Vanessa was used to turning men's heads - but perhaps she was a little too complacent about her ability to attract them when she crossed swords with the masterful Callum Grayne.

Their very first meeting had hardly given him a good opinion of her, and as they, unavoidably, began seeing a lot more of each other his attitude became even more uncompromising. He didn't trust her; he suspected her motives for taking the job book cataloguer in the Highlands, working for elderly Mr. Maclean, and he was determined not to let her use her beauty to deceive him as well.

Up to a point Cal was right about Vanessa, but she had, she thought, the best of reasons for her deception; she takes the job with Mr. Maclean because he's actually her grandfather and, as she believes, the cause of her parents deaths and the long estrangement between her father and grandfather. She hopes to get him to care for her, then reject him, as he apparently did to her father.

So what business is it of Callum Grayne's as to her reasons for taking the job and what did it matter to her what that odious man thought of her?