The Return of The Rejected Heiress

at of a hundred ceiling sconces. To the three hundred guests sipping vintage sparkling wine under the vaulted ceilings, tonight

patrolmen pulled her mother's crushed luxury sedan from the salt marshes beside the coastal turnpike. Eleanor Marlowe, the executive who had drafted every major acquisition for the

private study, his voice flat as he stared at his own polished shoes

et on the road

team, and certainly not Vivian, her mother's former social secretary, who stood by the oak bar, adju

andles of the do

Cole wa

thority that drew eyes away from the bar. He was her first love. For two years, they had stolen afternoons away from their families, sitting on the sto

looking for a quiet con

ais, the ambient hum of the ballroom died down into a watchful hush. The Marlowe Group was short on liquid capital

hem of her gown, her mouth opening to call his name. She searched his eyes for the boy who had sat

miliar scent of cedar shavings, rain, and his

straighten his dark tie,

ng the silver link at his cuff tap against his watch face. He wouldn't look at

ame out thin and dry, like paper

eet. A waiter carrying a tray of crysta

laugh escaped her throat before sh

at

wasn't malice or distance; it was a tight, desperate panic. "We were foolish to think two families with competing port li

stepped into the gap between them, placing

s, his voice carrying clearly across the parquet floor. "The Cole family severs

gers curled into a tight, white-knuckled fist at his thigh. But his boots kept moving o

t the estate carrying a single gray vinyl suitcase, written off by a father who needed a sca

place stood Elise Marlowe: twenty-five years old, operating behind three lay

l district three hundred feet below. For seven years, working out of a small office above a shipping agent's firm in Singapore, she ha

rivate liens, and waited for the Marlowe Group's quarterly reports to show red ink. Tomorrow afternoon, she was walking back through the front door of her father's h