What does a girl do when, running away on the eve of her marriage, she finds a devastatingly handsome man in possession of the villa she has been loaned as a hideout where she can lick her wounds? Greg Strathallan is rich and notorious - and may be implicated in his wife's death - but he is kind, and Julie is desperately in need of kindness. She knows her family have engineered her marriage, but not why. She is shocked to discover they knew Martin was still involved with his ex-fiance, who has no intention of letting him go. Why would they want Julie to proceed with the wedding? Was she, in walking out, the cause of her father's heart attack? Or was the culprit Martin's father, spreading his tentacles octopus-like into the heart of her father's failing hotels? Young and inexperienced though she is, Julie battles to save the business. But the bankers do not trust her. Her father is too ill to hand over authority. Martin's father sits in the shadows, waiting to pounce. And Martin, playing his own little games, still wants her for the inheritance she is bound, eventually, to provide . . .