The Ashtons - Cole, Abigail & Megan

California with her husband, two children and a golden retriever with delusions of grandeur.
    Visit her website at www.maureenchild.com
    Look for Maureen Child’s exciting new Nocturne ™
novel, Vanished, available in March 2010.
Her next Desire ™ , Seduced Into a Paper Marriage,
will be an April 2010 publication.

To my mom, Sallye Carberry, for more reasons than I could possibly list here! I love you, Mom.

Prologue
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    1968
    S pencer Ashton leaned back in his dark brown leather desk chair and allowed himself a smile. He’d come a long way from Nebraska in a very short time.
    But not far enough.
    His smile faded even as he turned in the chair to stare out the window at the palm trees waving in the wind. Palm trees—a symbol of California and a reminder of just how different his life was now in comparison to his old world. He caught the glimmer of his reflection in the sparkling glass and studied it. Heknew his own attributes as well as he knew his bank balance. Paid to be honest—at least with yourself.
    He was young, reasonably good-looking and ambitious. All traits that had served him well so far. Only three years with Lattimer Investment Banking and here he sat. In a corner office. He’d earned it. He’d toadied to John Lattimer, said all the right things, been all the right places and he’d learned. Learned enough to know that he’d never be satisfied working for someone else.
    He wanted it all.
    Wanted to put light-years between the man he was now and the man he’d been. If a brief flicker of guilt raced through his mind at the thought of the young wife and family he’d abandoned, he wiped it out fast. He hardly ever thought of Sally these days. Who had the time? He was a man on the fast track to success and wouldn’t waste his energies by looking back.
    Nodding slowly, thoughtfully, he decided then and there to never look back again. As of now, this moment, he had no past. He was starting over. A fresh slate. Nowhere to go but up.
    The Lattimer Investment Banking business was a good step, he told himself. “But one day, it’ll be Ashton Investments.”
    He could see it all so clearly. Himself, feared and admired by other lesser men. Employees jockeying for his good favor. Business rivals praying he wouldn’t pull the rug out from beneath them. Hewould have a house twice as big as Lattimer’s and he for damn sure wouldn’t keep an employee as ambitious as himself around.
    “Power,” he murmured, smiling again as a late afternoon breeze tossed the long, lacy fronds of the trees right outside his office. “It all comes down to power. And what a man’s willing to do to get it.”
    “Spencer?”
    He stood up instantly at the sound of his boss’s voice. Lattimer never knocked, damn it. Irritation scrambled through Spencer’s system, but he quashed it with ruthless determination. He couldn’t afford to piss off the old man. Not yet, anyway.
    “John,” Spencer said, smiling as though he wasn’t imagining Lattimer out on a street corner with a tin cup and a handful of pencils. “Good to see you.” Then he shifted his gaze to the young woman clinging to Lattimer’s right arm.
    Steering the petite blond woman farther into the office, John said, “I wanted you to meet Caroline, my daughter.” He winked down at her. “My only child and the apple of my eye.”
    Daughter?
    Why hadn’t he known the old pirate had a kid?
    Spencer’s agile mind quickstepped. Pretty, in a nondescript, quiet way, Caroline Lattimer had green eyes, a nice figure and the polish and confidence of a woman raised with money. Obviously, her dear daddy doted on her, and Spencer, being a man whonever failed to recognize opportunity when it stepped up and slugged him, gave her a slow smile.
    She ducked her head, then looked up at him with, he was pleased to see, interest.
    “Miss Lattimer,” he said, taking her hand in both of his and feeling a quick jolt of pleasure at her nervous, indrawn breath, “I’m very pleased to meet you.”
    “Daddy’s told me so much about you,” she said, her voice quiet, cultured.
    Shy, he thought and inwardly smiled. Though she was pretty enough and the daughter of a wealthy man, her own innate shyness had probably kept her from having too much experience with men.
    Which only worked to his advantage.
    Spencer kept her hand in his and stroked her skin with his thumb. And while she smiled up at him, he planned her seduction. His mind worked like a calculator as he figured out