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He sat down on one of the chairs by the kitchen table and put his head in his hands.
Not again. She’d seemed so happy since the wedding.
That’s when they leave—when they’re happy. They don’t need you any more.
No. This couldn’t happen with Ellie. He loved her too much. More than Helena. So much more. He stood up. He’d be damned if he lost a second wife this way. But if she was really intent on going she bloody well owed him an explanation. He wasn’t going to let her waltz off without a backward glance.
The keys jumped from Ellie’s fingers as if they had a life of their own. She muttered through her tears and bent to scoop them up from the front step. Thankfully the holiday company had told her they’d had a cancellation this week. The cottage was empty. Perhaps if she went inside it would help.
Although she’d remembered Chloe’s name almost the second she’d reached Larkford’s kitchen, she still couldn’t shake the clammy, creeping feeling of disloyalty and guilt. She’d needed to come somewhere she could rid herself of this horrible feeling of being disconnected from her past.
She slid the key into the lock and started the familiar routine of pulling and turning to ease it open. It was feeling particularly uncooperative today. She gave the key one last jiggle and felt the levers give. The door creaked open.
For no reason she could think of, she burst into tears.
The cream and terracotta tiled hallway seemed familiar and strange at the same time. The surfaces were cleared of all her knickknacks and photos, but the furniture was still in situ. Even devoid of personal items it seemed more welcoming than when she’d left on that grey, rainy day months ago.
Ellie hadn’t planned to end up here. She just had. An impulse. She walked into the sitting room and slumped into her favourite armchair.
I should never have left this chair. I should have stayed here eating biscuits and never gone to Larkford. Then I would never have forgotten you, my darling girl.
But then she wouldn’t have this new baby. And she really wanted it. She clamped her hands to her stomach, as if to reassure the tiny life inside, and her eyes glittered with maternal fierceness.
If Mark didn’t want it, then she’d just bring it up on her own.
Ellie shook her head. She hadn’t even told Mark yet, didn’t have a clue what his reaction would be. She was just making the same mistake she always made: an idea had crept into her head and she’d sprinted away with it like an Olympic athlete, not even bothering to check that she was running in the right direction. Maybe she was so terrified of losing Mark that deep down she almost expected something to come along and demolish it. And at the first hint of trouble she’d been only too ready to believe her luck couldn’t hold out.
Sitting here moping was doing her no good. She pulled herself to her feet and started to walk round the house. As she visited every room different memories came alive: Chloe riding her truck up and down the hall; Sam marking homework at the dining table; the kitchen counter where she had made cakes with Chloe, more flour down their fronts than in the mixing bowl. And she realised she’d never been able to do this before, never been able to look at her cottage and see it alive with wonderful warm memories of her lost family.
As she sat trying to process all the new information Kat’s song from the wedding drifted through her head:
Yesterday is where I live, trapped by ghosts and memories.
But I can’t stay frozen, my heart numb, because tomorrow is calling me…
Ellie guessed the song had been about her break-up with Razor, but the simple lyrics about learning to love again had been so right for their wedding day too. ‘All My Tomorrows’ was the title. And she’d promised the rest of hers to Mark, willingly. Nothing in the world could make her take that promise back. So there was only one thing to do: she had to go back home—her real home, Larkford—and let Mark know he was going to be a father. Whatever fallout happened, happened. They would just have to deal with it together.
Her instincts told her it was going to be okay. She hoped she was brave enough to listen to them.
She grabbed her keys off the table and took long strides into the hall, her eyes fixed on the front door. A shadow crossed the glazed panel. She hesitated, then walked a few steps further, only to halt again as a fist pounded on the door.
‘Ellie? Are you there?’
She dropped her keys.
‘Ellie!’
‘Mark?’ Her voice was shaky, but a smile stretched her trembling lips. She ran to the door and pressed her palms against the glass.
‘Let me in, or so help me I’m just going to have to break the door down!’
She patted her pockets, then scanned the hallway, remembering she’d dropped her keys. She ran to pick them up, but it took three attempts before her shaking fingers kept a grip on them. As fast as she could she raced back to the door and jammed the key in the lock. An ugly grinding sound followed as she turned it, then the key refused to move any further. She wiggled and jiggled it, pushed and pulled the door, trying all her old tricks, but it wouldn’t budge. The key would not turn in either direction, so she couldn’t even get it out again to have another go.
‘Ellie? Open the door!’ The last shred of patience disappeared from his voice.
‘I’m trying! The lock’s jammed.’
‘Let me try.’
The door shuddered and groaned under Mark’s assault, but remained stubbornly firm.
Ellie sighed. ‘They don’t make doors like this any more.’
Between pants, she heard Mark mutter, ‘You’re telling me.’
She pressed her face to the stained glass design, able to see him through a clear piece of glass in the centre. He looked tired, disheveled and incredibly sexy. Without warning, she started to cry again.
He stopped wrestling with the door and looked at her through the textured glass. ‘We have to talk.’
She gulped. He sounded serious. Was serious good or bad? Good. Serious was good. Please God, let serious be good!
‘I know,’ she said.
‘Why are you here, instead of at home?’
She took a deep breath and turned away from him, pressed her back against the door, then slid to the floor.
‘How did you know where to find me?’
‘I phoned Charlie in a panic and she suggested I might find you here. I’d already been to your parents’ house and your brother’s.’
She nodded. Charlie knew her so well. Maybe too well. If her friend hadn’t guessed where she was she might have made it back to Larkford and Mark would never have known how stupid she’d been this afternoon. But why had her first impulse been to run? To come here? Did that mean something?
‘Ellie?’
She took a deep breath. ‘Do you think we got married too fast, Mark? I mean, did we get carried away? Should we have waited?’ Everything just seemed so confusing today.
She heard him sit on the step. His feet scraped the gravel path as he stretched his legs out. ‘Are you saying you want out?’ he said quietly. ‘Are you saying you want to come back here for good? I thought you loved me, Ellie. I really did.’
Ellie spun onto her knees and looked through the letterbox. He looked so forlorn, so utterly crushed, she could hardly speak. ‘I do love you,’ she said, in a croaky whisper. He looked round, and her stomach went cold as she saw the sadness in his eyes.
He tried a small smile on for size. ‘Good. Come home with me, then.’
Her fingers got tired holding the brass letterbox open and she let it snap shut. Carefully, because she was feeling a bit wobbly, she pulled herself to her feet. He stood too, and leaned against the door, trying to see her through the multi-coloured glass. Ellie raised her fingers to the clear green diamond of glass where she could see his left eye. It reminded her of the colour of the sunset flash. Of true love. Of coming home.
‘I’m sorry, Mark. It’s just…I just needed to be somewhere that reminded me of Chloe.’
The green eye staring at her through the glass blinked. She knew what he was thinking. He thought she’d come here to remember Sam too. But while she had unearthed forgotten memories of both the people she’d lost, it didn’t make the slightest impact on what she felt for Mark.
‘I love you, Mark. And as soon as we work out a way to get this door open I’m coming back home. I promise.’
He nodded again, but she could tell he only half believed her. Another wave of emotion hit her and she began to cry again. What was wrong with her today? ‘I don’t know why I’m doing this,’ she said, half-sobbing, half-laughing. ‘I can’t seem to get a grip…’
‘Perhaps it’s the hormones?’
Hormones?
She jumped as the brass flap of the letterbox creaked open again. Something plastic rattled through and clattered onto the floor. Her pregnancy test! She’d left it in the sink. So much for a cool, calm testing of the water on that subject.
‘When were you going to tell me?’ he asked, his voice going cold. ‘I didn’t expect to find out I’m going to be a father from a plastic stick. You could have called me at the very least.’
‘I was going to tell you, but then I…I forgot Chloe’s name. And that just freaked me out. I was scared. What if I forget her altogether when this new baby comes along? I couldn’t live with myself. You do understand, don’t you?’
She heard him grumble something under his breath. The heavy crunch of his feet on the gravel got quieter.
‘Mark!’ Ellie ran to the door and pressed her nose against the glass.
No answer. She’d finally scared him away with the ghosts from her past. Her unfinished business had caught up with her.
‘Mark!’ She sounded far too desperate, but she didn’t care.
She dropped the test and flung her full weight against the door. Unimpressed, it hardly rattled. She banged it with her fists, hoping to catch Mark’s attention. She needed to tell him how stupid she’d been, that she thought he’d be a wonderful father.
‘Mark!’ Hoarse shouts were punctuated by sobs as she continued to bang on the door.
She stopped.
No faint crunch on the gravel. No hint of a shadow moving up the path. She used the door for support as she slumped against it, exhausted. He couldn’t leave now, could he?
She managed one last hollow plea, so quiet he couldn’t possibly hear it. ‘Don’t go.’
‘I’m not going anywhere.’
She spun round to find him striding towards her down the hallway.
‘How did you—?’
He nodded towards the back door, not slowing until he crushed her close to him. His lips kissed her wet eyelids, her nose, her cheeks, and came to linger on her mouth. She might be confused about many things, but here in his arms everything seemed to make sense. When she finally dragged herself away, she looked into his face. All the passion, tenderness and love she had ever hoped to see there were glistening in his eyes.
‘Ellie, there is room in that massive heart of yours for all of us. Easily.’ He stroked the side of her face. ‘Just because we’re going to make new memories together—the three of us—it doesn’t mean you have to erase the old ones.’
He dipped his hand into his pocket and pulled something out of it. It was only as she felt cold metal round her neck that she realised he had brought her locket with him, and that he was fastening it at her nape, underneath her hair.
Her lip quivered. ‘But what if I do forget? My brain’s not reliable all the time, is it?’
He looked at her with fierce tenderness. ‘You won’t forget. I won’t let you. If you lose a name or a date I’ll remember it for you. We’re in this together, Ellie. You and me. And I want all of you. We have the future, but your past has made you who you are now, and that’s the woman I love.’
She raised both hands and stroked the sides of his face, looking just as fiercely back at him. ‘Oh, I love you too,’ she whispered, and pressed her trembling lips to his.
She had one thing left to ask. Just because she needed to be one hundred percent certain. ‘You do want children?’
Waiting for his reaction, she swallowed, trying to ease the thickening in her throat.
His hands moved from her back to splay over her still-flat stomach. She laughed. He looked as if he was expecting evidence there and then. He was just going to have to be patient.
‘I want it all. I want our baby. I want to change nappies and clean up sick and crawl around on the floor with him. I want to give him brothers and sisters and teach the whole lot of them to play cricket. I want to help our children with their homework, teach them how to drive, give our daughters away at the altar. And I want to do it all with you by my side. Will you do that with me, Ellie? Do you want that too?’
Ellie threw back her head and laughed with joy. Mark always had made everything seem so simple. She was the one who made it all so complicated. She kissed him with a fervour that surprised them both.
Then, for the second time that month, she said, ‘I do.’
EPILOGUE
ELLIE crept across the carpet in her bare feet and peered into the empty cot.
‘Shh!’ A low voice came from a dim corner of the room. ‘I’ve just got him off to sleep.’ Mark was pacing up and down, their two-week-old son cradled against his shoulder.
Baby Miles was sleeping the boneless sleep that newborns did so well. His mouth hung open and his brow was tensed into a frown. Mark and Ellie smiled at each other.
‘The trick to putting him into bed is to treat him like a stick of dynamite,’ he said, sounding like a total expert already as he lowered the infant into the cot with precision. ‘One false move and—’
‘The explosion is just as noisy and twice as devastating. I know. You’ve made that joke a hundred times in the last fortnight, and unfortunately I haven’t forgotten a single occasion.’
Mark grinned at her, then went back to what he’d been doing. He eased his hand from under his son’s head. They both froze as the little tyrant stirred and made a squeaky grunt. Mark’s mask of stern concentration melted.
‘I love it when he makes those noises,’ he said, reaching for Ellie’s hand and leading her from the room. She lifted their joined hands to look at her watch.
‘Midnight! Just the right time for a chocolate feast,’ she explained, and pulled him towards the kitchen. She delved into the fridge and pulled out a large bar of her favourite chocolate.
He turned the radio on low, and they ate chocolate and chatted until they were both doing more yawning than munching.
Ellie cocked her head. ‘Listen, Mark.’ He turned the radio up a notch. It sounded deafening in the quiet kitchen. They both looked at the ceiling and waited. When they were sure it was safe to make a noise, she added, ‘They’re playing our song.’
He started to hum along to Kat’s latest single, ‘All My Tomorrows’. It had been number one for three weeks already. The music-buying public couldn’t seem to get enough of the simple love song, performed with just the expressive huskiness of Kat’s voice and her acoustic guitar.
Ellie smiled and remembered the first time she’d heard it. She could almost feel the warmth of the Carribbean dawn on her skin and smell the hibiscus blossoms. Mark joined in the second chorus. She stood up and ruffled his hair before sitting on his lap. ‘Don’t give up your day job, sweetie. Kat might have you up on murder charges for doing that to her song.’
Mark pulled a face and Ellie hummed along with the music.
Treasure my heart and keep it safe, and I’ll spend all my tomorrows loving you.
Ellie wagged a finger at him. ‘Better do as the lady says, Mark.’
‘Always,’ he said, as he leaned in and stole a kiss.
The Ballerina Bride
Fiona Harper
Ballerina on the run!
Prima ballerina Allegra’s spent her life on stage. But now there are whispers that the superstar’s lost her sparkle... So when she’s offered a week on a tropical island, for survival expert Finn McLeod’s TV show, she leaps at it!
Finn’s frankly unimpressed—how will this fragile-looking girl survive life in the wild? But for Allegra, it’s not the island that’s the problem, but her all-consuming crush on the unavailable Finn! Gorgeous on TV, close up he’s devastating—and Allegra’s hours of disciplined dance practice are useless when it comes to resisting temptation....
When ordinary girls get their fairy-tale endings!
Who says fairy tales can’t come true? Once Upon a Kiss… is a miniseries featuring retellings of classic, well-loved stories. Immerse yourself in a little bit of fantasy for the modern-day girl, and be whisked away, along with our down-to-earth heroines, to the romances of your wildest daydreams!
Available this month is Fiona Harper’s captivating story The Ballerina Bride. We hope you enjoy this classic, beautifully written romance, based on The Little Mermaid but with a fabulous ballerina twist!
In love with the fairy tale? Go to www.millsandboon.co.uk to find the previous titles in this series:
Dear Reader,
We all love the magic of fairy tales, don’t we? There’s something in those enduring stories that resonates with us.
Some time ago now I was asked if I would like to write another book based on a fairy tale (I’d already done a modern-day Cinderella story in Invitation To The Boss’s Ball), and after researching many fairy tales, I settled on Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid. There was a sense of yearning in that story that stayed with me long after I’d finished reading it.
So that was how Finn and Allegra’s story was born, but I turned my “fish out of water” heroine into a privileged ballerina, thrust into the hero’s world, only to discover that reaching for her heart’s desire is much harder and more painful than she ever could have imagined.
I used the original fairy tale quite a lot for inspiration as I wrote this book. It influenced the major themes and plot points and even the colors of the hero’s and heroine’s eyes. I “borrowed” a hero who was looking for beauty in the wrong place, too blind to see what was just under his nose, and a brave heroine looking for a soul, who had the chance to destroy the object of her devotion in order to save herself. I hope you enjoy finding all the hidden—and not-so-hidden—parallels as much as I did putting them in between the pages of this book.
Blessings,
Fiona
As a child, FIONA HARPER was constantly teased for either having her nose in a book, or living in a dream world. Things haven’t changed much since then, but at least in writing she’s found a use for her runaway imagination. After studying dance at university, Fiona worked as a dancer, teacher and choreographer, before trading in that career for video-editing and production. When she became a mother, she cut back on her working hours to spend time with her children, and when her littlest one started preschool she found a few spare moments to rediscover an old-but-not-forgotten love—writing.
Fiona lives in London, but her other favorite places to be are the Highlands of Scotland, and the Kent countryside on a summer’s afternoon. She loves cooking good food and anything cinnamon-flavored. Of course, she still can’t keep away from a good book, or a good movie—especially romances—but only if she’s stocked up with tissues, because she knows she will need them by the end, be it happy or sad. Her favorite things in the world are her wonderful husband, who has learned to decipher her incoherent ramblings, and her two daughters.
To Tammy, a woman of both inner and outer grace, and an amazing friend.
Thank you.
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER ONE
THE noise of the helicopter’s rotor blades made chit-chat impossible. Just as well, really, because Finn had no idea what to say to the tiny woman sitting next to him. Her eyes were wide, her knees clamped together, and her claw-like fingers clutched onto her seat belt as if it were a lifeline.
What on earth had Simon done?
I’ve found a fabulous replacement for Anya Pirelli, his producer had said. Just you wait! A real coup!
Finn knew sales patter when he heard it and after seeing the goods on offer he wasn’t sure he was buying. She certainly wouldn’t have been his choice for a celebrity guest star.
She was tiny, this woman. A ballet dancer, Simon had said. If they were standing she’d barely reach his shoulders. Nothing like the Amazonian tennis player, with her sporty curves and long blond hair, who was supposed to have been sitting beside him.
No, this woman was so thin she was hardly there. Would probably blow away in a stiff breeze…
Thinking of high winds, he turned to look past the pilot’s head through the windshield. The meteorological report had said the storm would hit in the small hours of the morning, but it seemed that the fickle tropical weather had decided to kick up a spectacular welcome for them. A greyish-purple cloud hung on the horizon and the sea below the helicopter was rapidly turning dark and choppy.
The pilot was also frowning and he turned to Finn and shook his head before focusing once again on the darkening sky.
Unfortunately, Finn knew exactly what that meant. He unbuckled his seat belt and reached for his rucksack. Twenty quid said the ballerina baulked at this latest development and he’d be making his way to their temporary desert island home with only Dave the cameraman for company.
Seriously? Had Simon really thought this woman—this girl, almost—was suitable for a gritty survival skills TV programme? He caught Dave’s eye. They both looked at the tiny, clenched woman sitting between them, then back at each other. It seemed Finn wasn’t the only one who thought Simon’s efforts at scraping the bottom of the celebrity barrel for Anya’s replacement had been unsuccessful.
The camera operator began to move, too, making sure he had all his equipment with him. A fuller crew would be arriving by much more civilised means later, but for now they only needed Dave, who was used to haring around after Finn and doing daft things. Despite his grumbling to the contrary, Finn was sure Dave secretly loved it.
The tiny ballerina was watching them as if she’d never seen anyone load a rucksack before. She was completely still, and the only parts of her that moved were her eyes, which darted between him and the cameraman.
‘What’s happening?’ she asked. But Finn didn’t hear the words; he just saw her mouth move.
He pointed emphatically to the dark clouds hovering over the island getting ever larger on the horizon and yelled at the top of his voice. ‘Storm’s closing in. We have to move now.’
Her mouth moved again. He was pretty sure she’d just echoed his last word back to him.
‘Now,’ he said, nodding.
She was lucky. If he’d been on his own he’d have jumped into the water, the helo still moving. But it was too dangerous for a novice. They would have to jump, but onto the wetter end of a wide beach. Not quite the luxury of a slow and steady descent on ropes as he’d planned. But there was one thing he could rely on in his life, and on his TV show—hardly anything went to plan. And that was just the way he liked it.