Sue Moorcroft - A Christmas Gift - The #1 Christmas bestseller returns with the most feel good romance of 2018

Published by Avon, an imprint of

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street,

London, SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2018

Copyright © Sue Moorcroft 2018

Cover illustration © Carrie May 2018

Cover design © Head Design 2018

Sue Moorcroft asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of 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, down-loaded, 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.

Source ISBN: 9780008260071

Ebook Edition © October 2018 ISBN: 9780008260088

Version 2018-09-17

To every wonderful member of my street team

Team Sue Moorcroft

with grateful thanks for your support.

You rock!

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

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

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Sue Moorcroft

About the Publisher

Georgine tied the laces of her running shoes, keeping one anxious eye on the patterned glass in her front door and the two manly shapes silhouetted by November sunlight.

One of them knocked with measured movements. ‘Miss France? Miss France? Come to the door, please.’ Then he muttered something to his companion.

The companion answered clearly, ‘Not giving up yet,’ and leant on the doorbell, raising his voice above the sound. ‘If you could just open the door, Miss France, we won’t keep you long.’

Everything about the men and their insistence said ‘debt collectors’. Even though she knew they weren’t as bad as bailiffs, who could lawfully gain entry, they raised too many horrible memories for her to open the door, even just to say that Aidan no longer lived with her. She wouldn’t have expected to be believed, anyway.

Heart tumbling, she fumbled herself into her running jacket and gloves, then checked her backpack for the Christmas student show production file. Yep, there was its pretty Christmassy cover, nestling on top of her distinctly less-Christmassy work clothes. Quietly, she swung the backpack onto her shoulders and let herself silently out of the back door, heaving a sigh of relief as she turned the key. The debt collectors would have to come up the footpath behind the terraced houses on Top Farm Road and climb her six-foot fence to see her here. She hoped they wouldn’t, because that was the route she was about to use to escape.

Breath forming a white cloud, she loped across the lawn, every grass blade rimed with frost and squeaking beneath her feet. A run and jump onto a garden chair and her gloves found enough purchase on the top of the ice-beaded fence to allow her to swing a leg over the top, then she was up, over and jogging along the footpath.

When she reached the point where Scott Road met Top Farm Road she lengthened her stride. She’d intended to drive to work until her unwanted callers had planted themselves between her and her elderly hatchback, but it was exhilarating to race through the zing of frost on the morning air. Any number of men could bang on her door all day long without bothering her.

Her breath came easily as she found her rhythm, legs carrying her out of the Bankside estate, soon reaching the last houses of Middledip village. The pavement petered out and her comfortably worn running shoes began slapping the road. She tried to concentrate on thinking about props for the Christmas show, but every time a car whooshed past she hopped onto the verge and held her breath in case it was the debt collectors and they’d somehow guess she was the Miss France they’d been trying to speak to.

It was a relief, when she’d covered a mile or so, to swing left beneath an iron arch bearing a white sign with black writing:

ACTING INSTRUMENTAL

Performing Arts College

Sanctuary. A place where she could leave reality behind. Her running feet ate up the final few hundred yards as she wove through students ambling along the drive, chatting or heads down over their phones.

One called, ‘Good mawnin’, Mizz Jaw-Jean,’ in a pretty fair Midwest American accent.

Laughing breathlessly, she raised a gloved hand. The student, Isla, was not only a drama student at Acting Instrumental, but the daughter of Sian from Georgine’s own schooldays. Her schoolmates in the huge comprehensive school in the nearby town of Bettsbrough had loved to rib her with awful parodies of her American father’s soft Georgia drawl. She wished she had a pound for every time her teenaged self had heard it. It might pay off the scary men at her door – if it had been her debt they were trying to collect. Which it wasn’t.

She’d honestly thought she’d finally be OK for money when she landed the job of events director at Acting Instrumental three years ago, but what with Georgine’s dad and her sister, Blair, needing support at different times, and Aidan falling apart upon being made redundant, which had led to the current financial mess … Still, never a day passed without her thanking her stars that she hadn’t been daunted by the formal language in the ad for an events director of student productions. What her role actually required her to be was stage manager, producer, hand-holder, bridge-builder and breach-filler.

Georgine specialised in that kind of role.

She veered towards the main building. Barely slowing as she yanked off her backpack, she touched her pass to the card reader. The door clicked a greeting and glided aside.

The first person her gaze fell on was Norman Ogden, the principal of Acting Instrumental, strolling past the as yet naked Christmas tree in the foyer at his usual deceptive pace. Peering from under his fringe, he reminded Georgine of an enormous schoolboy who’d found an adult set of clothes and tried them on. ‘Cold enough for snow,’ she panted, to draw her boss’s attention away from the fact that she only had a few minutes in which to change out of her running gear before work.