Trisha Ashley - A Christmas Cracker - The only festive romance to curl up with this Christmas!

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 2015

Copyright © Trisha Ashley 2015

Trisha Ashley 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: 9781847562807

Ebook Edition © October 2015 ISBN: 9780008133719

Version: 2018-02-08

For Grace

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1: Bottled

Chapter 2: Picture This

Chapter 3: Bang to Rights

Chapter 4: The Prisoner’s Friend

Chapter 5: Engagements

Chapter 6: The Quality of Mercy

Chapter 7: Life of Pye

Chapter 8: Clouded Mirrors

Chapter 9: Rumbled

Chapter 10: Crumbs!

Chapter 11: Cat Flight

Chapter 12: Christmas Lists

Chapter 13: Sleeping Beauty

Chapter 14: Cat-Flap

Chapter 15: Ghost Mice

Chapter 16: To the Point

Chapter 17: Reanimated

Chapter 18: Potent

Chapter 19: Brief Encounters

Chapter 20: Fishy

Chapter 21: Well Spiced

Chapter 22: Thin Air

Chapter 23: Fine-Tuned

Chapter 24: The House of Mirth

Chapter 25: Going Spiral

Chapter 26: Lukewarm

Chapter 27: Queen for the Day

Chapter 28: Winding Up

Chapter 29: Thrown

Chapter 30: Unfettered and Free

Chapter 31: Four-Legged Friends

Chapter 32: Out of the Box

Chapter 33: Give Peace a Chance

Chapter 34: On the Tiles

Chapter 35: False Start

Chapter 36: Charm Offensive

Chapter 37: An Absolute Cracker

Chapter 38: Give Me a Ring

Chapter 39: Sweet Liberty

Chapter 40: Missed Connections

Chapter 41: Spats

Chapter 42: Not Waving

Chapter 43: Christmas Every Day

Chapter 44: Snowed Under

Chapter 45: Guilt-Edged

Chapter 46: Picture Perfect

Chapter 47: True Lovers’ Knots

Chapter 48: Santa’s Little Helper

Chapter 49: On the Case

Chapter 50: Fireworks

Chapter 51: True Lies

Chapter 52: Daggers Drawn

Chapter 53: Advent

Chapter 54: Box of Delights

Chapter 55: Hasty Pudding

Chapter 56: The Big Picture

Chapter 57: Crowned

Recipes

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‘You mean you’ve known for ages that your boss at Champers&Chocs was passing off bottles of cheap fizz as vintage champagne, and you haven’t done a single thing about it?’ Kate exclaimed incredulously, her pale blue eyes wide and a cup of herbal tea the exact colour of cat pee suspended halfway to her rose-tinted lips.

Kate was my opposite in looks, being small, fair and cute, though she wasn’t as cute as she thought she was, unless you were really fond of rabbits. And speaking of rabbits, she should long since have put her penchant for pale pink fluffy jumpers behind her, even if the angora had been ethically sourced, which I doubted.

I sighed and stirred my Americano, starting to wish I hadn’t said anything about it because, after all, she and her husband were Jeremy’s old friends, not mine, and she’d been less than welcoming when we’d first got engaged. But sometimes Kate and I would meet up for coffee and, that day being one of those occasions, my worries had spilled out of me the moment we’d sat down.

It wouldn’t have happened if I’d been able to tell my best friend, Emma, but since she’d remarried she’d increasingly been having problems of her own with her husband, Desmond, so I hadn’t wanted to burden her with mine.

Still, at least she wouldn’t have gazed at me in the sad, accusing way Kate was, when I looked up.

‘The idea that anything fraudulent was going on never crossed my mind until I found out by accident,’ I explained. ‘I mean, I don’t think I’d even seen a real bottle of champagne, other than on the TV, until I got engaged to Jeremy.’

‘No, I don’t suppose there are champagne bars on every corner of council estates,’ she said snidely. ‘Just cheap booze shops.’

For the last years of her life, Mum and I had shared a specially adapted council bungalow on a very nice estate, but Kate always talked as if I was dragged up in a slum and had made some giant social leap by getting engaged to a member of the teaching profession.

‘Oh, forget it,’ I snapped.

‘No, you can’t just leave it there without telling me how you found out and why you didn’t report it to the police,’ she insisted.

‘Because I thought it had stopped. It was before last Christmas, when I was packing special orders one evening and my boss and I were the only people there. There was a phone call and I walked into his office to tell him—’

‘I have wondered about those late nights, just the two of you …’ she said suggestively.

I stared at her in astonishment. ‘You don’t mean you thought I was having a fling with Harry Briggs ? I mean, apart from his being twenty years older than me and not my type, I’m in love with Jeremy and wouldn’t dream of cheating on him.’

‘Well, you have to admit it looked a bit odd.’

‘I don’t see why. Harry said I had the nicest handwriting for the personal messages that went in the box with the champagne and chocolates, and I was the most careful packer for the expensive orders.’

It was a pity, I thought, that those had turned out to be the fraudulent ones.

‘Jeremy said you started doing casual evening packing work there while your mother was still alive,’ she said. ‘Harry paid you cash in hand.’

‘Yes, because luckily our lovely neighbour was always happy to sit with Mum in the evenings for a couple of hours and the money was useful. A carer’s allowance doesn’t go very far.’

‘I suppose not,’ she said disinterestedly. ‘But go on, you walked into Harry’s office and then …?’

‘He was sticking labels onto bottles, which seemed odd, but he explained that sometimes they got damaged and then he had to replace them.’

‘And you believed that?’ she asked pityingly. ‘You think it’s that easy to get hold of extra labels?’

‘Not when I’d thought about it a bit, especially since it was the most expensive champagne we stocked. Most of what we sell isn’t actually champagne, it’s Prosecco, but that’s made clear on the website.’

‘So, did you say anything to him at the time?’