The Independent Bride

THE WEDDING CHALLENGE

Chased to the altar—three independent cousins swept off their feet by the most eligible Englishmen!

Pepper, Izzy and Jemima Jane are cousins—with nothing in common except the gorgeous red hair they’ve inherited from their grandmother! They even grew up on different continents: Pepper is heiress to an American business empire, Izzy and JJ shared their very English childhood as adopted sisters….

But do they have more in common than they realize?

For the first time in their lives, the three cousins find themselves together: as a family, as friends, as business partners. And they’re about to discover that they’re not so different from each other after all!

Pepper, Izzy and JJ are thoroughly modern women, determined to be ruled by the head, not the heart. Now their lives are turned upside down as each meets a man who challenges them to let love into their lives—with dramatic consequences!

Pepper has an unexpected encounter in The Independent Bride.

Look out for Izzy’s story in The Accidental Mistress and JJ’s in The Duke’s Proposal.

Dear Reader,

This book was born in a wine bar. I was with two friends who I really thought had got life sussed. Then a smoky-voiced singer started singing about fields of barley, and we all went quiet. Yes, we could run our lives, pay our bills, have fun. But….

Modern women can handle anything. Well, that’s what we tell ourselves. Most of the time it’s true, too. But when you’re in love you’re on your own in a strange country without a compass. And everyone else looks as if they know exactly what they’re doing.

Cousins Pepper, Izzy and Jemima Jane are young, vibrant, successful—and when love strikes it doesn’t make a blind bit of difference. Though they’re not admitting it, of course. Especially not to each other!

I really love these women. And I sympathize with them. Been there, done that; still wince when I think about some of it. And I am so glad they get their happy ending. Hope you are, too!

Best wishes

Sophie Weston

The Independent Bride

Sophie Weston

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

THE last of the overnight flights out of JFK to London was about to board. The departure lounge was crowded to overflowing, but even so one alert journalist was scanning the faces carefully. Rewarded, he caught his breath with excitement.

He nudged his companion in the ribs. ‘Did you see who that was?’

The companion was a generation older than the keen young television correspondent; it took a lot to get him excited. Besides, he had made a career out of not being impressed by anyone. ‘If you mean Steven Konig, I saw him on the main concourse.’

The younger man swung round. ‘Really? Konig—the food for famine guy? He’s here? Where?’

‘They boarded him first,’ said the other, bored.

‘Oh, that’s who it was! I thought it must be royalty.’ The younger man had a point to prove, too. ‘You do know it was the top brass escorting him?’

His companion got even more bored. ‘If you mean David Guber, he and Konig go way back. They were students at Oxford together.’

That would silence the upstart, he thought.

But it didn’t. Amazingly, the younger man’s chagrin lasted only a few seconds before he was bouncing back, eager as a puppy.

‘I didn’t catch Konig, but I did catch someone a lot more interesting.’ He paused expectantly.

The older man yawned.

‘The Tiger Cub,’ said up-and-coming television financial newsman tantalisingly. And sat back, waiting to be asked ‘Who or what is the Tiger Cub?’

It did not come.

It would be too much to say that the older man sat bolt upright and looked keenly round the lounge. Excitement, after all, was not his bag. But there was no doubt his journalist’s antennae twitched.

‘The Calhoun girl?’ he said, after a moment.

‘Pepper Calhoun, yes,’ said his companion, disappointed but still fighting. At least he knew that Penelope Anne Calhoun was called Pepper by her intimates.

The older man stared into the middle distance, his eyes narrowed. ‘That’s interesting,’ he said at last.

‘Yes, that’s what I thought. Do you think Calhoun Carter are going on the acquisition trail in the UK? I can think of a couple of retail companies ripe for acquisition.’ He smacked his lips at the thought, especially as he could be the first back to London with the news. At least, he could if Sandy Franks was as indifferent as he seemed.

But Sandy Franks was still thinking aloud. ‘The last I heard, the girl wasn’t working for Calhoun Carter. Mary Ellen Calhoun has been telling people that her granddaughter is going to gain experience in the outside world before coming back into the company for good.’

‘You believe that?’

‘It’s possible.’ He sucked his teeth, pondering. ‘Maybe Pepper Calhoun has decided to do her own thing. Visit the sights. Have a fling with the boyfriend. What is she? Twenty-six? Twenty-seven? She’s got a right to party a bit before she settles down to a life of corporate greed.’

‘The Tiger Cub?’ Young and eager Martin Tammery laughed heartily at the naïveté of experience. ‘She doesn’t party. Her idea of a good time is an eighteen-hour day topped off by a night of conference calls. And she hasn’t had a boyfriend since business school.’

‘Then she’ll be ripe for a romantic interlude,’ said experience with conviction.

His companion stayed unconvinced. ‘The one thing that is absolutely certain about Pepper Calhoun is that she doesn’t do romance. Never has. Never will.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘She’s going to inherit one of the retail giants. I’ve been keeping a file on her since she went to her first prom. Believe me, she is her grandmother’s heir in every way there is. Brain like a computer, tongue like a razor, heart like outer space.’

The older man blinked. ‘Run that past me again? What’s outer space got to do with Pepper Calhoun?’

‘They’re both cold and empty,’ said the other with feeling. ‘And totally inaccessible.’

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.