‘I love it.’

‘You know you could come.’

‘And you know I can’t.’

It was impossible, Molly thought. Social life was impossible.

Until Sarah died Molly had been running her estate agency on the coast. She’d been one of the most successful realtors in the business, going from strength to strength. Her love life, too, had been exceedingly satisfactory. Michael was the local solicitor and everyone had said they made the perfect couple.

Their combined life plans hadn’t included Sam, though. ‘Put him in a boarding school,’ Michael had decreed when Sarah died, but Molly hadn’t. Nor had she torn Sam away from his home in inner Sydney, though she was now starting to question the wisdom of moving here.

The city property market was hard to break into. Her cousin was a toad. Sam’s school was less than satisfactory, and she couldn’t afford to change him to a better one. Sam was miserable, and she was so darned lonely herself!

But leaving Sam with babysitters wouldn’t solve anything. He woke with nightmares and she had to be there. After all, she was all he had.

‘Hey, cheer up,’ Angela told her, watching her face. ‘You’re about to spend the weekend with Australia’s most eligible bachelor.’

She was, but the crazy thing was that she didn’t want to go.

Like Sam, Molly still felt like closing all doors. Since Sarah’s death the world had become a dangerous place. The newspapers hurled bad news at her, television shows seemed dark and threatening-and if it was like this for her, how much more so for a small boy who’d lost everything?

‘Is the frog okay?’ Angela asked.

‘He seems great.’

‘Thanks to Jackson.’

‘If it wasn’t for Jackson, Lionel wouldn’t be injured.’

But Angela was determined to state his case. ‘It was Jackson’s lawyer who did the damage. Jackson himself was kind.’

‘The man’s dangerous. He has a reputation to put Casanova to shame.’