LITMIR.BIZ

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      To Robyn Donald and Daphne Clair

       for their support in the darkest hours, for creating Kara School of Writing for people just like me and for sharing the joy when dreams come true!

      Contents

      Prologue

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Coming Next Month

      Prologue

      Twelve years ago…

      Black, ice-cold water swirled around her, sapping the last of the heat from her body, the last of her will to survive. A tinge of irony touched her mind that she should die this way. Helena Milton, full of life, colour and crazy dreams, and powered by a get-go attitude to life that had alternately amazed and dismayed her quieter elderly parents.

      Her parents—would they ever understand why she’d left? Why she’d agreed to marry Patrick Davies and settle for less than love? Deep in her heart she knew she was doing the right thing—for herself, sure, but most of all for them and for the sacrifices they’d made for her.

      But she’d failed. An uncontrollable skid on the ice-and snow-strewn road had plunged her car through the bridge barrier and into the swollen river below. The river which now flumed with chilled water from the melting snow that came straight off New Zealand’s central plateau mountains.

      Helena lifted numbed frozen fingers to try the switch for the electric windows again. Futile. Not even her ever-weakened attempts to break the glass had any effect. With the doors jammed and the car’s electrics out of commission she remained trapped. Helena closed her eyes again. What was the point in keeping them open when all around her was nothing but blackness?

      A spark of anger lit briefly in her chest that she could die like this—alone and with her goals unfulfilled, no chance to earn her father’s pride instead of being the object of his quiet disappointment. Defeat had an ugly, bitter taste.

      Let go, whispered the little voice at the back of her head. Let go. She sagged deeper into her car seat, accepting the cold that penetrated to her bones, and let her mind drift. How long would it take, she wondered.

      A new and different sound from outside penetrated the thickening fog of reluctant acceptance in her mind. She forced her eyelids up and scanned around her. Fairy lights on the road above. A crazed laugh, broken and weak, choked from her throat as some of her usual humour surfaced. Whatever happened to the white light at the end of the tunnel everyone talked about?

      A dark figure loomed at her driver’s window, a pale face pressed against the glass. Water foamed around the figure and against the window’s edge. Helena felt the car shift slightly with the increasing pressure of the river’s pummelling force. The man’s lips moved but she shook her head slowly in response. What was he saying? His arms raised and she recognised the outline of an axe clenched in his hands. He tapped it against the glass. Helena suddenly understood what he’d been trying to say. She threw herself sideways, into the deepening pool in her car, oblivious to the dice-shaped pieces of broken safety glass that showered her body.

      The roaring growl of the water, muffled before, now crashed intrusively against her ears. Strong hands reached in to grab her by her jacket, her hair, anything that gave her rescuer purchase. Helena struggled to help him as he dragged her through the gaping window but she flopped uselessly as her limbs refused to obey. With one powerful lift he manoeuvred her slight frame free from the car. The shield of his body protected her from the hungry determination of the swirling current as he carried her to the bank.

      The bank was hard, blessedly so. Helena relished each pressure point of discomfort as confirmation she still lived. She’d been so close to giving in. The concept that she was finally safe rejoiced through her mind. Now, all she wanted to do was sleep, except the man who’d pulled her from the car seemed determined not to let her.

      “Is there anyone else in the car?” her rescuer shouted in her ear. “C’mon! Answer me, is there anyone else?”

      Slowly, her lips formed the words, her voice weak. “No. Alone.”

      “Thank God. Are you hurt? Did you lose consciousness?”

      She felt his hands, strong and capable, probe her scalp then skim her body as she shook her head. The cold air bit through her wet clothing all the way to her bones.

      “Doesn’t look like you’ve broken anything. Let’s get you somewhere dry.”

      “My things? My car?” she managed to ask through frozen lips.

      “Sorry, hon. Your car’s heading downstream. First order of business is to get you dry and warm.”

      Her rescuer lifted her into his arms and strode toward what she now recognised as a large truck and trailer unit parked in a lay-by to the side of the road. A tiny smile pulled at her lips as she recognised the source of her earlier confusion. A long-distance trucker, his rig was festooned with driving lights.

      “What’s so funny?”

      His voice was deep, young. Reassuring. She wanted to see what he looked like but the effort required to tilt her head and pick out his profile in the shadows cast by the truck’s lights remained beyond her.

      “Fairy lights,” she whispered.

      A deep chuckle rumbled through his body. “Sure, fairy lights.”

      He lifted her up into the cab of his truck then climbed in after her to settle her into the basic sleeping compartment behind.

      “Do you remember how long you were in the water? What time you crashed?”

      “J-just after nine…I think.”

      He flung a look at the clock on the dash. “About half an hour then. What the hell were you doing out on the road without chains? Didn’t you see the warning signs?”

      “D-didn’t w-want to stop. I have to get to Auckland.” The short speech took every last ounce of energy left within her.

      “You won’t be going anywhere tonight.”

      A sudden disembodied voice on the radio elicited a sharp curse from her rescuer before he responded. She tried to listen, catching only the words accident and hypothermia before drowsiness pulled at her with the strength of a super magnet. She began to slide into unconsciousness, rousing only as he shook her gently.

      “Hey, don’t go to sleep yet. You have to get those clothes off and get warm again. Can you manage?”

      “N-no. F-fingers t-too cold.”

      She felt as helpless as a rag doll when he began to peel off her wet clothing, muttering under his breath as her limp limbs hindered the process and massive tremors racked her body.

      “Shivering, that’s good. You’re on your way back.”

      Pain seared through her as circulation sluggishly resumed. “B-b-back? I n-never got where I was g-going.”

      He chuckled again, and Helena decided she liked

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