The Engagement Project / Her Surprise Hero: The Engagement Project / Her Surprise Hero

IT WAS an idyllic day for a garden party. The sky was a deep blue; sparkling sunshine flooded the Valley; a cooling breeze lowered the spring into summer heat. A veritable explosion of flowering trees and foaming blossom had turned the rich rural area into one breathtakingly beautiful garden that leapt at the eye and caught at the throat. It was so perfect a world the inhabitants of Silver Valley felt privileged to live in it.

Only Charlotte Prescott, a widow at twenty-six, with a seven-year-old child, stood in front of the bank of mirrors in her dressing room, staring blindly at her own reflection. The end of an era had finally arrived, but there was no joy in it for her, for her father, or for Christopher, her clever, thoughtful child. They were the dispossessed, and nothing in the world could soothe the pain of loss.

For the past month, since the invitations had begun to arrive, Silver Valley had been eagerly anticipating the Open Day: a get-to-know-you garden party to be held in the grounds of the grandest colonial mansion in the valley, Riverbend. Such a lovely name, Riverbend! A private house, its grandeur reflected the wealth and community standing of the man who had built it in the 1880s, Charles Randall Marsdon, a young man of means who had migrated from England to a country that didn’t have a splendid past, like his homeland, but in his opinion had a glowing future. He’d meant to be part of that future. He’d meant to get to the top!

There might have been a certain amount of bravado in that young man’s goal, but Charles Marsdon had turned out not only to be a visionary, but a hard-headed businessman who had moved to the highest echelons of colonial life with enviable speed.

Riverbend was a wonderfully romantic two-storey mansion, with a fine Georgian façade and soaring white columns, its classic architecture adapted to climatic needs with large-scale open-arched verandahs providing deep shading for the house. It had been in the Marsdon family—her family—for six generations, but sadly it would never pass to her adored son. For the simple reason that Riverbend was no longer theirs. The mansion, its surrounding vineyards and olive groves, badly neglected since the Tragedy, had been sold to a company called Vortex. Little was known about Vortex, except that it had met the stiff price her father had put on the estate. Not that he could have afforded to take a lofty attitude. Marsdon money had all but run out. But Vivian Marsdon was an immensely proud man who never for a moment underestimated his important position in the Valley. It was everything to him to keep face. In any event, the asking price, exorbitantly high, had been paid swiftly—and oddly enough without a single quibble.

Now, months later, the CEO of the company was finally coming to town. Naturally she and her father had been invited, although neither of them had met any Vortex representative. The sale had been handled to her father’s satisfaction by their family solicitors, Dunnett & Banfield. Part of the deal was that her father was to have tenure of the Lodge—originally an old coach house—during his lifetime, after which it would be returned to the estate. The coach house had been converted and greatly enlarged by her grandfather into a beautiful and comfortable guest house that had enjoyed a good deal of use in the old days, when her grandparents had entertained on a grand scale, and it was at the Lodge they were living now. Just the three of them: father, daughter, grandson.

Her former in-laws—Martyn’s parents and his sister Nicole—barely acknowledged them these days. The estrangement had become entrenched in the eighteen months since Martyn’s death. Her husband, three years older than she, had been killed when he’d lost control of his high-powered sports car on a notorious black spot in the Valley and smashed into a tree. A young woman had been with him. Mercifully she’d been thrown clear of the car, suffering only minor injuries. It had later transpired she had been Martyn’s mistress for close on six months. Of course Martyn hadn’t been getting what he’d needed at home. If Charlotte had been a loving wife the tragedy would never have happened. The second major tragedy in her lifetime. It seemed very much as if Charlotte Prescott was a jinx.

Poor old you! Charlotte spoke silently to her image. What a mess you’ve made of your life!

She really didn’t need anyone to tell her that. The irony was that her father had made just as much a mess of his own life—even before the Tragedy. The first tragedy. The only one that mattered to her parents. Her father had had little time for Martyn, yet he himself was a man without insight into his own limitations. Perhaps the defining one was unloading responsibility. Vivian Marsdon was constitutionally incapable of accepting the blame for anything. Anything that went wrong was always someone else’s fault, or due to some circumstance beyond his control. The start of the Marsdon freefall from grace had begun when her highly respected grandfather, Sir Richard Marsdon, had died. His only son and heir had not been able to pick up the reins. It was as simple as that. The theory of three. One man made the money, the next enlarged on it, the third lost it. No better cushion than piles of money. Not every generation produced an heir with the Midas touch, let alone the necessary drive to manage and significantly enlarge the family fortune.

Her father, born to wealth and prestige, lacked Sir Richard’s strong character as well as his formidable business brain. Marsdon money had begun to disappear early, like water down a drain. Failed pie-in-the-sky schemes had been approached with enthusiasm. Her father had turned a deaf ear to cautioning counsel from accountants and solicitors alike. He knew best. Sadly, his lack of judgement had put a discernible dent in the family fortunes. And that was even before the Tragedy that had blighted their family life.

With a sigh of regret, Charlotte picked up her lovely hat with its wide floppy brim, settling it on her head. She rarely wore her long hair loose these days, preferring to pull it back from her face and arrange it in various knots. In any case, the straw picture hat demanded she pull her hair back off her face. Her dress was Hermes silk, in chartreuse, strapless except for a wide silk band over one shoulder that flowed down the bodice and short skirt. The hat was a perfect colour match, adorned with organdie peonies in masterly deep pinks that complemented the unique shade of golden lime-green.

The outfit wasn’t new, but she had only worn it once, at Melbourne Cup day when Martyn was alive. Martyn had taken great pride in how she looked. She’d always had to look her best. In those days she had been every inch a fashionista, such had been their extravagant and, it had to be said, empty lifestyle. Martyn had been a man much like her father—an inheritor of wealth who could do what he liked, when he liked, if he so chose. Martyn had made his choice. He had always expected to marry her, right from childhood, bringing about the union of two long-established rural families. And once he’d had her—he had always been mad about her—he had set about making their lifestyle a whirl of pleasure up until his untimely death.

From time to time she had consoled herself with the thought that perhaps Martyn, as he matured, would cease taking up endless defensive positions against his highly effective father, Gordon, come to recognise his family responsibilities and then pursue them with some skill and determination.

Sadly, all her hopes—and Gordon Prescott’s—had been killed off one by one. And she’d had to face some hard facts herself. Hadn’t she been left with a legacy of guilt? She had never loved Martyn. Bonded to him from earliest childhood, she had always regarded him with great affection. But romantic love? Never! The heart wasn’t obedient to the expectations of others. She knew what romantic love was. She knew about passion—dangerous passion and its infinite temptations—but she hadn’t steered away from it in the interests of safety. She had totally succumbed.

All these years later her heart still pumped his name.

Rohan.

She heard her son’s voice clearly. He sounded anxious. “Mummy, are you ready? Grandpa wants to leave.”

A moment later, Christopher, a strikingly handsome little boy, dressed in a bright blue shirt with mother-of-pearl buttons and grey cargo pants, tore into the room.

“Come on, come on,” he urged, holding out his hand to her. “He’s stomping around the hall and going red in the face. That means his blood pressure is going up, doesn’t it?”

“Nothing for you to worry about, sweetheart,” Charlotte answered calmly. “Grandpa’s health is excellent. Stomping is a way to get our attention. Anyway, we’re not late,” she pointed out.

It had been after Martyn’s death, on her father’s urging, that she and Christopher had moved into the Lodge. Her father was sad and lonely, finding it hard getting over the big reversals in his life. She knew at some point she had to make a life for herself and her son. But where? She couldn’t escape the Valley. Christopher loved it here. It was his home. He loved his friends, his school, his beautiful environment and his bond with his grandfather. It made a move away from the Valley extremely difficult, and there were other crucial considerations for a single mother with a young child.

Martyn had left her little money. They had lived with his parents at their huge High Grove estate. They had wanted for nothing, all expenses paid, but Martyn’s father—knowing his son’s proclivities—had kept his son on a fairly tight leash. His widow, so all members of the Prescott family had come to believe, was undeserving.

“Grandpa runs to a timetable of his own,” Christopher was saying, shaking his golden-blond head. She too was blonde, with green eyes. Martyn had been fair as well, with greyish-blue eyes. Christopher’s eyes were as brilliant as blue-fire diamonds. “You look lovely in that dress, Mummy,” he added, full of love and pride in his beautiful mother. “Please don’t be sad today. I just wish I was seventeen instead of seven,” he lamented. “I’m just a kid. But I’ll grow up and become a great big success. You’ll have me to look after you.”

“My knight in shining armour!” She bent to give him a big hug, then took his outstretched hand, shaking it back and forth as if beginning a march. “Onward, Christian soldiers!”

“What’s that?” He looked up at her with interest.

“It’s an English hymn,” she explained. Her father wouldn’t have included hymns in the curriculum. Her father wasn’t big on hymns. Not since the Tragedy. “It means we have to go forth and do our best. Endure. It was a favourite hymn of Sir Winston Churchill. You know who he was?”

“Of course!” Christopher scoffed. “He was the great English World War II Prime Minister. The country gave him a huge amount of money for his services to the nation, then they took most of it back in tax. Grandpa told me.”

Charlotte laughed. Very well read himself, her father had taken it upon himself to “educate” Christopher. Christopher had attended the best school in the Valley for a few years now, but her father took his grandson’s education much further, taking pride and delight it setting streams of general, historical and geographical questions for which Christopher had to find the answers. Christopher was already computer literate but her father wasn’t—something that infuriated him—and insisted he find the answers in the books in the well-stocked library. Christopher never cheated. He always came up trumps. Christopher was a very clever little boy.

Like his father.

The garden party was well underway by the time they finished their stroll along the curving driveway. Riverbend had never looked more beautiful, Charlotte thought, pierced by the same sense of loss she knew her father was experiencing—though one would never have known it from his confident Lord of the Manor bearing. Her father was a handsome man, but alas not a lot of people in the Valley liked him. The mansion, since they had moved, had undergone very necessary repairs. These days it was superbly maintained, and staffed by a housekeeper, her husband—a sort of major-domo—and several ground staff to bring the once-famous gardens back to their best. A good-looking young woman came out from Sydney from time to time, to check on what was being done. Charlotte had met her once, purely by accident.

© Margaret Way, PTY., LTD 2011

THE ENGAGEMENT

PROJECT

BRENDA HARLEN

About the Author

BRENDA HARLEN grew up in a small town surrounded by books and imaginary friends. Although she always dreamed of being a writer, she chose to follow a more traditional career path first. After two years of practicing as a lawyer (including an appearance in front of the Supreme Court of Canada), she gave up her “real” job to be a mom and to try her hand at writing books. Three years, five manuscripts and another baby later, she sold her first book—an RWA Golden Heart winner.

Brenda lives in southern Ontario with her real-life husband/hero, two heroes-in-training and two neurotic dogs. She is still surrounded by books (“too many books,” according to her children) and imaginary friends, but she also enjoys communicating with “real” people. Readers can contact Brenda by e-mail at brendaharlen@yahoo.com.

Dear Reader,

I’ve always enjoyed reading and writing connected stories because of the opportunities they provide to meet new characters and revisit old friends.

A few years ago, I wrote a book called The Marriage Solution. It was, at the time, a stand-alone story, but the hero had a brother, and, even then, I knew that I would write his story someday.

Of course, Gage Richmond was an unapologetic playboy who had some growing up to do before he was worthy of his own happily-ever-after. Thankfully, Megan Roarke is just the right woman to help him on that journey.

I’m thrilled to share their story with you and excited to announce that The Engagement Project is only the first book in my new BRIDES & BABIES miniseries. Because I’ve always enjoyed meeting new characters and revisiting old friends.

I hope you enjoy reading their story as much as I enjoyed writing it.

All the best,

Brenda Harlen

To my mom—

Because you taught me to be strong, to believe in

myself, and to never give up.

And because there’s a little bit of you in every

one of my heroines.

I love you

Chapter One

Megan Roarke hated shopping.

Her older sister often teased that there was something defective in Megan’s double-X chromosome that she balked at going to the mall. Of course, Megan couldn’t expect her to understand. Ashley was “the beautiful one”—the one who looked good in anything and drew glances of admiration wherever she went.

Megan, on the other hand, had always been referred to as “the smart one.” She’d started to read when she was three years old and had spent most of the next twenty years with her nose in a book. She read everything she could get her hands on—from fantastical stories about magical lands to biographies of world leaders to technical manuals. Books were her bridges to so many different places, knowledge was the key that opened new worlds—and a whole lot of other clichés that hid the real truth: she’d been a painfully shy and socially inept child who found refuge from the harsh realities of life between the covers of a book.

And through her reading, she’d learned that the childhood labels attached to herself and her sister did both of them a disservice. While Ashley was undeniably beautiful, she was also a smart and savvy woman; and though Megan accepted that there would always be people who were intimidated by her high IQ, she knew her intelligence wasn’t the sum total of her character.

Still, she didn’t bother to try and dispel the stereotypical image people inevitably formed when they learned that she was a scientist, because she was a lab geek. She loved her work, and she would much rather spend time with formulas than people. Not that she disliked people, exactly. She just didn’t understand them. Elemental properties were consistent and chemical reactions were predictable. Human beings, on the other hand, always seemed inconsistent and unpredictable.

Ashley claimed that was what made people so interesting, and she would know. Not only had Megan’s sister enjoyed an active social life before she’d met the man who was now her fiancé, she taught first grade at a local school and absolutely thrived in the environment of incessant noise and unending chaos that was created by twenty six-year-olds in a classroom.

But it was the recent engagement that was the cause of Megan’s dreaded trip to the Pinehurst Shopping Center. Apparently it wasn’t enough that Trevor had put a ring on Ashley’s finger, now they were having a party to celebrate the event.

“Nothing fancy,” Ashley had assured her. “Just drinks and hors d’oeuvres with family and some close friends.”

Of course, Megan knew her sister’s definition of “nothing fancy” was drastically different from her own and that even drinks and hors d’oeuvres required something a little more formal than comfy faded jeans and her favorite “Go Green” T-shirt—especially since their mother had become involved in the planning.

The sky had turned dark by the time Megan pulled into a vacant parking space and the first drops of rain were starting to fall as she dashed across the lot.

The mall was busier than she would have expected for a Friday afternoon, and she found herself hesitating inside the entrance.

She’d always been a little uncomfortable in crowds, always feeling as if everyone was looking at her. It wasn’t just an irrational feeling but a ridiculous one, because the reality was that no one ever noticed her. Megan didn’t stand out in a crowd of one, but she still had to force herself to take a deep breath before she could step forward.

For a lot of years, she’d simply avoided crowds rather than fight against the panicky feelings they stirred inside. But over the past few years, she’d made an effort to overcome this fear, and had mostly done so. She rarely felt afraid anymore, just awkward and uncomfortable.

A strand of hair had come loose from her ponytail and she tucked it behind her ear as she studied the mall directory, looking for Chaundra’s Boutique.

“I asked Anne-Marie to set aside the cutest little dress that I know will look fabulous on you,” Ashley had told her.

Nothing had ever looked fabulous on Megan’s shapeless frame, but she hadn’t disputed her sister’s statement. There was no changing Ashley’s mind once it was made up and if she wanted her to buy this dress, Megan would buy the dress. It was certainly an easier solution than having to pick something out on her own.

She headed through the maze of halls toward the boutique. Thirteen minutes later—three of which were taken up with a phone call from Ashley, who wanted to make sure Megan hadn’t forgotten to stop at the mall and then, when she realized her sister was in the boutique, convinced her to let Anne-Marie pick out some jewelry to go with the dress—she was on her way back out again. A relatively quick and painless shopping experience, Megan thought gratefully, as she retraced her steps toward the exit.

An opinion that quickly changed when she stood at the doors and stared out at the rain pounding down on the pavement. With a sigh, she folded the dress bag over her arm and pushed open the door. She was halfway to her car when she realized her keys weren’t in her pocket—and totally drenched by the time she turned around again.

She tracked her keys down in Chaundra’s Boutique, by the register where she’d set them down to answer her sister’s call. She thanked the perpetually smiling Anne Marie again and left the store, wondering how anyone could be so perky all the time, thanking her lucky stars that she worked in the lab where smiling was optional.

Then she turned the corner and walked into a brick wall.

Okay, so it only felt like a brick wall, Megan acknowledged. What it was, in reality, was a man’s chest.

She berated herself for her clumsiness as she lifted her gaze and prepared to apologize. But the words stuck in her throat when she pushed her soggy bangs away from her face and recognized the man standing in front of her.

Gage Richmond.

The younger son of the CEO of Richmond Pharmaceuticals. The man whose mere presence always made her pulse race and her knees quiver.

The first time she’d met him, on her first day of work at the R.P. lab, she’d nearly melted in a puddle at his feet just because he shook her hand. The man was seriously hot—and Megan had been seriously smitten. Not that she would ever admit it, of course. In fact, she went out of her way to avoid him whenever possible because she didn’t want him to know that her heart beat a little bit faster whenever he was near. And she didn’t want to acknowledge—even to herself—that she was shallow enough to be attracted to a hard body and sexy smile, especially considering her past experience with his type.

On the other hand, no one she’d ever known quite measured up to Gage Richmond. He had thick, light brown hair that curled just above the collar of his shirt, stunning golden brown eyes surrounded by unbelievably long lashes, a strong square jaw and a temptingly shaped mouth. And then there was his body—a long and lean six feet two inches of delicious and delectable male.

“Sorry about that,” he said, holding out the keys that had slipped from her grasp when they’d collided.

“My fault,” she managed to reply, looking away again and desperately hoping that he wouldn’t recognize her.

“No, it was mine. I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going.” Then he destroyed her meager hope by saying, “It’s Megan, right?”

She nodded, a little surprised that he’d remembered. Men like Gage Richmond didn’t usually notice women like her, despite the fact that she’d worked for his father’s company for almost three years.

“I guess it’s really raining out there now,” he said.

“I wouldn’t know,” she said. “I generally just drench myself before coming out in public because I like the wet look.”

Ashley had often said her tendency to hide her fears and insecurities behind sarcasm was going to get her in trouble someday and, even as the words spilled out of Megan’s mouth, she wished she could yank them back.

But Gage only grinned. “I’d say it’s a good look for you except that you’re shivering.”

“The price women pay to be fashionable.”

“How about a cup of coffee to warm you up?”

Gage Richmond was asking her to have coffee with him? Megan couldn’t believe it.

“Or don’t you drink coffee?” he prompted.

“No,” she said. “I mean, yes. I do drink coffee. But I’m not drinking coffee now. I mean, I don’t want any coffee. I want to go home.”

Megan could hear the words tumbling out of her mouth, but didn’t seem able to stop them. If they’d been in California, she could hope that the ground would open up and swallow her whole. But in Pinehurst, New York, earthquakes were extremely rare, so she was forced to live with the humiliating knowledge that she’d made a complete fool of herself in front of her boss’s son.