Miranda Lee is Australian, living near Sydney.Born and raised in the bush, she was boarding-school educated and briefly pursued a career inclassical music before moving to Sydney and embracingthe world of computers. Happily married,with three daughters, she began writing whenfamily commitments kept her at home. She likes tocreate stories that are believable, modern, fast-pacedand sexy. Her interests include meaty sagas, doingword puzzles, gambling and going to the movies.

Don’t miss Miranda Lee’s exciting new novel, The Billionaire’s Bride of Vengeance, available in January 2009 from Mills & Boon® Modern™.

CHAPTER ONE

DANIEL stared down through the plane window at the panoramic beauty of the city and coastline below. The captain had just announced a slight delay in landing at Mascot Airport and was doing a sweeping circle over Sydney to give his mainly tourist passengers a good look at the city which reputedly had the best harbour—and the best beaches—in the world.

Not an exaggerated claim, in Daniel’s opinion. He’d flown over some pretty spectacular cities in his time. New York. San Francisco. Rio.

But Sydney was in a class of its own.

Maybe it was the early-morning light which made its beaches look whiter than white, and the water bluer than blue. But just the sight of that dazzling harbour with its famous icons of the bridge and the opera house—each one sparkling in the summer sunshine—lightened Daniel’s spirits.

Beth had been right to insist he come home, even if only for a visit.

Home…

Funny how he always thought of Sydney as home. True, he’d been born here. And yes, he’d gone to school here from the age of twelve to eighteen, which was why he didn’t have much of an American accent. But most of his life had been spent in the States. In Los Angeles, to be precise. The city of angels. Or devils, depending on your point of view.

LA could be one tough city. Usually, Daniel could handle its toughness. One could say he’d thrived on it.

But life had finally got the better of him. This last Christmas had been particularly bleak and lonely, with his mother having died earlier that year.

A shudder rippled down Daniel’s spine. It was eight months since his poor mom had passed away, but it felt like yesterday.

He still didn’t know how he’d controlled himself when his father showed up at her funeral with his new wife on his arm. His fourth. Blonde, of course. And young. They were always blonde and young. And his father was what now? Sixty-five, ten years older than his mother would have been next month. Still, successful producers never seemed to have trouble attracting—and marrying—ambitious young starlets.

His own mother had had stars in her eyes when she’d first met the handsome Ben Bannister on a star-finding trip to Sydney. He’d been a very experienced thirty whereas she was a naive twenty.

Daniel often wondered why his father had married his mother. The pretty little brunette from Bondi didn’t seem his style. OK, so he’d got her pregnant, but was that reason enough to marry? Far better that he’d gone back to America and left her to raise her son by herself here in Australia.

None of his father’s marriages lasted very long. A few years at the most. But they always produced a child or two. Daniel had several half-brothers and -sisters whom he barely knew. His father no longer lived in Los Angeles, having moved to New York after he left Daniel’s mother when Daniel was six. Or had he been seven?

Must have been seven, Daniel mused. He was six years older than his little sister, Beth, who’d just begun to walk at the time.

Whatever, he’d been old enough to be almost as hurt as his mother, his sweet, soft-hearted mother, who had never got over her husband’s betrayal. Before his father stormed out of the front door, he’d callously told his weeping wife that he’d been unfaithful to her all along. She’d turned to pills for comfort at first. Then drink. And finally other men, younger men who used her body and spent her settlement money like water.

When things became really bad, Daniel’s maternal grandfather stepped in and took Beth and himself back to Australia to live with him, making sure they got a good education and a more stable upbringing. Both children loved life in Sydney with their widower grandfather, Beth especially. Within months, she was saying she wanted to stay forever. Daniel liked the life too, but he was older and couldn’t help worrying about his mother. She sounded OK in her letters, claimed she’d stopped drinking and had a job, but she always had some excuse why she couldn’t fly out and visit.

Once he’d completed high school, Daniel felt compelled to return to Los Angeles, where he’d been relieved to see that his mom had stopped drinking, but oh…how she’d aged. Yes, she did have a job, but it didn’t pay much and she was living in a dump. Unable to convince her to return to Australia with him—a warped form of pride, in his opinion—Daniel borrowed some money from his grandfather, found somewhere better for them both to live, then enrolled at a local university to study law. He worked three part-time jobs to pay his fees, and to make sure his mother wanted for nothing.

When he graduated top of his class, the prestigious LA law firm of Johansen, O’Neill and Morecroft snapped Daniel up and he soon found his feet as their most aggressive and successful divorce lawyer. Soon he was able to repay his grandfather every cent he’d borrowed, plus interest. When his impressive first-year bonus came in he put down a deposit on a maintenance-free condominium for his mother, and a nearby bachelor pad for himself. As much as he adored his mother, Daniel felt it was high time he had his own space.

In the first few years of his career as a divorce lawyer, Daniel represented both men and women, but when he made partner shortly after his thirtieth birthday he announced that in future the only clients he would represent were women. The men he left to someone else.

Daniel found great satisfaction in preventing sleazebag husbands with more money than morals from weaseling their way out of paying what was due to their ex-wives. He was ruthless in his quest to gain financial security for the discarded, disillusioned and distressed women who trailed through his office. Women who were no longer young enough, or pretty enough, or exciting enough for the husbands who’d once promised to love, honour and cherish them forever.

Daniel was particularly vicious in his pursuit of justice if there were children involved, especially when the men in question didn’t want to face their responsibility regarding hands-on child-rearing. And there were plenty of those.

Men who abandoned their children had to be made to pay.

‘But not all men are like that,’ his more optimistic little sister had recently said to him over the phone during her weekly call from Sydney. Beth never had returned to America, even after her beloved grandfather passed away. ‘If my marriage ever broke up, Vince would never abandon our child. Or children. I’m not sure how many we’ll have. But more than one.’

Beth was currently seven months pregnant with her first child.

‘Not that our marriage is ever going to break up,’ Beth had added quickly. ‘We have our ups and downs but we’re still very much in love with each other.’

In love, Daniel mused as the jumbo jet banked and began its descent into Sydney.

What was being in love, exactly?

He’d never felt it, he was sure. Not once. Thirty-six years old, and he’d never fallen in love.

He’d liked lots of women. And lusted after them. And made love to them.

But that wasn’t the same as being in love. He’d never been so overcome by mad passion that he’d do anything for the object of said passion, such as ask her to marry him. Even if he did fall in love one day, Daniel couldn’t see himself marrying. He’d seen far too many divorces!

‘You’re a cynical, cold-blooded bastard,’ his last ladyfriend had flung at him just before she’d flounced out of his office—and his life—a couple of weeks before Christmas. ‘I refuse to waste any more time on you, Daniel Bannister. You obviously don’t love me. I doubt you even know what love is.’

All true, he’d finally agreed after she’d stormed out, her fury forcing him to have a long, hard look at himself.

What he’d discovered had been sobering.

He’d always condemned his father for being a serial husband, but he wasn’t much better when it came to relationships. He’d become a serial lover, going from one woman to another, never committing himself, never losing much sleep when these relationships—such as they were—were terminated.

Yep. He was a cynical, cold-blooded bastard all right. Not quite the noble, knight-in-shining-armour type he’d always imagined himself to be.

Two months later he was in a plane circling Sydney, still trying to come to terms with this revised character assessment of himself, trying to justify his past behaviour. Not very successfully. OK, so he hadn’t ever lied to his ladyfriends, or promised anything serious, or betrayed any vows, or abandoned any children. But he’d still hurt the women he’d dated, and who had probably wanted more from him than what he’d been prepared to give.

Daniel understood that he was a good catch, as the saying went. Physically attractive, professionally successful, financially secure. The kind of guy that his married acquaintances were always trying to set up with their single, female, husband-hunting friends.

To give himself some credit, Daniel always steered clear of the more obvious traps, sticking to women whom he’d mistakenly believed were dedicated career girls.

Only in hindsight did he realise that thirty-something girls who’d devoted their lives to their careers often had a change of heart when their biological clocks started ticking. Suddenly, some of them began to want wedding bells and baby bootees, whereas in the beginning all they’d wanted was some stimulating conversation over dinner and some satisfying sex at the end of the night.

Which he was more than happy to provide.

As Daniel stared through the plane window, his eyes glazed over and he started wondering if men ever suffered from the biological-clock syndrome. He’d turned thirty-six last month.

Maybe one day soon, he’d meet some girl and suddenly feel things he’d never felt before. Maybe he’d lose his head through love and desire and uncontrollable passion.

Daniel uttered a small, dry laugh.

Dream on, Daniel. This is you we’re talking about here. That cynical, cold-blooded bastard. You’d be the last man on earth to lose his head over a woman!

The plane’s wheels making contact with the tarmac startled Daniel. He’d been so wrapped up in his thoughts that he’d stopped following their descent.

His gaze focused again through the window to take in the view of Sydney from the ground.

A large bay of water stretched out before him on the plane’s left, fringed by sand. Directly opposite was an industrial area. To his right, a residential suburb. Airports were usually on the outskirts of cities but Mascot wasn’t far from Sydney’s city centre.

His sister’s house was in the eastern suburbs, at Rose Bay, also near the city centre. She’d promised to meet him, despite the early hour and her advanced pregnancy.

Daniel knew it would do him good to spend a couple of weeks here in Sydney with his sister and her husband. Australians were wonderfully easygoing, and Beth was Australian through and through now.

People blamed the hot weather, but Daniel didn’t believe it had anything to do with the weather. He believed it had something to do with their isolation. They lived so far away that they hadn’t yet been contaminated with the rest of the world’s mad and bad habits. In his experience, Australians didn’t seem to live to work as a lot of Americans did. They worked to live.

Daniel hoped to embrace some of that philosophy during his visit here. He was in danger of becoming a serious workaholic.

All work and no play made Daniel a very dull boy.

A fortnight of total relaxation would do him a power of good.

CHAPTER TWO

CHARLOTTE responded to the annoying beep-beep of her clock alarm as any person would at five a.m. on a Friday morning, especially one who’d only got to bed at two. She flung an arm over her duvet, cut the irritating noise off by hitting the snooze button, then rolled over and curled up again for ten more minutes’ precious sleep.

But before she could return to the bliss of oblivion, Charlotte suddenly remembered why she’d set her alarm at such a God-forsaken hour.

Gary’s flight was due in at six-twenty.

Although it was not a long drive from Bondi to Mascot at that hour of the morning, Charlotte had known in advance that she’d need extra time to make herself look tippy-top to meet her fiancé. Hence her early alarm.

Throwing back the duvet, Charlotte leapt out of bed, swearing when she banged her leg on the corner of her bedside chest. Rubbing her thigh, she limped to the bathroom.

‘Aaah!’ she squawked when she finally saw herself in the mirror above the vanity.

Her screech of alarm was followed by the appearance of an equally dishevelled Louise in the bathroom door. ‘What’s all the noise about?’ her flatmate asked blearily.

‘Look at me!’ Charlotte proclaimed with a despairing groan. ‘This is all your fault, Louise. You should never have insisted on having my hen night only two days before my wedding, and the night before Gary’s arrival. You know what even a few drinks do to me. Not to mention lack of sleep. My God, I look a positive fright!’

Louise snorted. ‘You couldn’t look a positive fright if your life depended on it. You even look good with dark roots.’

Charlotte groaned again. Louise had to be blind! Her hair was nothing short of appalling.

Maintaining herself as the long-haired, golden-locked blonde whom Gary had met and fallen instantly in love with up on the Gold Coast last year had taken its toll. All Charlotte and Louise’s skills as hairdressers could not prevent the damage which had been done to her naturally thick, dark brown hair by continual bleaching.

She’d only gone blonde for that holiday in a fit of pique after her break-up with Dwayne. His new girlfriend was a blonde. Charlotte had never intended to keep it that way. She’d been planning on cutting it short afterwards and returning to her natural colour.

But her plans had changed on meeting Gary, and eight months later she was still a blonde. A blonde with dark roots and split ends.

Charlotte wished now she hadn’t put off doing the roots till the day of her wedding. She should have had them done yesterday. And had a trim. And put in a treatment.

‘I have to use the bathroom,’ Louise said with a yawn. ‘Why don’t you go make me some coffee, in exchange for which I’ll blow-dry your hair for you?’

‘Do you think you could give me a quick trim and an instant treatment as well?’ Charlotte pleaded.

‘What am I, your fairy godmother? OK, OK, just go get that coffee.’

One hour later Charlotte looked as good as she could, under the circumstances. But, truly, if she kept bleaching and blow-drying her hair so ruthlessly it would start breaking off, as Louise had pointed out.

‘If Gary really loves you,’ Louise had added drily, ‘he wouldn’t care if your hair’s long or short. Or if you’re a blonde or a brunette.’

Louise’s words echoed in Charlotte’s mind during the short drive to the airport.

If Gary really loves you…

It wasn’t the first time Louise had expressed doubts over the reality of Gary’s love for her. And vice versa.

Charlotte could understand her friend’s misgivings. Most of her relationship with the good-looking American lawyer had developed over the internet, which was a trap in itself. Exchanging emails wasn’t the same as actually spending time with each other. It was easy to put your best foot forward with words, rather than action. Charlotte did understand that.

But theirs hadn’t been a strictly email romance. Their initial meeting had been in the flesh. Unfortunately, their time together had been brief. It had been the last night of her holiday on the Gold Coast. The last night of Gary’s trip to Australia as well. He had been due to return to LA the next day. Gary had spied her across a crowded room—actually, it was a smoke-filled club—and zeroed in on her straight away. He’d asked her to dance and the rest, as they say, was history.

They’d spent the whole night together. Not in bed or anything like that. Charlotte had never been the sort of girl to jump into bed at the drop of a hat, especially with some smooth-talking American out here on holiday. There was no doubt Gary wouldn’t have minded, but he’d seemed impressed when she’d resisted his advances to have sex. Instead, they’d walked along the beach for hours, hand in hand, just talking. As they’d watched the sun come up together, he told her she was the girl he’d waited for all his life.

Later that day she’d accompanied Gary to the airport, where he’d promised to call her as soon as he got home. His passionate goodbye kiss had sent her head spinning, repairing some of the damage Dwayne had perpetrated on her battered self-esteem.

Louise had warned her when she came back to Sydney that men met on holiday rarely contacted you afterwards. But Gary had. He’d called Charlotte as soon as he’d returned to Los Angeles and they’d been in constant contact ever since, sometimes by phone, but mostly by email.

Charlotte felt she knew Gary much better than she’d even known Dwayne, the rat on whom she’d wasted the previous two years of her life. He’d eventually dumped her for some gym bunny, whom he’d got pregnant.

When Gary asked her to marry him last November, Charlotte hadn’t hesitated to say yes.

Maybe she would have hesitated if he hadn’t been prepared to marry her here in Sydney, and make his life here.

Or if you weren’t thirty-three, another nasty little voice whispered in her head. And beginning to believe that you would never find a husband.

Charlotte swiftly brushed that no longer relevant thought aside.

She was getting married. Tomorrow. And in considerable style.

Charlotte hoped Gary wouldn’t mind. He’d requested a simple wedding. No church. Just a celebrant, and only a small guest list. He himself had no close family; his parents had been killed in a tragic house fire when he was a teenager.

But Charlotte’s father hadn’t waited thirty-three years to give his youngest daughter away in anything less than a white wedding with all the trimmings.

Secretly, Charlotte had been glad her father had insisted on this. Her two older sisters had both been beautiful brides with white wedding gowns, and Charlotte hadn’t really wanted to settle for anything less. The church part she’d managed to skirt around, her parents reluctantly agreeing to a celebrant. But everything else was to be very traditional, complete with a proper reception, a three-tiered wedding cake, the bridal waltz. The lot!

Charlotte hadn’t informed Gary of any of this. She reasoned that once he was here, she could explain that it wasn’t her doing. It was her parents’ idea. And it wasn’t as though he had to pay for any of it. Her father had footed the bill, dear sweet man that he was. All Gary had to do was be fitted with a rental tux today—a fitting had been arranged for this afternoon—then show up in it tomorrow.

Charlotte didn’t think that was too much to ask. Not of a man who really loved her. And he did. He must really love her, otherwise he wouldn’t be coming all this way to marry her. Or have sent her such a lovely sapphire and diamond engagement ring.

Just the sight of it on her ring finger was reassuring.

Half an hour later, Charlotte was pacing back and forth outside the arrivals gate to which Gary’s flight had been allotted, her eyes darting continuously to the ramp down which her fiancé would walk any moment now. His plane had only touched down ten minutes earlier—it had been late landing—but business class passengers were rarely held up in Customs.

She couldn’t stand still. Nerves had her stomach in knots. But was she excited or afraid, afraid that she was about to rush into marriage with a man she hadn’t even been to bed with?

Still, maybe that was a good thing. She’d eventually slept with most of her other boyfriends and none of them had proposed marriage. Perhaps because she’d always ultimately disappointed them, sexually. Her lack of enjoyment seemed to bother her boyfriends more than it did her.

She’d been totally honest with Gary and he’d reassured her he wasn’t marrying her because she was a sexpot, but because she was beautiful and warm and sweet and wanted what he wanted. A family. At the same time, he seemed extremely confident that everything would turn out fine on their wedding night.

Charlotte hoped so, hoped that this time she would feel the earth move the way Louise was always talking about.

If she didn’t? Well…as Gary said, they would work on it together.

There! There he was!

She started jumping up and down, waving and smiling.

‘Here! Here! Over here!’

When he turned his darkly handsome head from where he’d been looking over to one side, Charlotte’s hand froze mid-air, her smile instantly fading.

Because it wasn’t Gary at all. Just someone who looked like him. In broad strokes, that was. About the same height. Gary was over six feet. Similar hair. Dark brown. Short. No parting. Rather similar in profile as well. High forehead, strong nose, square jaw.

But when this man stared straight at her, Charlotte could see his eyes were nothing like Gary’s. This man’s were deeper set, and very penetrating. Not blue, either, but brown. Almost black when they narrowed underneath his dark straight brows.

They were narrowed right now. On her.

Never in her life had Charlotte been looked at the way this man was looking at her. The focused intensity in his gaze was nothing short of blistering.

When he started pushing his luggage trolley towards her, Charlotte’s arm dropped back down to clutch her shoulder bag across her chest in a strangely defensive fashion. Despite her stomach curling with embarrassment, she found she could not look away from him, but kept on staring back into those darkly magnetic eyes.

‘Did Beth send you to meet me?’ he asked as he ground to a halt in front of her, his accent not dissimilar to Gary’s.

Dear God, Gary! In her fluster, she’d forgotten all about him.

‘I’m sorry, no,’ she apologised swiftly, dragging her eyes away from the disturbing stranger to see if Gary had made an appearance. ‘I don’t know anyone named Beth. I… I thought you were my fiancé for a moment,’ she rattled on, her eyes agitatedly searching the now constant line of exiting passengers.

But Gary wasn’t amongst them.

She glanced back at the American, who was still standing there. He was still staring at her as well, but now with an air of curiosity, whereas before his eyes had carried…what, exactly?

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