Welcome to Mills & Boon. Jennifer Rae

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СКАЧАТЬ just sorry the honeymoon has to end,” I murmured as we left Las Vegas.

      Edward looked at me. “Who says it does?”

      “What do you mean?”

      “We’re both unemployed now.” He lifted a dark eyebrow. “We can go anywhere you want. Rio. Tokyo. Venice. Istanbul. After all,” he gave a wicked grin, lifting a dark eyebrow as he said, “we do have a jet....”

      But there was only one place I wanted to go.

      “Take me home,” I said.

      “Home?”

      I smiled. “Where we first began.”

      Hannah Maywood St. Cyr was born a few weeks later in Cornwall, at a modern hospital near Penryth Hall. We named her after my mom. She’s the sweetest baby, with dark hair and beautiful blue eyes, just like her father’s.

      The three of us like to visit California in the winter. We even bought the Malibu cottage as a vacation house. But now we’ve been married a year, we’re already starting to outgrow it.

      It’s summer again, and Hannah is starting to walk. Cornwall is a sight to behold, all brilliant blue skies and fields of wildflowers. I’ve started a small theater company in a nearby town, just to be creative and have fun with new friends—because who doesn’t love a play? But most of my time has been spent on my project of remodeling Penryth Hall, to let the light in. A dangerous endeavor. Yesterday I smashed my thumb with a hammer. I have no idea what I’m doing. But that’s part of the fun.

      Edward opened his new business a few months ago, manufacturing athletic gear for adventure sports like skydiving and mountain climbing, renting a old factory in Truro. It’s a small company, but rapidly growing, and he loves every day of it. We live a mostly simple life. We got rid of the jet, sold the townhouse in London. Honestly, we didn’t need that stuff. We took most of the payout from his St. Cyr Global shares to create a foundation to help children all over the world, whether they need families or homes, water or school or shoes. I think my mom would approve.

      We aren’t filthy rich anymore, but we have enough, and we’re rich in the things that matter most. Love. Hope. Most of all, family.

      Madison was nominated for a prestigious award for that little movie she did in Mongolia, which left her unrecognizable as a gaunt slave of Genghis Khan riding bareback across the steppes. She was thrilled, but she’s even happier now she’s found true love with someone totally outside the industry—a hunky fireman. “He actually saves lives, Diana. And he’s so funny and makes this amazing lasagna....” My stepsister is a loving aunt to Hannah and often sends pictures and toys. Madison is happy, even with all the minor annoyances of being a movie star.

      Annoyances I’ll never have to worry about, since my agent fired me, as threatened, when I told him I was turning down that movie after all. I called Jason next, to tell him I was leaving Hollywood to marry Edward. He got choked up, telling me in his Texas drawl that he’d never get over me, never. Then he replaced me with a beautiful blonde starlet in the five seconds it took you to read this sentence.

      Howard visits our little family in England when he can, on breaks from his zombie series; or else we visit him on set, as we did recently in Louisiana where he was directing his upcoming TV Christmas movie, Werewolves Vs. Santa. (In case you’re wondering, Santa wins.) He’s just started dating a gorgeous sixty-year-old makeup artist named Deondra. After almost a decade alone, he’s giddy as a teenager.

      He’s also the proudest grandpa alive, and the love is mutual. At just eleven months old, Hannah is already showing a scary amount of interest in covering her face in gray makeup and making “ooh—ooh” noises, just like all the zombie “friends” of her Grandpa Howard. Maybe she’ll go into that particular family business. Who knows?

      But here in Cornwall, it’s August and the world is in bloom. As our little family sits together on a blanket, having a picnic amid the newly-tended garden behind Penryth Hall, I look down at Hannah playing next to me on the blanket, building a bridge out of blocks. Nearby, our sheepdog Caesar is rolling in the grass, snuffing with satisfaction before going back to chew a juicy bone. In the distance below the cliffs, the sun is sparkling over the Atlantic. The ocean stretches out toward the west, toward the new world, as far as the eye can see.

      Our own new world is limitless and new.

      I look behind me, at the gray stone hall I’ve come to love. The first time I saw it, it looked like a ghost castle in twilight. I thought then that it was a place to hide.

      Instead, it was the place I came alive. The place where my body and soul blazed into fire. Where Edward and I each sought sanctuary when we were hurt, and Penryth Hall healed us.

      It was the place our family began.

      “I love you, Diana,” Edward whispers now behind me. I lean back against his chest, against his legs that are wrapped around mine, as one of his large hands rests protectively over the swell of my belly. Yes, I’m pregnant again. A boy this time.

      Life is more complicated than the movies, that’s for sure. But it’s also better than I ever dared dream. Real life, the one I’m living right now, is better than any fantasy. Smashed thumbs and all.

      I’ve finally found the place I belong.

      Mrs. Warreldy-Gribbley never wrote a “how-to” manual about how to fall in love, or raise a child, or discover what you really want in life. Because there are no guide books for that, really. There are no surefire, guaranteed instructions. Each one of us can only wake up each morning and make the best choices we can, hundreds of choices each day, big ones and little ones we don’t even think about.

      Sometimes bad things happen. But sometimes we get lucky. Sometimes we’re brave. And sometimes, when we least expect it, we’re loved more than we deserve.

      It turned out I didn’t need to be a movie star. I didn’t need to be famous or rich. I just needed to be loved, and to be brave enough to love back with all my heart.

      People can change, Howard told me once. Sometimes for better than you can imagine.

      He was right. Real life can be better than any dream. And it’s happening, right now, all around us.

      * * * * *

      Read on for an extract from TO SIN WITH THE TYCOON by Cathy Williams.

      CHAPTER ONE

      ALICE MORGAN WAS growing more annoyed by the second. It was ten-thirty. She had now been sitting in this office for an hour and a half and no one could tell her whether she would be sitting there, tapping her foot and looking at her watch, for another hour and a half, two hours, three hours or for the rest of the day.

      In fact, she seemed to have been forgotten. Mr Big played by his own rules, she had been told. He came and went as he pleased. He did as he wanted. He was unpredictable, a law unto himself. All this had been relayed to her by a simpering, pocket-sized blonde Barbie doll as she had been ushered into her office to find that her new boss was nowhere to be found.

      ‘Perhaps he has a diary?’ Alice had suggested. ‘Maybe he had a breakfast meeting and forgot that I would be coming at nine. If you could check, then at least I would know how long I can expect to be kept waiting.’

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