The Lady Could Kill for Love

London-based Lady Jessop Chilcott has every reason to dislike her retainer in far-off North Queensland, Ted Tarran. The recent death of her husband, Sir Jessop, has left young Rose broke — her Notting Hill home gone — the sale of Sir Jess's prized yacht Passionflower he kept in charter in the Great Barrier Reef's Whitsunday Islands her only hope.
But Tarran won't sign off on the survey report needed to make the sale because of a hidden cache he has x-rayed in the yacht.
Was Sir Jess a part-time smuggler on his biannual trips Down Under? Were his gambling debts in the UK the motive? Tarran demands she come to the Whitsundays to help him answer the question — or no survey, no sale.
Reluctantly Rose makes the long flight to a land she despises for its sun-culture. There's too much at stake. Not just the money. But also she is soon to be impregnated with Sir Jess's sperm. His baronetcy must pass to an heir. But not trashed by Tarran’s findings.
Against all her upbringing — and first impressions of Tarran as brash and everything she detests about the outdoorsy type — Rose seduces Tarran into helping her prove Sir Jess was no smuggler.
To her dismay, Tarran's efforts expose Sir Jess as a philanderer. But together they do uncover an alternative smuggler to hand on a platter to Tarran's brother, Peter, a police detective inspector who adores Rose.
Success lulls Ted and Rose into a torrid romance shattered by a last-minute villain whose bid to recover the contraband leaves Ted in a coma. The Lady turns unladylike, using her assets as an elite athlete to exact revenge.
But she claims Ted as her prize only after the harrowing discovery of a wife at his bedside prompts her return to England and heartbreak.
The Lady Could Kill for Love is the second in a romantic suspense trilogy set in the Whitsunday Islands, made famous the world over by Oprah Winfrey's televised tour of Hamilton Island in 2011. Comprising 74 islands scattered through a thousand miles of emerald sea, the Whitsundays are a wonderland of sun, sex and cyclones, making them an irresistible setting for rip-roaring romance and adventure.