Rebecca Winters - Cinderella on His Doorstep / Accidentally Expecting! - Cinderella on His Doorstep

Escape the winter chill for the sunny, beautiful Loire Valley and the drama and excitement of Naples!

CINDERELLA ON HIS DOORSTEP

by Rebecca Winters

Rebecca Winters has taken readers on many wonderful journeys, and this story, her hundredth book, is no exception. She’ll capture your imagination with the smells, sounds and flavours of France…and steal your heart with a romance to treasure!

ACCIDENTALLY EXPECTING!

by Lucy Gordon

Tear-jerking and touching—Lucy Gordon brings you a story that will stay with you long after you’ve turned the last page…On the shores of the Mediterranean, the majesty of Mount Vesuvius and dangerous, dashing Dante will make your senses erupt!

by

by

MILLS & BOON®

www.millsandboon.co.uk

By

Dear Reader

My wonderful editor Kimberley Young informed me that CINDERELLA ON HIS DOORSTEP was my one-hundredth novel for Harlequin Mills & Boon. I was presented with a gorgeous heart on a chain. It was an open heart, beautifully sculptured. As I drew it out of the box I realised those one hundred books had been a labour of love. They’ve taken me to faraway places where I could lose myself for a time.

In CINDERELLA ON HIS DOORSTEP, I immersed myself in the château country of France, where some of the most beautiful vineyards in the world can be found. Alex and Dana are two people both searching for something that has eluded them all their lives. When fate brings Dana to the doorstep of Alex’s dilapidated château, they both sense their lives are going to change. They long to put down roots as deep and lasting as the roots of his vineyard. Together, it’s more than possible their broken hearts will mend.

Enjoy their journey!

Rebecca Winters

Rebecca Winters, whose family of four children has now swelled to include five beautiful grandchildren, lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, in the land of the Rocky Mountains. With canyons and high Alpine meadows full of wildflowers, she never runs out of places to explore. They, plus her favourite vacation spots in Europe, often end up as backgrounds for her Mills & Boon® Romance novels because writing is her passion, along with her family and church.

Rebecca loves to hear from her readers. If you wish to e-mail her, please visit her website at www.cleanromances.com

To my son, Bill, whom I often call Guillaume, because he speaks French too and loved France and the vineyards as much as I did when we traveled there. I called upon him for some of the research for this book. Once again we had a marvelous time discussing one of France’s greatest contributions to the world.

Sanur, Bali—June 2

“MARTAN?”

Through the shower of a light rain Alex Martin heard his name being called from clear down the street. He paused in the front doorway with his suitcases. The houseboy whose now-deceased mother had been hired by the Forsten Project years earlier to help clean the employees’ houses, had attached himself to Alex. Without fail, he always called him by his last name, giving it a French pronunciation.

“Hey, Sapto—I didn’t think I was going to see you again.” He’d been waiting for the taxi that would drive him to the Sanur airport in Bali.

Before the accident that had killed William Martin, Alex’s Australian-born father, William would turn on Sapto. “Our last name is Martin ! Mar-TIN!”

Sapto had stubbornly refused to comply. In recent months he’d lost his mother in a flood and knew Alex had lost his French mother to an aggressive infection several years back. He felt they had a bond. Alex had been rather touched by the boy’s sensitivity and never tried to correct him.

“Take me home with you.” His dark eyes begged him. “I’ve never been to France.”

Home? That was a strange thing for Sapto to say. Though Alex held dual citizenship and was bilingual, he’d never been to France, either. As for Sapto, he guessed the fifteen-year-old hadn’t ventured farther than twenty miles from Sanur in the whole of his life.

Alex’s family had moved wherever his father’s work as a mechanical engineer had taken him, first in Australia, then Africa and eventually Indonesia. With his parents gone, he didn’t consider anywhere home. After flying to Australia to bury his father next to his mother, he was aware of an emptiness that prevented him from feeling an emotional tie to any given spot.

“I wish I could, Sapto, but I don’t know what my future’s going to be from here on out.”

“But you said your French grandfather left you a house when he died! I could live there and clean it for you.”

Alex grimaced. “He didn’t leave it to me , Sapto.” The letter meant for his mother had come two years too late. It had finally caught up to Alex through the Forsten company where he worked.

The attorney who’d written it stated there was going to be a probate hearing for the Fleury property on June 5 in Angers, France. This was the last notice. If Genevieve Fleury, the only living member of the Fleury family didn’t appear for it, the property located in the Loire Valley would be turned over to the French government.

After making a phone call to the attorney and identifying himself, Alex was told the estate had been neglected for forty odd years and had dwindled into an old relic beyond salvaging. The back taxes owing were prohibitive.

Be that as it may, Alex had the impression the attorney was downplaying its value for a reason. A piece of ground was always worth something. In fact, the other man hadn’t been able to cover his shock when he’d learned it was Genevieve’s son on the phone.

Something wasn’t right.

At this point the one thing driving Alex was the need to visit the land of his mother’s roots and get to the bottom of this mystery before moving on. With no family ties, he was free to set up his own company in the States.

By now the taxi had arrived. Sapto put his bags in the trunk for him. “You will write me, yes?” His eyes glistened with tears.

“I promise to send you a postcard.” He slipped a cash bonus into the teen’s hand. “Thank you for all your help. I won’t forget. Take care.”

“Goodbye,” Sapto called back, running after the taxi until it rounded the corner.

Hollywood, California—August 2

“Lunch break! Meet back here at one o’clock. No excuses!”

With the strongly accented edict that had been awaited for over an hour, the actors and cameramen left the set in a stampede.

When Jan Lofgren’s thick brows met together, Dana knew her genius father was in one of his moods. Most of the time the Swedish-born director was so caught up in the story he wanted to bring to life, he lived in another realm and lost patience with human weaknesses and imperfections of any kind, especially hers.

As his only offspring, she’d been a big disappointment. He’d wanted a brilliant son. Instead he got a mediocre daughter, whose average brain and looks would never make her fortune. When she was a little girl her mother had cautioned her, “Your father loves you, honey, but don’t expect him to be like anyone else. With that ego of his, he’s a difficult man to love. You have to take him the way he is, or suffer.”

The truth was as hard to take today as it was then. Dana had been through a lot of grief since her mother’s death five years ago, but had learned to keep it to herself. Especially lately while he was having problems with his present girlfriend, Saskia Brusse, a Dutch model turned aspiring actress who had a bit part in this film. She wasn’t much older than Dana’s twenty-six years, the antithesis of Dana’s mother in every conceivable way.