The Independent Bride. Sophie Weston

He sucked his teeth, pondering. ‘Maybe Pepper Calhoun has decided to do her own thing. Visit the sights. Have a fling with the boyfriend. What is she? Twenty-six? Twenty-seven? She’s got a right to party a bit before she settles down to a life of corporate greed.’

      ‘The Tiger Cub?’ Young and eager Martin Tammery laughed heartily at the naïveté of experience. ‘She doesn’t party. Her idea of a good time is an eighteen-hour day topped off by a night of conference calls. And she hasn’t had a boyfriend since business school.’

      ‘Then she’ll be ripe for a romantic interlude,’ said experience with conviction.

      His companion stayed unconvinced. ‘The one thing that is absolutely certain about Pepper Calhoun is that she doesn’t do romance. Never has. Never will.’

      ‘How can you be sure?’

      ‘She’s going to inherit one of the retail giants. I’ve been keeping a file on her since she went to her first prom. Believe me, she is her grandmother’s heir in every way there is. Brain like a computer, tongue like a razor, heart like outer space.’

      The older man blinked. ‘Run that past me again? What’s outer space got to do with Pepper Calhoun?’

      ‘They’re both cold and empty,’ said the other with feeling. ‘And totally inaccessible.’

      CHAPTER ONE

      WHAT a difference a week makes!

      Penelope Anne Calhoun rested her tired red head against the wall of the departure lounge and tried to be philosophical.

      Exactly a week ago today she had thought she was nicely on track for the rest of her life. She’d had friends she trusted, a new project she believed in, and the best address in New York.

      There had been just the one tiny cloud on the horizon, and Pepper had been sure she could deal with that. Well, eventually. When she had to. When the final funding for Out of the Attic was in place and she could go to her grandmother and say, This is what I’m going to do.

      It was not as if they hadn’t tried to warn her.

      ‘Pepper, are you sure this is a good idea?’ her old mentor from business school had asked. ‘I mean—concept shopping! Love the idea. But what happens when your grandmother finds out?’

      And she said, so airily, so positively, ‘Nothing will happen.’

      She could see the professor was dubious. ‘Are you sure of that?’

      And she was. She was. ‘Absolutely,’ Pepper said with total assurance.

      ‘Mrs Calhoun won’t see it as a rival to Calhoun Carter?’

      Pepper laughed heartily. ‘CC has branches in every major city in the US and five overseas countries. Beside CC, Out of the Attic is a minnow. No—less than a minnow. It’s plankton to a whale.’

      ‘That’s not quite what I meant,’ said her teacher dryly. ‘I was thinking more of a rival suitor.’

      And, heaven help her, she had even laughed at that.

      ‘Okay. Maybe she’ll kick up a little at first. But she’ll see it my way eventually. She knows I have to prove myself.’

      ‘Does she?’

      ‘Yup,’ Pepper had said, with the total confidence of a woman who had been Mary Ellen Calhoun’s little princess since she was eight. ‘My grandmother wants what’s best for me. You see, she loves me.’

      The guy hadn’t said any more. Pepper had felt quite sorry for him, out-argued by his own pupil like that. She had taken him out to a spectacular gourmet dinner to make it up to him.

      And how wrong she had been. How wrong.

      She first realised that things weren’t going to plan the day that Ed kidnapped her.

      She wasn’t scared. Of course she wasn’t. She had known Ed Ivanov all her life. Anyway, Calhouns didn’t scare easy. Pepper was a Calhoun right the way through to that cool business brain of hers.

      So she kept her head and stayed calm.

      ‘What’s this about, Ed?’

      But he just shook his head. The noise in the helicopter made a great excuse.

      Pepper looked down at unfamiliar rolling countryside and tried to guess where they were. A long way from New York by now. Ed had got her into the ’copter, saying he wanted her to meet some potential investors. Ed was one of the tiny group of trusted friends who knew about Out of the Attic.

      So she’d gone with him without a second thought.

      By the time they were well out of the metropolitan area, following a river valley, she was having second thoughts all right. Ed hadn’t mentioned investors again. In fact Ed wasn’t talking much at all.

      When Pepper had walked off with the Year Prize at business school, it had been for a paper on problem solving. So she said to herself, Right, Pepper, solve this.

      She tapped him on the arm, and when he turned mouthed at him carefully, ‘There are only three reasons for you to do this. Ransom. Ungovernable passion. You’ve gone mad. Which is it?’

      But he waved a hundred-dollar manicure to indicate the noise of the rotor arms and did not answer.

      Pepper shook her head. Unless he had been fired in the last twenty-four hours, Ed did not need money. He was a successful Wall Street analyst. And the idea of passion was laughable. They had dated briefly at business school but it had ended peaceably and neither of them had a broken heart.

      Or, Ed’s beach readings, she remembered, ran to highly coloured adventure stories. Maybe he was whisking her off for a secret weekend as a prelude to another proposal of marriage? She looked at him. He was peering at the valley below the helicopter, nibbling at a nail.

      Romantic? Ed? Nah!

      She considered him from under her long lashes. They were surprisingly dark compared with her flame-red hair. One of her few good points, she always said. Pepper was realistic about her lack of attractions.

      Which was another reason why she didn’t think passion had driven Ed to enforced seduction. He did not look at her. He did not touch her. In fact, he was behaving more like a transcontinental courier with an awkward package than a man in love.

      Anyway, surely even Ed wouldn’t think that kidnapping a woman was a good way to persuade her to marry him?

      And then the helicopter came down in the middle of a clearing and Ed started talking again.

      ‘This is my father’s fishing cabin,’ he said and helped her out.

      Keep it light, she told herself. Keep it light. ‘Since when do I fish?’

      He did not look mad. He gave her a slightly harassed smile. ‘We’re just up here for a meeting. I told you.’

      That was when Pepper started to get a really bad feeling about the trip.

      She hid it. ‘Do I need my visual aids?’ she said dryly. She had brought all the stuff with her for a really great presentation of Out of the Attic.

      He shook his head.

      ‘Somehow, you don’t surprise me,’ she said with irony. ‘Okay. Lead on.’

      It was really quite a simple cabin—single storey, in need of repair. The way down to it was full of puddles, too. Her shiny black city pumps, discreetly plain and shockingly expensive, were never going to be the same again. Still, at least she didn’t take a tumble—unlike Ed.

      Rain dripped through the trees. It soaked Pepper’s hair until the elegant auburn pleat turned black and flattened on the top of her head. It darkened the shoulders of her designer label navy jacket. She felt an uncomfortable trickle down the neck of her pearl silk blouse. But it wasn’t