Betrayal

Brenna Stewart is deeply suspicious of Fin Malone. He’s best friends with her ex, a Hollywood director who abandoned Brenna the minute he found out about her pregnancy! She can’t trust her ex, or his sudden interest in their daughter, so why is Fin here?

Fin claims he’s only the messenger, not here to split Brenna’s small family up. Little Nancy is instantly hooked by Fin’s easy charm, but Brenna won’t let Fin turn her own head. She keeps him at arm’s length, until the press gets wind of Nancy’s existence and Brenna has no choice but to seek out Fin’s protection…

Maggie Cox

Copyright

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2013

Copyright © Maggie Cox 2013

Maggie Cox asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

E-book Edition © June 2013 ISBN: 9781472017079

Version date: 2018-07-23

The day MAGGIE COX saw the film version of Wuthering Heights, with a beautiful Merle Oberon and a very handsome Laurence Olivier, was the day she became hooked on romance. From that day onwards she spent a lot of time dreaming up her own romances, secretly hoping that one day she might become published and get paid for doing what she loved most! Now that her dream is being realised, she wakes up every morning and counts her blessings. She is married to a gorgeous man, and is the mother of two wonderful sons. Her two other great passions in life – besides her family and reading/writing – are music and films.

Maggie also writes for Mills & Boon^>® Modern Romance.

May the power of love and hope always prevail over darkness.

Cover

Excerpt

Title Page

Copyright

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Epilogue

Endpages

About the Publisher

When the knock on the door she’d been expecting finally came, Brenna experienced a flood of panic so acute that for a moment she felt like she was plunging down the steepest ravine in an out-of-control car.

With all her heart she wanted to turn and run. But run where? Ultimately there was no escape from the situation she was in. She knew that. Besides, she wasn’t the running-away type.

So, here she was – albeit under protest – in a luxurious hotel suite paid for by Nicholas Balcon, her little girl’s father. The same father who five years previously, on hearing that she was pregnant with his child, coldly informed her he was going to the States to further his career and his plans didn’t include Brenna and a baby.

So what had caused him to have a change of heart after all this time? Why, now, did he suddenly profess an interest in the child they had made together when for five whole years she hadn’t heard so much as a word from him … not one?

He didn’t even know if he had a son or a daughter. That’s how ‘interested’ in his offspring he’d been. Brenna’s blood ran icily cold as she approached the door to let him in. If he was expecting to meet a slightly older version of the eager, meek twenty-two-year-old she’d been when they’d first met then he was in for a very rude awakening. The woman he’d see on the outside might look similar, but inside she was changed beyond all recognition and Nick Balcon, with his heartless behaviour, had been the cause of that change.

But when she pulled back the door, it wasn’t Nicholas.

An inadvertent gasp escaped her at the sight of the tall broad-shouldered man who stood there in Nicholas’s place and for a moment she was rendered speechless by a sky-blue glance that made her feel as though she was free-falling out of an aeroplane.

‘Brenna Stewart?’

‘Yes.’ She knew her troubled brown eyes must easily convey her confusion. ‘I’m sorry. I was expecting someone else.’

‘You mean Nick?’ The stranger extended a large, capable-looking hand that would make her own much smaller one feel like a child’s should she entrust it to his grasp.

‘I’m Fintan Malone. You can call me Fin. I’m a friend and colleague of Nick’s. He asked me to look out for you until he got here.’