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      CHAPTER ONE

      A DEARLY BELOVED daughter buried in the wrong plot.

      A man digging up a grave.

      A dog running amok in the memorial garden, knocking off angels’ heads.

      What a Monday morning, Lucy Flippence thought as she drove to Greenlands Cemetery, having been given the job of dealing with these situations. Just when some slack time would have been very handy, too, it being her sister’s birthday. It would be really nice to take Ellie out to lunch, especially since Lucy was dying to see her in the wildly colourful new clothes with the new hairdo.

      It would be like a complete makeover and highly due, given it was Ellie’s thirtieth birthday. For the past two years her sister had been drowning in blacks and greys and taupes, and so caught up in being Michael Finn’s personal assistant, she didn’t have any other life—not one man sparking her interest.

      Right now Lucy had quite a fresh understanding of this disinterest in men. The nasty incident in the Irish pub at Port Douglas had spoiled her weekend away with friends. The guy had started out a promising prince and turned into a horrid frog. It seemed to her they all did, sooner or later. At twenty-eight she had yet to meet one whose shining armour remained shiny, regardless of circumstances.

      Even so, she wasn’t about to give up on men. She enjoyed the exciting high of a new attraction, loved the sense of being loved, if only for a little while. It was worth the hurt of being disillusioned. As long as she lived, she was going to be out there, experiencing everything that looked and felt good. It was what her mother had told her to do—her mother who’d married her horrible frog father because she was pregnant with Ellie.

      ‘Don’t ever make that mistake, Lucy. Be careful.’

      She was.

      Always careful.

      Especially since she didn’t want to have children, didn’t want to pass on her dyslexia, blighting another life with it. Putting a child through what she’d been through at school was not an act of love, and the problems didn’t stop there, either. The incurable disability blocked a heap of avenues that normal people simply took in their stride.

      The thought of an innocent baby being born with a wrongly wired brain like hers triggered a strongly negative recoil inside Lucy. She would not risk that happening. Which meant, of course, she would probably never marry—no real point to it if having a family was out of the question.

      There was, however, always the hope of meeting a prince who didn’t care about having children, or perhaps one who had a genetic fault of his own and would be happy to simply settle with having each other to love. She hadn’t ruled out these possibilities. They bolstered her resolve to keep moving on, making the most of her journey through life.

      The cemetery on the outskirts of Cairns came into view. It was aptly named Greenlands—everything being so very green as it usually was up here in far north tropical Queensland, especially after the big wet and before the oppressive heat of summer. August was always a pleasant month and Lucy was glad she wasn’t stuck in the office, closed off from the lovely sunshine.

      As she drove the van into the parking lot, she spotted a man wielding a shovel beside one of the graves. He looked elderly and Lucy instantly decided he wouldn’t be dangerous to approach, not that she was frightened of doing so anyway. Her appearance invariably disarmed people.

      She loved putting herself together in a fun outfit. The Sunday Markets at Port Douglas were always great for crafty stuff. The wooden bead necklaces and bangles she’d bought yesterday, along with the tan leather belt, and sandals that strapped in criss-crosses up her lower legs, looked fabulous with the white broderie anglaise miniskirt and peasant blouse she was wearing today. Her long

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