Heidi Rice - So Now You're Back

HEIDI RICE’sfirst romance novel was published in 2007, followed by several international award nominated titles. So Now You’re Back is her commercial fiction debut.

www.mirabooks.co.uk

To Rob, my hero.

Writing a book is supposed to be a solitary pursuit, until your publisher asks you to write the acknowledgements, and you suddenly realise how many other people got involved along the way. So here’s my chance to send big, shouty thank yous to just a few of those people … My husband Rob for his suggestion that I rip off Shakespeare when I couldn’t come up with a plot. My best mate Catri, who insisted we go to the Great Smokey Mountains for one of our US road trips. My best writing mate Abby Green, for telling me I so could write a longer book, over and over again until it stuck. My other great writing mates Fiona Harper, Iona Grey and Scarlet Wilson for consulting on everything from covers to sagging middles and dealing with my many, many anxiety attacks. To my editor Bryony Green for giving me revisions that made this story even better than I could make it on my own (the sulking was just for show, honest!). To the wonderful TonyB at Smokey Mountain Kayaking for his willingness to share his in-depth knowledge of kayaking and the Smokies. To culinary superstar Faenia Moore for her willingness to share her in-depth knowledge of baking and TV cookery shows. And finally to Anna Baggaley and everyone at Harlequin Mira for all your support on this, as it turns out, not at all lonely journey.

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Epilogue

Endpage

Copyright

Where ru Mum? Your late. AGAIN!!!

‘Bugger.’ Halle Best clicked furiously on the iPhone’s keypad as she shot out of the car park at St Pancras Station and crossed the loading bay.

There in 2 secs. Honest.

Magnifico-Multitask Mum strikes again, she thought triumphantly as she shoved the phone back in her bag. She kept her head down as the service tunnel at the back of the station led onto the strip of shops and cafés lining the route to the main concourse. Avoiding eye contact with members of the British public had become a habit in the past two years, because she’d discovered they only ever seemed to recognise her and want to waylay her for an autograph—or a chat about their latest baking disaster—when she was in a rush, chronically late or on a collision course with her daughter Lizzie’s prodigious temper. As all three defcon positions were currently in countdown mode, she absolutely could not risk it.

Darting past the YO! Sushi on her left and the ticket office on her right, she narrowly avoided a young mum with a pushchair while circumnavigating a group of backpack-toting foreign students going at a pace that would make a geriatric snail look like Usain Bolt.

She sucked in a couple of extra breaths, feeling winded as she hit the main thoroughfare.

Note to self: Get that bloody cross-trainer in the basement out of mothballs.

Raising her head to check her direction, she made eye contact with a sharply dressed office worker who sent her a don’t-I-know-you-from-somewhere smile. Halle returned it while shooting past on full steam before the woman figured out the answer.

She hated to be impolite or abrupt with people who recognised her. And up until two years ago, she had always been more than willing to stop and chat about collapsing soufflés or how to make the perfect choux pastry, because she’d gotten a major rush out of any kind of acknowledgement. She was still both humbled and chuffed to bits at any sign that people enjoyed and appreciated her Domestic Diva brand. But in the past twenty-four months, ever since The Best of Everything had moved from a morning slot on cable TV to an early evening slot on BBC Two and her third book— The Best on a Budget —had hit the bestseller charts, the attention had begun to interfere more and more with even Magnifico-Multitask Mum’s ability to keep all the plates in her life spinning.

Hence being a tiny bit tardy to collect her daughter from the Eurostar terminal after Lizzie’s four-day trip to Paris to visit her father. The production meeting had overrun, as it always did. But Halle thought she’d programmed in more than enough time to get from Soho to King’s Cross. And if it hadn’t been for that plonker trying to do a right turn in a no-right-turn zone outside the British Library, she so would have made it here in time. She mentally tucked her frustration away, pasting on what she hoped was her most competent and unflustered smile as she spotted her daughter, slumped glumly on one of the benches by the Eurostar exit, with her boots perched on her suitcase, her iPod earbuds in and her smartphone out as she texted furiously—probably about what an arsewipe her mum was to all her friends on Facebook.

Halle slowed, as love and relief barrelled into her chest and combined with her breathlessness to make her light-headed. Given she was already several crucial nanoseconds late, she might as well take a moment to admire her eighteen-year-old daughter before facing the full force of Lizzie’s disgust.

Long-limbed and slim—but not too slim any more, thank goodness—Lizzie had what Halle had always craved, a coltish elegance that was natural and unaffected and didn’t require the help of a personal trainer and/or industrial-strength Spanx. The soft tangle of strawberry blonde hair hanging down her back, which had fizzed around her head as a baby and made her look like a cherubic dandelion, was equally arresting. Sometime in the past two years, after what Halle had panicked might be an eating disorder, Lizzie had lost that pudgy tomboyish quality that Halle had always adored and grown into this beautiful if sullen and secretive swan.

Halle shook off the thought to stop the guilt from constricting around her stomach like a freakishly large anaconda. No need to go there, again. Somewhere along the line, Lizzie had stopped being that happy-go-lucky tomboy who had been open and eager about everything and an absolute marvel with her little brother, Aldo, and become a volatile teenager with a quick-fire temper who resented her mother’s success and thought the now ten-year-old Aldo was the spawn of Satan.

To be fair, given Aldo’s genius for making everyone’s life hell, including his own, Halle did secretly sympathise with her daughter on that score. And really the only thing for Halle to remember in the face of her daughter’s derision was what the family counsellor had told her.

That teenage rebellion was normal, that it was much better for Halle to have to deal with Lizzie’s temper than having her daughter internalise everything and that while Halle’s family set-up wasn’t completely the norm, very few people’s were these days. In fact, the norm these days was pretty much the anti-norm. And, if nothing else, Halle’s family—which included a ten-year-old son who didn’t have a father, and an eighteen-year-old daughter who saw her father, whose name Halle couldn’t say without flinching, only six weeks a year—fitted perfectly into the anti-norm mould.