A Family To Belong To. NATASHA OAKLEY

Чтение книги онлайн.

      CHAPTER ONE

      THE wind tasted salty on her lips and the ice-cold rain pitted her cheeks. Kate Simmonds stared out at the slate-grey sea and felt her hair flick painfully around her face.

      She was coming home.

      Too late.

      Aunt Babs was dead.

      She lifted one shaking hand to push back her hair. A week ago everything had been so different, or had seemed that way. Then there’d been time. She had known she’d make the trip back home some time—just not yet. She wasn’t ready. Even now. And Aunt Babs had understood. She really had.

      But now it was too late.

      Kate leant against the metal bar of the upper ferry deck and looked out to sea. An immense grey vastness stretching out before her. It put everything into perspective somehow. Made all her bitter angst seem rather unimportant and petty. She should have made time.

      Aunt Babs had given her a home. She’d taken an awkward, angry little ten-year-old into her house and loved her as though she’d been her own. A foster mum in a million. Kate knew she’d deserved more from her than the weekly phone call and the occasional trip to London. It was just one more regret to add to the pile she was accumulating in her life.

      It must be almost six years since she’d made this trip. She’d not meant to stay away so long. Six years! So much had changed in that time. She had changed. She was barely recognisable from that twenty-two-year-old Katie. She’d passed through Katie, Kay and Katherine before becoming Kate. Reinvented. Kate Simmonds. Poised. Elegant. In control of her life.

      If only that were true. Inside she still lived with the same cankerous uncertainties and a desperate desire to belong. Still carried the scars of rejection. And now, of course, there was something more. Something even deeper. A more recent pain that seared like a branding iron. She pushed her hands deep in the pockets of her long black coat and turned away from the overwhelming greyness of the March sky.

      Just a handful of tourists had ventured outside to eagerly watch the Isle of Wight appear in the distance. They stood clustered together under a canopy of clashing umbrellas. Dimly she was aware of a questioning glance directed at her, then a half-smile as though the elderly lady in the red anorak thought she might know her.

      Kate looked away. She didn’t. It was an illusion—like so much of her life. She didn’t want the inane conversation she knew would follow. She wanted to be left alone with her thoughts, however painful.

      Abruptly Kate turned and walked back across the deck, pulling open the heavy metal door. The high heels on her suede boots made the steep steps down difficult and her black coat spread out behind her like a flowing cape.

      Below, the passenger lounge smelt of chips and stale cigarettes but it was good to be out of the bitter wind. Kate shook out her hair and unwound her long burnt-orange scarf before joining the crocodile of people waiting in line for something to drink.

      ‘If you want coffee you’re in the wrong queue.’

      Her head whipped up at the sound of a male voice and she stared up into the face of Gideon…Manser.

      His name fell effortlessly into place. She remembered him perfectly. His intense blue eyes and angular features. The small indentation in the centre of his chin. A man with more sex appeal than the average movie СКАЧАТЬ