Chapter 48

FOUR YEARS LATER

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‘We are really interested in running a series of these books,' the man sitting across the desk from Jasmine told her. 'If you can write others as good as this first one.'

Jasmine shrugged. 'I'm not sure that I can.'

The man's smile of confidence seemed to say he was used to dealing with temperamental authors and that he was usually the victor. He was a man of middle age, his kindly exterior belied by the sharpness of his icy blue eyes, a sense of purpose about him that told the woman seated across the desk from him that he could be a very shrewd businessman.

Jasmine had never been to a publishers before, and the image of a sterilely white and chrome-painted office, modern in the extreme, had given way to a cluttered room that looked more like a lawyer's office, with manuscripts and books littering the desktop. She had guessed when she received the written summons to see James CoInbrook that there had been a favora