Darcie Boleyn - Something Old, Something New

Will you marry me… again?

When Annie Thomas agrees to give her ex away at his wedding to his boyfriend, she thinks she’ll be fine. With her three children at her side, she can handle anything. Then she finds out her gorgeous first ex-husband Evan Llewellyn is flying in from his glamorous life in New York to attend as well!

An unexpected pregnancy ended their relationship and as she stumbles through the ups and downs of life as a working single mum – helping everyone else find a happy ending along the way – Annie refuses to believe their old and incredibly hot spark can still exist.

It’s only when she and Evan are forced to face up to the past together that they’ll discover if they can have their own happily-ever-after too!

Also by Darcie Boleyn

Wish Upon a Christmas Cake

Something Old, Something New

Darcie Boleyn

Copyright

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2016

Copyright © Darcie Boleyn 2016

Darcie Boleyn 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.

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, 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-book Edition © June 2016 ISBN: 9781474047487

Version date: 2018-06-20

DARCIE BOLEYN

has a huge heart and is a real softy. She never fails to cry at books and movies, whether the ending is happy or not. She loves to travel and is happiest in the snow with a pair of skies strapped to her feet. Darcie is in possession of an overactive imagination that often keeps her awake at night. She always wanted to be a Jedi but she hasn’t yet found suitable transport to take her to a galaxy far, far away. She also has reservations about how she’d look in a gold bikini, as she rather enjoys red wine, cheese and loves anything with ginger or cherries in it – especially chocolate. She fell in love in New York, got married in the snow, rescues uncoordinated greyhounds and can usually be found reading or typing away on her laptop. Darcie loves to hear from readers, you can follow her on Twitter at: @DarcieBoleyn

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Book List

Title Page

Copyright

Author Bio

Acknowledgement

Dedication

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 Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Excerpt

Endpages

About the Publisher

Thanks as always to my nine. I love you all so much and I am so proud of you!

Huge thanks to my editor Charlotte Mursell, for your patience and encouragement, especially when I thought I needed to start all over again!

To my fellow Carina authors, thanks for answering my many questions during research, writing and editing, and for your support and friendship.

To the authors, readers and bloggers I interact with daily – you guys are stars!

Love,

Darcie xxx

For LK, with love.

XXX

Chapter One

Dog Poo Divorce

Coffee. Check.

Fresh air to clear head after last night’s leftover Christmas Shiraz. Check.

Dogs in the garden for morning poo. Check.

So here I am, shivering on the back doorstep early on a Sunday morning. It’s cold but dry for once. Dawn is breaking on the horizon and… wait, okay, I can’t see the horizon because of the six-foot fence and the house behind mine, but the English teacher in me is being poetic.

The sky is a beautiful shade of red and… okay, it’s not really dawn either. It’s eight-thirty but it does feel really early. On a weekday, I’m used to being up at five-thirty and I begin hurtling through the day until I flop exhausted on the sofa at nine p.m., yet on Saturday and Sunday, rising any time before ten o’clock feels early.

Perhaps it has something to do with the wine haze this morning. In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have finished off the bottle, but then, I don’t drink through the week – well, not every day anyway – and is one glass after a hard day at work actually binge drinking? So I feel entitled to a glass or two at the weekend. I rarely go out anywhere so wine and chocolate tend to be my little treats. The trouble with red wine is that it just sends me off to sleep so quickly. It’s a legal and easy way to get hold of a sedative. Besides, the youngest two are at their father’s this weekend and my eldest, well, she was busy studying.

Janis turned seventeen last summer and has her A-levels coming up in May and June. She tells me she’s studying and I hope that she’s being honest. It’s so important to me that Janis succeeds, that she doesn’t follow in my errant footsteps and make the same mistakes. I know I’m lucky in that Janis is fairly sensible. She’s always had an old head on her shoulders. I wonder sometimes if it’s because I had her so young, as if nature sought to compensate for my youth and naivety by giving me a wise baby. After all, she got ten A* grades at GCSE. She’s bright and she works hard. She’ll be fine with the jump to A-level, I’m sure. She is, sadly, going through a bit of a phase regarding me and I seem to irritate her more than I used to, but I’m hoping that it’s just hormones and possibly tiredness from all the studying, and that she’ll soon adore me in the way she always used to – before she turned into a serious teenager.

My attention is dragged to my two British bulldogs Dragon and Fairy Princess. Yes, interesting names for pets dogs but Henry named one and Anabelle the other.

What on earth is that?

Dragon has just divested himself of the BIGGEST poop in the world – please excuse my vulgarity, talking about dog faeces, but when you have three children, no subject is taboo – and…

Oh no, not again ! There’s something white and stringy in it.

Eek!

Worms.

Shit!

Literally.

I jump up and down on the spot, forgetting my half-full cup of coffee, which spills over my fluffy white dressing gown. I just get squeamish at the thought of parasites, especially with young children around. I’ve seen the warning posters at the doctor’s surgery about dog poo and how young children can get it into their eyes and go blind, or pick up worm eggs that they then digest and…