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CHAPTER ONE

SHE WAS DEFINITELY being followed

Nicole tightened her grip on the stroller’s handlebar and picked up her pace The same black Jeep had alreadywalk through the village Two uise the fact that their attention was focused entirely on her As the vehicle slowed to a complete crawl a short distance behind her, she felt the familiar prick of ice-cold terror in her throat It was officially time to panic

The cobbled laneway that led up to her farht April drizzle Her ballet flats scraped against the stone as the breath whooshed froleeful squeal sounded from within the cocoon of pink blankets as the stroller bounced and swayed Nicole forced herself to s an inner calm she wasn’t quite sure she possessed They were nearly ho would be fine

As she rounded the last bend that led to La Petite, she slowed to a stop The gateas filled with vehicles, and a line of cars stretched further up the lane A dozen figures stood in ith cain in her ears as her blood pressure instantly skyrocketed

They had found her

Thinking fast, she pulled off her light jacket and draped it over the stroller’s hood They descended quickly, the crowd of an to flash She kept her head down, and the air see point as she tried to htly around her Apparently the addition of a child made absolutely no difference to the paparazzi’s definition of personal space

Aher way ‘Co ’un, Miss Duvalle’ He serous ‘You’ve kept this hidden quite well, haven’t you?’

Nicole bit down hard on her botto and pray that they went away The sudden jarring sound of a car horn was just what she needed as the black Jeep appeared in the lane behind her The vehicle began pushing its way through the crowd, forcing the photographers to scatter Taking advantage of the distraction, she

It seeateway onto her own private property They couldn’t enter without breaking the law, but she wasn’t so naive to think that she was somehow out of their reach

She would never have privacy here again The thought brought a choking sob to her throat

She resisted the urge to look over her shoulder and focused on retrieving her keys fro hands Once she was finally inside, she slid the deadbolt into place and scooped Anna up into her ariving her a sh the haze of blind panic The sun shone through the s, brightening the roo blue eyes s of the situation they were in

She needed to find out as going on Now She gently settled her daughter on a soft ot to work It wasn’t an easy task to fire up the ancient computer that had come with the far to the French countryside from London had been to throay her s the showbiz news Still, she encies One that only made and received calls—that was all she needed

It seemed like hours before she could finally type a feords into the search engine on the dusty screen She immediately wished she hadn’t bothered

‘Billionaire Marchesi’s Secret Love Child Uncovered!’

Seeing the words in black and white filled her with ice-cold dread She scanned through a few lines of the anonyust Was her life always going to be sordid entertainment for the masses? She bit her lip hard as she dropped her head into her hands She wouldn’t cry

This wasn’t supposed to happen to her here The tiny village of L’Annique had been her sanctuary for more than a year now She had fallen in love with her kind neighbours and the quiet, almost humdrum atmosphere Unlike in London, where her name was synonyhter in peace And now this quiet village would be overtaken by the stor up with her

Every penny from the sale of her London town house had been poured into her new beginning Uprooting herself again would bankrupt her And if she ran they would follow her—of that much she could be sure She didn’t have the kind of power it took to protect her child from the media