Chapter 5

An image of the stranger’s handsome, bronzed face swam before Selena afresh, along with the extraordinary impact of those dark, deep-set eyes against the fantastic symmetry of his hard bone structure.

A soft gurgle of laughter was reluctantly dragged from her. So, she was female, human, and she had noticed a breathtakingly gorgeous guy. Not her type, though. He had been altogether too arrogant and slick to appeal to her. She liked open, friendly men with a creative bent. Add in tobacco brown hair and laughing green eyes, she reflected abstractedly, and she would be describing her likeness of the perfect man.

Fifty breathless minutes later, Selena returned Billy and Bob to their mother, who had a prenatal appointment to attend at the hospital. She knew Joyce Miller well; the two women had worked together at the nursery for over a year.

“Come in for a while,” the heavily pregnant redhead urged. “I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

“Sorry, I can’t,” Selena declined.

Joy gave her a wry appraisal. “Is the Evil Witch jerking your chain again?”

Selena shrugged in acceptance. “There are still a few things needing to be done at my father’s house—”

“But you don’t even live there. I can’t see what the state of Candy Manor has got to do with you.”

It had been quite a few years since Selena had moved into the small flat above the office at the nursery. Her accommodation was basic, but it had been a relief to embrace peace and independence. “I don’t mind if it keeps Elise happy. Tomorrow is a special day for Dad.”

“And for you,” Joy chipped in. “Candy Manor was built by your ancestors. It was once your mother’s home—”

Selena laughed and shook her head. “More than a generation back, and even then, it was going to rack and ruin. My grandmother moved out because the roof was leaking so badly, and by then, she and my mother were only living in a couple of rooms. It’s a pity that none of my mother’s ancestors had the magic skill of making money.”

“Well, I think you’ve done incredibly well getting the locals together and coming up with so many good ideas to raise cash for the garden restoration.”

Selena grinned. “Thanks, but I’ve only ever been the backroom girl. It was my father’s persuasive tongue and his fantastic business connections that brought in the serious pledges of money. He’s done a marvelous job. Without his input, we would never have made it this far.”

“I’ve finally realized why you’re still single. You adore your father,” the redhead said ruefully. “No man will ever match him in your eyes.”

Walking over to the Old house where her father and stepmother lived, Selena thought about that conversation. She had not argued the point because the truth was too bitter. But, even so, Selena did believe that for any man to match Joshua Lynch would be a very tall order indeed. Her father was special.

It had taken an exceptional man to acknowledge an illegitimate daughter, take her into his home, and keep her there even when it had cost him his marriage. She accepted that her father had his flaws. As a younger man, he had had a pronounced weakness for women and more than one extramarital affair. Her mother, Miranda, had been one of those women.

The following morning, Selena watched while her father posed for the cameras at the neglected main entrance of the Massey estate. Although comfortably into his fifties, Joshua Lynch looked younger. With his silvering blond hair swept back from his tanned brow, he was a very presentable man.

A lawyer who had forged a successful career with a furniture company, he was accustomed to dealing with the media, and his short, witty speech added gloss to an already polished public performance.

The gates were swept open, and the local television news team recorded the moment and punctuated it with an interview. Selena’s stepmother and her stepsisters, Charlotte and Karen, were reveling in the limelight.

Selena made no attempt to join the family gathering since she was well aware that she would be unwelcome and that the subsequent unpleasantness would discomfort her father.

“I didn’t realize the police seniors were coming too,” a member of the Candy Manor committee remarked at her elbow. “That’s Chief Superintendent Robert.”

Selena glanced over her shoulder and saw two men in suits standing by a police car. Their faces were grave.

Another man was in conversation with her father, and whatever was being said was evidently not to Joshua Lynch’s liking, for he had turned a dull red and was saying loudly that something was nonsense. The news crew was now paying attention to the tableau. With an exasperated smile on his lips, her father strode towards the men by the car, even making a laughing face as he approached.

But a curious little puddle of silence was steadily spreading through the crowd. It enabled Selena to hear the senior police officer refer to ‘very serious allegations.’ She watched in frank disbelief as her father had his legal rights read to him. In full view of his family and the media, Joshua Lynch was being arrested.

In his opulent private suite at the Paragon House hotel later that afternoon, Alejandro Perez flicked on the recording that had been made for his benefit. Having received an anonymous tip-off, the television crew had lingered for the more exciting finale that had been promised: Lynch, captured on film at the very height of his self-glorification as a local worthy and philanthropist, brought crashing down from his little plastic pedestal of respectability.

Alejandro had bought the furniture company that employed his quarry and had sent in his auditors to check the accounts. Catching Joshua red-handed had not been the challenge he had expected. Indeed, it had been almost too easy.

Of course, public exposure was only the beginning, Alejandro reflected. Joshua had to be made to pay the proper price for his sins. Piece by piece, he intended to strip the man who had abandoned his mother of everything he valued, and his good name was only the first step in that process...