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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 the spring rain that sent chills up and down her spine.

‘If the CIA are trying to recruit me, you can tell them now—no dice.’

But it was not the CIA, any more than it was the nonexistent investors. Or Ed in romantic excess.

It was someone who was coming out onto the rough stoop at the sound of their approach.

It was her grandmother.

All desire to find humour in the situation left Pepper abruptly. She stopped dead. The look she turned on Ed was hot enough to melt asbestos.

Bad conscience made Ed peevish. ‘No need to be so dramatic. It’s just business.’

Pepper was very pale. ‘No, Ed. It’s my life.’

He looked down his nose. ‘Now you’re talking like a teen queen.’

She looked back at the cabin. Mary Ellen Calhoun was watching them attentively. Even in the wet spring woods she was wearing Paris design and diamonds. Pepper saw the gleam of Venetian earnings under her grandmother’s cap of skilfully tinted dark hair. Mary Ellen Calhoun was seventy-three but she would go to her grave a brunette.

Pepper said, ‘What did my grandmother promise you to get me here?’

He looked genuinely shocked. ‘Nothing. She just wanted me to stop you making a big mistake.’

‘It’s a mistake to back my own idea? I thought that was why we went to business school.’

‘Look, Pepper,’ he said patiently, ‘Out of the Attic is a retail start-up. That’s five years of your life, minimum. Mary Ellen doesn’t want to wait five years to get you back on board at Calhoun Carter.’

‘Since when do you call her Mary Ellen? You been talking to her a lot recently, Ed?’

He winced. ‘Not really. We—er—bumped into each other at a charity reception a couple of weeks ago…’

‘My grandmother doesn’t go to charity receptions for fun,’ said Pepper dispassionately. ‘And she never bumps into anyone.’

He looked at her, half-defiant, half-ashamed. Pepper squared her shoulders.

‘Oh, well, it had to happen some time, I guess. Wait here,’ she told Ed quietly. ‘This is not going to be pretty.’

The moment she came face to face with her grandmother Pepper knew what was going to happen. One look and she just knew.

It was there, in Mary Ellen’s black currant eyes. Mary Ellen wanted the last of the Calhouns back on the board. Like now.

Not that you could tell that from her behaviour. Mary Ellen came forward, hands out, smiling, just as she always did. Glutinously innocent. Pepper had learned to distrust that innocence the way she would distrust a basking snake.

Of course, Mary Ellen was not your average grandmother. She had been President of Calhoun Carter since her husband had died thirty-three years ago. That sort of thing gave you an edge. Pepper might distrust her, but she respected her, too. And she was realising that she was fighting for her life.

She did not take the hands held out to her. She said quietly, ‘Hello, Grandmother.’

Mary Ellen looked startled. It was a voice she did not recognise.

Not surprising, thought Pepper. She didn’t recognise it herself.

‘It’s good to see you, honey,’ Mary Ellen said in her soft, deceptive, ladylike tones.

‘No, it isn’t. It’s business,’ said Pepper grimly. ‘Spare me the fancy stuff. Get on with it.’

The two women’s eyes locked.

Then Mary Ellen gave the tinkling laugh she had perfected in the days when she was a popular debutante; before she’d married her way out of impoverished gentility; before she’d hijacked her husband’s company and became a ruthless tycoon.

‘Then you’d better come in out of the rain,’ she said with a charming pout.

‘And Ed?’ Pepper was mocking. ‘Do you want him in out of the rain as well?’

Mary Ellen frowned. ‘He’s a man. A little rain won’t kill him.’

‘Thought you wouldn’t want any witnesses.’ Pepper nodded.

Mary Ellen did not deign to answer that. She stalked inside like an empress. And the moment the door closed behind her granddaughter she abandoned innocence, ladylike charm and the pout all in one go. Suddenly she looked what she was, thought Pepper. Seventy-three years old and mean as a snake.

Pepper drew a deep breath. ‘Okay. Fire away. I can see that you’ve heard about Out of the Attic. What do you think can do to stop me?’

Mary Ellen smiled. ‘I’ve already done it.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Really, you are such a child. I told the finance department to put it around that anyone who lent money to you could kiss goodbye to Carter Calhoun business. For ever.’

Pepper went very still. ‘I see. I suppose they were doing that this morning? That’s why you had Ed get me out of town? So I wouldn’t be there if anyone wanted to call me to check?’

Mary Ellen shrugged. ‘What’s to check?’

But Pepper knew she was right. Mary Ellen had made sure Pepper was out of the way when the news broke in case she found a way to fight back.

‘You always did fight dirty,’ Pepper said. ‘Why didn’t I remember that?’

Mary Ellen was impatient. ‘I want you back in the firm. You know that. This little idea of yours is just a waste of time.’ She opened her electronic organiser. ‘Shall we say—middle of next week? That will give you time to move out of that nasty apartment and get yourself home, where you belong. I’ll tell Jim to organise you an office.’

‘No,’ said Pepper quietly.

Mary Ellen extracted the stylus and tapped in a deliberate note. ‘Seven forty-five on Wednesday,’ she said, as if Pepper hadn’t spoken. ‘Go to the plant and ask for Connie. She’s the Human Resources Manager now. She’ll find—’

Pepper raised her voice. ‘I said no.’

The inside of the cabin was very dusty, but Mary Ellen had cleaned up a corner for herself. Typically it was the best chair in the room. And it was set at the desk. She sat down now and steepled her fingertips.

‘You don’t have a choice,’ she said calmly. ‘Your little business is a busted flush. Who else but me would employ you?’

Pepper stared. Her thoughts whirled like a rising storm.

I thought she loved me. She doesn’t. She just loves making everyone dance to her tune. How on earth did I miss that?

It hurt. It really hurt.

‘Let me spell it out for you,’ said Mary Ellen. She sounded almost motherly.

That truly sickened Pepper. For a moment she could not speak.

Mary Ellen misunderstood her silence. Mary Ellen thought she had won. But then Mary Ellen always did win.

‘Look at it this way. You’re the last Calhoun. Anyone in the retail business is going to think you’re a spy. A business in any other sector will just think you have to be a liability or you’d be in the family firm where you belong. It’s a nobrainer.’

Pepper was shaking. ‘A no-brainer,’ she agreed with heavy irony.

Mary Ellen gave her famously charming, naughty child smile. ‘Sure,’ she agreed. ‘Glad you see it so clearly. Your little idea is dead. You won’t get funding from anyone in North America.’ She tapped the organiser. ‘See you Wednesday.’

Pepper drew a deep breath. Get a grip, she told herself feverishly, get a grip. Lose your temper and she’s won. She already thinks she’s won. This is your last chance…

And she said quietly, ‘No.’

She was right. Mary Ellen had been quite sure that she had won. She did not believe that Pepper would hold out. Startled, furious, disbelieving, she went on the attack. Mary Ellen Calhoun on the attack did not take prisoners.

Pepper just stood there, under an assault of words like hailstones. In the end they all came back to the same point. Pepper was Calhoun Carter Industries’ property, bought and paid for over years. The very best education money could buy had seen to that. Along with the house in the South of France, the condo in New York, the South Sea Island mountain retreat, her suite in the Calhoun mansion…

Pepper hung on to cool reason but it was an effort. ‘But they aren’t mine.’

Mary Ellen showed her teeth in a shark’s smile. ‘Got it at last!’

Oh, Pepper got it. Slowly. Reluctantly. With disbelief. But she got it.

‘You mean that all the stuff you’ve given me over the years—’

‘Invested,’ corrected Mary Ellen coldly. ‘You are an investment. Nothing more.’

If Pepper had been pale before, she was ashen now. This was the woman who had introduced her at parties as ‘my little princess’?

Mary Ellen smiled. ‘Think about it. The European schools. The year in Paris. Seed corn. I even arranged for you to go to business school five years younger than everyone else, so you wouldn’t want time out when the company needed you.’

Pepper was outraged. ‘The business school took me on my own merits. I won a prize, for God’s sake.’

Mary Ellen mocked that, too. ‘Problem solving! When did you ever solve a problem? All your problems have been bought off by Calhoun money.’

That was when Mary Ellen listed them. Not just the right schools, the right clothes, the right apartments, the right friends. The senior businessmen who had taken her calls and talked to her like an equal. The junior businessmen who had dated her…

Dated…?

Pepper gulped. Her blouse was not just damp and cold any more. It was icy. A cascade of icicles was thundering down her spine. She was shivering so much she could hardly speak.

‘What do you mean? What have my dates got to do with this?’

Mary Ellen saw that she had scored a hit. Her eyes gleamed.

‘You have no idea what it cost me to get you a social life,’ she went on with that trill of laughter that was her trademark. It was very musical, very ladylike. But the eyes that met Pepper’s across the dusty old cabin were not ladylike in the least.

Even so—dated?

‘You’re nothing but a potato,’ said Mary Ellen, light and cruel and suddenly horribly believable. ‘Who would bother with you if you weren’t my grandchild?’

Pepper was the first to admit that she was not fashionably slender, but she had always thought she was good company. That her friends liked her for that. She said so.

Mary Ellen’s hard little eyes snapped. ‘And I suppose you think that one day you’ll meet Prince Charming and get married, too? Grow up!’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You have only one chance to be a bride,’ said Mary Ellen, showing her teeth like a shark. ‘And that’s if I buy you a husband. After all those mercy dates I paid for, I’ve got a good long list of candidates.’

That was when Pepper knew that she could not take any more. There was no point in even trying. With a superhuman effort, she told her icy muscles to stop shaking and move. And she walked out.

Mary Ellen was not expecting it. ‘Where are you going?’ she yelled, suddenly not even pretending to be ladylike any more.

Pepper did not stop. She went running, scrambling up the soggy path, to where Ed was sitting.

Her grandmother ran after her, but halted at the point where the path began to climb.

‘You get back here this minute,’ she yelled.

Pepper did not stop. Not even when she fell to one knee. Not even when she felt her pantyhose tear and blood trickle down her shin. She didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything but getting away from the grandmother whose affection had been a lie right from the start.

By the time she reached Ed, she was panting. ‘Take me back to New York,’ she said. ‘Take me back now.’

He hesitated, but only for a moment. It would have taken a braver man than Ed Ivanov to face Mary Ellen in this mood. He took Pepper’s arm and hurried her towards the clearing where the helicopter was waiting.

Ladylike, five foot two, Mary Ellen had a voice like a bass drum when roused. It reached them easily. So did the fury.

‘You’ll never make it on your own, Penelope Anne Calhoun, do you hear me? I own you.’

A week later, Pepper knew exactly how true that was. So she leaned against the wall, skulking down as a party of VIPs swept onto the London plane in advance of everyone else. She did not care about VIPs, but there was an outside chance that they might recognise her. After all, Mary Ellen was a VIP. As the Calhoun heir, Pepper had been one too for most of her life.

Well, that was all over now. A good thing, too, she told herself.

She would get to London. She would put together a new life. And she would survive.

All she had to do was keep clear of VIPs.

‘Professor Konig?’ The flight attendant had obviously been waiting for them. She was instantly alert, full of professional smiles. ‘Welcome on board, sir. This way.’

The VIP and the airline director followed her.

‘So that’s what you get in first class,’ Steven Konig muttered to David Guber. ‘Instant name-check and personal escort to your seat.’

The attendant took his jacket and the ticket stub to label it, and left her boss to do the formal farewells. Steven looked after her.

‘Is it enough to justify the cost, I ask myself?’

The other man smiled. ‘You old Puritan! Still working on the principle I’m uncomfortable therefore I am?’

Steven laughed. ‘You may be right.’

Dave punched his arm lightly. ‘You’re important enough to fly the Atlantic without having your knees under your nose any more, Steven. Live with it.’

‘Can I quote you?’ Steven was dry.

Dave Guber was not only a long-standing friend, he was a main board member of this airline. He grinned, ‘If you do, I’ll sue.’ He shook hands and added soberly, ‘I mean it. I’m really grateful, Steven. You saved our butts.’

Steven shook his head, disclaiming.

‘Yes, you did. If you hadn’t come through for me we’d have had a conference and no keynote speaker. Great speech, too.’

Steven shrugged. ‘I was glad to do it. I’ve wanted to do a think piece on the subject for a long time.’

‘Yeah, sure. Like you haven’t got enough to fill your time already.’

‘No, I mean it,’ Steven insisted. ‘It makes a change.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘It seems like all I do these days is meetings, meetings, meetings. It was really nice just to sit down and think for once.’

Dave Guber looked quizzical. ‘Wish you were only doing one job again?’

‘Chairman of Kplant is my job,’ Steven told him drily. ‘Being Master of Queen Margaret’s isn’t a job; it’s a vocation. Ask the Dean.’

They both grinned. They understood each other perfectly. They had first met at Queen Margaret’s College, Oxford, as students years ago. And they had both been fined by the Dean regularly for standard student bad behaviour.

Dave cocked an eyebrow. ‘He isn’t glad to see you back?’

‘Spitting tintacks,’ agreed Steven, amused.

‘That must make life peaceful.’

‘Hey, if I wanted peace I’d have stayed in the lab. You say goodbye to peace the moment you open your own company.’

Dave’s career had been with big international corporates. He looked at his friend curiously. ‘Is it worth it?’

‘It’s great,’ said Steven. There was no mistaking his enthusiasm.

‘You never want to slow down?’ Dave asked tentatively.

Slowing down was heresy in business, of course. But he remembered the gorgeous blonde whom Steven had dated all those years ago. No one mentioned her any more. Nobody linked his name with anyone else, either. Dave thought he had never met anyone as lonely as Steven Konig.

‘Do you never think about—er—a family, maybe?’

Steven’s face changed. He didn’t frown exactly. He just withdrew—very slightly, very politely. Suddenly Dave wasn’t talking to his old buddy any more. He was taking formal leave of an international figure.

Dave sighed and gave up.

‘Well, don’t forget you’re going to come and stay with us the very next vacation you get. Marise and I are counting on it.’

Vacation? Steven managed to repress a hollow laugh.

‘Sure thing,’ he said. It was vague enough not to count as a promise. Steven always kept his promises, so he didn’t hand them out lightly.

‘I’ll hold you to that.’

Steven gave his sudden smile, the one that made him look just like the student who had once worked out how to set off fireworks by remote control from Queen Margaret’s venerable tower. His eyes were vivid with amusement.

‘I’ll put it in the five-year plan.’

Dave flung up his hands in mock despair. ‘You’re crazy.’

‘You said it yourself. I’m a Big Name,’ Steven said crisply. ‘For that, there’s a price.’

David Guber was an important man, with stock options and the power to hire and fire. But he wasn’t Steven Konig, who had single-handedly taken his food research business from the small companies sector to the big time. The press fell over themselves to interview Steven Konig in five continents. Of course there was going to be a price.

Dave sighed. ‘Well, if you ever get off the carousel come see us,’ he said. And to the glamorous flight attendant, who still hovered, ‘Make sure Professor Konig has the journey of his life. We owe this man, big time.’ He pumped his hand again. ‘You’re a great guy, Steven. Have a good flight.’

Steven was already opening his briefcase before Guber had left the plane.

‘Can I get you anything, Professor?’ the attendant asked.

Steven bit back a wry smile. So Dave Guber thought he ought to date, did he? How was a man to do that when every woman he met called him Professor? Or Chairman? Or even, God help him, Master?