TRISHA ASHLEY
The Chocolate Collection

Copyright

Avon HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015

Chocolate Wishes Copyright © Trisha Ashley 2010 Chocolate Shoes and Wedding Blues Copyright © Trisha Ashley 2012 Creature Comforts excerpt Copyright © Trisha Ashley 2015

Trisha Ashley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780007365722, 9780007478408

Ebook Edition © March 2015 ISBN: 9780008142568 Version: 2018–07–24

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright

Chocolate Wishes

Chocolate Shoes and Wedding Blues

Read on for an Extract of Creature Comforts

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

TRISHA ASHLEY
Chocolate Wishes

Copyright

Avon HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright © Trisha Ashley 2010

Trisha Ashley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9781847561145

Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2010 ISBN: 9780007365722 Version: 2018–07–24

I think it is time my wonderful agent had a dedication all to herself, so this one is for Judith Murdoch, with love and thanks.

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue Mortal Ruin

Chapter One There Must Be an Angel

Chapter Two Satan’s Child

Chapter Three Chocolate Wishes

Chapter Four Falling Star

Chapter Five Pay Dirt

Chapter Six Stupid Cupid

Chapter Seven Brief Encounters

Chapter Eight Good Libations

Chapter Nine Drawing the Lines

Chapter Ten Comparative Evils

Chapter Eleven Birthday Wishes

Chapter Twelve Desperate Dates

Chapter Thirteen Ashes of Roses

Chapter Fourteen Fairy Dust

Chapter Fifteen Welcome Gifts

Chapter Sixteen Dead as My Love

Chapter Seventeen Written on the Cards

Chapter Eighteen Charm

Chapter Nineteen In the Mix

Chapter Twenty Fallen Angels

Chapter Twenty-one Garnish

Chapter Twenty-two Darker Past Midnight

Chapter Twenty-three Pax

Chapter Twenty-four Gift Bag

Chapter Twenty-five Mixed Bag

Chapter Twenty-six High Maintenance

Chapter Twenty-seven Pure Criollo

Chapter Twenty-eight Home Alone

Chapter Twenty-nine Rites

Chapter Thirty Grave Concerns

Chapter Thirty-one Party Animals

Chapter Thirty-two Delivering Angels

Chapter Thirty-three Candy-Coated

Chapter Thirty-four Melting Moments

Chapter Thirty-five Proposals

Chapter Thirty-six Behind the Scenes at the Museum

Chapter Thirty-seven Gran Couva!

Acknowledgements

Prologue: Mortal Ruin

When the normally innocuous radio station she always listened to while she was working suddenly started pumping out Mortal Ruin’s first big hit, ‘Dead as My Love’, Chloe Lyon was in the kitchen area of her small flat, carefully brushing a thick coating of richly scented dark criollo couverture chocolate into moulds, to make the last batch of hollow angels before Christmas.

That seemed pretty appropriate, because a hollow angel was what Raffy Sinclair had proved himself to be, but it meant that it was a couple of minutes before she had a hand free to reach across and snap down the off button. By then they’d moved on to Eric Clapton’s ‘Tears in Heaven’, so it was becoming obvious that the guest on Desert Island Discs (she’d missed the start) had much happier memories of 1992 than Chloe did. In fact, she’d take a bet on the next song being Whitney Houston and ‘I Will Always Love You’, and that really would finish her off.

But the music carried on playing in her head even after the radio was silenced and it was already too late to suppress the memories. The dark, viciously searing tide of anger and pain at Raffy’s betrayal was rushing in as sharply as if it had all happened yesterday and she was once again that love-struck nineteen-year-old, thinking she’d found a kind of magic more potent than any of her grandfather’s chants, charms and incantations.

She’d loved that Clapton song, though Raffy’d teased her that it was mawkish. But then, as well as being keen on Nirvana, he’d had a worrying penchant for Megadeath and older bands like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Black Sabbath, all of which influenced the lyrics he wrote for his own band, Mortal Ruin. This obsession with the dark side was part of the reason why she’d never mentioned her grandfather to him – he might have been too interested had he known about her connection with Gregory Warlock.

But actually, there had simply not been enough time to explore their family and backgrounds, since they’d met and fallen in love at the start of her first university term and those few weeks spent intently engrossed in each other encompassed the whole span of their relationship.

It wasn’t surprising that she’d loved him at first sight – he was tall and handsome, with long black curling hair, a pale, translucent skin and eyes the greeny-blue of the Caribbean Sea in a holiday brochure – but he’d seemed as transfixed as she was…And anyway, the Tarot cards, when she consulted them, had told her that change was coming and she would meet her soul mate, so she’d naturally assumed he was the one.

Big mistake.

She hadn’t believed it was the end, even after that final argument on the last night of term, when he’d told her he and the other three Mortal Ruin band members had decided to gamble their futures on a recording contract and he’d asked her to go with him, rather than head home for the holidays as she’d intended. She hadn’t explained why she absolutely had to go home either, though she might have done if she hadn’t been so angry – or if he had been capable of talking about anything other than Mortal Ruin by that point.

If only she’d known she wouldn’t be going back for the next term…If only they hadn’t had that final, bitter argument, so she never even gave him her home address…There was a whole series of ifs, but they probably wouldn’t have made any difference in the end, because he turned out to be so not the man she’d thought he was.

A hollow angel: dark and handsome on the outside, an emotional void within. A Lucifer echoing with false promises.

Of course, she hadn’t known that then. Looking after Jake, her baby half-brother, while waiting for her mother to come back from her latest fling, she’d had plenty of time to worry about what would happen when Raffy finally got her letter. She’d sent it via her former roommate, Rachel, to hand to him when he came to his senses and went back to look for her. Because, despite their last argument, she’d been quite sure of his love and that somehow they would find a way of being together, of working things out. He’d told her he loved her often enough…

Even in her darkest moments she’d believed that, right up to the day she received the note from Rachel, telling her that Raffy had returned briefly at the start of the new term and she had given him the letter, but after reading it he’d simply crumpled it up and shoved it in his pocket without comment.

She hadn’t needed the tear-stained confession on the next page to know how easily and quickly he had replaced her, or how little she meant to him. Out of sight, out of mind.

It was not so easy for her to forget him, when his music seemed to be out there everywhere, assailing her at unexpected moments, but eventually her searing anger had cauterised the wounds and given her a certain measure of immunity.

So why now was she sitting at the kitchen table weeping hot, scalding tears?

Saltwater and chocolate are never a good combination.

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