Rags To Riches: His Wish, Her Command: The Last Summer of Being Single / An Enticing Debt to Pay / A Navy SEAL's Surprise Baby. Annie West

the ground, standing next to his dad in his best banker’s smart suit, as they both smiled for the camera.

      Four photographs. And yet here in this house he had already seen more photographs than he ever knew existed.

      It was almost as if his dad had deliberately kept these photos from him. Was he trying to hide something? Trying to protect him?

      Not any more.

       Change of plan.

      He was here now. He had the means and the opportunity and he could spare a few hours of personal time. In a few days he would be back to Australia. This could be the only chance he might have.

      The more he thought about it, the more decisive he became.

      He had used his tenacity and determination to take his business to the top. Now it was time to apply that same energy and drive to do some digging into his own past.

      Decision made.

      He had a new mission. He was going to find any and every scrap of evidence of his family’s past. Even if it meant turning this house upside down to find them.

      Starting with the attic.

      Because whatever he found from now on, he had every intention of claiming for himself. This was personal and had nothing whatsoever to do with Nicole or her housekeeper. Nothing at all.

      Ella tried to wind her way through the jumble of unwanted furniture and assorted objects that had accumulated in the attic. And fought a sudden urge to kick them out of the way. Hard.

      Stamping her foot, she squeezed her eyes tight shut, dropped her head back and counted to ten. Backwards. The furniture was bashed enough without her adding to the knocks and scrapes.

      They said that bad things came in threes. Well, her Friday was certainly turning out to be a lot more challenging than she had expected. First was the news about the mistral. A summer storm was the last thing this garden needed a few days before a garden party. And it could last for days!

      As for the second? It was obvious to her now that Sebastien Castellano never had any intention of staying around long enough to attend Nicole’s birthday party. And that was just cruel.

      How could he do that? How could he promise to be here then change his mind?

      She simply did not understand that at all. He had travelled halfway around the world for a business trip, only to take off again without seeing Nicole!

      How could he be so selfish? Surely he could put Nicole’s needs in front of his own for once? And what was so urgent back in Sydney that he could not stay for a few more days?

      And then there was the killer. The thick letter stuffed into her trouser pocket that had been waiting for her when she got back from the school run.

      The very sight of the Spanish stamps made her heart sink into her deck shoes.

      To a six-year-old, Barcelona might just as well have been next to India and not just a few hours’ drive away. Not that Christobal’s parents came to see them very often. They hated staying at Sandrine’s clean but simple hotel and made repeated comparisons with their luxury villa complete with indoor heated swimming pool and every possible item of the latest technology.

      They truly could not tolerate the fact that their grandson was being brought up in a tiny French village while their daughter-in-law worked as a housekeeper for a wealthy woman.

      She did not even drive any more.

      7Christmas had been a nightmare. As soon as Dan had gone to bed they had bombarded her with their elaborate plans for his education—all the time making her feel like a completely selfish mother by not providing personal tutors and modern computer games and the like so that Dan would not feel left out at the expensive private schools he would soon be attending.

      Yeah. Boarding schools. Right. Like she was going to let that happen! Except of course by selfishly keeping Dan here with her she was ruining his chance of a good education and a career. Guilt. Guilt. Guilt.

      Ella groaned, then shrugged and sat down on the curved cover of an old trunk and opened the letter under the light beaming in through the dirty glass-covered skylight in the attic roof.

      Then hot tears burned the corners of her eyes, blurring her vision.

      Two return train tickets to Barcelona. First class. For Monday next week! Two days. She only had two days before she had to hand her baby boy over to his grandparents.

      Oh, no. Of course she had known that they wanted to see Dan during his summer school holidays, but the first week! The Martinez family took their holiday in August, not July! And Dan had been so looking forward to Nicole’s party. If she used these tickets, she would be forced to leave him there on his own while she scurried back here to work every hour she could to create this very special birthday party for Nicole.

      So what if she had been putting on a brave face in front of Sebastien Castellano? He didn’t have to know that she was secretly panicking. Swan on the water did not come close.

      No. She would simply reschedule the dates and… Ella scan-read the letter that came with the tickets. His grandparents had already booked more tickets for a whole programme of special trips and wonderful treats for Dan, which she knew that he would adore.

      The energy and the fight drained out of her.

      She couldn’t reschedule the trip without throwing all of those plans away.

      They were Christobal’s parents! Of course they wanted to see Dan and give him a wonderful time. Dan was all they had left of their son. Chris would have wanted this. Of course, Chris would also have liked them to welcome her as well. But that was a lot more difficult.

      Her fingers clenched around the paper. What choice did she have? They knew that she did not have the money to give Dan the things they could. Playing the piano at Sandrine’s at the weekends was not going to be enough to even buy a new computer. She was lucky to have Sandrine’s old machine so that she could keep in touch with her own parents and they were in no position to help her financially.

      In their eyes she had made a total mess of her life. A wandering musician without a stable home. She had no investments or resources to provide her son with the type of education that his father had enjoyed. She had never even been to university!

      The beam of sunshine focused through the skylight on her hand and she watched tiny motes of dust float in and out of the narrow cone of intense light. Dust particles going where the breeze took them. Without direction.

      Then the sound of a dog barking echoed up from the garden and the old house creaked around her. Solid and reassuring.

      ‘Stupid girl,’ she said out loud, wiped her eyes with a not-so-clean finger and sniffed loudly. She was not without direction or friends. ‘Let’s get this show on the road. Things to do and people to see.’

      ‘Do you have a saying for everything, Mrs Martinez?’ a man’s voice asked, and Ella practically jumped off the trunk in shock.

      Seb watched Ella stuff a letter into her trouser pocket. He had seen enough for him to know that something had upset her very badly.

      ‘I’m sorry if I startled you,’ he added, then glanced around the attic room and blinked several times as his eyes became more accustomed to the dim light in that part of the attic. ‘Although I am surprised that you can see anything at all.’

      He turned sideways and stumbled over a box of tools as he reached for the light switch but Ella was already on her feet and faster, and as their hands connected his mind and senses were filled with the image of the girl with her hair down he had seen in the garden that morning. The girl whose touch made the hairs on the back of his arm prickle to attention.

      A hard fluorescent strip light crackled into life above his head creating hard shadows and dark corners. Ella instantly snatched her hand away as though she had been stung, but her pale blue eyes were still locked onto his. In this light the planes of her face