A Secret, A Safari, A Second Chance
A luxury escape...
A chance to reveal her baby bombshell!
In this Destination Brides story, a bid at a charity auction wins Eve Bliss a dream holiday on safari! As a penniless single mom, she’d be foolish not to go, but she’s not expecting Kit Merchant to be there on business. She and Kit once shared a passionate moment. Now, together in beautiful Africa, how long can she keep her four-year-old secret? Kit has a daughter!
LIZ FIELDING was born with itchy feet. She made it to Zambia before her twenty-first birthday and, gathering her own special hero and a couple of children on the way, lived in Botswana, Kenya and Bahrain—with pauses for sightseeing pretty much everywhere in between. She now lives in the west of England, close to the Regency grandeur of Bath and the ancient mystery of Stonehenge, and these days leaves her pen to do the travelling. For news of upcoming books visit Liz’s website: lizfielding.com.
Also by Liz Fielding
Vettori’s Damsel in Distress
The Sheikh’s Convenient Princess
Her Pregnancy Bombshell
Destination Brides collection
Summer Escape with the Tycoon by Donna Alward
Swept Away by the Venetian Millionaire by Nina Singh
One Night in Provence by Barbara Wallace
A Secret, a Safari, a Second Chance
All available now
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.
A Secret, a Safari, a Second Chance
Liz Fielding
www.millsandboon.co.uk
ISBN: 978-1-474-09151-0
A SECRET, A SAFARI, A SECOND CHANCE
© 2019 Liz Fielding
Published in Great Britain 2019
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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Version: 2020-03-02
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For Donna, Barbara and Nina,
with whom I have shared great hugs,
both in cyberspace and in reality.
Forever friends.
Contents
Cover
Back Cover Text
About the Author
Booklist
Title Page
Copyright
Note to Readers
Dedication
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Extract
About the Publisher
PROLOGUE
‘ARE YOU COLD, RED?’
Eve was shivering, but the Nantucket evening was balmy; the cold was coming from inside.
She’d been cajoled into joining this beach party by the older women in her family, who were worried about her and thought she needed to get out, assuring her kindly that some young company would ‘cheer her up’.
Her cousins, given no choice in the matter, had done their best to include her, but these teenagers had known one another all their lives. She was twenty-one, in her last year at university; they all seemed so young, and her novelty value as ‘the English cousin’ was outweighed by the awkwardness of the fact that her mother had just died.
Bit of a downer, that.
She’d taken pity on them, pleading a headache to move away from the music and the bonfire to sit in the quiet shadow of the dunes, welcoming the chance to be on her own for a while, without having family fussing around her. Counting down the time until her grandmother would be in bed and she could slip back into the house, so that she wouldn’t have to pretend to have had a good time.
So that her grandmother wouldn’t have to pretend to care.
The last thing she needed was for someone to hit on her.
‘If I lend you my sweater can I join your escape party?’ She managed to stuff the little soft elephant she’d been cradling for comfort out of sight in her bag but, before she could tell the guy to get lost, he had draped a soft cashmere sweater across her shoulders and flopped down beside her on the sand. The sweater smelled not of woodsmoke but of the sea and, as her body relaxed into its soft warmth, she didn’t shake it off but pulled it around her.
‘Hi,’ he said, offering a large, square hand. ‘I’m Kit.’ Years at an English boarding school had drummed in the automatic ‘politeness’ response but as she reached up to take it, her own name died in her throat.
She might only be an occasional summer visitor to her mother’s birthplace, but everyone knew Kit Merchant. An island legend, he’d been a teenager when he’d brought home sailing gold from London and had been collecting trophies ever since.
Now in his mid-twenties, he was too old, and a lot too glamorous, to be hanging out at a teenage beach party.
‘This isn’t a party,’ she said, but curiosity beat her irritation that he’d called her Red. Her hair, a gift from her mother’s Scottish ancestors, had been an unending source of nicknames ever since she’d gone to school and it had got old. ‘What are you escaping from?’
Without taking his eyes off her, or letting go of her hand, he waved in the general direction of the fun on the beach. ‘It’s my kid sister’s birthday and I’ve been appointed the responsible adult.’
‘Oh, bad luck.’
‘Not that bad if I can sit it out with you?’
He had to be kidding but the guy was not only a legend, he was over-the-top gorgeous from his tousled hair to his long, bare feet. Suddenly, being on her own felt overrated.
‘Is that what a responsible adult would do?’ she asked.
‘I’ve given them the “no booze, no sex” talk and, since they were polite enough not to laugh, I thought I’d retreat to a safe distance so that they can enjoy themselves.’
The flames of the bonfire were reflected in his eyes, dancing off his cheeks, adding golden highlights to his sun-silvered hair and she felt warmed, not just by his sweater, but his smile.
‘In other words, no.’
‘My responsibility extends to all my sister’s guests, especially the ones sitting on their own looking sad. So, who are you? And why are you hiding out over here when you could be having fun drinking soda and toasting marshmallows?’
Despite the smile, there was an edge to ‘having fun’ that suggested he was having a bad evening, too. That neither of them wanted to be here.
‘I hate soda,’ she said, ‘and my marshmallows always fall into the fire.’
Her name she kept to herself. Her mother’s memorial service had been all over the local papers and if she told him that she was Genevieve Bliss, the flirtatious mood would shatter.
It felt like a lifetime since she’d smiled, since she’d been treated with anything other than kid gloves, let alone flirted with and, choosing not to be that ‘poor girl’ whose mother had died of a fever in a Central American jungle, she took her cue from him.
‘Red is good enough and, like you, I’m too old for this party.’
He looked at her for a moment then with what might have been a shrug said, ‘In that case, Red, can I tempt you to a decent bottle of wine and I’m sure to have something a little more substantial than marshmallows in the fridge?’
‘You have a fridge?’ She lifted a disbelieving brow and he laughed.
‘I not only have a fridge,’ he said, ‘I have a cabin just down the beach.’
‘What about the party?’
He looked across at the young people sitting around in groups, chatting, drinking soda. One or two were dancing to music that reached them as little more than a bass beat. He hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘If they need me, they know where to find me.’
Could this be real? She was being invited by a world-famous yachtsman, a man whose face and ripped body had appeared on countless magazine covers, to have supper with him in a cabin on the beach?
Sensing her own hesitation, he said, ‘I’m not hitting on you, Scout’s honour.’
He sounded serious, but his eyes were telling a different story, his mouth was temptingly close and she was overwhelmed by a reckless need to be held, to be warm again.
‘How disappointing,’ she said, and his sweater slipped from her shoulders as she hooked her free hand around the back of his head. For a moment neither of them moved and then, as she closed her eyes, he kissed her.
CHAPTER ONE
Nearly four years later
‘ARE YOU COLD, HONEY?’
Genevieve Bliss was shivering, but not with the cold. She had been on edge from the moment she’d arrived on Nantucket and tonight’s charity dinner and auction to raise funds for an opioid clinic was not helping.
It wasn’t the cause. She knew the clinic was desperately needed. It was the location. The Merchant Seafarer Resort was the last place she would have chosen to visit voluntarily, but her godmother, recovering from a hip replacement and pleading the need of her arm, was determined to bid at the auction.
‘I’m fine,’ she said, forcing herself to relax as they approached the impressive entrance.
It would be fine.
Kit Merchant, according to his team blog, was on the other side of the world putting a new multimillion-pound racing yacht through its paces. Even if he was here, he wouldn’t recognise a girl who, for one unforgettable night, he’d called Red.
Not that she believed for one moment that it had been unforgettable for him. His playboy reputation was a gift to the gossip magazines and without the red hair to flag up a reminder, she would be lost in the crowd both literally and figuratively.
‘I’m just a little overawed to be honest, Martha,’ she said, as they made their way to the cloakroom. ‘This place is way out of my comfort zone.’
‘To be brutally frank, Eve, I’d say your comfort zone and your wardrobe are both overdue a serious shake-up.’
On the contrary, what she’d gone for was a shake-down.
Desperate to hide the red hair that could be seen from a mile away, just in case he made a flying trip home, she’d used a semi-permanent colour to tone it down. She’d been aiming for something approaching the glossy brunette on the carton; her hair had resisted the transformation and what she’d ended up with was a muddy brown.
It wasn’t pretty, and it had been a shock to catch sight of herself in a mirror, but it was temporary, and she could live with it. Her dress was, she had to admit, not flattering.
She hadn’t brought party clothes with her; it hadn’t been that kind of visit. Even if there had been room in her bag after she’d packed for Hannah, she wouldn’t have trusted the zipper on anything in her wardrobe.
Ghastly hair and the extra pounds were, she told herself, the perfect camouflage. If, by any chance, she was to pass Kit Merchant in the street, he wouldn’t notice her, let alone take a second look.
If she were with Hannah on the other hand...
Far away in London, it had been easy to convince herself that she’d done the right thing. Here, where the Merchant name was everywhere, she wasn’t so certain.
‘Where on earth did you get that dress?’ Martha asked, as she took off her coat.
‘You really aren’t helping my self-confidence, Martha,’ she said as, attempting to make a joke of it, she struck a pose. ‘This dress is a classic.’ At her godmother’s raised eyebrow, she said, ‘Honest. I found it in Nana’s wardrobe. She’d never even worn it. It still had the tags.’
Martha was not amused. ‘The last time your grandmother bought a new dress Reagan was president.’
‘It’s lovely material.’
‘It fits where it touches. At your age you should be shaking out the red curls Mother Nature gave you and wearing something outrageous to go with that tattoo you’re so desperate to keep hidden.’
‘A moment of graduation madness,’ she said, turning around to try and catch a glimpse in the cloakroom mirror. ‘I didn’t realise it showed.’ She tugged at the dress. ‘I need to lose those last few pounds of baby weight before I wear anything likely to scare the horses.’
‘Nonsense. Hidden beneath that shapeless sack of a dress you have a lovely figure.’
As Martha, unable to disguise her irritation, shook her own head, the pink streak in her sharply angled silver bob caught the light. A picture of elegance right down to her silver-topped Malacca cane, Eve’s seventy-year-old godmother made her look like a dreary governess in some nineteenth-century novel.
‘You were the loveliest girl, Eve, and somewhere, hiding beneath your grandmother’s dress and a very bad hair colour, is a beautiful young woman. What on earth were you thinking?’
‘The dress or the hair?’
She waved a dismissive hand. ‘You can take off the dress and the sooner the better. Your hair is another matter altogether.’
‘My hair was all anybody ever saw,’ she said, capturing a wayward curl that no amount of hairspray could ever quite control, pinning it on automatic, implying that the change had happened long ago and had nothing to do with her visit to Nantucket. ‘People didn’t ask my name, they just called me Red.’ Not true, only one person had ever called her Red, but there had been other names. Coppernob, Carrots, Clown. ‘And I don’t think the head of a prestigious boys’ school would employ a science teacher who dressed outrageously.’
‘Don’t tell me you’re planning to live with that look permanently if you get the job?’
She’d worn a conservative grey suit and pinned her hair up as tight as humanly possible for the interview and had somehow reached the shortlist. It had been the perfect excuse to keep her visit to her ailing grandmother as short as possible.
The best-laid plans...
‘I had to call them when Nana died to let them know that I wouldn’t be available for a second interview.’
‘Surely, under the circumstances, they would have waited?’
‘They could have held the post for another week, but the cottage was an unforeseen complication,’ she said. ‘Since I couldn’t give them a date, I had to step down.’
‘You weren’t expecting to inherit your grandmother’s cottage?’ Martha asked, surprised.
After the way she’d left, she wouldn’t have been surprised if Nana had left it to her cat. The creature was old, bad-tempered, and the rest of the family had, as one, taken a sharp step back when she’d raised the question of rehoming him.
‘I didn’t inherit it,’ she pointed out. ‘Nana left it, and everything in it, in trust for Hannah.’
The lawyers had made it plain that her plan to invite the family to help themselves to furniture and anything else they wanted, get a firm in to clear out what was left and leave it in the hands of a realtor, was not an option.
‘I should probably sympathise with the lost opportunity,’ Martha said, ‘but good teachers are always in demand. You can’t sell the cottage, but you and Hannah could live there. Stay on the island and let your hair grow out. Someone has to take care of that cat,’ she added.
With the summer approaching, Eve had to admit that it did sound a lot more appealing than going back to supply teaching in London. Apart from the cat.
Unfortunately, Hannah’s father wouldn’t stay in the southern hemisphere for ever, forcing her to face the decision she’d been avoiding for so long that it now felt...impossible.
And she wouldn’t be able to hide behind the muddy brown for ever.
She’d be for ever on edge, never knowing when she might turn a corner, with not just hers but Hannah’s unmissable bright red curls blazing in the sunlight, and find herself face-to-face with the man who’d lived up to his reputation as a serial love ’em and leave ’em playboy.
‘Once I’ve sorted out the family stuff and put it into storage I’m going to freshen up the cottage and put it on the rental market to build up a college fund for Hannah,’ she said, aware that Kit Merchant wasn’t the only one on the run.
‘Or you could sublet your London flat and put that money in the bank,’ Martha pointed out. ‘Unless there’s some pressing reason to return to London? You never talk about Hannah’s father. Does he support her? Does she see him?’
‘N-no—’ It would have been the perfect excuse, but then she would have had to invent some man, a relationship that had gone off the rails. She’d told Hannah that she didn’t see her father because he lived in another country but that he had been kind when her mama had been very sad.
Her best friend at preschool had a daddy who lived in Australia so she’d accepted it without question.
For now.
She knew that if Hannah was ever to know who her father was, she would have to tell Kit, but she was very afraid that he wouldn’t want to know.
‘He was there at a bad moment,’ she told Martha. ‘That’s all.’
True, and less embarrassing than admitting that her precious daughter was the result of a one-night stand at a beach party with her mother’s ashes barely in the ground.
Shame had sent her running back to England and then a pregnancy that would have caused gossip, raised eyebrows, a stain on her mother’s memory, had kept her away.
Her daughter had turned three at the beginning of May, time enough, she hoped, for dates to have blurred.
‘Did you ever tell him about Hannah?’ Martha asked.
‘I... No,’ she admitted. ‘He was long gone before she arrived.’
To say that Martha pulled a face would have been an exaggeration. There was the slightest movement of muscles, more than enough to show her disapproval. ‘And now you’re hiding out, afraid to get involved again.’
‘It’s simpler this way.’
‘Men do tend to complicate life,’ Martha agreed, ‘but they add a little spice. You’re a single mother, Eve, not a nun.’
‘Martha! I’m shocked.’
‘Are you?’ Her godmother could write an essay with the lift of an eyebrow. ‘Clearly you haven’t heard the rumour that it was my generation that invented sex as a recreational pastime.’
It was perhaps as well that, having arrived at the entrance to the ballroom, Martha didn’t wait for a response, but reached for a glass of champagne.
‘This is stunning,’ Eve said, following suit as she took in the magnificence of the ivory-and-gold ballroom.
She’d never been to the resort as a girl, although she’d instantly recognised Kit Merchant when he’d left the party to come and talk to her.
She hadn’t wanted to talk, and she was pretty sure he hadn’t followed her for the conversation. A local hero, he could probably have had any girl on the beach, but they were his kid sister’s friends, pretty and no doubt keen to attract his attention. Trouble, in fact, which might have accounted for his eagerness to get away.
Normally, she’d have told him to get lost, but she’d been a mess. Her mother had just died, and her father hadn’t felt the need to fly in to support her at the funeral. Her boyfriend had felt the same way, sticking to his plan to go backpacking around Europe during the spring break rather than fly to Nantucket, and she’d dumped him by text from the airport.
She’d been at the party because her cousins’ arms had been twisted to take her with them and she had only gone to get away from another miserable night sitting in with Nana.
She had been desperate for someone, anyone, to put their arms around her, to hold her, and Kit had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Not that he’d failed her. Far from it. No doubt used to females throwing themselves at him, he had responded with some truly outstanding sex. Not the wham, bam, anonymous stuff she’d expected, had wanted right there on the beach to drive away the pain. Instead he’d grabbed her hand, racing with her to his beach hut where they’d had hot, mindless sex, as if they were both desperate to blot out the world. But then he had slowed everything down. They had drunk a rich red wine under a star-filled sky before making slow, sweet love; the kind that could break your heart. That you would never forget.
She swallowed, looking at the men in dinner jackets, the women in their beautiful clothes, and had a moment of regret for the head-turning red curls, wishing she were wearing something a little less...classic.
Wanting, just for a moment, to feel that alive again.
But only for a moment.
She’d been there and done that. She had Hannah, with her own Titian curls and Kit’s bright blue eyes, as a constant reminder of the night she’d lost her head.
Her baby girl. The love of her life.
She knew she should tell him, that he had a right to know, but her world was complicated enough. She wasn’t going to stick around and risk blundering into the man who’d made her laugh, made her cry, made love to her with a sweet passion that had changed everything in one starlit night.