Passion's Promise

Chapter One Edward Hascomb Rawlings sat in his office and smiled at the morning paper on his desk. Page five showed a large photograph of a smiling young woman coming down the ramp of a plane. The Honorable Kezia Saint Martin. Another smaller photograph showed her on the arm of a tall, attractive man, leaving the terminal for the seclusion of a waiting limousine. The man, as Edward knew, was Whitney Hayworth III, the youngest partner of the legal firm of Benton, Thatcher, Powers, and Frye. Edward had known Whit since the boy got out of law school. And that had been ten years ago. But he wasn't interested in Whit. He was interested in the diminutive woman on his arm. Edward knew her almost jet black hair, deep blue eyes, and creamy English complexion so well. And she looked well now, even in newsprint. She was smiling. She seemed tanned. And she was finally back. Her absences always seemed interminable to Edward. The paper said that she had just come from Marbella, where she had been seen over the weekend, staying at the Spanish summer home of her aunt, the Contessa di San Ricamini, n*e Hilary Saint Martin. Before that Kezia had summered in the South of France, in "almost total seclusion." Edward laughed at the thought. He had seen her column regularly all summer, with reports from London, Paris, Barcelona, Nice, and Rome. She had had a busy summer, in "seclusion." A paragraph further down the same page mentioned three others who had arrived on the same flight as Kezia. the so suddenly powerful daughter of the Greek shipping magnate, who had left her, his only heir, the bulk of his fortune. And there was mention as well of the Belgian princess, fresh from the Paris collections for a little junket to New York. Kezia had been in good company on the flight, and Edward wondered how much money she had taken from them at backgammon. Kezia was a most effective player. It struck him too that it was once again Kezia who got most of the press coverage. It was that way for her. Always the center of attention, the sparkle as she walked into restaurants and out of theaters. It had been at its cruelest peak when she was in her teens; the photographers and reporters were always hungry, curious, prying, then. For years it had seemed that she was followed everywhere by a fleet of piranhas, but that was when she had first inherited her father's fortune. Now they were used to her, and their attention seemed kinder. At first Edward had tried hard to shield her from the press. That first year. That first, godawful, intolerable, excruciating year, when she was nine. But the scavengers had only been waiting. And they hadn't waited long. It came as a shock to Kezia when she was thirteen, to be followed by a red-hot young woman reporter into Elizabeth Arden's. Kezia hadn't understood. But the reporter had. She had understood plenty. Edward's face grew hard at the memory. Bitch. How could she do that to a child? She had asked her about Liane, right there in front of everyone. "How did you feel when your mother..." The reporter was four years late with her story. And out of a job by noon the next day. Edward was disappointed: he had hoped to have her job by the same night. And that was Kezia's first taste of it.Steel, Danielle is the author of 'Passion's Promise' with ISBN 9780440129264 and ISBN 0440129265.