Jenny Oliver - Love At Christmas, Actually

Love At Christmas, Actually

Copyright

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2015

Copyright © A.L. Michael/Maxine Morrey/Jenny Oliver 2015

A.L. Michael/Maxine Morrey/Jenny Oliver 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 2015 ISBN: 9781474048521

Version date: 2018-06-20

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Driving Home for Christmas

Blurb

Author Bio

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

Epilogue

Winter’s Fairytale

Blurb

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

The Little Christmas Kitchen

Blurb

Author Bio

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

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 41

CHAPTER 42

CHAPTER 43

CHAPTER 44

CHAPTER 45

CHAPTER 46

CHAPTER 47

CHAPTER 48

CHAPTER 49

CHAPTER 50

CHAPTER 51

Endpages

About the Publisher

Megan McAllister is home for Christmas…whether she likes it or not!

Christmas is about family…and for Megan family means two people: herself, and her daughter Skye. It doesn’t mean her parents who, ten years ago, saw her pregnancy as anything but a miracle. And it definitely doesn’t include her irresistible ex-boyfriend Lucas Bright.

So ‘Driving Home for Christmas’ has never been top of Megan’s festive playlist. But for Skye, she knows she needs to spend the holiday season with the people she’s left behind. She can do this. Even if the thought of meeting Lucas under the mistletoe still has her feeling like she’s drunk one-too-many Snowballs!

But somewhere between the hanging of stockings and the crackle of wrapping paper, Christmas starts to sparkle. And Megan begins to wonder if family could be bigger than her and Skye after all…

Pop the buck’s fizz, stoke the fire and prepare to giggle the festive season away with AL Michael!

A.L. MICHAELis a twenty-something writer from North London, currently living in Watford. She has a BA in English Literature with Creative Writing, and an MA in Creative Entrepreneurship (both from UEA) and is studying for an MSc in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes. She is not at all dependent on her student discount card. She works as a creative writing workshop facilitator, and an English tutor, and is currently working on her fourth novel. She has an alarming penchant for puns, is often sarcastic when she means to be sincere, and can spend hours watching videos of Corgis on Buzzfeed. But it’s all research, really.

For Mum and Dad, who have always supported my choices.

And for S, who is the only person I want to kiss under the mistletoe.

Chapter One

December 2004

Maybe they’ll be merciful, Megan McAllister thought as she hung Christmas decorations onto the same Christmas tree they’d had every year since she could remember. Old Piney spent the year out in the garden, and was cruelly uprooted every December and brought into the sweltering heat of the living room, with the log fire crackling, almost as a warning of what happened to bad trees. It was starting to look like it was suffering. It wasn’t the only one.

Maybe they’d see it as a Christmas miracle, and look to the kindness and understanding of the people of Bethlehem when she told them. But she doubted it somehow.

She was meant to be off to Cambridge, to read English. She was meant to go off and do great things. She’d only just got her head around the idea of being independent, leaving their little village for a proper town. Leaving Lucas behind. And now…well, none of that really mattered any more, did it?

She paused, looking at the decoration she’d picked up. A red clay hand imprint, heavy and solid, with ‘Megan’s first Christmas’ marker-penned across the front.

Oh shit.

***

‘I don’t want to go, Anna.’

Skye heard her mother’s voice, arguing with her great-aunt. Skye was meant to be in bed, but Auntie Anna tended to let it slide if she was quiet or reading. Anna let a lot of things go for reading. Especially if Skye then recited something impressive from Shakespeare or a Wilde play. Anna was ‘wild for Wilde’, as she loved to say.

‘Darling, it’s important,’ Anna drawled, and Skye could imagine her sucking on her thin black cigarette holder, tracing the edges of her heavily lined lashes.

Her mum used to say Anna was a ‘theatre darling’ and ‘a bit of a cliché’, but Skye didn’t really think it was fair to call someone a cliché just because they enjoyed what they enjoyed. It was like when people called her precocious because she liked exact words and actions. Nothing wrong with that. For the most part, Anna was just eccentric, with her big jewellery and dramatic hand gestures.

‘What’s different now? She summons us and we have to come running? She’s wanted nothing to do with us for ten years, Anna.’

‘You know that’s not true, darling,’ Anna shushed her. They must have been talking about her grandma, Skye realised, because that was the only time her mum and Anna argued. Well, that and the time Skye had snuck into the fridge and had a bite of Anna’s special chocolate brownie that tasted weird, and she’d had to lie down for hours. Mum had been pretty mad about that.