Ruthless Tycoon, Innocent Wife

CHAPTER ONE

JUST a few more hours and then everyone would leave. She could do this; she had to. It was what her parents would have expected of her. She could almost hear her mother’s voice—warm, faintly admonishing—saying, ‘Come on, Annie, keep the flag flying high, sweetie-pie.’ It had been one of her mother’s favourite sayings when as a small child she had tried to duck out of anything unpleasant.

Marianne Carr drew in a deep breath and straightened her drooping shoulders. Checking her reflection in the bedroom mirror, she satisfied herself that the recent flood of tears didn’t show and then left the room. On walking down the wide staircase she could see the odd person or two in the hall, but the main body of guests were in the drawing room. They were talking in the hushed tones one used at funeral receptions.

Crystal, her mother’s housekeeper and friend who’d been one of the family for as long as Marianne could remember, met her at the foot of the stairs. Crystal’s eyes were pink-rimmed and her voice wobbly when she said, ‘Shall I tell them to come through to the dining room now? Everything’s ready.’

Marianne nodded. She hugged Crystal for a moment, a catch in her voice as she murmured, ‘You’ve been a tower of strength to me, Crystal. I couldn’t have got through this without you.’

Crystal’s plump chin trembled as she fought for control. ‘I don’t feel I have been. I still find it hard to believe they won’t walk in the door, to be truthful.’

‘I know. I feel the same.’ It had been Crystal the police had notified the night of her parents’ terrible car crash, two policemen calling at the house. Crystal had immediately phoned her and she had left her flat in London within minutes. On the journey back to Cornwall she had been in deep shock, praying the whole time that she wouldn’t be too late. Crystal had told her her father had been pronounced dead at the scene of the accident but her mother was still clinging to life.

By the time she reached the hospital her mother had been able to tell the police that her father had collapsed at the wheel and the car had ploughed off the road, wrapping itself round a tree. She had had five precious minutes with the woman who had been her best friend as well as her mother. Five minutes to last the rest of her life.

The post-mortem had revealed that her father had suffered a massive heart attack and had probably been dead before the car had hit the tree. It was generally acknowledged it was the worst of luck that he had been driving at the time.

Forcing her thoughts into neutral, Marianne realised Crystal was dabbing her eyes again. ‘I’ll go and announce they can come through, Crystal. OK?’

‘No, no. If you can hold it together, then so can I,’ Crystal protested shakily. ‘I’ll do it.’

The two looked at each other for a long moment, drawing from each other’s strength in the midst of their grief, and then Crystal bustled off.

Marianne glanced at her watch, a present from her parents for her twenty-first six years before. One o’clock. Hopefully the assembled family and friends would all be gone by four. She heard Tom Blackthorn’s voice as she reached the drawing-room door and saw him standing with a tall dark man she’d vaguely noticed earlier. Tom was her father’s solicitor and friend; he’d asked to stay behind after the others had gone so he could read her parents’ will to her. She knew it wasn’t just that, though. He would feel it his duty to point out that a huge rambling place like Seacrest was too much for a young woman to take on, that it would make more sense to sell it.

She wouldn’t listen to him. She mentally nodded to the thought. Seacrest was in her blood. It had been in her father’s, and his father before him. It had been her great-great-grandfather who had built the massive stone house on the top of the cliff over one hundred and fifty years ago, and Carrs had lived in Seacrest ever since. Although she had inherited it far too soon—her eyes darkened with pain—she would keep her beloved house going while she had breath in her body. It was part of her, part of her parents.

‘Ah, Annie.’ Tom had known her since she was a baby and, as he put out a fatherly arm and drew her into his side, she had to bite back the tears. To combat the weakness she kept her spine straight and her lips clamped together. ‘I’d like you to meet the son of one of your father’s old friends. Rafe Steed, Marianne Carr.’

Her inward battle to remain composed and in control in spite of her grief during the funeral had rendered her almost blind and deaf throughout. Now, for the first time that day, she looked properly at the man she had noticed earlier at the church and then the graveside with Tom, seeing him as a person rather than another sombre-clothed shape among many sombre-clothed shapes.

The polite, How do you do? which had sprung to her lips was never voiced. He was tall—very tall—and broad with it. He wasn’t smiling. Not that it was the time and place for smiles, she supposed, but there was something in the piercing blue eyes that was unnerving. After what seemed an endless moment, he said, ‘Please accept the condolences of my father, Miss Carr. Ill health has prevented him making the journey from the States himself but he wanted to pay his respects.’