is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular and bestselling novelists. Her writing was an instant success with readers worldwide. Since her first book, Bittersweet Passion, was published in 1987, she has gone from strength to strength and now has over ninety titles, which have sold more than thirty-five million copies, to her name.

In this special collection, we offer readers a chance to revisit favourite books or enjoy that rare treasure—a book by a favourite writer—they may have missed. In every case, seduction and passion with a gorgeous, irresistible man are guaranteed!

LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen Mills & Boon® reader since her teens. She is very happily married, with an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, which knocks everything over, a very small terrier, which barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.

Emerald

Mistress

Lynne

Graham

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

IN AN INSTANT of searing honesty that came between sleeping and waking exhausted in her Manchester hotel room, Harriet Carmichael recognised that her life was not at all what she had once dreamt it would be. But she still hadn’t the slightest suspicion that she was about to face a day when her every worst nightmare would come true.

In any case, on her seventh birthday her stepfather had taught her to count her blessings when her exquisite mother had failed once again to put in a promised appearance. Those constant disappointments had hurt so much that Harriet had soon learned the art of looking on the bright side. That was how she protected herself. Negative thoughts were banished with a rousing mental mantra of all the things that she felt she should be grateful for. Right now there was her fantastic fiancé, Luke, who had fallen for her in spite of her imperfections. Then there was her wonderful and glamorous extended family. She also had a great job, which earned her a terrific salary and which had finally persuaded Luke to put marriage on the agenda.

A starry smile tilted her generous mouth now. Awash with feel-good buoyancy, Harriet reached for the television remote and flicked on the business news.

‘Following a recent drop in share prices, Rafael Cavaliere’s arrival in London is fuelling rumours of a crash in the electronics sector.’

Harriet sat up in bed with a jerk to study the camera shot of the notorious Italian tycoon at Heathrow Airport. As usual his staff and his bodyguards surrounded his tall, commanding figure while a posse of frantic paparazzi bayed for attention. In the midst of this mêlée, however, Cavaliere strode along without haste in an apparent oasis of personal peace. The iceman cometh, Harriet thought grimly. Although he was only in his mid thirties he emanated the brutal assurance of a powerful male at home with the raw politics of the business world. His enormous wealth and brilliant financial acumen were laced with formidable ruthlessness. Behind the shades he always wore his lean, dark and compelling profile was as unreadable as a granite wall. A disturbing little shiver ran down her spine.

With an impatient hand Harriet thrust back the tumble of rich dark red hair falling across her pale brow, the soft contours of her rounded face taut with disapproval. Ten years earlier Rafael Cavaliere had acquired the pharmaceutical company where her stepfather had worked. Stripped of its every asset, the ailing firm had ceased to exist. Subsequently unemployment had devastated the rural town where she had grown up, and wrecked more than one previously happy family. She despised everything Rafael Cavaliere stood for: he did not create, he simply destroyed, and all in the very convenient names of progress, efficiency and profit.

In those days Harriet had been a country girl, never happier than when she was helping out at the local riding school, and her sole ambition had been to work with horses. Which was exactly why she had been so very unsettled only two months ago, when she’d become the fortunate recipient of a most unexpected inheritance: a relative she’d never met had left her a small livery business on the west coast of Ireland. Initially astonished and ecstatic at the news, Harriet had been downright irritated to be told that a handsome offer had already been made to purchase the property. In fact she had been mad keen to book the first available flight to Kerry. Unfortunately for her, however, absolutely nobody else in her life had shared her enthusiasm for exploring either her Irish legacy or her Irish heritage, she recalled heavily.

Her mother, Eva, had fled Ireland and her family for London as a pregnant teenager. Eva’s memories were bitter and unforgiving, and she had always refused to tell her daughter who her father was. Harriet would have dearly loved some encouragement to visit the village of Ballyflynn, where Eva had grown up, and would have welcomed the chance to see if she could discover for herself the identity of her birth father. But fate had decreed otherwise, for tomorrow contracts were to be exchanged for the sale of the livery stable. Urged to be sensible rather than sentimental, Harriet had given way to pressure and had agreed to sell her inheritance sight unseen. After all, to do otherwise would have entailed turning her life upside down.

Her mobile phone rang. Though discomfited by her somewhat downbeat reflections, Harriet answered it with concentrated brightness.

‘Harriet…do you know if my Armani suit is still at the dry cleaners?’ Luke enquired tautly.

‘Let me think.’ Harriet thought back to the weekend, which had raced past in her usual feverish fight with the clock as she struggled to meet all her obligations. Luke had asked her to pick up his suit if she could manage it, and she had said she would. But had she actually done so? Since working overtime had begun encroaching heavily on her weekends, she had found it increasingly hard to factor in the time to take care of the ordinary things of life.

‘Harriet…’ Luke pressed. ‘I’m running late—’

‘I definitely picked your suit up—’

‘But it’s not in the wardrobe!’ Luke was as clipped and cutting in his impatience as only a lawyer could be. He had been equally blunt when it came to pointing out that the Emerald Isle was famously green because it rained a lot there, and therefore it was not at all his idea of the perfect setting for a holiday home.

‘So where is it?’

Harriet pictured him with his streaky blond hair swept back from his brow, his tanned, lively features lit by light green eyes. Love made her feel hollow with longing. With effort she retrieved a recollection of staggering into his apartment laden with shopping bags, the Armani suit draped over her arm. ‘Give me a minute. I’m thinking.’

‘Why are you always so disorganised?’ Luke condemned with sudden unexpected anger.

Taken aback by that unfair criticism, Harriet squeezed her eyes tight shut and with a meteoric effort remembered. ‘Your suit is hanging on the back of the kitchen door.’

‘It’s…where? Oh, never mind,’ Luke said ungratefully.

‘That is the last time I do a favour for you on a Saturday, just so that you can meet your friends at the gym,’ Harriet declared. ‘I’m not disorganised, just run off my feet!’

A sudden silence hummed on the line.

‘I’m sorry. I was out of order,’ Luke told her quietly. ‘Will I see you later?’

‘No. I’ll be lucky to make it home before midnight.’ Even when she got back to London she would still have to call into the agency, brief her boss, Saskia, and write up a detailed report. The monthly meeting with the executives at the Zenco headquarters in Manchester was the most important date in her diary.

‘That’s a shame, because I miss you,’ Luke asserted with easy charm. ‘However, I do have a lot on today too. So don’t worry if I switch off my phone. Just leave a message. Look, I have to rush…I’ll call you tomorrow, babes.’

Babes? Replacing the handset, Harriet was surprised by that particular term of endearment, for it had a frivolous edge that was not in his usual style. Her half-sister Alice used that expression too. But then Alice was an It-girl with a trust fund and an aptitude for always being at the cutting edge of the latest trends. Harriet smiled fondly. She was very proud of the younger woman and thought, not for the first time, that it was a great shame that two of her favourite people, her sister and her fiancé, could hardly stand to be in the same room together.

Her mobile shrilled once more, just as she was about to head out for her meeting.

‘Are you watching the news?’ Her boss hissed in a frantic tone of urgency.

‘No…why?’ As Saskia was a natural-born drama queen, Harriet turned on the television news again in no great hurry.

‘Zenco has gone down…’ Saskia framed harshly.

Harriet’s stomach flipped. She stared transfixed at the screen. Crowds of employees were milling around the pavement in front of the Zenco building. Some people were banging on the entrance doors, but nobody appeared to be getting inside. Expressions reflected anger, bewilderment and blank disbelief. The camera lingered lovingly on the face of a young woman sobbing.

‘You deal with Zenco’s people all the time. Why didn’t you realise that there was trouble brewing?’ Saskia condemned, slashing like a knife through Harriet’s horror at the drama that was unfolding on screen. ‘If you’d warned us we could have pulled back!’

Unprepared for this attack, Harriet was bemused. ‘But, Saskia, how could I—?’

‘Right at this minute I’m not interested in listening to your excuses,’ her boss spat, with an almost hysterical edge to her voice. ‘Get over there and pull every bloody string you have to and find out what’s happening. Then come back here as soon as possible! Without the Zenco account you can’t afford to be running up expenses like some lottery winner.’

In the aftermath of that unreasonable accusation, Harriet pressed cooling hands to her hot cheeks. The brunette was well known for her acid tongue, but it was the first time that Harriet had personally felt its effects. Until this morning she had been a favoured employee, riding the crest of the wave on Zenco’s ever-increasing marketing budget, she acknowledged grimly. If Zenco was in trouble, so was she.

Two years had passed since Harriet had joined the staff at Dar Design. Back then the Zenco account had been small, but they had liked Dar’s creative department’s campaign and Harriet’s enthusiastic presentation skills—and the rest was history: the agency had expanded fast to meet the advertising needs of the giant multinational company. What if the gravy train had shrieked to a sudden halt?

Six hours later, Harriet crossed Dar Design’s elegant reception area. An eerie silence hung over the office. Hovering colleagues peered out of doorways and looked away again hurriedly. Nobody knew what to do or what to say. Before Harriet had even boarded her flight back to London Saskia had phoned her four more times. Everybody must have heard Saskia screaming at the top of her voice that Zenco owed the agency so much money Dar Design would go to the wall with them. Harriet’s attempts to talk to Luke had been foiled when, on calling his secretary, she had discovered that he would be at a legal conference until six; and his mobile phone was switched off, just as he’d said it would be.

An emaciated brunette in her forties, clad in a pink tweed suit, thrust wide the door of her office. ‘So?’ Saskia demanded caustically.

Harriet breathed in deeply, walked in and closed the door behind her. ‘It’s not good. The rumour is that there’s a black hole in Zenco’s accounts and investigations are pending against three of the directors.’

Saskia uttered a very rude word and studied Harriet with raging resentment. ‘Why the hell am I only hearing about this now?’

‘Corruption in high places isn’t a topic of conversation amongst the Zenco personnel I’ve dealt with,’ Harriet pointed out as quietly as she knew how. ‘They don’t have the connections and neither do I.’

* * *

Despite the long estrangement that had existed between Valente Cavaliere and his son, Rafael chose to attend his father’s funeral.

Rafael believed family hostilities were not for public parade or debate, and he saw no reason to offend tribal traditions. Certainly it was inconvenient for him to leave the UK at the moment that Zenco went into its death throes, but he was still well on track to make another few million pounds in profit from other people’s stupidity and greed.

A silence filled with awe and respect greeted his arrival at the chapel in Rome. He marked the older man’s passing without visible emotion or sentiment. His impassive demeanour was a fitting footnote which his late parent would have very much admired. In seventy odd years of fully indulging his own essentially vicious nature, Valente had never once managed to match his son’s cold, proud detachment.

In a thwarted rage at his inability to intimidate Rafael, Valente had fought continually with him. He had competed in corrupt and underhand ways for his son’s every prize and had on many occasions attempted to bring the younger man’s business empire down. In defeat, Valente had learnt to his own astonishment that he was very proud of his own flesh and blood. Rafael was fiercely intelligent, icily self-controlled and lethally unemotional. By the time of his death Valente had come to believe that he had bred a king among men by the Irish wife who had so grievously failed to meet his expectations

Rafael’s reflections at the graveside were not of a religious or peaceful nature. By then memories sharp and sour as bile were afflicting him.

‘Your mother is a slut and a junkie. Don’t believe a word the lying bitch says!’ Valente had warned Rafael when he was seven years old, and he had gone on to carefully explain exactly what those words meant. ‘When you visit her never forget that you’re a Cavaliere and she’s Irish trash.’

Valente, however, had truly surpassed himself when Rafael had fallen in love for the first and last time at the age of fifteen. He had paid a remarkably fresh-faced hooker to charm and seduce his impressionable son over the space of a week.

‘I had to make a man of you and she was impressed. Tasty, wasn’t she? I should know. I tried her out before I picked her for you,’ Valente had chuckled. ‘But you can’t love her. She’s a whore and you’ll never see her again. All women are sluts under the skin when it comes to men with money and power.’

That devastating news had been delivered with tasteless hilarity in front of an appreciative audience of his father’s closest associates.

‘There can be no sentiment in business,’ Valente had explained when the father of Rafael’s best friend had shot himself over a deal that went wrong the week after Valente reneged on it. ‘I look after me and, as long as you are loyal, I look after you. That’s it. Family and friends don’t count unless I get something out of it.’

Not long afterwards Rafael had received a lecture on the respective values of abortion, denial and intimidation in respect of unplanned pregnancies. That ironic recollection almost made Rafael smile for the first time in days. Valente had fathered a child in Ireland, during a brief encounter with the widow who had once acted as the caretaker at his wife’s ancestral home, Flynn Court. Now Rafael had a half-sister, a lively fifteen-year-old girl with a brash, mouthy manner and big scared Cavaliere eyes. He’d been paying for her education at select boarding schools for almost the last four years. It wasn’t a sentimental attachment, though. There was always purpose in Rafael’s actions. His generosity had embarrassed and enraged his father and done his own image no harm whatsoever in the eyes of the once suspicious locals in Ballyflynn.

He tossed a copy of a faded photo of his mother and the neglected Flynn Court into the grave with Valente. May she haunt you through purgatory and hell, he urged grimly…

* * *

At Saskia’s command, Harriet finished work earlier than she’d expected and went home. By then she was fully aware that, with Zenco about to go down, her career would divebomb with it. In the short term a period of unemployment would not create a serious problem for her as she was financially secure, she reasoned, striving to be upbeat. But Luke, who was always cautious, would undoubtedly decide that setting a date for their wedding was out of the question.

Harriet tried not to think about the prospect of another couple of years spent concealing her secret addiction to bridal magazines and smiling with valiant unconcern when people asked when the big day would be. She would have cut off her arm sooner than let Luke guess just how keen she was to buy into marriage and eventually motherhood, because she did not want him to feel under pressure. But they had been together five years and engaged for two; at twenty-eight she was ready for the next step.

Once home, she listened to a message on her answering machine.

Alice’s beautifully modulated speaking tones, honed to an aristocratic edge by her expensive education, filled the room. ‘I thought we could do lunch…but obviously you’re off doing your big business bit somewhere. Shame! Catch you another time. I’m off to Nice tonight.’

Harriet suppressed a disappointed sigh just as the doorbell sounded. Lunching with her glitzy kid sister and hearing all about her wonderfully exciting life was always entertaining.

It was Juliet, the pneumatic blonde glamour model who lived across the hall. ‘I’m moving out this evening.’

‘My goodness, that’s sudden—’

‘I’m off to Europe with my bloke and I have a favour to ask…’ Juliet, who never came to Harriet’s door for any other reason, displayed perfect teeth in an expectant smile. ‘You have such a soft heart, and you’re fantastic with animals. Would you give Samson a home?’

Harriet blinked in dismay. Samson was Juliet’s chihuahua, purchased as a girlie fashion accessory when the film Legally Blonde had been in vogue. Harriet realised she’d not seen the little dog since another resident had reminded Juliet of the no-pets clause in her rental agreement. ‘I didn’t know you still had him.’

‘He’s been living a life of luxury in a posh pet hotel and costing me a bloody fortune,’ Juliet lamented. ‘But I don’t have time to sell him.’

‘I’m sorry—I can’t help.’ Harriet hardened her heart against the thought of poor neglected Samson and felt very much like shaking his feckless owner until her pearly teeth rattled in her selfish head. ‘Couldn’t the kennels find another home for him?’

‘No, they’d rather hang on to him to make more dosh out of me!’ Juliet wailed accusingly. ‘You’ve got to help me with this. Danny’s picking me up in less than an hour!’

‘I’m afraid I don’t have anywhere to keep a dog either.’ Harriet steeled herself not to surrender to the blonde’s steamrolling personality; Luke was not a dog lover, and had vehemently objected when she had once taken care of Samson over a weekend.

An hour and a half later, having changed into a blue dress that was a particular favourite of Luke’s, Harriet was on the way over to his flat with the intention of surprising him—his conference would have ended by now. She clutched the ingredients of an oriental stir-fry; he loved her cooking. Would it be manipulative to feed him before she mentioned the giant black cloud hovering on her career horizon? Her scrupulous conscience twanged. She was also being haunted by an image of Samson, small enough to sit in pint jug, being bullied by other larger dogs in some gloomy canine holiday home. But the chihuahua was not her responsibility, she reminded herself hurriedly. Luke got really irritated when she plunged headfirst into helping other people solve their problems.

She let herself into his ultra modern apartment and went straight down the hall and into the kitchen. A burst of giggling from the open plan living-cum-bedroom area made her still in surprise. She moved to the door.

‘We called her Porky Pie when we were kids,’ a familiar female voice was saying. ‘Ma was so ashamed of Harriet that she once pretended that she was the housekeeper’s child. She was plump, and she talked with a horrible country bumpkin accent. She might have slimmed down since then, but she’s still got a fat face and a bum the width of a combine harvester.’

Harriet was welded to the spot by astonishment. What was Alice doing in Luke’s apartment, and why was her sister saying such horrible things about her? Was she trying to amuse Luke? Once or twice she had heard Alice being cruelly sarcastic and funny at the expense of others, but had put it down to immaturity since the girl was six years her junior.

‘Alice,’ Luke chided, in an inexcusably indulgent tone.

‘“My name is Porky Pie and I am so boring. I talk about recipes and am so desperate to be liked that I am a total pathetic doormat to everyone around me,”’ Alice proclaimed, mimicking Harriet’s burr well enough for her shaken victim to wince and turn even paler as she moved forward hurriedly to reveal her presence before anything more could be said. ‘Would you prefer a slice of my chocolate cake or another shag, babes?’

‘Do you need to ask? Open those beautiful legs…’

Harriet’s own lower limbs set like lead beneath her. Her stomach churned like a whirlpool while she stared across the spacious stretch of polished wood flooring in utter disbelief. Luke was lying back on the bed stark naked and he was pulling her equally naked half-sister down on top of him! Giggling with carefree abandon, her pale blonde silky hair rippling across her slim tanned shoulders, Alice moved straight into a much more intimate pose with the ease of habit and confidence.

‘I love your dainty little boobs…’ Luke groaned with pleasure, stretching up greedy hands to the pert mounds jutting over him as Alice arched her spine with taunting sexiness.

Harriet was frozen to the spot in sheer shock at the graphic scene before her. ‘Not like mine…’ she heard herself say flatly, and out loud, her own voice sounding curiously detached and lifeless to her ears.

The lovers froze with an immediacy that might have been comic in other circumstances. Luke reared up off the pillows. ‘Harriet?’

‘How long have you been seeing each other?’ Harriet enquired with revulsion, her hands knotting into fists as she physically forced herself not to avert her gaze from their intimacy.

Alice detached from Luke with unhurried grace and angled a bright look of defiance at Harriet, her brown eyes sparkling, her beautiful face expressing unashamed challenge. ‘Months. He can’t get enough of me, in bed or out of it. I’m sorry you had to find out this way. But that’s life, and it’s tough on all of us. I haven’t enjoyed sneaking around like I’m doing something to be ashamed of.’

Striving to pull on his trousers with something less than his normal assurance, Luke harshly told Alice to keep quiet. Harriet recoiled from that pitying intervention from her fiancé. Only he wasn’t her fiancé any more, she told herself starkly. When he had slept with her sister he had made a joke of their engagement. Rigid with the effort of self-control required to keep her emotions from betraying her, she turned round in a stilted movement and walked straight back out of the apartment.

She couldn’t catch her breath at first. She felt like someone had locked her in a little black box and deprived her of oxygen. She was fighting off the urge to panic and scream. Her mind kept on feverishly replaying what she had seen, what she had heard and been told. The words and the images were like serrated knives, twisting ever deeper inside her. The pain was unbelievable, for she had adored Luke for what felt like half of her adult life. She could not imagine living without him. She could not bear the knowledge that he had made love to her sister, had laughed and listened to Alice’s degrading comments. What had happened to loyalty and decency?

What had happened to the dislike that Luke and Alice had been so keen to parade previously, their snide comments about each other? Luke had called Alice a spoilt little princess and had scorned her life of carefree self-indulgence. Alice had often referred to Luke as a pompous prat. Had that supposed animosity only been put on for Harriet’s benefit?

When Harriet had first met Luke at university she had been his mate when she’d wanted to be so much more, a rank outsider forced to smile on the sidelines while he dated and bedded prettier and slimmer and more sophisticated girls. But through friendship she had won his trust and affection. Love had blossomed when he’d begun to look for her when she wasn’t there, and had shared his hopes, failures and successes with her.

She had starved herself down two full dress sizes to meet Luke’s standards. Indeed, this was the worst of moments to appreciate that she had honed herself into a different person simply to make herself more attractive to the man she had set her heart on holding. But maybe that had been trying to cheat fate. Maybe she and Luke had never been meant to be. Certainly she could not compete with Alice, who was six inches taller and a naturally slender blonde with a fantastic figure. Alice was truly beautiful, and she did not have to work at self-presentation.

Wanting Luke, Alice had just reached out and taken him without apology. She had probably picked up that simple philosophy of life from their mother, Eva. The older woman had left her humble beginnings behind in Ireland and had missed no opportunity to better her prospects. Now based in Paris, and on her third marriage, to a Norwegian shipping magnate, Eva had attained all her goals in life. Harriet was her eldest child and had been raised by Eva’s first husband. Eva had had Alice, and Harriet’s younger half-brother Boyce, with his successor.

‘You only get one life,’ Eva had remarked without regret when she walked out on her devastated second husband for his younger, richer and more powerful replacement. ‘Sometimes you have to be totally selfish to make the most of it. Be true to yourself first.’

That had been a foreign creed to Harriet, who had been forced to put other people’s feelings and needs ahead of her own. But now that her own world had come crashing down around her she could see how self-interest could pay off, and how it might give her another desperately needed focus. It was to meet Luke’s expectations that she was living in the city and working in a high-powered job for money that gave her very little satisfaction. Suddenly she was seeing how her broken heart might be turned into something much more positive.

With Luke out of her life, and a career that was fast fading, she was free to do exactly as she liked, she told herself fiercely, determined to find a source of optimism in the savage, suffocating pain she was struggling to hold at bay. If losing Luke to her half-sister meant the chance to downshift to a simpler lifestyle in the Irish countryside, should she not snatch at that opportunity? After all, there would never be a better time to take such a risk. She was young, single, solvent and healthy.

She was taken aback to find Samson the chihuahua parked outside her front door in his pet carrier. A box of doggy accessories, which included his fake diamond collar collection and designer coats and matching boots, was placed beside him. She rummaged through its contents: there was no feeding bowl, no food, not even a lead. The tiny animal shivered violently at the back of the carrier, enormous round eyes fixed to her in silent pleading.

Harriet suppressed a groan of angry exasperation. How could Juliet abandon her pet when she knew that Harriet didn’t want him? Samson had been dumped, just the way she had been, Harriet recognised painfully. Dumped when he fell out of fashion and a more promising prospect came along. She had always wanted a dog—but a big, normal dog, not one the size of a tiny stuffed toy. But didn’t that make her guilty of body fascism? How had she enjoyed being judged against some impossible marker of physical female perfection and found wanting by Alice? She squirmed with guilt and frustration. It wasn’t Samson’s fault that he was very much undersized…

* * *

The ivy-covered tumbledown wall of an ancient estate bounded the road for what seemed like miles before a roadsign in English and Irish Gaelic alerted Harriet to her arrival in Ballyflynn.

Her heart started beating very fast. A very old stone church appeared in advance of the first houses. Had her mother worshipped there as a girl? Trying as she was to look in every direction at once, Harriet slowed her car to the speed of a snail. Buildings painted in ice cream pastels lined both sides of a wide street embellished by occasional trees. It was distinctly picturesque if sleepy little village.

Parking outside McNally’s, the solicitor dealing with her late cousin’s will, she lifted her designer handbag. Luke had bought it for her birthday. Suddenly she had a flashback to the photo of Alice and Luke that had been printed in a gossip column two weeks earlier. Her tummy gave a sick lurch of remembrance. Luke had always been ambitious and he would be thoroughly enjoying his new public profile. Hungry for the offer of a partnership in the legal firm where he worked, he had told Harriet that appearances were all-important when it came to impressing the senior staff. Alice had to be the definitive image enhancement, with her beauty and her entrée into more exclusive circles. Harriet snatched in a shaken breath. It was only seven weeks since they had broken up and the pain was still horribly fresh. But she was going to get over it without turning into a bitter, jealous monster, she urged herself.

Eugene McNally, the portly middle-aged solicitor, handed over the keys to the late Kathleen Gallagher’s property with wry reluctance. His disappointment had been palpable when Harriet had stated her complete uninterest in discussing or even hearing about the increased offer that had just been made for her inheritance. However, although she had already received copious details in the post, Harriet did have to sit through a further recitation by Mr McNally of the liabilities which were still being settled against her late relative’s estate.

‘Your legacy is unlikely to make you rich,’ the ruddy-faced Mr McNally warned her. ‘It may even cost you money. Making a profit out of horses is not easy.’

‘I know.’ Harriet wondered if he thought she was the type to chase foolish rainbows. Of course her lastminute change of heart about selling must surely have caused considerable annoyance and inconvenience for both him and the prospective buyer, she allowed guiltily. But she’d been hugely apologetic when she’d explained on the phone that an unexpected crisis in her life had made her rethink her future. The buyer she had let down was a business called Flynn Enterprises. Obviously a local one, she reflected ruefully, and treading on local toes was not the way to make friends. Yet, while moving to Ireland was an admittedly bold and risky move on her part, she was convinced that her nearest and dearest were wrong in believing that she was making the biggest mistake of her life….

‘Are you doing this to punish me and make me feel bad?’ Luke had condemned resentfully when he found out.

‘All of a sudden you seem to have gone haywire,’ her stepfather had muttered worriedly. ‘You’re acting like a giddy teenager!’

‘A hair shirt and a spell in a convent would be more exciting than burying yourself alive in that hick village at the back end of nowhere,’ her mother Eva had warned in exasperation. ‘I couldn’t wait to get away. You’ll hate it. You’ll be back in London within six months!’

But what Harriet had chosen to do felt very right to her. In fact she felt different, and she didn’t quite understand why. But she did appreciate that for once she was in complete control of her own destiny, and that gave her a wonderful sense of freedom. She could hardly wait to meet the challenge of running her own business and was quietly confident that, with hard work, she could make a go of it.

She drove very slowly out of Ballyflynn. The same estate wall that had greeted her arrival still stretched before her in an even worse state of repair. There was a tight knot of anticipation in the pit of her tummy. Eugene McNally’s helpful receptionist had given her exact directions: travel about half a mile past the hump backed bridge and turn sharp left down the lane behind the chestnut tree.

The lane was rough and winding, the tall hedges on either side so overgrown that any view was obscured. The verges were lush and green, the floating tumbrels of Queen Anne’s lace moving softly in the slight breeze. She wasn’t expecting too much, Harriet reminded herself. It was so important not to have unrealistic expectations. The lane fanned out into a concrete yard surrounded by a collection of old sheds and stables fashioned of a variety of materials and not at all scenic. Obviously repairs were on the agenda. Well, she had a little money to spend, and two hands to work with.

She drove on round the next corner and lost her heart within thirty seconds flat. In a grove of glorious trees a little whitewashed cottage sat below a thatched roof so endearingly steep it resembled a witch’s hat. Worn red paint picked out old-fashioned mullioned windows and a battered wooden door. Utterly astonished by the sheer eccentricity and apparent age of the building, Harriet blinked and stared. Then she slammed on the brakes, thrust aside her seat belt and climbed out to explore.

The key turned in the door’s lock with ease. A good sign, she thought, buzzing with anticipation. She stepped into a dim interior and was struck by the evocative smell of beeswax and flowers filling her nostrils. A tiny fire glowed in a massive smoke-blackened fireplace, which still rejoiced in all the black metal fittings that had once functioned as a cooking range. The light of the flames gleamed and danced over the dark wood patina of a centrally positioned table, on which was placed a bunch of misty purple lavender spikes and soft pink roses in a chipped crystal vase.

There were two doors, the first of which led into a small room dominated by a high brass bed and a massive Victorian wardrobe. The other led into a much more recent extension to the cottage. Here, the kitchen housed an Aga and had an office corner that accommodated a very cluttered desk set against walls papered with tatty rosettes and faded photos of racing events and horses. Another bedroom led off a small rear corridor. Praying that the final door next to it led into a bathroom that enjoyed full washing facilities, Harriet depressed the knob.

‘Go away…I’m in the bath, Una!’ a startled male voice yelled in protest.

Almost simultaneously Harriet heard a door open off the kitchen and a girl shouting, ‘Fergal…there’s a strange car out front. Forget having a soak. If that’s the Carmichael woman arriving, she’ll not want to find a strange fella in her bath!’

A tall whip-thin teenager in dirty jodhpurs focused on Harriet with sparkling brown eyes and thumped a dismayed hand to her full mouth. Her spiky black hair was threaded with purplish streaks in true gothic style, but she was without a doubt an extraordinarily pretty girl.

There was the sound of a body hastily vacating sloshing bathwater. ‘How do you know? I have a way with women,’ Fergal quipped cheekily. ‘She might be glad enough to find me here—’

‘I can’t give you an honest opinion on that score until I see you,’ Harriet murmured truthfully.

A silence that screamed fell, and then the upper half of a young giant with a tousled blond head twisted round the door to peer out at her. He had navy blue eyes and an unshaven chin. Even though Harriet was thoroughly irritated to find her magical cottage invaded by strangers, she was not at all surprised at Fergal’s belief that he had a way with her sex. In his early to mid-twenties, and with a smile that could strip paint, he was very handsome.

‘Bloody hell…I’m sorry!’ Fergal groaned, and slammed the door fast.

‘I’m Una Donnelly…your part-time groom,’ the teenager announced, tilting her chin pugnaciously.

‘I didn’t realise that anybody else had keys for this place,’ Harriet remarked carefully.

Una reddened. ‘Fergal’s not anybody,’ she proclaimed defensively. ‘He’s like Kathleen’s unofficial partner and he’s always made himself at home here.’

‘Only not now that there’s a new owner!’ Fergal called hurriedly from behind the door he had opened a crack.

‘I assume I have you to thank for dusting and lighting the fire in the hall.’ Harriet walked back into the kitchen to fill the kettle and put it on to boil. She was very tired and extremely hungry, and she needed to get Samson out of the car. After a crack-of-dawn start yesterday, she had driven her packed car from London to board a ferry in Wales. After spending the night on Irish soil in a bed and breakfast, her subsequent journey across the midlands to the Atlantic west coast had been long and draining.

‘No. Why would I do that?’ Una asked in a startled tone that suggested such homely domestic tasks were alien to her.

‘Well, someone did.’

‘But I didn’t know for sure when you were coming—’

‘Good heavens!’ Harriet lost interest in that minor mystery when she looked out of the window for the first time. A simply huge mansion sat on the hill above her new home. Silhouetted against the dulling blue sky, the house was as pure and classic an example of Georgian architecture as she had ever seen, and the setting was spectacular. ‘What’s that?’

‘Flynn Court.’

Harriet tensed. ‘Any connection with a business called Flynn Enterprises?’

‘Big connection,’ Una emphasised at her elbow. ‘With Rafael Flynn on your case you don’t need to worry about us. We don’t want you out. We’re on your side. We think it’s great that you want to make a go of the yard.’

‘I’m delighted to hear it.’ Smothering a yawn, Harriet trekked outside to release Samson from the captivity of his cosy carrier and bring in the groceries she had bought on the road. Did this Rafael Flynn want her out? She winced. Obviously he had tried to buy her out already. But he couldn’t achieve that without her agreement, so why should the teenager’s words leave her feeling threatened?

Samson danced round her feet, tossing a half-hearted bark of greeting at Una, but reserved his main enthusiasm for the food and water that Harriet was placing outside for him.

‘I’ve never seen anything that tiny,’ Una gasped. ‘Is it a dog or a rat? You’d better watch out for it in the yard. Horses spook easily.’

‘Samson will learn. He may be small but he has the heart of a lion.’ Harriet made a determined attempt to build up the chihuahua’s profile.

Unimpressed, Una frowned in wonderment at the lion-hearted miniature dog. ‘Don’t let him wander. The wolfhounds up at the Court would eat him up in one big bite.’

Fergal reappeared, fully dressed in the shabby gear of a horseman. With his damp blond head hovering within inches of the low ceiling, his blue eyes anxious, he held out a huge hand. ‘I’m Fergal Gibson, Miss Carmichael—’

‘Harriet,’ she said automatically

He put a set of keys down on the table with a definitive snap. ‘I wouldn’t have been using the facilities if I’d known you were arriving today. There’s the spare keys back.’

‘But you can’t just surrender to her like that!’ Una launched at him fierily. ‘Like this place is nothing to you and you don’t care that you’re losing a fortune. Kathleen never meant for this to happen—’

‘Stay out of this, Una,’ Fergal cut in with frank male embarrassment. ‘Harriet’s only just got here, and I’m sure she’d prefer to be taking stock of her new home without uninvited visitors. I’ll lock up the horses for the night, shall I?’

Uncertain as to what to do and say at that moment, Harriet walked out in to the yard with Una in the young blond man’s wake. As her mother’s cousin had died nearly four months earlier, it had not occurred to Harriet that there might still be livestock on the property. Certainly none had appeared on the inventory of assets. What exactly was the role of an ‘unofficial partner’? Encountering a truculent look of suspicion from the hot-headed teenager, Harriet suppressed a groan, for she was beginning to suspect that nothing about her Irish inheritance was likely to be as straightforward as she had fondly imagined it would be.

At the back of the cottage a new barn and a row of state-of-the-art stables greeted Harriet’s astonished scrutiny. Her attention skimmed over the floodlit sand paddock with jumps sited towards the rear and what looked like the entrance to an indoor arena.

‘Kathleen and Fergal split the costs of construction. He did the actual building himself. It took three years, and he worked all the hours of the day to afford his share. He bought in young stock and he trained them to sell on as four-year-olds. The horses are his.’ Una spelt out that information with the curtness of youthful stress. ‘But he owns nothing else because it’s all built on your land, and he’s got no right to compensation, either.’

Harriet drew in a long deep breath and slowly exhaled again. ‘I’ll handle this with Fergal direct,’ she countered gently. ‘Give me time to get settled in.’

Spirited brown eyes sought hers. ‘I just want you to do what’s right. Kathleen was very fond of him, and he kept the yard going for her when she was ill.’

Discomfited, Harriet nodded and wandered over to the stables to escape any more argument. Fergal gave her an admirably cheerful introduction to the three inmates that dispelled her unease. There were two brown geldings and a huge almost black stallion of about seventeen hands. Sighting Harriet, the big horse gave a nervous whinny and pranced restlessly in his box.

‘Watch out for Pluto. He can be a cheeky devil,’ Fergal warned her. ‘Don’t try to handle him on your own.’

‘He’s superb,’ Harriet acknowledged, impressed by Pluto’s undeniable presence.

‘He’s the one I’m hoping will make my fortune,’ Fergal confided with a sunny smile that lit up his open tanned face. ‘Don’t be listening to Una. She means well but she’s too young to understand,’ he added in a rueful undertone. ‘This is your place and Kathleen always meant you to have it.’

‘I didn’t even know she existed. I wish we’d met.’ Harriet grimaced. ‘I’m not only saying that because I think I should. Ever since Kathleen Gallagher remembered me in her will and I had to ask my mother who she was I’ve been eaten with curiosity about Kathleen and a side of the family I never knew.’

‘Let me tell you, in some cases never knowing your relations could be a gift,’ her companion opined wryly, surprising her with that hint of greater depth than his candid expression and easy smile suggested.

A couple of hours later, with Samson at her heels, Harriet took a rough tour of the fields that were designated as hers on the property plan. A wave of happiness and enthusiasm had temporarily banished her exhaustion. It was on this fertile ground that she would build a viable business that would still allow her the time to savour life. It didn’t matter that the fencing needed to be renewed, or that the outbuildings that had not been built by Fergal were badly in need of repair: she had enough money in the bank for now to take care of things. The green rolling countryside ornamented by scattered groups of stately mature trees was truly beautiful, and that was infinitely more important to her.

The smell of the sea was in the air when she followed a winding uneven track that took her right down to the seashore and a stretch of glorious white deserted beach that disappeared into the distance. With the sun setting in crimson splendour it was breathtaking. The sound of the Atlantic surf breaking against the silence of true isolation enclosed Harriet and she smiled. Tomorrow she would deal with any problems, but this evening was just for celebrating—not only the joyful surprise of ownership but also a new beginning and an independence that she had never known before.

Back at the cottage, she unpacked only the necessities and enjoyed a quick supper of soup and a roll. She thought how comfortable it was not to have to stick to a strict diet or feel the nagging need to retire still hungry from the table. Not having a man around had advantages, she told herself with determined good cheer as she went into the bedroom: she didn’t care that she had put on weight since breaking up with Luke. She pulled on a floral jersey camisole and matching shorts and sank into the blissfully soft brass bed with a sigh of grateful contentment. Cosy comfort and a full tummy felt good.

It was daylight when she wakened with a jolting start and sat up. From somewhere she could hear a loud clattering and banging noise. Alarm made her tense. Scrambling out of bed, she raced through the kitchen to look out into the stable yard. Her breath tripped in her throat in dismay when she saw the door of Pluto’s stall swinging back on its hinges in the stiff breeze. How the heck had he got out?

Yanking open the back door, she hauled on the muddy Wellington boots she had worn while she walked the boundaries of her land the evening before. As she hurried round the corner of the cottage she was just in time to see Pluto sail like a ship on springs over the fencing that marked the division between the livery yard and the grounds of Flynn Court. Saying a rude word under her breath, Harriet threw herself at the fence and clambered over it to set off in keen pursuit…

CHAPTER TWO

JUST AFTER DAWN, Flynn Court was wreathed in a sea-fret that semi-obscured the classic elegance of the great house and concealed the worst of the dilapidation inflicted by decades of neglect. As the sun broke through the mist, Rafael settled his helicopter down on the landing pad situated to the north side of his ancestral home.

Ireland felt cool and airy and fresh after the heat of the Caribbean sun. Emerging from the helicopter, his current lover, Bianca, had a dramatic fit of the shivers and announced that she was freezing. As Rafael had warned her already that accompanying him to the wilds of County Kerry would involve a degree of physical hardship, a total absence of luxury and no exclusive social outlets whatever, he ignored the complaint. On Irish soil he always relaxed, secure in the knowledge that the local community respected his privacy and that the paparazzi who had finally connected his dual Irish-Italian heritage would receive no assistance and even less encouragement to pry further.

Breakfast was brought up to the master bedroom suite by one of the staff he’d had flown in to make the house ready for occupation the previous week. Barefoot, his shirt hanging open, Rafael sprawled along the window seat with his coffee and feasted his attention on the rolling parkland that ran down to the jagged rocks and the sand dunes that bounded the bay where he had played as a child.

In his father’s home in Italy he had been watched every hour of the day by nannies and bodyguards. The staff had walked in fear of Valente’s violent temper and had restricted Rafael’s play in an effort to protect him from even the smallest injury. Only at Flynn Court had Rafael had the chance to get dirty and paddle, fishing in rock pools and building dams. With his mother too out of it to know what he was doing most of the time, Rafael had run wild and free on the windswept beauty of the beach at the foot of the hill.

‘This is sublime…’ Bianca employed her favourite word, which she used to distinguish everything from a good meal to phenomenal sex and expensive perfume.

Rafael had forgotten her presence. She had little stimulating conversation, so tuning her out was not a challenge. Previously he had decided that the ability to emulate wallpaper was a something in her favour. Now, blonde hair trailing into a flowing mane over one shoulder, she was reclining on the bed. As befitted a supermodel who was internationally renowned for her beauty, she looked as inhumanly perfect as an advertising hoarding. She was posed for maximum effect, her flawless body arrayed in silk lingerie the colour of a café latte, artfully dampened nipples poking through the lace for his admiration. Oozing confidence in her manifold attractions, she stretched out languid legs that were an incredible thirty-six inches long. But Rafael wasn’t a photographer, and he liked his sex a little less choreographed. At this moment he felt nothing and knew that, once again, he had become bored.

Anyway, Bianca’s green eyes, smoky with smudged kohl, were fixed with mesmeric intensity on the true object of her desire. She smiled a Helen of Troy smile of unsurpassable luminosity that lit up the exquisite symmetry of her face. Rafael watched this display of blatant self-love that no mere man—or woman—could ever hope to equal. Bianca shifted position, skimming a light, caressing hand down over the smooth sculpted line of her slender thigh. She was enthralled to the point of ecstasy by her own beautiful reflection in the eighteenth-century mirror on the wall opposite.

A sudden noise from outside sent Rafael’s attention flying back to the tall sash window. A horse was galloping at breakneck speed across the field below his lawn. His interest was caught; he was a great horse-lover, and the owner of an internationally acclaimed stud farm in Kildare. He stood up for a better view; a flutter of colourful movement behind the lower hedge that bounded the field made him reach for the binoculars on the pier table.

A woman was fighting her way through the hedge. She was wearing a quite bizarre outfit: a camisole and shorts fashioned of fabric decorated with large pink flowers. Pyjamas? Worn with green Wellington boots? An aristocratic black brow climbed. A stray shard of sunshine made her hair shine as bright as polished copper in firelight. It was an amazing colour, red as the richest wine against her pale skin. Could this be the tough and savvy London career woman who had refused to sell the Gallagher property back to the Flynn Court estate? The woman who wanted to downshift to the idyllic illusion of rural simplicity? Rafael grinned. One more dreamer bites the dust….

‘If the mountain won’t come…’ Bianca giggled and let intimate hands stray below his shirt to trace his muscular back and then sink below his waist.

Rafael’s even white teeth gritted and he shifted to dislodge her. He wasn’t in the mood. After a week on the yacht in which Bianca had entertained his entire crew by walking around nude at every opportunity she had lost all mystery and allure. He had shagged her on the plane to pass the time. Perhaps out of guilt over his essential indifference now that desire had fled. Why did he get bored so easily? Why was the chase always so much more exciting than the sexual catch? But then, honesty urged him to admit, when had he ever had to mount a pursuit to score with a woman? Or employ the tactics of charm and persuasion?

His intent gaze narrowed on the woman charging across the field full tilt. Her firm round breasts bounced with unfettered abandon. The stallion soared like a great bird over the fence onto the rolling lawn. The redhead flung herself sideways over the same barrier, got into difficulties and virtually fell down the other side. She had a generous bottom, shaped like a heart. In fact, he acknowledged, his interest fairly ensnared, the body below that clinging jersey fabric was as lush and ripe with curves as an old-fashioned hourglass. That voluptuous hint of pure feminine abundance was distinctly sexy. Without any warning, she achieved the effect that Bianca had failed to rouse. His slumbering libido kicked in with a surge of sexual enthusiasm that startled him.

‘There’s a fat woman running round your garden!’ Bianca exclaimed in disbelief.

Fat? Rafael would have laughed out loud had he not at that moment registered that the stallion was frantically rolling its eyes in fear and panic. In that state of terror the horse was as much a danger to himself as to the foolish woman chasing him. Without hesitation, Rafael raced for the stairs.

‘Pluto…shush, there’s a nice boy,’ Harriet wheezed, struggling to make her voice calm and comforting, but so out of breath that her lungs felt strangled.

Showing the whites of his eyes, Pluto careered round like a crazy mechanical bucking horse, and then he started coming right at her and she froze. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a flash of sudden movement, but that was the only warning she got before she was snatched off her feet and pinned face down to the damp ground, her ribcage momentarily squashed flat beneath a powerful masculine body. The thunder of hooves passing too close to her ears for comfort made her appreciate that she had very nearly been trampled.

‘Stay here,’ an accented male voice growled, and the weight on her back lifted again as he tugged Pluto’s head collar from her loosened grasp.

Harriet flipped over and watched him approach the sweating, snorting stallion. He was very tall and his movements were incredibly quiet, assured and graceful. His black hair was cropped short, his feet bare in the dew-wet grass. His blue shirt fluttered back in the morning breeze from the soft, well-worn denims that hugged his narrow hips and long powerful thighs to reveal a hair-roughened bronze torso that was as sleek and hard with muscle as the proverbial six-pack. She flushed at her straying attention and then noted that he was talking softly to Pluto. He knew his way around horses all right. The huge stallion trembled. The man reached up and, still talking with soothing cool, slowly and deftly slipped on Pluto’s head collar. In silence she watched as the stallion calmed down beneath much firmer handling than she would have dared to attempt.

Prior to this point she had only seen her rescuer’s bronzed profile, and now she saw him face-on. Her blue eyes widened and her heart began a slow, heavy beat that echoed her growing tension. He was drop-dead gorgeous, and for an instant she thought there was something eerily familiar about that stunning bone structure of his. Frowning, she discarded that unlikely notion, but still she stared at him, drinking in every vibrant aspect of him with a hunger that was startlingly new to her. His high cheekbones framed brilliant, dark golden eyes, divided by a strong masculine nose and completed by an aggressive jawline.

‘Thank you,’ Harriet said unevenly.

‘So you’re the lady who is planning to get back to nature and raise organic vegetables on my doorstep,’ he husked. ‘I’m Rafael Flynn.’

‘Harriet Carmichael.’ Only when she encountered that mocking scrutiny did she finally recall that she was wearing her comfy floral pyjamas, which could not be said to flatter the fuller figure. Her face coloured up and burned with embarrassment. She was furious with herself for blushing. After all, only a bikini would have shown more flesh. ‘Sorry about all the fuss. I don’t know how Pluto got out—’

‘If your horse had strayed onto the road he would be dead,’ Rafael Flynn slotted in smoothly.

Feeling that it was grossly insensitive to point out the obvious, Harriet stiffened defensively and resisted the urge to inform him that Pluto did not belong to her. Technically the stallion had been in her charge, and she was not one to duck responsibility. ‘But fortunately he didn’t,’ she countered tightly, while also trying not to wonder how long Pluto would have had to hang around the very quiet road to get run over by passing traffic.

A weather-beaten older man in a dark suit hurried round the side of the house towards them and came forward to take charge of the stallion. ‘Tolly will ensure that Pluto is brought back to you in a horsebox,’ Rafael Flynn asserted.

Harriet bit her lip, feeling like a schoolgirl being rebuked for imprudent behaviour. She would dearly have loved to seize hold of Pluto herself and frogmarch him back to his stable. But there were too many barriers to be cleared, and she was too sensible to even consider taking such a risk with a horse too powerful for her to hold. ‘I’m sorry you’ve been inconvenienced.’

‘Relax…I would have been gutted had I missed out on those enchanting pyjamas,’ Rafael murmured silkily.

His heavily lidded dark eyes roamed with unashamed intent over the jutting swell of her ripe breasts and lingered there with wicked appreciation before he directed his attention back up to the wonderfully voluptuous promise of her full-lipped pink mouth. If it had not been for Bianca he would have invited his neighbour to join him for breakfast in bed. At the same time, he knew that with regard to Harriet Carmichael he had to take care of business first. He never, ever allowed anything to deflect him from his goal. And she was in for a rough and rocky passage if she continued to oppose him.

Wholly unprepared for his comment and appraisal, and interpreting both as derisive amusement, Harriet flung him a look of angry disconcertion. ‘Very funny. Don’t let me keep you!’

Taken aback by that inept response to a mildly flirtatious comment, Rafael frowned as Bianca chose that inopportune moment to stroll out of the house. ‘The countryside is sublime,’ she sighed, invading his space.

The statuesque blonde was so beautiful that Harriet simply gaped, only glancing away uncomfortably when she appreciated that the other woman was virtually naked below the silk wrap that she had forgotten to close over. The possessive hand she curved over Rafael Flynn’s arm made Harriet feel equally uncomfortable. Had she been guilty of casting admiring eyes over another woman’s husband?

‘Miss Carmichael…’ In a fluster, Harriet focused on the silver haired older man, who had passed custody of Pluto over to a younger man in working clothes. ‘I’m Joseph Tolly. Forty years back our families were neighbours. You have a great look of your mother.’

A huge smile of surprise and pleasure momentarily banished Harriet’s discomfiture. ‘Honestly? My goodness, you must have known her. I would really love to hear what you remember about those days.’

‘You’d be very welcome to visit me this evening,’ the old man told her warmly.

‘I’d be delighted. Where do you live?’

Unaccustomed to being ignored, Rafael watched the exchange of civilities between his usually correct butler and his new neighbour with grim amusement. Bianca was flouncing back and forth like a child threatening a tantrum, because nobody was demonstrating the slightest interest in her either and attention was the oxygen of her existence. With that example before him, Rafael was able to concede that the ability to enjoy a friendly chat whatever the circumstances was inimitably Irish. He could even afford to smile with benevolence at such sentimentality between strangers. Having refused his generous offer to buy her property, his sexy neighbour was about to pay the price for that defiance in what would be a rather less civilised second act. When necessary, Rafael played a long game, and a deep one, and he did not stop playing until success was his.

Encountering Rafael Flynn’s glinting dark, reflective gaze, Harriet felt chilled. A split second later, discarding that sensation, she recalled that she was still standing on the front lawn of his fabulous Georgian mansion, and mortification threatened to eat her alive. How could she have forgotten for one moment that she was parading around in her pyjamas? Was it any wonder that Rafael Flynn was looking at her as though she had escaped from a zoo?

‘Excuse me…’she muttered, turning hurriedly on her heel to trek rigid-backed down the hill. Every big gaudy rose splayed across her bottom felt like a stabbing source of personal torment. The arrogant louse had laughed at her! But, she reflected uncomfortably, he could hardly have missed the juvenile way she had blushed and stared at him with eyes on stalks. Any guy that handsome had to be aware of his effect on women, so he was certain to have noticed. What on earth had come over her? She cringed with chagrin.

As if that were not bad enough, that crack about organic vegetables had hit her on the raw as well. Why shouldn’t she want to have a bit of a go at growing things? It seemed Mr McNally, the solicitor, had repeated everything she’d said—but then why should he not have? She had not asked the poor man to keep her aspirations to get down and dirty in the vegetable patch a big dark secret. Since when had she become so over-sensitive?

After a quick shower, and an even faster breakfast, Harriet began to plan the rebirth of the livery yard in greater detail. A proper name for the business and a sign out on the road would be the first step. Lost in thought, she stroked Samson’s silky ears until the little dog sighed with contentment. She would have to do some research to see which services were most likely to be in demand locally and check out the competition. She also needed to get moving on a repair programme, and talk to Fergal to find out exactly what his unofficial partnership with Kathleen had entailed. Someone to supply help and cover in what was basically a twenty-four-seven business would be very useful, Harriet conceded thoughtfully.

Fergal Gibson drove into the yard just as Pluto was being led out of the huge horsebox that had arrived from Flynn Court.

‘What happened?’ he exclaimed. ‘How did Pluto get out?’

‘The stable door’s damaged,’ Harriet told him. ‘I think he kicked his way out, but I have no idea why.’

‘It could have been Flynn’s helicopter coming in.’ Fergal ran careful hands over the restive stallion in search of injury and with a relieved sigh put him into another stall. ‘I’m really sorry. I’ll put up another bolt. Catching him must’ve been a nightmare.’

‘Rafael Flynn caught him,’ Harriet admitted ruefully.

Fergal chuckled. ‘Women and horses. Now, there is a guy with the magic touch. I hear that he can make them do anything for him.’

Her blue eyes gleamed. She was tempted to quip that that was no doubt why Rafael Flynn appeared to have such a good opinion of himself. ‘Is he married?’

‘Are you joking? I hear his latest lady is some famous fashion model.’

Thinking of the woman she had seen, Harriet thought that figured, and she told Fergal to come inside for tea when he had finished in the yard.

‘One of the local farmers has been looking after Kathleen’s animals for you,’ he informed her then, washing his hands at the sink with the ease of someone very much at home with his surroundings. ‘You’d best decide what you want done with them.’

‘Animals?’

‘Kathleen has a soft touch for strays. There’s an old mare called Snowball that she rescued, and she can still be ridden. There’s a pig too…oh, yeah, and chickens, ex-battery farm inmates,’ Fergal explained ruefully. ‘We’re talking pets and charity cases here, not pedigrees. I had them moved before Eugene McNally did his inventory because he would’ve had them put down. Now you can make the tough decisions.’

Harriet was already smiling at the prospect of a readymade family of livestock which would provide a vital link back to the cousin whom she had to thank for her inheritance. ‘If they had a home with Kathleen they’ll have a home with me.’

His tanned face broke into a warm, attractive grin.

‘Right.’ Harriet curved her hands round the mug of tea in front of her and breathed in deep. ‘You’re using the stables here…’

‘I was hoping we could come to an arrangement,’ Fergal admitted.

‘I’d like that if it is possible,’ Harriet told him honestly. ‘But I do need to make a living, and right now I don’t know if the figures will add up with your horses using that amount of space—’

‘I could start work on fixing up the old stables and move the geldings in there instead. That was phase two of Kathleen’s expansion plan. But the new stables were essential to bring in the owners who wanted their mounts to have only the best.’

Talking to Fergal was easy. He was straightforward, and happy to talk about her late cousin’s original plans. Having been priced out of the riding school business by the high costs of insurance and the seasonal aspect of the tourist trade, Kathleen had hoped to build a livery yard that would be upmarket to attract new clients and increase her income.

‘She must have had savings or something, because she really did spend a mint here,’ Fergal advanced. ‘She bought that pick-up brand-new, and the horsebox arrived only the week before she had the first heart attack.’ His cheerfulness visibly ebbed at that sobering recollection. ‘She was sixty-three and seemed as fit as a fiddle. She was waiting for surgery when she died.’

Harriet watched Fergal swallow thickly and knew that he had been genuinely fond of the older woman. He reminded her of a big, blond good-natured bear, slow of speech and thoughtful and kind.

‘You should come to the Point-to-Point races with me tomorrow. It’s the last meeting of the season,’ he told her with enthusiasm. ‘I’m running Tailwind. I can introduce you around. People need to know you’re open for business.’

‘I’d like that.’ Belatedly conscious of the speculative masculine look of appreciation she was receiving, Harriet glanced away and tried not to smile. She was flattered that he appeared to find her attractive. But she suspected that Fergal Gibson might be a wild flirt, and if she responded it would probably wreck any prospect of their establishing a good working relationship. Unless she was reading him wrong, it would be easy come, easy go with Fergal, and that had never been her style. But maybe a silly rebound fling was what she needed right now…after all, she had been extremely sensible and cautious all her life and where had it got her? Luke, she reminded herself squarely, was with Alice now.

* * *

‘What’s your interest in Harriet Carmichael?’ Rafael asked his elderly butler smoothly, while Bianca chatted to a friend on the phone about how sublime Ireland was—with the exceptions of the weather, the absence of large shopping outlets and nightclubs, Rafael’s cold and comfortless ancestral home and the amount of time he spent in the stables.

Tolly gave him a little smile. ‘Now, wouldn’t that be telling?’

Rafael laughed with true appreciation, for only Tolly would dare to tell him to mind his own business. ‘What do you know about her?’

‘That she’ll not be single for long,’ the older man forecast with assurance, his blue eyes twinkling.

Rafael elevated a mocking black brow. ‘On what do you base that belief?’

‘She’s a fine-looking girl with a lovely smile and land and a business. When it comes to a good catch the local lads are neither blind nor stupid. No, that little lady will be snatched up and off the market by the winter.’

‘Maybe she craves something rather more exciting?’ Rafael murmured softly.

Tolly’s weather-beaten features stiffened. ‘I don’t think so, sir.’

Sir? Rafael wondered why the old man should be so thin-skinned about a young woman he had only met that day. Was it because Tolly had once known her family and already considered her part of the community? Or was he simply showing his disapproval of Rafael’s infinitely casual attitude to women and sex? Whatever, Rafael was very much amused by Tolly’s sudden formality. Across the room, Bianca was now dancing, her hips shimmying to the driving beat of the music she had put on. She shed her jacket slowly, provocatively tugged her suede belt free of her tiny mini-skirt and treated herself to a seductive appraisal in the vast gilt mirror. Rafael decided that his next lover would be less vain and more intelligent and switched on the business news.

* * *

Joseph Tolly lived in a small, incredibly neat gate lodge beside the distinctly ruinous rear entrance to the Flynn Court estate. For all his arrogant confidence, Harriet reflected, with a stab of wicked satisfaction that shook her, Rafael Flynn was clearly too poor to adequately maintain his ancestral home. So why the heck had he attempted to buy Kathleen Gallagher’s property from her at such a healthy price?

The old man appeared at the door before Harriet even reached it. ‘Come on in,’ he urged with a broad smile of welcome.

She was touched to see the careful preparations he had made for her visit. A snowy white lace-edged cloth had been laid on a tray that bore old-fashioned floral bone china and a luscious chocolate cake. The simply furnished room was immaculately tidy and every wooden surface gleamed.

‘Will you tell me everything you remember about my mother’s family?’ Harriet urged her host eagerly, and then, rather more self-consciously, her cheeks colouring, she added, ‘You must be wondering why I’m asking a stranger when she’s still alive. My mother isn’t very nostalgic about the past.’

‘Perhaps there wasn’t much for her to be sentimental about,’ Joseph Tolly said gently. ‘In those days this community was struggling to survive. There wasn’t much employment. Even now the tourists need encouragement to travel several miles of twisting road from the nearest town to visit Ballyflynn. Have you been to see the old place where your family used to live?’

‘I don’t know where it is.’

‘Your mother’s family lived a field away from mine, on a smallholding about two miles out of the village. The house is derelict now, but I’ll draw you a little map so that you can go and have a look around.’

‘Thank you…I’d love to do that,’ Harriet confided.

‘Shall I tell you what I remember best about your mother?’

Harriet nodded very seriously and offered to pour the tea.

Watching her take charge of the tea tray, Joseph Tolly smiled and settled himself more comfortably into his shabby fireside chair. ‘Your mother must have been about fourteen when she decided she didn’t want to be known as Agnes any more, and she started calling herself Eva instead.’

Harriet blinked in surprise, for she had not known that her parent had chosen that name for herself. Agnes? But then all she had ever known of Eva’s history was the absolute basics: that her mother was the daughter of a small farmer who had been widowed while she was still a child. Her older teenaged brother had been killed in a tractor accident.

‘What a rumpus she caused!’ Tolly chuckled. ‘The nuns at the convent school had no tolerance for girls’ fancies, but your mother defied the lot of them—even the cantankerous old priest that we had then.’ His expressive eyes invited her to enjoy his warm humour. ‘Unfortunately I think she paid the price for it, because your grandfather took her out of school early and she was a bright girl.’

‘What was my grandfather like?’ Harriet prompted eagerly.

‘Dermot Gallagher had a mean temper on him,’ Joseph told her, with a look of honest apology at having to make that admission. ‘He wasn’t a lucky man, and his disappointments soured him and made him a harsh parent. He wouldn’t let your mother have a life like other girls, so when she ran away nobody was that surprised. If she wasn’t working on the farm, he hired her out to work for other people and kept her wages.’

Harriet was sobered by what she was learning, and finally appreciated why her mother might have preferred to leave that distant past buried. ‘I wish she’d told me what it was like for her then. I had no idea her childhood was that tough.’

‘Your cousin, Kathleen, once told my late wife that when your mother tried to stand up to Dermot he would threaten to have her locked up with the nuns. That may sound unbelievable to you, but right up until twenty years ago certain convents ran commercial laundries staffed by young women who had been put in their charge because they were supposedly a threat to decent society. More than one disobedient daughter ended up in those unhappy places, and some of them never came out again.’

Harriet lost colour when she made the connection. ‘You’re talking about the Magdalene Laundries?’

‘Yes.’ Tolly nodded grave confirmation. ‘Life was very different here then. No one would have dreamt of interfering between a father and his child.’

‘She must have felt so alone…’ Harriet thought that it was hardly surprising that when Eva had finally escaped her father’s threats and restrictions, partying had held rather more appeal for her than parenting.

‘Hasn’t Eva the life now, though?’ Joseph remarked in a determinedly cheerful change of subject that suggested he was more comfortable skimming the surface of her mother’s past. ‘I saw a picture of her in an old magazine last year. She looked like a queen in a ballgown at some charity do. She’s come a long way from the young woman who used to help out in the village shop.’

‘Could you give me the names of any of her schoolfriends?’ Harriet suspected that the key to discovering her father’s identity would most likely be found amongst her mother’s contemporaries.

‘I was acquainted with the family situation, but not with much else. We were of different generations.’ His eyes veiled, he served her with a mouthwatering wedge of chocolate cake, and for a few minutes there was silence as Harriet did justice to it.

‘I imagine that there was quite an uproar after my mother ran away.’ Harriet was thoroughly relaxed, and happy to match Tolly’s frankness with her own. ‘I’m very keen to find out who my father was.’

Clearly unprepared for that admission, Joseph looked startled. ‘But surely your mother—?’

‘No…she’s always refused to say,’ Harriet admitted ruefully.

‘But you can hardly go around asking awkward questions of people you don’t even know,’ the old man pointed out. ‘You could cause offence, and you might also cause trouble by casting suspicion on an innocent party. I would strongly advise you to speak to your mother again.’

Harriet suppressed a heavy sigh. She was not close to Eva, and worked hard at conserving the relationship she did have with her. The last time she had tackled the older woman on the score of her parentage Eva had taken strong umbrage.

Joseph gave his guest an anxious appraisal. ‘I think you also need to ask yourself what you’re hoping to get from the information you seek. Your father may be a man who let your mother down when she most needed his support. He might have no interest in knowing you.’

‘Yes, I accept that.’ Harriet was, however, studying her companion with increased interest. The very urgency with which he spoke made her wonder if he knew rather more about her background than he was willing to admit. ‘Were there rumours at the time?’ she pressed more boldly. ‘I mean, people must’ve talked.’

‘People always gossip, and rarely with kindness or commonsense,’ Tolly responded steadily. ‘It would be wrong of me to repeat idle chatter. If your mother was seeing anyone it was kept very much a secret.’

Harriet let the subject drop there, guiltily conscious that she had said rather too much for so short an acquaintance, and listened as her host talked gladly about less contentious issues. It had gone nine when she drove home in a deeply pensive mood. What did she hope to achieve from establishing the identity of her father? She knew that she had a deep need to know exactly where she had come from. But wasn’t it more than that?

Harriet had never really felt that she belonged anywhere. In the same way she had never known what it was to have a parent who was absolutely hers…at least not for long. As a child she had been hurt and confused, because she’d rarely seen the mother she adored. She had then had to adjust to the cruel reality that Eva could somehow manage to be a full time parent for her younger son and daughter. But perhaps it had hurt most of all when Harriet had finally discovered that the man she had grown up believing to be her father was not her biological father after all.

Eva had been six months pregnant when she’d married Will Carmichael, a research scientist a decade older. Seemingly she had snatched at the chance of a wedding ring and a name for her unborn child. A quiet, studious man, Will had been besotted with his youthful Irish bride, but the union had been a disastrous mismatch. Walking down a London street one day, Eva had been stopped by a talent scout and discovered as a fashion model. Hiring a nanny to take care of her baby, Eva had flung herself into the excitement of fame, fortune and foreign travel. The unequal marriage had disintegrated without fanfare.

Even after the divorce Will had been left to shoulder the burden of raising Harriet while Eva concentrated on her career. And when Harriet was five years old her mother had remarried and become a society wife. The wealthy English businessman with whom Eva had had her younger children, Alice and Boyce, had not encouraged Harriet’s visits to his country home in Surrey. He had disliked such an obvious reminder that his beautiful wife’s past had featured other men, and in the interests of marital harmony Harriet had been virtually airbrushed out of her mother’s life.

Harriet had been thirteen years old when she’d overheard a devastating exchange between Eva and Will on the phone.

‘I wanted to tell Harriet the truth years ago, but you wouldn’t agree,’ Will had been saying, with unusual curtness of tone for so mild-mannered a man. ‘She thinks of me as her father, and finding out that I’m no more her father than the Easter bunny will be a nasty shock! Teenagers are vulnerable, Eva. I don’t care if your therapist believes that coming clean on that score will benefit you; I’m more concerned about how it might affect Harriet.’

Harriet had been shattered by the revelation that the father who had brought her up with so much apparent love and sacrifice was not even a blood relation. Even though Will had repeatedly assured her that he loved her just as much as any biological parent, Harriet had still felt like a cuckoo abandoned in his nest. In her heart, where she had used the salve of her father’s love to compensate for her more distant bonds with her mother, she had felt utterly crushed. A kind and gentle man, Will Carmichael had taken on a responsibility that was not his and done his best by her principally because he had had no other choice. Her mother’s refusal to finish the story by telling Harriet exactly who her birth father was had not helped.

The following morning dawned bright and breezy, and Harriet scrambled out of bed with a little frisson of anticipation: it was an absolutely perfect day for the races. A veteran of such country pursuits in her early teen years, and well aware of how rough and ready such events could be, she dug out warm comfy clothes and thermal socks to go with her Wellington boots.

Samson trotted round her feet and fussed until she set out his breakfast.

‘You’re a real little tyrant,’ she told him fondly.

Out in the yard it was all go, and Harriet resolved to rise from her bed earlier. Fergal was cleaning up a dilapidated horse trailer and Una Donnelly was busy in Tailwind’s box, engaged in plaiting his mane into intricate knots. Harriet leant on the stall door to watch. ‘I was never very good at plaiting.’

The teenager looked across at her with a surprisingly ready smile, her liquid dark eyes full of pleasure, as if such compliments rarely came her way. ‘It takes a lot of practice,’ she confirmed. ‘But I could teach you if you like.’

‘OK…did Fergal bring you over?’

‘No, I’ve got a bike.’ She grimaced and lowered her voice to an exasperated whisper. ‘He passes our door but he won’t give me a lift because he’s scared of folk talking about us. He’s dead silly about stuff like that.’

Harriet gave her a non-committal smile.

‘You should let Fergal use the horsebox,’ Una added. ‘It’ll make the yard look better. You’ve got to think of your image in horsy circles.’

Harriet went pink and hurried over to Fergal to urge. ‘I never even thought to say…for goodness’ sake, use Kathleen’s horsebox!’

‘If I do, will you do me the honour of walking Tailwind round the paddock for me before the race?’ Fergal asked with a grin.

‘I’d be delighted.’

‘You can’t let Harriet do it!’ Una wailed incredulously. ‘That’s my job!’

As Harriet parted her lips, to hastily disclaim any desire to usurp the teenager’s place, Fergal caught her eyes with a meaningful expression in his and a brief jerk of his head that begged her not to interfere. ‘I’m sorry, Una. But Harriet needs to show her face and there’s no better way.’

Una hung over the door of the stall and said, in a voice that throbbed with tragedy. ‘How can you think of putting Harriet before me?’

Fergal bolted for the horsebox at the far end of the yard.

Harriet was transfixed by the virtual assault of the girl’s outraged dark brown eyes. ‘Are you dating him?’ Una asked baldly.

Harriet was grateful to be in a position to utter a brisk negative.

‘But he still chose you over me,’ Una breathed in a wobbly voice, her eyes glassy with the threat of tears. But then you’re an older woman.’

‘He’s thinking of business,’ Harriet answered with determined lightness, while endeavouring not to picture herself as some sultry aging vamp given to charming toy boys off the straight and narrow. She remembered all too well how super-sensitive she had been to every perceived slight and rejection at Una’s age, and could not decide whether the girl’s startling prettiness was more of a blessing or a curse. ‘Would you like some tea before we leave?’

‘I’m not sure I’m coming any more,’ the teenager mumbled chokily, half turning away. ‘It’s hardly worth my while, is it?’

‘I’d really appreciate the company,’ Harriet responded gently. ‘Do you realise I know nothing about you yet?’

‘Ask anyone in Ballyflynn. I’m Eilish Donnelly’s little mistake. Always in trouble and no better than I ought to be, according to everyone!’ Una shot at her in a tearful tirade. ‘And when my big bully of a brother finds out I’ve been thrown out of another school he’s going to kill me!’

Silence fell.

‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Harriet remarked prosaically, as if nothing out of the ordinary had been said.

‘I suppose if I asked you if you fancied Fergal you’d tell me to mind my own business…’ Una mumbled.

‘I would.’

That instant comeback provoked an unexpected giggle from the temperamental teenager. ‘At least you say what you think and don’t talk down to me like I’m six years old—like some people I could mention!’

‘Thanks…you saved my bacon,’ Fergal muttered with real gratitude when he found Harriet alone in the kitchen. ‘I am really glad you’re around the yard now. Una can be a handful and no mistake. I don’t know what’s come over her.’

Harriet believed him. He was pale at the memory of Una’s tearful emotional outburst, and practically shaking in his riding boots. Una was a strong-willed girl and she had Fergal in her sights. He probably did need to be very careful not to encourage her. Harriet could not help recalling how much more reserved and shy she had been with Luke, watching and loving from afar for so long, only revealing her feelings when it was safe to do so. Alice would have been much more open and extrovert and exciting. Perhaps that was yet another good reason why Luke had chosen to be with her sister rather than her.

‘Don’t get me wrong. Una’s a good kid,’ Fergal added hurriedly. ‘She’ll soon find someone more her age.’

Suspecting that Una was too passionate to quickly forget her first love, Harriet said nothing. She struggled to shut Alice and Luke out of her thoughts again. The past was the past and she had to live with it.

In the horsebox, Una chattered pointedly to Harriet while shooting stony glances at a blissfully unaware Fergal as he drove. The fields where the Point-to-Point races were being held were accessed down a long rough lane. Marquee tents served as a weighing room for the jockeys and also provided a bar with one side walled off in a members only enclosure. The event was already thronged with people, most of whom were as sensibly and plainly garbed as Harriet, in anticipation of the muddy conditions.

As she waited for Tailwind to be unboxed, several men nearby in a huddle were talking nineteen to the dozen. As with Fergal, it took her a moment or two to be able to distinguish clear words in the colourful lilt and flow of the musical Kerry accent.

‘So Martin the vet’s trying to see to Flynn’s mare that’s in foal while the model woman is spreading herself across the stable wall like she’s on one of those pop videos…you know, those ones they ban. And she’s wearing a very short dress,’ someone reported in an urgent whisper, ‘And what does Flynn say? He only tells the hussy to go and get some clothes on before she frightens the horse! Isn’t he the man?’ was the conclusion, in a tone of deep envy and near reverence.

Her face hot, Harriet moved hurriedly out of earshot. Across the field she saw Rafael Flynn’s girlfriend emerge from a big powerful four-wheel-drive. Garbed in a purely fashionable fitted tweed hacking jacket and pure white riding breeches that were skin tight, the leggy blonde moved as though she was on a catwalk, and looked so spectacular that everyone stopped dead to stare at her.

But Harriet’s attention flew straight past her to the tall dark male striding towards the paddock: Rafael Flynn himself. His height and carriage picked him out from the crowd. The breeze had ruffled his luxuriant hair into jet-black spikes. His lean, sculpted face was very bronzed against the light sweater he wore below an outdoor jacket so cool in cut it could only have been of Italian design.

Someone cannoned into Harriet and, caught unprepared, she lurched backwards into the deep muddy tracks forged by some heavy vehicle and fell.

‘I’m so sorry…I didn’t see you. Are you hurt?’ A burly older man was reaching down to help her up again.

Harriet glanced at the mud liberally staining her jacket and jeans and then she laughed and shrugged. ‘No, I’m fine…luckily I’m fully washable.’

From about thirty feet away Rafael watched the surprisingly good-natured exchange. Most of the women he knew would have been screaming the place down. Harriet’s instant smile seemed designed to reassure the clumsy idiot who had sent her flying that being tipped into the mud had been a fun experience for her. Right on cue, Bianca approached him to lament the dirt now spattering her highly polished leather boots. The diamond choker he had given her as a farewell gift glittered at her swan-like throat. Within a few hours she would be boarding her flight home to Belgium. She dug out a little hand mirror to check her hair and the temptation was too much for her: she succumbed to studying herself from every angle. Crushing boredom assailed him and he walked away without her noticing.

‘I wonder what Rafael Flynn is doing here,’ Fergal mused as he accompanied Harriet over to the paddock with his gelding. ‘He doesn’t often appear at local meetings.’

Keen punters were lining the fence, eager for a look at the runners in the next race. Harriet took charge of Tailwind. Halfway through her first round of the paddock she connected with brilliant, dark and incisive eyes and her heart jumped as though she had hit an electric fence. Rafael Flynn. She looked away, colour warming her cheeks. Her copper hair blew in bright streamers across her face until she clawed it back with a self-conscious hand.

Once the jockey had mounted Tailwind, to warm him up before the race, Fergal ensured that she met a lot of people. He was popular and he knew everyone. Several locals spoke with warm regret about her cousin, Kathleen, and she was asked about the type of livery that she would be offering once she got the yard up and running again. Throughout it all she was conscious of an infuriating constant need to look around and see where Rafael Flynn was, but she fought that mortifying urge with every weapon in her armoury. For goodness’ sake, she wasn’t a schoolgirl any more and she wasn’t about to behave like one!

Tailwind shot over the starting line like a bullet out of a gun. But he also ran out of the race at the second fence. Crestfallen by the poor showing, Fergal walked the gelding back to the horsebox. ‘Where’s Una disappeared to?’

Harriet noted the teenager ducking behind the sweet stall and moved with determination through the crowds to speak to her. ‘What are you doing over here? Fergal’s looking for you—’

Una peered nervously out at her. ‘I’ll be over in a minute. My brother’s over at the winners’ enclosure…I don’t want him to see me.’

‘Is he that scary?’

‘Scarier than scary.’ For a moment Una looked very young and vulnerable. ‘I’m never going to live up to his expectations. He wants me to be clever, like he is, and I’m not.’

‘I bet you’re a lot smarter than you think you are. Don’t put yourself down,’ Harriet told her squarely. ‘Can’t you talk to your mother about this?’

A thin shoulder jerked in an awkward shrug and Una veiled her eyes. ‘My mum’s not well a lot of the time. I don’t like bothering her. I have my sister, but she has a husband and a baby too…that’s why I hang out so much at the yard.’

Harriet resisted a sudden urge to hug the younger woman. ‘You’re always welcome there.’

An older woman intercepted her on the way back to the horsebox and questioned her closely about the livery yard facilities. Having expressed keen interest in a retirement package for her elderly horse, her first potential customer arranged to call and inspect the stables.

A smile of satisfaction on her lips, Harriet turned away and found Rafael Flynn striding towards her. Her tummy flipped like she was spinning on a merry-go-round.

‘Is it true that you’re planning to reopen the yard?’ he enquired flatly.

‘Yes…I don’t think I’m enough of a gardener to make a living growing organic vegetables,’ Harriet quipped, colliding with dark eyes that gleamed pure liquid gold in the sunlight.

Rafael Flynn braced a lean brown hand against a horsebox and gazed down at her. Instantly she was wildly aware of his size, and the raw charge of his potent presence. Forced to look up, she rested her attention momentarily on his impossibly long black lashes, which supplied the only softening influence to his lean, dark, overwhelmingly male features. She found it incredibly difficult to catch her breath.

‘Business has no personal dimension for me. You may find the livery venture more of a challenge than you expect.’

‘Don’t tell me you’re in the same line and that we’re going to be competing!’ Harriet breathed in unconcealed dismay.

A flash of momentary incomprehension tautened Rafael Flynn’s stunning bone structure. Then he flung back his handsome dark head and laughed with rich appreciation, showing strong white teeth. ‘No…I’m not in the livery line, Harriet.’

He had a dazzling smile. Rosy colour lit her fair skin, because his sexy accent did something almost intimate to the old-fashioned name that she had always hated. ‘That’s not a Kerry brogue, is it?’

He kept on smiling, and she tried to look away and couldn’t. ‘It is in part…but my ancestry is mixed.’

‘Like mine,’ she said breathlessly, fighting to think of something more interesting to say but finding her mind a horrific blank. Her eyes met his and a tight, hard knot of excitement spread a starburst of heat low in her tummy.

‘Dine with me tonight?’ Rafael murmured lazily, deciding to put his acquisition plans for her property on temporary hold.

With astonishing difficulty she recalled the Amazonian goddess, reputedly in current residence beneath his roof. ‘Your girlfriend—’

He shrugged a shoulder in a fluid gesture of unconcern. ‘Bianca’s history.’

His complete indifference to the reality that the blonde was watching them from about twenty yards away chilled Harriet to the marrow. ‘But she’s here—’

‘She knows it’s over. She’s leaving this afternoon. Dinner?’ he prompted drily.

Harriet backed off a step from him. He embodied every warning she had ever heard or read about a man: arrogant and emotionally detached, he was a pure-bred predator—absolutely not her type. She could not overlook or excuse his attitude to the unfortunate Bianca. ‘Sorry, but no thanks. I’m not thinking of dating anyone at the minute.’

‘I haven’t dated since I was fourteen.’ Rafael was wondering whether she imagined that a brief pretence of uninterest would increase his ardour—because he could not credit that she could be saying no to him.

‘I was engaged until quite recently, and I’m still getting over that.’

‘I’ll get you over it,’ Rafael promised in a low, earthy tone.

‘I’m also incredibly busy right now,’ Harriet muttered uncomfortably, backing away another couple of steps, intimidated by the effect of that full-on charge of raw charisma.

Rafael watched her retreat with concealed disbelief. He could not understand what her game was. Of course it was a game: in his experience all women played games. But she was playing to weird rules he did not recognise.

‘Nice talking to you,’ Harriet mumbled, and bolted, wincing at her own awkwardness.

There he was: literally the man of her dreams. But he was not the sort of guy she would dare to begin seeing or risk feeling anything for. Goodness, he had just dumped a woman who was so gorgeous people stopped dead to marvel at her! Off with the old, on with the new. Although she was certain that he had to be looking on her as more of a snack than a full banquet. After all, she couldn’t hold a candle to his ex-girlfriend. She couldn’t quite accept that he truly had asked her out to dinner. Her—Harriet Carmichael—dressed in muddy jeans and wellies, with no make-up, and probably a few pounds heavier than she’d used to be when she was with Luke.

Luke…The wash of humiliating memory sobered her feverish reflections. Perhaps she took life too seriously. Perhaps she needed to learn how to be more casual when it came to the opposite sex. Apart from a couple of boyfriends in her teen years, she had only had Luke in her life. Now she was back being single, and, though she might be twenty-eight years old, she felt no more confident or knowledgeable about men than she had done at twenty.

Hadn’t she just made the ridiculous error of trying to mentally measure up Rafael Flynn as a potential life partner? Were her nesting instincts sending her to the outer edge of craziness? He was fling material—wild fling material. He was racy, shameless and…exciting. If she was honest, he was more exciting than Luke had ever been. She should have had the courage to say yes to dinner and seduction. It might have made her feel a little less inadequate when she thought about Alice and Luke as a couple.

‘Harriet…’ Una approached her, her expressive face full of concern. ‘I think you should steer clear of Rafael Flynn.’

Although her own knee jerk reaction had been to run a mile from him, Harriet was already experiencing a certain amount of regret, self-doubt and confusion about that response. ‘Why?’

‘You’re too nice for him—you’re gentle and trusting. He’ll think that’s so dumb and he’ll break your heart.’

‘I haven’t got one to break right now. Someone got there before Mr Flynn,’ Harriet confided ruefully. ‘But thanks for caring.’

‘I’d hate to see you hurt—’

‘Is he really that bad?’ Harriet’s plea for further explanation was unconsciously wistful in tone.

Una flushed. ‘It’s not that he’s bad,’ the teenager disclaimed hurriedly. ‘Just from a different world. You’d be oil and water and he’d walk all over you.’

‘No…he wouldn’t do that,’ Harriet countered with quiet but firm conviction.

Una did not look convinced. ‘If an international supermodel can’t hold him for five minutes, who can?’

A woman with the strength to be tough and subject him to a locked room and chains, Harriet thought abstractedly. Implanting a few basic standards in the midst of the smash and grab ethics that drove him might not go amiss either.

That evening, two prospective clients took a tour of the yard. Harriet had mapped out a business plan and drawn up a basic livery contract before she’d even arrived in Ballyflynn. Now she sat up late working out how many boarders she’d require to break even. She was also thinking of opening a tack shop that sold feed and basic supplies, as there was nowhere local meeting that demand. She didn’t need to make a fortune, only a living, she reminded herself resolutely. She had downshifted to make a dream come true and enjoy a more simple life. And leading a successful simple life, she told herself censoriously, did not include any dealings whatsoever with the type of male who had affairs with fabulous fashion models.

On Monday morning Harriet received a call from the solicitor, Eugene McNally, and was surprised to be told that he was anxious to see her on a matter of some urgency.

The older man greeted Harriet at his office with perceptible discomfiture. ‘I’m afraid that I’ve been notified of a substantial claim against Kathleen Gallagher’s estate.’

CHAPTER THREE

HARRIET regarded the solicitor in surprise. ‘Surely it’s very late in the day for anything like that to surface?’

‘It is. But it’s only now I’ve been informed that three years ago Kathleen took out a large loan which now requires settlement in one way…’ he hesitated ‘…or another.’

‘Who’s the loan with?’ Harriet was struggling to remain calm and think clearly. She had funds in the bank, and there was no reason why she should not apply for a mortgage…although a mortgage would certainly raise her overheads, she thought anxiously.

‘Flynn Enterprises.’

While Harriet digested that most disturbing news in astonishment, the silence stretched. ‘How much did Kathleen borrow?’

‘One hundred and fifty thousand euros…over a hundred thousand pounds in sterling,’ the solicitor advanced heavily. ‘Believe me, I had no idea whatsoever.’

Harriet was shocked at the sheer size of the amount, but anger was already beginning to stir. ‘Really?’ she prompted, with a doubt she could not conceal. ‘But you were my cousin’s legal adviser and her executor.’

‘Kathleen did not consult me when she signed the agreement with Flynn Enterprises, nor did I receive any papers relating to that transaction,’ the older man revealed unhappily. ‘Evidently your cousin was determined to keep the matter private. I would have cautioned her against borrowing at her age. It was most unwise.’

‘But a very wise move from Rafael Flynn’s point of view. My goodness, a hundred thousand pounds…’ Her mouth had run dry. ‘On what terms was the money advanced?’

‘No repayments were required for three years. At the end of that period either the loan was to be repaid on demand—’

‘On demand?’ Harriet gasped in appalled interruption.

‘Or Flynn Enterprises would be entitled to assume a full half-share in the property and the livery yard and to become Kathleen’s legal partner. The company would also be entitled to first refusal in the event of a sale. The contract was drawn up by a clever lawyer and it would appear to be watertight.’

Harriet’s lips parted in shock. ‘Are you saying that I could end up with Rafael Flynn as a partner in a business that is pretty much non-existent at this moment in time?’

‘Miss Carmichael…’ Eugene McNally breathed tautly, passing a thick legal document across the desk for her perusal. ‘Mr Flynn could move into your guestroom and you couldn’t object.’

‘So I’ll pay off the loan…I’ll get the money by taking out a mortgage!’ Harriet exclaimed.

‘While another party has an interest in half of the property that would be a challenge. You cannot define any one part of your inheritance as wholly yours. In those circumstances you will find it virtually impossible to persuade a financial institution to offer you a loan secured on the property. This contract leaves you with precious few options.’

Harriet was steadily turning paler. ‘But why did my cousin borrow such a huge amount?’

‘Trade took a downturn at the livery yard, and she had debts. I assume the bank refused to finance the improvements she wanted to make. She also thought she was on to a winner working with Fergal Gibson—though I know for a fact that two years back the pair of them took a heavy loss on a racehorse they bought together. But Kathleen was an eternal optimist.’ The older man loosed a weary sigh. ‘I’m betting she looked at the three-year holiday on the loan repayments and hoped for the best.’

‘But surely she saw the risk of having Rafael Flynn foisted on her as a partner?’

‘She might not even have read the small print. She was a horse fancier, not a businesswoman. At the time Mr Flynn did not own the Flynn Court estate. But he is a man of considerable stature and experience in the bloodstock world, and Kathleen may well have…somewhat naively…thought that such a partner would be most advantageous to her.’

One hundred thousand pounds, Harriet reflected in growing horror. It was an enormous sum. Even if she took all the profit she had made on selling her London apartment she couldn’t pay off a loan that size and still hope to rebuild the business. Settling the debt would destroy her prospects of making the livery yard pay. And if she couldn’t settle the debt even if she did make money from the yard, he would be entitled to half of the proceeds! This was the guy who had dared to ask her to have dinner with him? No wonder he had suggested that she might find the livery business challenging!

‘Why wasn’t this contract mentioned sooner?’ Harriet asked tightly. ‘I think it’s inexcusable that I am only learning about it now.’

‘Mr Flynn was apparently willing to overlook the contract’s existence if you sold the property to him.’

‘He offers a very generous tip for a man whose stately home appears to be falling down round him!’

‘Mr Flynn only gained access to Flynn Court after his father, Valente Cavaliere, died some weeks ago. I believe that an extensive renovation project is being planned,’ the solicitor explained, unaware of the bombshell that he was dropping.

Harriet stared at the solicitor with steadily rounding blue eyes of disbelief. ‘Cavaliere? He’s…Are you telling me that Rafael Flynn is actually Rafael Cavaliere?’ she pressed, in a voice that was fading and breathless with shock. ‘The first time I met him I thought there was something familiar about him, but I would never have made that connection in a hundred years!’

‘My advice—and it’s off the record—would be to sell to him and buy elsewhere in the area,’ the older man suggested uncomfortably. ‘He’s a hard man if you cross him, but he has been extremely generous to this community and he has considerable local support. He’s offering you a very fair price. You can’t fight that amount of money and power—’

‘Watch me, Mr McNally,’ Harriet advised with fighting fervour. The craven suggestion that she simply accept defeat filled her with raging resentment and a fierce determination to do exactly the opposite. ‘Just watch me!’

She swept back out to her car in high dudgeon. Rafael rotten Cavaliere! What was an Italian tycoon doing in a tiny Irish village? And calling himself Flynn, of all things! It was like finding a barracuda in a goldfish bowl. She could not believe it was true. She could not credit that once again Rafael Cavaliere had contrived to cast the long dark shadow of misfortune across her path. She stopped her car in the lay-by next to the church because she was shaking with reaction. But the momentum of anger soon impelled her on to swing left through the crumbling stone entrance of Flynn Court. The long stately drive was full of potholes, but bounded on both sides by magnificent cypress trees, which gave occasional glimpses of the stunning view down to the bay and the sea. She brought her car to a halt right outside the imposing front door.

Tolly appeared in answer to the ancient bell she had pulled. ‘Miss Carmichael…how may I assist you?’ he enquired gravely.

In any other mood Harriet would have been tickled pink by the solemn manner which Joseph evidently assumed to carry out his official duties as butler. ‘I’m here to see your boss.’

‘I’ll see if Mr Flynn is available. Please take a seat.’

Harriet preferred to stand. The hall was a vast semi-circular space, with walls ornamented with fantastic elaborate plasterwork. Even dirty and in need of decoration, it was a spectacular space.

‘Miss Carmichael…bad news travels fast,’ a lazy masculine drawl commented from behind her.

Her heart-shaped face tightening as though she was sucking on a lemon, Harriet spun round. Her tormentor was sheathed in a sleek black designer business suit. Staggeringly tall and vibrantly handsome, he also looked horribly intimidating. Every nerve in her tense body seemed to jump and her tummy flipped in concert. ‘Allow me to tell you that you do business like a gangster.’

His lean, bronzed features remained impassive. ‘My late father would be proud of me.’

‘I’m not selling to you…I don’t care what you do. I have a great dislike of being forced to do anything, Mr Cavaliere. But most of all I have a great dislike, not to mention complete contempt, for your methods. Why do you call yourself Flynn? To mislead people?’ Harriet condemned with a heated sense of injustice. ‘I mean, who the heck would expect to find an Italian billionaire slumming somewhere like this?’

‘Let me answer you point by point,’ Rafael murmured levelly. ‘On my birth certificate it says Rafael Cavaliere Flynn, and I was born here. My mother named me. I am not concerned by the name that the press have allotted to me. Nor do I consider myself to be “slumming” in the house where many generations of Flynns have lived and died. I am proud of my ancestry.’

His immense self-assurance infuriated Harriet beyond bearing. All worked up as she was, she was already conscious that her face was hot with temper. Being rebuked for her bad manners was the last straw. She could have screamed for, ironically, she had never before dared to be that rude to anyone. ‘Are you aware that you have blighted my life like the plague since I was fifteen?’ she suddenly launched at him, half an octave higher.

Rafael quirked a mobile black brow.

‘No, I haven’t gone crazy. In the nineties you took over Benson Pharmaceuticals where my stepfather worked in the research lab and he lost his job. He was just one employee among four thousand. You shut the company down and sold off everything. The whole town died—’

‘A business has to be in profit to be sustainable.’

‘My stepfather had a nervous breakdown. He couldn’t get another job, and he had to sell our house and just about everything we owned by the end of the year. Men like you destroy lives,’ Harriet framed shakily.

‘Benson Pharmaceuticals lost a major contract to an Asian company and crashed. I was in no way responsible for its demise.’ Rafael watched her brow furrow in surprise.

He was standing below the cupola. The fall of light through the glass dome in the roof played over his superb bone structure and glinted in the dense black of his hair.

Registering that she was inadvertently staring, she tore her attention from him again, her cheeks burning. ‘That may be so, but you make nothing. You simply tear things apart to make the most money you can.’

‘You’re wrong. In the case of Bensons, I refused a highly profitable offer to buy the site and redevelop it as a shopping outlet. I knew that the town would regenerate faster if the buildings became a base for an industrial estate where other businesses could be set up.’

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