Willing Surrender

Clary Grey and Morgan Caird from NZ sizzle at each other across a pony-trials field in the countryside near London, and later that night at a local party, Morgan comes on to her in a big way. She's au pairing for a nearby family (taking a break from nursing), he's an entrepreneur visiting titled English relatives. Clary knows Morgan has a girlfriend in London whom Morgan dismisses as unimportant, so Clary won't have a bar of him. Visiting NZ friends in London a couple of weeks later, she joins them in a restaurant spitefully suggested by Morgan's county cousin and discovers that his girlfriend is her sister-in-law who left Clary's beloved brother Angus for Morgan...and Clary creates quite a scene. Back in NZ some months later, she's distressed by her brother's heartache, but at least he's busy on another invention, an important one this time and backed by a big consortium. A man from this consortium tells Angus of a friend's mother who needs a nurse for three months just as Clary is job hunting. Off she goes to the country outside Auckland with the redoutable Mrs Hargreaves, to a very wealthy home and lifestyle - and finds that Morgan Caird is Mrs Hargreaves' son from her first marriage. Morgan, obsessed with Clary, plausibly blackmails her into staying the full three months... Clary is torn by her love/hate/lust reaction to Morgan, memories of what happened to her father, and loyalty to her brother who's obsessed with anguish and revenge. It's a sizzling novel with great settings,and great characterisation. Morgan's a bit too strong for some tastes, but very plausible. (Amateur Freudians could have a field day with him! - but he certainly has a no-nonsense appeal.) Clary is deliciously likeable, has guts and integrity. Certainly, both characters develop in ways neither of them expected. The novel is unputdownable, racing from one emotional crisis to another. It's certainly one to remember and keep.