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Her heart thumped, banging against her ribs hard enough to bruise. ‘We’re only having an affair, Jed.’ She pointed out. Oh, it was way past an affair for her, but she’d use anything and everything in her arsenal to get him to back off.

‘That’s not only hurtful, Eden; it’s also untrue,’ Jed told her, his expression grim. ‘I call bullshit.’

Of course, he did.

She pressed her fingers to her forehead. ‘Can we not go back to how we were before the party?’ she pleaded.

‘No! We can’t just sweep your distrust of me, your inability to talk to me under the bed, like it’s an inconvenient detail. It’s a major stumbling block to us moving forward.’

What? ‘You want us to move forward?’ What did that mean?

He looked up at the ceiling and hauled in a deep breath, obviously agitated.

‘Jesus Christ, I feel like I am talking to myself or that you’ve lost your ability to listen.

’ He bent his knees so that their eyes were level, and the heat and frustration in his seared her skin.

‘I like you. More than I’ve liked any woman, ever.

I could fall for you, but that’s not going to happen unless you can trust me, unless we can be honest with each other.

And you’re not being honest with me, are you? ’

She shook her head. They were long past the point of her denying it.

‘Are you married? In a relationship?’ he asked.

She shook her head again.

‘In trouble with the law?’

She took a moment to think about that. They’d investigated and cleared her. ‘No.’

‘You took a long time to answer a simple question.’ He linked his hands behind his head and moved to stand by the window, his expression distant. ‘I don’t like this, Eden.’

Neither did she.

Her phone buzzed, and they both turned to look at the screen. Tara’s name flashed up and Eden released a frustrated gasp. She lunged for the phone, but Jed, possessing longer arms, got to it first. He picked it up. ‘Why is Tara Bancroft calling you?’ he asked, his frown deepening.

She didn’t know how to answer him, couldn’t form any words to explain. Every synapse she possessed was on the verge of shorting out. The phone mercifully stopped its strident jangling, but the walls of the room had moved six feet in.

There was only one reason why Tara was calling her now after weeks of silence. She’d definitively linked her to the police investigation and had to suspect she was the police’s informant. There was no one else who could give them so much information about the foundation.

‘How do you know Tara, Eden?’ Jed asked, his question a sharp snap.

The moment she’d been dreading had arrived, and it was time to deal with the revelations and then the fallout. Was there an exit ramp she’d missed? Could she still try to bluff her way out of this?

Her shoulders slumped. No, the police had interviewed the Bancrofts; they had to know they were suspects.

That ship had sailed. She’d just be delaying the inevitable.

And she was so tired of the pretence that she was running short of the mental energy she needed to watch her words.

And of sneaking around. Tara’s call was, frankly, a relief.

Now all she needed were the right words and the courage to tell Jed the truth.

Her phone rang again, and Eden knew it was Tara calling again.

She watched, resigned, as Jed’s thumb swiped her screen and answered.

He hit the speaker phone button and Tara’s screech filled the room.

‘Eden, did I see you running away from Bythesea Hall? Of course I did, because you don’t have the guts to look us in the eye after the hell you’ve put us through! ’

There was panic in her voice, fear and outrage. But given what Tara was facing, Eden thought she was holding it together rather well. ‘You ungrateful, manipulative, disloyal bitch!’

Tara certainly hadn’t lost her ability to come out swinging. Eden slid down the wall to sit on her haunches. She placed her forehead on her knees. So this is what it felt like when the sky fell in.

‘Tara, this is Jed. What are you talking about?’ Eden couldn’t look at him. She couldn’t face his disgust and disappointment.

‘That bloody woman has ruined us!’ Tara’s scream rose a pitch. ‘It’s because of her that we’re being investigated, but she’s the one who siphoned the money. And she’s trying to pin it on us!’

‘Explain!’ Jed’s one-word command was an armour-piercing bullet straight through her heart.

‘We’ve had the police searching our offices and we might be arrested!’

‘Not you, Tara,’ Jed interjected. ‘Eden, what’s going on?’

Eden lifted her concrete-heavy head and rested the back of the head on the wall. She shrugged. ‘Where should I start?’

‘At the beginning and make it quick.’

Tara started to squawk, and Jed told her to be quiet.

Eden continued. ‘Years ago, I did a DNA test and discovered that Troyden was my uncle. I applied for a job with the Bancrofts because I read that Troyden is their biggest donor and I wanted to find out more about him before I met him. I worked for the Bancrofts for five, nearly six, years.’

‘Why not just meet him directly?’ Jed asked.

That would’ve been the reasonable thing to do. But she’d wanted to see what he was like before she put herself at risk of being disappointed and disillusioned again. She’d been trying to protect herself. Was that so wrong?

‘I was busy at work. I loved my job and my employers, and I kept putting off the decision to meet Troyden. Then a few months ago, my mum married God, and I discovered what the Bancrofts were up to. I resigned and I was completely alone. It was… tough. Then I started thinking about Troyden. That first weekend at Elmsleigh, I was still deciding whether to meet him or not,’ she told Jed.

Damn, why couldn’t he give her a hint of a smile, a show of warmth, a smidgeon of support?

The man she’d slept with, laughed with, and loved, was Greek-god remote, as cold and unresponsive as the statues in Athens’ National Archaeological Museum.

‘Rubbish, she just wants his money!’

‘Unhelpful, Tara,’ Jed shot back.

‘Where does the missing money come into it?’ Jed asked, his laser gaze slicing through skin, muscle and bone.

‘She stole money and blamed it on us!’ Tara screamed.

Eden rubbed her forehead. God, she hoped Tara was somewhere private and wasn’t making a scene at Henry’s garden party, yelling in front of his guests.

No, Tara was too aware of her image to risk her reputation by airing her grubby laundry in public.

‘Our bank accounts have been seized. We can’t operate,’ Tara explained, her words machine-gun fast. ‘She reported us to the police, and they are investigating us for fraud. Us? Can you believe it?’

Judging by Jed’s shocked face, no, he couldn’t. His reaction didn’t surprise her: the situation was unfolding exactly as she’d expected. Jed’s shock. Tara’s denial. And, of course, she was the bad guy. Frankly, Tara ramming a rusty icepick through her ribs would’ve been less painful.

* * *

He’d been tossed into a leaky life raft on a stormy North Atlantic sea and the waves were twenty feet high.

He had one woman screaming at him through the phone, another sitting in total shock on the floor, her eyes glassy and her face bloodless.

Eden looked so frail that he was scared that if he so much as tapped her she’d shatter into a million pieces.

Jed hauled in a deep breath, desperately searching for a measure of calm.

Look, he knew Eden was secretive and kept parts of herself and her life hidden, but this was bigger than he’d imagined.

He gripped the bridge of his nose and squeezed.

He needed to push his emotions aside and think. Okay, step by step…

He found it hard to believe that the Bancrofts had embezzled money from their foundation. Yes, they could be persistent, but he’d never doubted their commitment to the foundation and charities they supported.

‘You’ve got to believe me, Jed,’ Tara demanded, her too-high voice drilling into his skull.

‘Eden was our right-hand person. We trusted her implicitly and we gave her too much freedom and access. It would’ve been easy for her to set us up, to make it look like we are the ones guilty of re-directing funds. ’

He shook his head, equally sure that Eden, the woman he couldn’t contemplate letting go, hadn’t stolen money from the Bancrofts and set them up to take the fall.

This was a perfect shitstorm! He didn’t have enough facts.

There were too many secrets, and too much emotion.

He needed time and space to think, and a hell of a lot more information.

He felt the phone leave his hand and watched Eden punch the red button to end the call. She tossed the phone onto the bed and when her eyes met his, the lack of emotion in them scared him. They were the blue-green of ice chips, diamond hard. ‘So much for not letting me down, huh?

‘It looks like you’ve already made up your mind who you believe,’ she continued. Her tiny smile was brittle and hard. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not a surprise.’

No, hold on, he hadn’t! He was still trying to make sense of the last minutes. He pushed his hair back from his forehead and watched as she stomped into the closet and reached for her rather battered suitcase. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he asked. Okay, he could see that she was packing, but…

She ignored him and kept ramming her clothes, bundling them into scrunched piles, into her suitcase. Her shoulders were pushed back, and her back and neck tight with tension. ‘Jesus, Eden, just talk to me.’

She sent him a scorching look. ‘About what?’ she demanded, in high-pitched, cold voice. ‘You heard the gist of it. I sicced the police on them.’