Tycoon's Forbidden Cinderella. Melanie Milburne

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       CHAPTER ONE

      AUDREY EYED HER mother’s wedding invitation as if it were a cockroach next to her breakfast teacup and toast plate. ‘I would do anything to get out of this wedding party and I mean anything.’

      Rosie, her flatmate, slipped into the seat opposite and pinched a slice of toast off Audrey’s plate and began munching. ‘Three times a bridesmaid, huh? Go you.’

      Audrey sighed. ‘Yes, well, being a bridesmaid three times would be bad enough but they’re my mother’s marriages and all to Harlan Fox. I thought she’d learned her lesson by now.’

      ‘I guess that does complicate things a bit...’ Rosie twisted her mouth in a glad-it’s-you-and-not-me manner.

      ‘I don’t know why my mother hasn’t learnt from her past two mistakes.’ Audrey stirred her tea until it created a whirlpool similar to the one she was feeling in her stomach. ‘Who marries the same man three times? I can’t bear another one of my mother’s marriages. I can’t bear another one of my mother’s divorces. None of them were civilised and private. They were nasty and horribly public.’ Her teaspoon fell against the saucer with a clatter. ‘That’s the problem with having a soap opera star for a parent. Nothing they do ever escapes public attention. Nothing. Good or bad or just plain dead embarrassing, it’s all splashed over the gossip magazines and the net for millions to read.’

      ‘Yeah, I kind of figured that after that spread about your mother’s affair with one of the young cameramen on set,’ Rosie said. ‘Amazing she has a daughter of twenty-five and yet she can still pull guys like a barman pulls beers.’

      ‘Yes, well, if that wasn’t bad enough, Harlan Fox is even more famous than my mother.’ Audrey frowned and pushed her cup and saucer away as if it had mortally offended her. ‘What can she possibly see in an aging rock star of a heavy metal band?’

      ‘Maybe it’s because Harlan and his band mates are in the process of reforming to go back on the tour?’ Rosie had clearly been reading the gossip pages rather avidly.

      Audrey rolled her eyes. ‘A process somewhat stalled by the fact that two of its members are still in rehab for drug and alcohol issues.’

      Rosie licked a droplet of raspberry jam off her finger and asked, ‘Is Harlan’s hot-looking son Lucien going to be best man again?’

      Audrey sprang up from the table as if her chair had suddenly exploded. The mere mention of Lucien Fox’s name was enough to make her grind her teeth until her molars rolled over and begged for mercy. She scooped her teacup off the table and poured the contents in the sink, wishing she were throwing it in Lucien’s impossibly handsome face. ‘Yes.’ She spat out the word like a lemon pip.

      ‘Funny how you two have never hit it off,’ Rosie said. ‘I mean, you’d think you’d have heaps in common. You’ve both lived in the shadow of a celebrity parent. And you’ve been step-siblings on and off for the last...how long’s it been now?’

      Audrey turned from the sink and gripped the back of the chair. ‘Six years. But it’s not going to happen again. No way. This wedding is not going to go ahead.’

      Rosie’s eyebrows lifted until they met her fringe. ‘What? You think you can talk them out of it?’

      Audrey released her stranglehold on the chair and picked up her phone from the table and checked for messages. Still no answer from her mother. Damn it. ‘I’m going to track Mum and Harlan down and give them a stern talking-to. I’ll resort to blackmail if I have to. I have to stop them marrying. I have to.’

      Rosie frowned. ‘Track them down? Why? Have they gone into hiding or something?’

      ‘They’ve both turned off their phones. Their publicists apparently have no idea where they’ve gone.’

      ‘But you do?’

      She drummed her fingers on the back of her phone. ‘No, but I have a hunch and I’m going to start there.’

      ‘Have you asked Lucien where he thinks they might be or are you still not talking since the last divorce? How many years ago was that again?’ Rosie asked.

      ‘Three,’ Audrey said. ‘For the last six years my mother and Harlan have been hooking up, getting hitched and then divorcing in a hate fest that makes headlines around the world. I’m over it. I’m not going to let it happen again. They can hook up if they want to but another marriage is out. O.U.T. Out.’

      Rosie shifted her lips from side to side as if observing an unusual creature in captivity. ‘Wow. You really have a thing about weddings, don’t you? Don’t you want to get married one day?’

      ‘No. I do not.’ Audrey knew she sounded like a starchy old spinster from a nineteenth-century novel but she was beyond caring. She hated weddings. Capital H hated them. She felt like throwing up when she saw a white dress. Maybe she wouldn’t hate weddings so much if she hadn’t been dragged to so many of her mother’s. Before Harlan Fox, Sibella Merrington had had three husbands and not one of them had been Audrey’s father. Audrey had no idea who her father was and apparently neither did her mother, although Sibella had narrowed it down to three men.

      What was it with her mother and the number three?

      ‘You didn’t answer my question,’ Rosie said. ‘Are you talking to Lucien again or not?’

      ‘Not.’

      ‘Maybe you should reconsider,’ Rosie said. ‘You never know, he might prove to be an ally in your mission to stop his dad and your mum getting married.’

      Audrey snorted. ‘The day I speak again to that arrogant, stuck-up jerk will be the day hell turns into an ice factory.’

      ‘Why do you hate him so much? What’s he ever done to you?’

      Audrey turned and snatched her coat off the hook behind the door and shrugged it on, pulling her hair out of the collar. She faced her flatmate. ‘I don’t want to talk about it. I just hate him, that’s all.’

      Rosie’s brows shot up again like skyrockets and she leaned forward in her chair, eyes sparkling with intrigue. ‘Did he try it on with you?’

      Audrey’s cheeks were suddenly feeling so hot she could have cooked another round of toast on them. No way was she going to confess it was she who had done the ‘trying it on’ and been rejected.

      Mortifyingly, embarrassingly, ego-crushingly rejected.

      Not once but two times. Once when she was eighteen and again when she was twenty-one, both times at her mother’s wedding reception to his father. Another good reason to prevent such a marriage occurring again.

      No more wedding receptions.

      No more champagne.

      No more gauche flirting with Lucien Fox.

      Oh, God, why, why, why had she СКАЧАТЬ