The Reluctant Heiress. Christine Flynn

      “Nothing in my life, nothing,” Jillian stressed, “is the same any more.”

      She’d thought Ben would understand. He’d seemed so understanding of everything else.

      “I even look different. The Kendrick women are tall and blonde and poised and self-confident, but I’m short, brunette, and so… not.”

      Reaching out, Ben grabbed her wrist. “Trust me,” he insisted, as his eyes shifted from her mouth to the skin exposed by the vee of her top. “The last thing you ever need to worry about is how you compare to your half-sisters.”

      Beneath his fingers, Jillian felt her pulse give a betraying little leap. Too aware of his big body, she took a step back, turned away.

      “You don’t need to humour me, Ben. That’s not what I want from you.”

      When she met his glance, his smile was gone.

      “I’m not humouring you, Jillian. I meant exactly what I said.” His blue eyes narrowed as he cautiously searched her face. “Now that you’ve mentioned it, what do you want from me?”

       CHRISTINE FLYNN

      admits to being interested in just about everything, which is why she considers herself fortunate to have turned her interest in writing into a career. She feels that a writer gets to explore it all and, to her, exploring relationships – especially the intense, bittersweet or even lighthearted relationships between men and women – is fascinating.

      Dear Reader,

      The bulletin board above my desk is a mess. The green bamboo backing that I thought looked better than plain cork is barely visible. It’s covered with reminders, schedules and little bits of inspiration. That inspiration includes an 8x10 of an incredibly hunky guy – the hero for my work in progress – and dozens of quotes. Some of those quotations make me smile. Most make me think. One inspired this story.

      “Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely.”— Attributed to Karen Kaiser Clark

      We know we can’t always control what happens to us. And sometimes it takes us a while to realise that our response to a situation is as important as the change itself. Change can be difficult. Growth can be a struggle. That’s why my first response to a crisis is to head for anything chocolate…and take it from there.

      Love,

       Christine

      The Reluctant Heiress

      CHRISTINE FLYNN

      

www.millsandboon.co.uk

      Prologue

      Jillian Hadley always waited until September to make her New Year’s resolutions. Where the rest of the world planned new beginnings on January first, she waited for the start of the new school year to compile her annual list of the faults she would fix, habits she would break and objectives she would pursue.

      She wasn’t rebelling against convention, though she definitely marched to her own drummer. She wasn’t asserting herself, either. The little quirk affected no one but herself. The independent streak she’d been raised to protect simply found the timing more logical. A new school year was a fresh start in itself. January came in the middle of it.

      As had become her habit, she’d turned on the television in the living room for company the minute she’d walked into the cozy little duplex she called home. Accompanied by a persuasive male voice promising her better gas mileage, she lugged the luggage she’d taken on her trip into her bedroom, flipped on the overhead light to illuminate the purely feminine space and tossed her suitcase and carry-on bag onto her white eyelet-covered bed.

      Only once in her eight years of teaching had she returned to Thomas Jefferson Elementary without her usual, lengthy list of items geared toward self-improvement. That had been last year; her very own personal year from hell. It had actually been closer to eighteen months, but there were details she preferred to overlook about that time as she unzipped her suitcase and started to unpack.

      Within three months, her mom had become seriously ill, her now ex-fiancé had informed her that he had no intention of marrying her and her mom had died. It seemed as if bad news had simply been heaped on worse to the point where numbness had become a constant state of being. She hadn’t even realized how much of a fog she’d drifted in until the pain and numbness had finally, mercifully begun to dull over the past summer.

      She lifted a slightly squashed, pale-pink orchid lei from atop a stack of shorts and tank tops. As of now, as of that very moment, she was declaring that horrible time officially over. Done. Finished. The loss of her mom, she would feel forever. Beth Hadley had been her friend, her champion and the strongest woman she’d ever known. Eric Chandler, she had long since concluded, she could easily survive without.

      It was her awareness of how completely she was over the man she’d once thought she would grow old with—and the realization that her biological clock hadn’t stopped running just because the rest of her life had gone on hold—that led straight to her first resolution.

      This year, she decided, hanging the lei over a post of her four-poster bed, if Coach Gunderson asked her out again, she would go. He was a nice guy. A little bald, but nice. And heaven knew how hard it was to find a decent guy anymore. One that wasn’t married, involved or gay, anyway. She would also avoid the doughnuts in the teachers’ lounge, learn to play the guitar she’d bought four years ago, and seriously consider getting her long, impossibly curly hair straightened. If she was feeling particularly adventurous, she might also get the unmanageable mass cut and dyed some color other than the uninspiring shade of plain old dark brown that it was.

      The reemerged optimist in her could practically feel all manner of change coming on. Her vacation—a major, much-needed splurge—was now officially over. Other than the lei and a bunch of little paper drink umbrellas, all she had left of those ten days on Maui was a hibiscus-print sarong she’d probably never wear, the postcards and photo books she’d brought back to share with her students and the great tan she’d acquired because she’d kept forgetting to reapply sunscreen.

      It didn’t matter that her vacation was now nothing but a memory. She felt none of the letdown she would have experienced even a few weeks ago at returning to her ordinary, rather predictable life. Even tired from eleven hours in the air, three plane changes and interminable waits in airports, she found herself looking forward to the new school year, to meeting her new students, to putting her resolutions to work. She didn’t even mind that before she could go to bed, she needed to do laundry so she could wash the top she wanted to wear to school tomorrow.

      In the interests of time, she dumped the remaining contents of the suitcase into her laundry basket and headed for the washer and dryer behind the louvered doors in her kitchen. Thinking she should check the messages on her blinking answering machine, she’d just passed the assortment of herbs and a fern she’d left in water in her sink when the disembodied male voice on the evening news brought her to a halt.

      With her heart beating a little too rapidly, she turned to the television opposite the sofa dividing the area in half.

      “…affair early in my marriage. That affair took place more than thirty years ago and resulted in a daughter I didn’t know I had until she approached me after her mother’s death last year. The photographs taken by Bradley Ashworth were of that meeting. As you know, Bradley was married to my youngest daughter, Tess. When Tess told him she wanted a divorce to escape his mental and physical abuse, he told her I was having an affair and used those photographs to blackmail her into silence.”

      On the screen, a distinguished-looking, silver-haired gentleman spoke in solemn tones from behind a bank of microphones. His sharp gray eyes peered intently toward his audience of millions.

      With