Maggie Cox: The Rich Man's Love-Child

‘It’s clearly nonsense to imagine we could make something work with you living in London and me here. Now that I’ve met Sorcha, I know seeing her once or twice a month wouldn’t be enough. Which is more than likely how it would go if we continued to live in separate countries. Our only real solution to the problem is for you and my daughter to move back here.’

‘Back to Ireland?’

‘Clearly, the prospect doesn’t appeal to you.’ Flynn could not curtail his profound dismay. But he was not about to let a second child slip out of his life so easily. Even if the prospect of fatherhood daunted him more than ever because of what had happened between him and Isabel. ‘Have you forgotten who I am, Caitlin? What I can give her? Her situation would be much more secure…would you deny her a better start in life than she’s got now?’

Dear Reader

In one way it’s astonishing to learn that Mills & Boon is celebrating its 100th birthday, but in another it comes as no surprise! It simply proves that people will always be engaged and entranced by romance and falling in love. To love and be loved is really the essence of our human existence. Even when people act less than lovingly, at the root of their anger, unhappiness, despair, is the very human need to be accepted and loved no matter what. Just as we love our children unconditionally, I believe that adults want that more than anything else too.

Long before I became an author I avidly read romance novels, and discovering Mills and Boon® was like being let loose in the most wonderful confectionery shop and told to help myself to whatever I liked! There were so many terrific writers, telling the most wonderful stories, and not only that, they all had happy endings! Some people think that we’re wearing rose-tinted spectacles if we believe in the possibility of happy ever after. My answer to that is I am personally going to keep on wearing mine if it means that I see hope and joy in the world instead of just pain and disaster.

Anyway, I hope that you will continue to read and enjoy Mills & Boon for many more years to come. I feel extremely privileged to be a part of something that has clearly brought so much pleasure to so many people for such a long time! My own contribution this month is a story set in beautiful Ireland that is personally very dear to my heart. Flynn and Caitlin have a tempestuous relationship and a difficult history, but I hope you will agree that the ties of love that bind them together are very strong…

With much love

Maggie x

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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The day Maggie Cox saw the film version of Wuthering Heights, with a beautiful Merle Oberon and a very handsome Laurence Olivier, was the day she became hooked on romance. From that day onwards she spent a lot of time dreaming up her own romances, secretly hoping that one day she might become published and get paid for doing what she loves most! Now that her dream is being realised, she wakes up every morning and counts her blessings. She is married to a gorgeous man, and is the mother of two wonderful sons. Her two other great passions in life—besides her family and reading/writing—are music and films.

To James, a truly kindred spirit

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘OH, WHAT a beautiful house!’

‘Yes, darling.’

‘And look at the lovely horses, Mummy!’

‘Yes…they’re grand too.’

‘Can we ride them?’

‘No, sweetheart.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because they don’t belong to us.’

Caitlin wrapped her daughter’s warm palm into her own icy one and squeezed it. Outside Mick Malone’s cab, which had picked them up from the airport and was taking them to her childhood home, the usually verdant but now snow-covered pastures sped past—all part of a vast country estate.

Glancing beyond the horses that were attempting to crop the frozen grass, Caitlin spied long low roofs and high hedges, and in the distance a large Georgian house, bordering on the palatial. Its long sweeping drive fanned out from a pair of massive stone pillars and black wrought-iron gates tipped with gold, and was lined with frosted conifers, sparkling in the cold January light. To a little girl raised in a cramped terraced house in a busy South London suburb Caitlin didn’t doubt it must resemble something out of a fairytale, and the scene was made even more enchanting by the low orange globe setting in the west behind it.

‘Who do they belong to, then?’

The child was leaning across her mother’s lap to try and get a better view of the creatures that had so captivated her, her soft moss-green eyes full of hope and yet disappointment too, because she hadn’t managed to procure the promise of a ride.

‘They belong to a family called MacCormac.’

Her glance suddenly collided with the too-interested gaze of the florid-faced driver in front of them, and Caitlin squirmed a little in her seat as a wave of uncomfortable heat assailed her.

‘I’m sure they’re very nice people to have such nice horses,’ the little girl chattered. ‘Perhaps if we ask them ever so nicely they might let us ride them. What do you think, Mummy?’

‘I think you’re asking far too many questions just now, Sorcha,’ Caitlin admonished her daughter, not unkindly.

Whether the MacCormac family were ‘nice’ people or not was hardly on her agenda right now…even if the very name was apt to deluge her stomach with wild butterflies. Not when she’d come home for the first time in four and a half years for the sole distressing purpose of attending her father’s funeral.

‘Kids! They drive you mad, but you wouldn’t be without them,’ Mick Malone cheerfully observed, determinedly catching Caitlin’s eye in his mirror. ‘And sure she must be a great comfort to you, now that both your parents are gone, God rest their souls.’

‘Yes, she is,’ Caitlin murmured, silently wishing that the man—a long-time friend of her father’s—would not try and engage her in any more conversation until they pulled up in front of the small farm cottage where she’d grown up.

She was almost too weary and heartsick to talk to anyone. It simply took too much energy to respond to polite and well-meant niceties when she felt so drained and hopeless inside. Both her parents gone…it didn’t seem possible.

Deliberately withdrawing her glance, she threaded her fingers distractedly through her daughter’s fine wheaten-gold hair and prayed for the strength to deal with whatever must come in the days ahead. As well as her grief at losing her father there was another shadow looming on the horizon, and she was more than anxious at the prospect of facing it. It was one that had been weighing down on Caitlin’s heart for four and a half long years, dogging her every waking moment. She was going to need all the help she could get to deal with that particular daunting spectre.