Fiona McArthur - Christmas with Her Ex

Fiona’s website is at www.fionamcarthur.com Title Page Christmas with Her Ex Fiona McArthur www.millsandboon.co.uk Dedication To my darling husband, who watched our travels via internet banking, with words of caution and judicious injections of funds, and the fuzzy but fabulous use of Skype. Prologue 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 Epilogue Copyright Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

AS KELSIE SUMMERS floated in her gondola past St Mark’s Square she thought of last night’s Christmas-themed mass at St Mark’s Cathedral and she rubbed the goose-bumps on her arms at the memory it evoked. The strings of Christmas fairy lights over the Bridge of Sighs had winked last night and now, though extinguished, they still decorated the canals and bridges of Venice on her way to the station.

Her bag was full of nativity scenes in glass and gorgeous Christmas-tree globes for her friends.

Even the crumbling mansions on the Venice waterways had gorgeous glass mangers and angels in their lower windows and she watched the last of them fade into the distance as her gondolier ducked under the final bridge.

The end of two weeks of magic and her trip of a lifetime—and so what if she’d originally planned to share it with someone long gone, she’d still made it happen.

The bow of the long black boat kissed the wharf and the gondolier swung Kelsie’s bag up onto the narrow boardwalk the same way as he held the craft steady, with little effort. She’d chosen the strongest-looking gondolier for just that reason.

She stepped out, in not very sensible shoes but she was a little more dressed up than usual in honour of the coming journey, and then her tasselled-hatted hero abandoned her cheerfully as he pushed off.

Kelsie dragged her bag up the planking to solid ground, or as solid as she could get in Venice, and sniffed away the idea of tears.

Surely she wasn’t weepy just because of the lack of gentlemen to help her move this huge bag! It was because she was leaving Venice. Because her lifelong travel dream was coming to an end.

Modern-day women didn’t need male help, Kelsie told herself, but the Stazione di Venezia, and the Santa Lucia steps, mocked her as she glanced down with a grimace.

A passing Venetian ‘gentleman’ flicked his nicotine-stained finger at the tiny alley that ran up the side of the building for those who didn’t want to hump their belongings up the steps and she smiled her thanks. Bless the inventor of suitcase spinner wheels, and her sense of independence was appeased.

She’d arrived in Venice in a blaze of anticipation via the front entrance to the railway station and it seemed fitting, she wasn’t sure why, to be slipping home to the real world of work and her solitary flat more than ten thousand miles away in Sydney, out the back way.

Though once she’d dragged this bulging brick of a suitcase inside, the train she was about to board was anything but the back way, and she felt her spirits soar again.

The last part of her journey—the one she’d dreamt of since a long-ago friend had mentioned his English grandmother embarked on it every year—had captured her imagination while she’d still been in school uniform. Venice to London via the Orient Express—the world’s most glamorous train journey. And she’d finally made it happen.

Which was why she was wearing her second-highest heels and her new cream Italian suit. Maybe not so glamorous doing it by yourself, she conceded, but still very glam, and stiffened her spine as she entered the cavernous world of departure beside a tourist shop adorned with miniature gondoliers’ hats.

Platform One. She’d entered at the correct platform, arrived at the specified time, so where was the blue and gold emblazoned wagon of the Orient Express?

Kelsie glanced around. Remembered the inside of Saint Lucia from arrival—like any other railway station—grey concrete, cold underfoot, traveller-filled bench seats, matching-luggage families huddled together. Finally she saw a small white sign, very ordinary, very unostentatious, that read ‘Meeting Point for Venice Simplon Orient Express’.

Connor Black watched the shoulders of the smartly dressed woman sag as she peered under her dark cap of hair with the perplexed countenance of the unseasoned traveller as she turned her back to him. Her head dipped down at what must be a horrendously heavy suitcase. It was almost bigger than she was, and he wondered if she’d dare try and perch on top of it.

He sighed and stood to offer his seat, brushing away the niggling feeling that he knew her. Of course he didn’t. He was in Venice. And if he didn’t offer her his seat Gran would poke him with her silver-topped cane as if he were a six-year-old until he did. Gran was his one big weakness and the only woman he loved. Unfortunately she knew it.

He caught his gran’s eye as she nodded approvingly and bit back a grin. Despite her age she looked like a million pounds in her pink jacket and skirt with her snow-white hair fresh from her Venetian stylist. The pink Kimberley diamonds at her wrist and throat glittered under the electric lights. Lord, he would miss the old minx when she was gone. Had to be the reason he was standing here in the first place.

He had very special clients, the Wilsons, a couple he’d worked with for years, whose tenuous assisted pregnancy had been particularly challenging, and they were all on tenterhooks until Connie Wilson had this baby safely delivered. He’d promised her influential husband, and more importantly the nervous Connie, he’d be available twenty-four seven.

So he should be somewhere closer to them, instead of sitting on a train for the next thirty-six hours playing nursemaid to an eighty-year-old lady who should be at home, knitting. But then even he laughed at the idea of Gran doing anything of the sort.

The original grande dame inclined her eyes sideways towards the woman several times and he settled her with his nod. And he’d better be quick about it.

Not used to taking orders from anyone, Connor decided this could prove to be a very long thirty-six hours as he stepped closer to the woman and spoke from behind her. ‘Excuse me. Would you like my seat, madam?’

The woman turned, their eyes met, and recognition slammed him harder than being hit with a suitcase twice the size of hers. Sky-blue eyes. Snub nose. that mouth. The one it had taken him, admittedly in his callow youth, two years to banish from his mind. A face that seemed outlined with a dark crayon line instead of the blur every other face was.

Fifteen years ago. Kelsie Summers.

‘Or perhaps you’d rather stand.’ Luckily that was under his breath because his grandmother’s eagle eye had spotted his reaction.

Stunned blue eyes stared frozenly back at his. He saw the movement in her alabaster throat as she swallowed, and then her tongue peeped out. Yes, you damn well should lick your lips in consternation, he thought savagely, when you left me at the registry office, cooling my heels.

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