Like so many other teenagers, young Maria wanted to get away from home.

Her stepbrother Adam Massey was a successful doctor with a house in London –– so what more convenient, Maria reasoned, than for her to come and live with him while she decided what to do with her life? So she descended on Adam's house. But she had left just two things out of her calculations:

One was that it was five years since she had seen Adam; she remembered only a comforting older brother – but the Adam she now met was an attractive, sophisticated man of the world, who after all was not really related to her. The other was Adam's beautiful, possessive girlfriend –– or was she his financee? –– Loren Griffiths, who was clearly not going to take kindly to any competition, and was quite capable of dealing with it in her own ruthless way.....