customs. Goodbye, Mr Franks. Nice to see you.’

But she kept his card. In the survival game you held onto any advantage you could get, however unlikely.

Steven looked for the glorious redhead in the baggage arrivals hall. There were so many people that it would have been a miracle if he’d found her. But he still looked.

Other people kept getting in the way, though. Martin Tammery, a pushy alumnus of Queen Margaret’s, returned to the attack, trying to persuade him to come on some new television game show he was starting. And he and Sandy Franks kept arguing about someone they’d seen in the crowd. The Tiger Cub, they called her.

Uninterested, Steven barely heard them. He wanted a goddess, not a tiger cub. He scanned the surge of people. Surely that fiery mane could not disappear so easily?

Martin Tammery took on an acquisitive expression. ‘Do you think she’ll be here for long? Could I get her on to In My Experience?’

Sandy Franks pursed his lips. ‘You’d have to move fast. She never stays anywhere long.’

‘Yeah. But if she’s here on some secret deal the London office will deny all knowledge. How do I get hold of her?’

Sandy’s eyes gleamed. ‘Ask me along to the recording and I might just help you out. I have contacts.’

‘There you are, Steven. That’s the class of company you’d be in if you come on the new programme,’ Martin said to him. ‘What about if I do a deal with you, too? If I get Pepper Calhoun on the programme, you stop wriggling.’

‘I have no idea who Pepper Calhoun is,’ said Steven, not taking his eyes off the crowd.

They both started to give him a potted biography. He paid no attention. There was a gleam of red on the other side of the luggage carousel. He started after it.

In vain, of course. By the time he got there the crowd had parted and closed up again too many times. She was lost, his golden Venus with her shy smile and her infectious laugh. And that mouth that brought him out in a cold sweat just to think about.

He should have asked for her number right then, when he’d had the chance, and to hell with political correctness. He should have given her his card. At least then he would have known.

The other two came panting up after him.

‘So what about it, Steven?’ said Martin. ‘Do the pilot show? For the honour of the old college?’

Steven sighed deeply. But, as the newly appointed Master, he had obligations to old alumni.

Here was the real world kicking in again, he thought wearily. Goodbye, dream of a goddess. Hello, duty.

‘Send me a proposal,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ll have to check the diary. But in principle I’ll do anything I can.’

Martin Tammery was exuberant in his thanks. ‘Great. I’ll count on that.’

He could, too, Steven thought, as he trailed his suitcase out into the main concourse and agreed to share a cab back into central London with the other two. Steven never let people down.

Story of my life, he thought with a touch of bitterness. Steven Konig, the ultimate sustainable resource. Always there for Queen Margaret’s College. For Kplant. Chairing a conference here, delivering a lecture there. Never rebelling. And never, ever giving in to impulse.

Which is exactly why I’m travelling in to London with two men who want more lectures and interviews and wise words, he thought with irony. Whereas what I want is my golden goddess here alone with me.

What would have happened if I had given her my card? Would she have given me her number? Agreed to meet? Maybe even been here now?

He went hot at the thought.

And where would we have gone from there?

Just the question filled him with wild longing. It was so acute that he winced. His companions, deep in conversation about employment law, did not notice.

Just as well, thought Steven, crushing the picture that his reflections had brought to leaping life. He was still influential Steven Konig with all those responsibilities. He still had no spare capacity to run a private life as well.

But he wished he had. He could not remember ever wishing anything so much. If only…

The other two broke off their conversation.

‘What was that, Steven?’ said Martin Tammery blankly.

Steven’s smile was full of self-mockery. ‘I just said Captain Blood had all the fun.’

Pepper found that life as a non-rich person was surprisingly easy. In lots of ways, it was even fun. And the best thing of all was not having to think how her grandmother would react to everything she wanted to do.

She had never stayed anywhere but five-star hotels before, all pre-booked by efficient Carmen. So it was an adventure to find herself a modest hotel to stay in.

It was a relief that she came through that all right. She even managed to negotiate with the concierge when he said that she had to wait until midday to take possession.

‘I’ve had a bad time. I need to sleep for a week,’ she said, yawning hugely. She brought out her remaining credit card. ‘I’ll pay for last night, too, if you want. Just lead me somewhere I can lie down.’

Either the yawn worked or the concierge was someone else with an unexpected streak of human kindness. Within ten minutes she was stretched out on a hard bed, her eyelids closing.

‘First problem solved,’ she said to herself drowsily. ‘So shucks to Mary Ellen Calhoun.’

She did not wake until the evening. And even then she just got up and had a slightly dazed walk through dark streets before falling back into bed.

The next morning she felt entirely different. Not hopeful, exactly. More interested. The pirate on the plane had said she could do anything she put her mind to. So—was he right?

After a good night’s sleep she was ready to find out. She had even half formulated a plan. She went out and got herself a mobile phone and began putting it into practice.

Problem solving seemed to be her forte. By the end of the day an old contact had agreed to look at her business plan for Out of the Attic. Another had offered to make some introductions. She’d found a temporary job to get her through the next few weeks. It was only word processing, but at least it meant that she did not have to dig into her small store of capital—or spend hours on her own thinking about the vicious little darts that her grandmother had thrown.

She’d also made a decision that surprised her. She had the name of a lawyer who had acted for her mother’s family years ago. She went back through the files on her laptop and there it was, a reply to a letter he had sent her on her twenty-fifth birthday.

‘Tell them you want nothing to do with them,’ Mary Ellen had said.

And Pepper had. So she’d been shamefaced in approaching him today. But that piratical endorsement had got her through the first hesitation. She’d called the lawyer.

He had been cool, but he had not refused to see her.

‘This is a surprise,’ he said when she came in. ‘Mrs Calhoun always insisted that you did not want to see anyone from the Dare family.’

‘That was then.’

He looked sceptical.

‘I’ve been disinherited,’ she told him baldly.

‘Ah.’ He pursed his lips. ‘So what exactly do you want from the Dare family?’

Pepper flushed. ‘Not money, if that’s what you think,’ she said indignantly. Being thought a sponger was a new experience she could have done without. ‘I can look after myself. But—I just thought—if anyone in my mother’s family wanted to see me, I’m going to be in London for a while. We might get a cup of coffee some day. That’s all.’

‘I see.’ The lawyer pondered.

She said with difficulty, ‘I don’t remember my mother, you see. Since—I mean, recently I’ve been thinking about that. And I think I’d like to meet my aunt. This feud thing has gone on too long. I don’t even know what it was about.’

For the first time the lawyer smiled. ‘I’ll ask,’ he promised.

He must have asked swiftly. Now, at the end of the day, Pepper was taking a phone call in her hotel room.

‘Pepper?’ said a voice that bubbled over with enthusiasm. ‘Oh, I can’t believe this. It is so good to talk to you after all these years.’

‘Who is this—?’ began Pepper, and then fell over her own words.

She knew that voice. She still had dreams of it saying, ‘Come on, what does it matter if you get dirty? You’re going to see the kingfishers.’

‘Isabel?’ she said in disbelief.

She had thought it was a dream. Her grandmother had said it was a dream. Or a prolonged case of a preschooler’s imaginary friends. Mary Ellen had even threatened to take her to a psychiatrist— ‘To get it out of your system for good and all.’

‘Izzy? Izzy, is that you?’

Izzy’s laugh had not changed either. In the memory that Mary Ellen had said was disturbed fantasy, she and Pepper had visited together just once when they were children. Izzy must have been about eight—and muddy; Pepper had been ten, in her best dress—and longing to be muddy, too.

Now Izzy sounded just the same as she had in Pepper’s memory: as if she could take on the world—and have the time of her life doing it.

‘Yup. It’s me,’ said Isabel Dare ungrammatically. ‘I gather you’re over in the UK for a while. Want to come and play?’

Pepper sat down hard in the overcrowded little room. In the mirror on the opposite wall, she saw that she was grinning all over her face. She embraced the disputed memory with relish. More, with laughter.

‘You’ve got more ditches for me to wade through?’

‘You remember, then?’ Izzy gave a choke of amusement. ‘Better than that. I’ve got a spare room that just happens to be empty. Fancy sharing a flat with your cousins?’

And Pepper thought, Home!

She had never shared with friends of her own age. It was a revelation.

Pepper had never come out of her room at the Calhoun mansion until every hair was neatly in place. Isabel and Jemima thought nothing of wandering around in their underwear with their hair in curlers while they swapped plans for the day. They shared clothes and housework and invitations with careless freedom. Then fought to the death over a low-fat yoghurt. They read each other’s horoscope aloud over Sunday breakfast. They split bills without arguing but battled over whose turn it was to wash up a couple of coffee cups. After a week of stunned disbelief, Pepper began to talk, too.

At first it was just little ironic asides. ‘I’ve lived in New York, Paris and Milan. But I’ve never lived in chaos before.’

‘Good experience for you, then,’ said Izzy cheerfully.

But Jemima was curious. ‘You must have. I mean you were a student, right? Everyone lives in chaos when they’re a student.’

‘Not me. I had my electronic personal organiser. And a maid.’

‘A maid?’ they chorused.

‘Well, someone to do the housework.’

‘We do our own housework,’ said Jemima firmly.

‘Unless Jay Jay is giving a party for all her cool friends,’ said the irrepressible Izzy. ‘Then we call in a stylist to run it. And a firm of industrial cleaners afterwards.’

Jemima threw a cushion at her.

There was some truth in the accusation, though, as Pepper found out. Izzy’s friends were a casual bunch, but Jemima took her socialising seriously.

‘It’s because she’s a fashion model,’ Izzy told Pepper when they were alone. She sounded unwontedly serious. ‘She seems to make a decent living. But her agent says she could be really big. That’s what the networking is all about.’

‘I know about networking,’ agreed Pepper with feeling. ‘I’ve been trying to put together a new retail idea. The business plan is beautiful. Now all I have to do is get the capital. Networking rules!’

That was when she moved on to full-scale confidences. Well, she didn’t tell them everything. Not ‘you’re a potato’ and ‘I paid men to date you’. But why she left Calhouns. And what she was trying to do in London.

‘And if it all collapses, I can hire out as a consultant,’ she ended flippantly. ‘That’s what unsuccessful entrepreneurs do between projects.’

‘So tell us about Out of the Attic,’ said Jemima, a dedicated shopper.

Pepper lit up. She loved her project.

‘It does two things. Most important, it looks at shopping as a form of entertainment. It has to be comfortable, stimulating, and aesthetically pleasant. So we turn a shop into a treasure trove. You don’t go through racks, you discover things. As if you were going through an attic, in fact.’

Jemima, the clothes professional, pursed her lips. ‘But you want people to move through the shop fast, buying as much as they can carry?’

‘They can buy. The stock is on site. But clients have the chance to look at things in a pretty environment before they decide what they want to try. They check their coats and bags at the door. They can get a coffee. They can sit and look at stuff.’

Jemima was unconvinced. ‘Sounds like an awful lot of effort to sell one garment.’

‘It would be. But most people will buy more than one. And they’ll take a catalogue home with them. We’re talking lifestyle here. And building a customer base.’ Pepper was warming to her theme. ‘I’m thinking we should have a Girls’ Night Out facility. An exclusive show for a few friends after work.’

Izzy was enthusiastic. ‘Great. Shopping and a party at the same time.’

Pepper nodded. ‘That’s what I thought.’

‘But you don’t shop and you hate parties,’ Jemima pointed out.

‘So? There aren’t enough people like me to build a business on. I know what other people want.’

Jemima stayed sceptical. ‘And what would the clothes be like?’

‘Well, it wouldn’t just be clothes. They’re too seasonal and subject to fashion.’

‘You mean you don’t know,’ Jemima crowed.

Pepper was stung. ‘I know. I’ve got a couple of designers on standby. The brief I gave them was pretty and practical.’

Jemima looked down her nose.

‘You probably don’t want to believe it,’ Pepper told her with feeling, ‘but most clothes in the mall are designed for adolescents who don’t feel the cold, never sit down and think they ought to be sexual predators. There’s this great big market out there who don’t fulfil the brief. My clothes will be for them.’

‘You mean the Size Fourteen Syndrome,’ sniffed Jemima.

Pepper glared. ‘And what is wrong with being size fourteen? Do you know how many people are?’

Jemima opened her mouth, caught Pepper’s eye and thought better of it.

‘There’s only one problem with being size fourteen,’ Pepper announced. ‘It’s not cool. I’m going to make Out of the Attic so cool no one who comes in will be ashamed of herself, no matter what size she is.’

Jemima cast her eyes to heaven. ‘Dream on.’

But Pepper was unmoved. ‘I’ve done the market research. And I’ve lived size fourteen. Women are just waiting for Out of the Attic. You’ll see.’

‘Excuse me, Master.’

Steven was miles away. He was standing by the high window staring down into the quad.

Not with pleasure. Other people saw a medieval hall the colour of warm butter, with mullioned windows that overlooked a succulent velvet lawn. Steven saw crumbling stonework, blocked guttering and the cost of a new roof that made his eyes spin just to think about.

Queen Margaret’s College was an ancient institution and a historic building. It was also broke.

Valerie Holmes, who had been the Master’s secretary for so long that she remembered when Steven Konig was a new undergraduate, looked at him with sympathy. Poor chap, she thought. He was the classic compromise candidate: neither the pure academic that the old guard wanted, nor the racy media darling that the politicians had been pushing so hard. As a result, he was disliked by both sides. And he knew it.

She coughed gently. ‘Master?’

Steven jumped and turned guiltily. ‘Oh, it’s you, Valerie,’ he said, surprised. ‘Is the car here already?’

He had an appointment to do a television interview and they were sending a car for him. It was Valerie who had insisted on that. She knew how much he hated the publicity stuff. But when you were Master of a college that was falling down you had to do it.

But this was not the car reluctantly provided by Indigo Television. This was something a lot more troubling. Though Valerie was much too discreet to say so.

‘No, Master. The car won’t be here for another hour.’

Steven sighed. He pushed a hand through his dark hair. She really should have reminded him to have it cut, thought Valerie, momentarily distracted. But at least he had shaved this morning. Sometimes, when he strode in from his morning jog round the Parks, he looked more like a guerrilla who had been in the jungle for too long than a senior member of the university.

He gave her his best grin, the conspiratorial one that made his eyes twinkle. Not a lot of people saw that grin. Most of them thought the Master of Queen Margaret’s College was a dour workaholic. And those were his supporters. Valerie knew different—as she told her husband.

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