When Ryan Ferrier’s father died, there was a big and disconcerting surprise in his will. He had, it was true, left her a half share in his prosperous vine growing business, but the other half had been left to his partner, a Frenchman name Alain de Beaunes - whom Ryan didn’t even know – with the proviso that if the two of them did not marry each other she would not inherit.

For the sake of the business, and for Alain, Ryan felt she could hardly refuse, and so the two of them, neither caring about the other in the least, were married.

But the fact that she was his unwilling wife did not, Ryan felt, give Alain the right to criticise her innocent friendship with David Howard – especially in view of his own rather less innocent relationship with the glamorous Vivienne Couvrier!