Sell Cherry Trees, the house she had been born in, her home until she was nineteen, the place where her mother had, sadly, spent so many months of illness, before finally succumbing to that illness eight years ago. Sell the home that had meant so much to them all over the years? Never!

Of course, she didn’t need two guesses as to who had put the unheard of before idea into her father’s head. Caleb Jones. The man who actually wanted to buy Cherry Trees.

She had heard nothing but ‘Cal Jones’ this and ‘Cal Jones’ that since the man had moved on to the old Rawlings Estate six months ago. Her father seemed to think he was wonderful, had spent many an evening playing chess with him over the months, and so, consequently, he had talked a lot about Mr Caleb Jones during her regular Sunday evening telephone calls to him.

And she had made her own enquiries about the man. What she had learnt certainly hadn’t endeared him to her. Or rather, it was what she hadn’t learnt about him that bothered her so much.

She wasn’t interested in the personal life of the man, although according to her father Caleb Jones was a cross between a saint and the Good Fairy, having taken on the guardianship of his young nephew after his parents had died. And his business dealings seemed to be a closed book. Or too much of an open book.

As a highly placed accountant in London, she had enough contacts in the business world to enable her to discreetly obtain the information she wanted. Oh, there was information enough, but it was all just a little too neat and tidy as far as she was concerned, Caleb Jones was either exactly what he appeared to be, a financial genius, or he was a crook. Nothing but one of the two extremes could have made possible the meteoric rise to the successful millionaire businessman that Caleb Jones was at only thirty-nine. And, despite her father’s admiration for the man, Helen didn’t believe it was the former.

A man like that wasn’t going to buy Cherry Trees if she could possibly prevent it.

Which was why she was driving down to her home on the Hampshire coast for the weekend to try and dissuade her father from the idea.

Sell Cherry Trees!

She still couldn’t believe her father was even considering it!

Caleb Jones had to have exerted some pressure, even if it was only that of supposed friendship, to have got her father to go even that far; he had always claimed in the past that he would never leave the house which, although once the old gatehouse of the Rawlings Estate, had been his home since he’d married her mother thirty years ago.

It was only since Caleb Jones moved on to the estate and began to work on him that he had even contemplated changing his mind. Well, he was about to find out that David Foster’s daughter wasn’t as gullible to his ruthless charm.

Not far to go now. She had been aware of the freshness of the sea air for some miles, had her side-window down in the heat of the July day, knew that she was even now turning down the narrow hedge-sided lane that edged one side of the Rawlings Estate.

It was a vast estate, comprised of thousands of acres, covered all of the land between here and the sea, was one of the last big private estates left intact in England. And now it all belonged to Caleb Jones.

Except the rambling old house that had once been its gatehouse.

Caleb Jones. Even the man’s name conjured up visions of a Godfather-like figure, sitting back smugly among the luxury of the earnings that, on the surface, seemed to have been acquired too cleanly. Not that one of the people she had spoken to about him had made one derogatory remark or cast one suspicion on him. But it was this very lack of open maliciousness that made her so wary; in a business world like London that just wasn’t natural. Not natural at all…

What the——?

Her foot moved desperately to the brake pedal as something wandered across the lane in front of the car. Her panic turned to complete horror as she realised it wasn’t a small animal as she had first suspected, but a very small baby toddling along on unsteady legs!

She turned the wheel sharply to the left, badly shaken as the car came to a shuddering halt on the grass verge, turning quickly in her seat to see the baby picking itself up after a slight stumble, completely unaware of the narrow escape it had just had if its proudly pleased smile was anything to go by.

Helen quickly released her seatbelt and scrambled out of the car, her only thought now to scoop the baby up out of harm’s way before another vehicle came innocently around the corner and perhaps didn’t manage to avoid hitting the tiny dungaree-clothed figure.

Dark blue eyes widened indignantly as Helen lifted the baby up, the pink rosebud of a mouth setting mutinously at what was obviously an unwanted interruption to what had been turning out to be a great adventure.

Once she reached the side of the lane Helen found herself looking into a face so angelically beautiful that it gave her heart a jolt. Above the rose-bud mouth was a tiny button nose, and the dark blue eyes were fringed with long black lashes that fanned down against rosily healthy cheeks as the baby blinked up at her curiously.

Above the heart-shaped face was a riot of jet-black curls of such a length that it was difficult to tell whether the child was a boy or a girl. The dungarees were certainly no indication; children’s clothes seemed to be unisex nowadays. And the parents could in no way be blamed for the indulgence of allowing the glossy black curls to grow so long even if it were a boy; it would be almost sacrilege even to think about cropping such a crowning glory.

But where were the parents? The child couldn’t have walked that far on these unsteady little legs, and Helen knew from having lived here most of her life that there were no houses in the near vicinity. But she had to find the parents somehow, couldn’t just drive off with the child and not——

‘Sam? Sam! Lord, Sam, where the hell are you?’

Helen could hear the panic in the male voice, knew the still rebellious bundle squirming about in her arms had to be the missing ‘Sam’.

‘Over here,’ she called out firmly, crossing the road in the direction of the voice.

The father. It had to be. The likeness between the two was unmistakable, the riotous dark curls, the dark blue eyes, the latter on the man anxious with the desperate worry

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Memories of the Past Carole Mortimer

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE

Memories of the Past

Carole Mortimer