Secret Heirs Collection. Коллектив авторов

       CHAPTER ONE

      THE LATE AFTERNOON sun was still too hot.

      Matt Novak shifted impatiently on the cushioned recliner his mother had had one of the maids place in the shaded area of the patio. The khaki shorts he was wearing with a black tee shirt were damp with perspiration. But he intended to go to the gym later. He was sick and tired of doing nothing at all.

      Ahead of him, sunlight was dazzling on the waters of the canal that lapped against the sea wall. Even the dark sunglasses he was wearing couldn’t entirely protect his eyes from the glare of the bay beyond.

      There was a banyan tree beside the patio, its gnarled branches almost invisible beneath trailing blossoms of flowering vines. His father’s sailing dinghy was tied to the dock, rocking gently at its mooring. He could smell the dampness of the vegetation growing out of the waterway and the unmistakeable scent of the sea.

      It was all very beautiful and very peaceful, but Matt had had enough of being treated like an invalid. To begin with, it had been quite pleasant to be waited on hand and foot, but now his mother was beginning to get on his nerves. She made no attempt to hide her disapproval when he went and bench-pressed his own weight in the gym. She really didn’t want to accept that he was feeling fine.

      As witness her reluctance to let him use a computer.

      His own laptop and phone had been stolen while he was in the hospital in Caracas, and to begin with he couldn’t have cared less. The tropical fever that had struck him down during his trip to Venezuela had been very unpleasant, and he’d needed all his strength to defeat it. But his mother wouldn’t accept that he was over that now, and she was doing everything in her power to keep him here in Coral Gables.

      The only fly in her ointment was that his father had abandoned his retirement and taken over the New York office of Novak Oil Exploration and Shipping again. Matt’s job until three months ago.

      He scowled. Not that he objected to that. He’d already decided that spending the rest of his life in a boardroom wasn’t for him. Now he had to convince his parents of the fact.

      However that wasn’t all that was bugging him at this moment. Despite the many emails he’d asked his mother to send to his estranged wife who lived in London, Joanna hadn’t responded to any of them.

      Yes, she was probably still mad at him. He got that. But didn’t she care now if he lived or died? It seemed not, and, although he had replaced his iPhone, she’d changed her number after their separation.

      He could have rung the gallery where she was working, but he had no desire to speak to David Bellamy. He had more pride than to admit he didn’t have his wife’s new number. But he was planning to leave for London at the end of the week. The sooner he could speak to her in person, the better.

      The sound of a car’s engine broke the silence.

      Matt stiffened, wondering who was visiting his mother today. Then he remembered. His sister, Sophie, who was staying with them at the moment, had gone into Miami to see one of her friends off at the airport. He thought the engine was that of his mother’s little Mazda, but, at the sound of more than one pair of footsteps coming along the paved pathway from the front of the house, he wondered who the hell Sophie had brought back with her.

      Not another woman for him to admire, he hoped. He’d had his fill of his mother’s attempts to interest him in some well-connected girl. He and Joanna might be having their problems, but they were still married and he firmly believed they’d eventually work their issues out.

      But it wasn’t a friend of Sophie’s. Well, only indirectly.

      The young woman following his sister was far more familiar to him. Tall and slim, yet with a curvaceous figure, shown to effect in an open-necked silk shirt and a swirly skirt that ended just above her knees, she looked stunning. A sexy riot of sun-streaked hair curled about her shoulders, and she met his startled gaze with wary violet eyes.

      The last time he’d seen his estranged wife had been at her father’s funeral nine months ago. Though on that occasion she hadn’t known he was there. Before that, it had been when she’d walked out of their London apartment. She’d sworn then she never wanted to see him again, and yet here she was.

      Halleluiah!

      Sophie looked anxious, he thought. ‘Look who I found at the airport,’ she exclaimed, trying for a cheerful tone, and Matt got instantly to his feet.

      For her part, Joanna was on edge. She hadn’t wanted to come here, to Matt’s parents’ house. Not like this. She needed to speak to her husband, of course she did, but she’d booked herself a room for the night at a hotel on Miami Beach and she’d been hoping to invite Matt to join her for dinner that evening. Turning up here, unannounced, had not been her intention.

      Until Sophie had informed her that Matt had been seriously ill.

      When she’d boarded the flight from New York to Miami that morning, she hadn’t really known if she’d find her husband here. He wasn’t in London, and she’d discovered he wasn’t at the New York office either, so she’d known he could be anywhere.

      The Novak Corporation or NovCo, as it appeared on the stock exchange, had offices all over the world. But Matt tended to work in one of two places and, after flying to New York and learning that only the elder Mr Novak was available, she’d felt compelled to try here.

      Of course, she’d wondered why Matt’s father should be in charge. Oliver Novak had retired to Florida a couple of years ago, and Joanna