Bright Angel

Stranded in blizzard conditions near the Utah Arizona border, Laura Clay, a graduate student with money worries, is given a lift to Kingman, Arizona, by Joshua Harris. Explaining the absence of Martin Walker, who was supposed to collect Laura, Joshua learns that she had intended marrying Martin in order to obtain the early release of a legacy – a scheme which had collapsed on her unequivocal rejection of Martin the previous night. Unaware that the funds released would cover the nursing at home of her terminally ill father and with the prospect of problems of his own being solved, Joshua Harris offers to take her back to Las Vegas where she and Martin had been attending a conference, to marry her, and to put her on her plane home. His single condition is that she should help him if by chance he should ever need a favour himself. Back in England, Laura shares the twenty four hour care of her father with two nurses. It is more than a year after his death that Joshua Harris finds her and asks if she will help him take care of a guest, Cleo Stevens; the wife of his colleague, Holden Stevens, Cleo's disruptive behaviour threatens to damage Harris Bright-A, the Harris family company. Profoundly grateful for the way he helped her father, Laura agrees. Maintaining with increasing determination the appearance of a helpful wife, Laura manages Cleo's stay between her home in Malmesbury and Joshua's house in London while at the same time continuing three separate academic work commitments and several tasks she has taken on for friends. Attracted to Joshua and at the same time wary, Laura senses that there may be more to Cleo's story than she had been told; equally she fears that her inheritance was obtained by a trick which if made public could damage the reputation of the lawyers administering her grandfather's estate. Juggling work, living between two houses and at the same time learning more and more about Joshua and Harris Bright-A, Laura, in love, is totally unprepared for what she then learns from Cleo herself . . .