The One Winter Collection
Abonelik- Hacim: 2050 sayfa. 4 illüstrasyonlar
- Tür: yabancı kurgu, yabancı aşk romanları, kısa aşk romanları, modern yabancı edebiyat, erotik romanlarDüzetme
About the Authors
KANDY SHEPHERD swapped a fast-paced career as a magazine editor for a life writing romance. She lives on a small farm in the Blue Mountains near Sydney, Australia, with her husband, daughter, and a menagerie of animal friends. Kandy believes in love at first sight and real-life romance—they worked for her!
Kandy loves to hear from her readers. Visit her website at: www.kandyshepherd.com.
MARION LENNOX is a country girl, born on an Australian dairy farm. She moved on—mostly because the cows just weren’t interested in her stories! Married to a ‘very special doctor’, Marion writes for the Mills & Boon Medical Romance and Mills & Boon True Love lines. (She used a different name for each category for a while—readers looking for her past romance titles should search for author Trisha David as well.) She’s now had more than seventy-five romance novels accepted for publication.
In her non-writing life Marion cares for kids, cats, dogs, chooks and goldfish. She travels, she fights her rampant garden (she’s losing) and her house dust (she’s lost).
CARA COLTER lives in British Columbia with her partner, Rob, and eleven horses. She has three grown children and a grandson. She is a recent recipient of an RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award in the Love and Laughter category. Cara loves to hear from readers, and you can contact her or learn more about her through her website, www.cara-colter.com
SUSAN MEIER spent most of her twenties thinking she was a job-hopper—until she began to write and realised everything that had come before was only research! One of eleven children, with twenty-four nieces and nephews and three kids of her own, Susan has had plenty of real-life experience of watching romance blossom in unexpected ways. She lives in western Pennsylvania with her wonderful husband, Mike, three children and two overfed, well-cuddled cats, Sophie and Fluffy. You can visit Susan’s website at www.susanmeier.com.
ELLIE DARKINS spent her formative years as a committed bookworm devouring romance novels. After completing her English degree (which had Mills & Boon on the syllabus!) she decided to make a living from her love of books. As a writer and freelance editor her work now entails dreaming up romantic proposals, hot dates with alpha males and trips to the past with dashing heroes.
A busy wife and mother of three (two daughters and the family dog), DONNA ALWARD believes hers is the best job in the world: a combination of stay-at-home mum and romance novelist. An avid reader since childhood, Donna always made up her own stories. She completed her arts degree in English literature in 1994, but it wasn’t until 2001 that she penned her first full-length novel and found herself hooked on writing romance. Donna loves to hear from readers. You can contact her through her website, www.donnaalward.com, her page at www.myspace.com/dalward, or through her publisher.
New York Times bestselling author SHIRLEY JUMP didn’t have the will-power to diet, nor the talent to master under-eye concealer, so she bowed out of a career in television and opted instead for a career where she could be paid to eat at her desk—writing. At first, seeking revenge on her children for their grocery store tantrums, she sold embarrassing essays about them to anthologies. However, it wasn’t enough to feed her growing addiction to writing funny. So she turned to the world of romance novels, where messes are (usually) cleaned up before The End. In the worlds Shirley gets to create and control, the children listen to their parents, the husbands always remember holidays, and the housework is magically done by elves. To learn more, visit her website at www.shirleyjump.com.
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 romance novels, because writing is her passion, along with her family and church.
ALISON ROBERTS is a New Zealander, currently lucky enough to live near a beautiful beach in Auckland. She is also lucky enough to write for both the Mills & Boon Romance and Medical Romance lines. A primary schoolteacher in a former life, she is also a qualified paramedic. She loves to travel and dance, drink champagne and spend time with her daughter and her friends.
Reading and writing have always been a big part of BARBARA HANNAY’s life. She wrote her first short story at the age of eight for the Brownies’ writer’s badge. It was about a girl who was devastated when her family had to move from the city to the Australian Outback.
Since then, a love of both city and country lifestyles has been a continuing theme in Barbara’s books and in her life. Although she has mostly lived in cities, now that her family has grown up and she’s a full-time writer she’s enjoying a country lifestyle. Barbara records her country life in her blog, Barbwired, and her website is: www.barbarahannay.com.
The One Winter Collection
One Winter’s Day
Kandy Shepherd, Marion Lennox and Cara Colter
One Winter’s Night
Susan Meier, Ellie Darkins and Donna Alward
One Winter’s Sunset
Shirley Jump, Rebecca Winters and Cara Colter
One Winter’s Sunrise
Kandy Shepherd, Alison Roberts and Barbara Hannay
ISBN: 978-1-474-08572-4
THE ONE WINTER COLLECTION
A Diamond in Her Stocking © 2014 Kandy Shepherd Christmas Where They Belong © 2014 Marion Lennox Snowed in at the Ranch © 2012 Cara Colter The Twelve Dates of Christmas © 2014 Susan Meier Frozen Heart, Melting Kiss © 2014 Ellie Darkins A Cadence Creek Christmas © 2013 Donna Alward The Christmas Baby Surprise © 2013 Shirley Kawa-Jump, LLC Marry Me under the Mistletoe © 2013 Rebecca Winters Snowflakes and Silver Linings © 2013 Cara Colter Gift-Wrapped in Her Wedding Dress © 2015 Kandy Shepherd The Baby Who Saved Christmas © 2015 Alison Roberts A Very Special Holiday Gift © 2014 Barbara Hannay
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, 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 publisher.
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Version date: 2018-07-24
Version: 2020-03-02
MILLS & BOON
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Table of Contents
Cover
About the Authors
Title Page
Copyright
One Winter’s Day
A Diamond in Her Stocking
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
EPILOGUE
Christmas Where They Belong
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
Snowed in at the Ranch
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
EPILOGUE
One Winter’s Night
The Twelve Dates of Christmas
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EPILOGUE
Frozen Heart, Melting Kiss
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
A Cadence Creek Christmas
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
One Winter’s Sunset
The Christmas Baby Surprise
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
Marry Me under the Mistletoe
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
Snowflakes and Silver Linings
Dedication
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
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
EPILOGUE
One Winter’s Sunrise
Gift-Wrapped in Her Wedding Dress
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
The Baby Who Saved Christmas
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
A Very Special Holiday Gift
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EPILOGUE
About the Publisher
One Winter’s Day
A Diamond in Her Stocking
Kandy Shepherd
Christmas Where They Belong
Marion Lennox
Snowed in at the Ranch
Cara Colter
A Diamond in Her Stocking
Kandy Shepherd
To the A-team, Cathleen Ross, Elizabeth Lhuede
and Keziah Hill, with heartfelt thanks for the
friendship and support.
CHAPTER ONE
AS LIZZIE DUMONT looked around at the soon-to-open Bay Bites café, her new place of employment, she vowed she would never reveal how she really felt about the way her high-flying career as a chef had crash-landed into a culinary backwater like Dolphin Bay. Not when people here had been so kind to her.
She would put behind her the adrenalin rush of working at star-rated restaurants in the gastronomic capitals of Paris and Lyon. Give up the buzz of being part of the thriving restaurant scene in Sydney. Embrace the comparatively lowly life of a café cook.
Her sigh echoed around the empty café. Who was she kidding? That heady time in France had been the pinnacle of her career. But she’d been sinking in Sydney. Working shift after shift until past midnight in restaurant kitchens—no matter how fashionable the venues—had hardly been compatible with being a good parent to her five-year-old daughter, Amy.
With no family in Sydney to fall back on, and few friends because she’d lived in France for so long before her divorce, she’d struggled to give Amy a reasonable life. Drowning in debt, swimming against the current of erratic babysitter schedules and unreasonable rosters, after less than a year she’d been going under.
By the time her sister Sandy had approached her to manage the new café adjacent to Sandy’s bookshop, Lizzie had been on the edge of despair. She’d even been contemplating the unthinkable—letting Amy live permanently with her ex-husband Philippe in France.
Gratefully, she’d grabbed the lifeline Sandy had thrown her.
And here she was. Dolphin Bay was a rapidly growing resort town on the south coast of New South Wales, with a heritage-listed harbour and beautiful beaches. It was also, in her experience, a gastronomic wasteland—the only memorable meal she could ever remember eating was fish and chips straight from the vinegar-soaked wrapping.
But Sandy had offered her sanctuary and a new life with Amy. In return, Lizzie would throw herself wholeheartedly into making Bay Bites the best café on the south coast. Heck, why stop there? She would use her skills and expertise to make Bay Bites the best café in the country.
She let herself get the teeniest bit excited at the thought. After all, she would be in charge. No cranky head chef screaming insults at her. No gritting her teeth at an ill-chosen item on the menu she’d been forced to cook whether she’d liked it or not.
She continued her inspection, her spirits rising by the second. Sandy had done a wonderful job of the fit-out. The décor was sleek and contemporary but with welcome touches of whimsy. In particular, she loved the way the dolphin theme had been incorporated. Hand-painted tiles backed the service area. Carved wooden dolphins supported the wooden countertop and framed the large blackboard on the wall behind it where she would chalk up the daily specials.
There was still work to be done. Lots of it. Boxes were stacked around the perimeter of the café waiting for her to unpack. Large flat packages, wrapped in brown paper, were propped against the walls. She itched to get started.
But someone had started the unpacking. Outsized glass jars were already lined up at the other end of the counter to the cash register, their polished chrome lids glinting in the late afternoon sun that filtered through the plate glass windows that faced the view of the harbour.
She could envisage the jars already filled with her secret recipe cookies. Nearby was the old-fashioned glass-fronted rotating cabinet for cakes and pies she’d asked Sandy to order. The equipment in the kitchen was brand new. It was perfect. She would make this work.
Lizzie ran her hand along the wooden countertop, marvelling at the intricacy of the carved dolphins, breathing in the smell of fresh varnish and new beginnings.
‘Those dolphins are kinda cool, aren’t they?’ The deep masculine voice from behind her made her spin around. She recognised it immediately.
But the shock of seeing Jesse Morgan stride through the connecting doorway from Bay Books next door expelled all the breath from her lungs. Her heart started to hammer so hard she had to clutch her hands to her chest to still it.
Jesse Morgan. All six foot three of him: black-haired, blue-eyed, movie-star handsome. Jesse Morgan of the broad shoulders and lean hips; of honed muscles accentuated by white T-shirt and denim jeans. Jesse Morgan, who was meant to be somewhere far, far away from Dolphin Bay.
Why hadn’t someone warned her he was in town?
Lizzie’s sister was married to Jesse’s brother Ben. Six months ago, Jesse had been the best man and she the chief bridesmaid at Ben and Sandy’s wedding. Lizzie hoped against hope Jesse might have forgotten what had happened between them at the wedding reception.
One look at the expression in his deep blue eyes told her he had not.
She cringed all the way down to her sneaker-clad feet.
‘What are you doing here?’ she managed to choke out once she had regained use of her voice. She was aiming for nonchalance but it came out as a wobbly attempt at bravado.
‘Hello to you, too, Lizzie,’ he said with a Jesse-brand charming smile, standing there in her café as confident and sure of himself as ever. A confidence surely bred from an awareness that since he’d been a teenager he would always be the best-looking man in the room. But she noticed the smile didn’t quite warm his eyes.
She tried to backtrack to a more polite greeting. But she didn’t know what to say. Not when the last time they’d met she’d been passionately kissing him, wanting him so badly she’d been tempted to throw away all caution and common sense and go much further than kissing.
‘You gave me a fright coming in behind me like that,’ she said with a rising note of defensiveness to her voice. Darn it. That was a dumb thing to say. She didn’t want him to think he had any effect on her at all.
Which, in spite of everything, would be a total lie. Jesse Morgan exuded raw masculine appeal. It triggered a sudden rush of awareness that tingled right through her. Any red-blooded woman would feel it. Lots of red-blooded women had felt it, by all accounts, she thought, her lips thinning.
‘I didn’t mean to scare you,’ he said. ‘But Sandy told me you were in here. She sent me to give you a hand with the unpacking. I’ve made a start, as you can see.’
He took a step towards her. She scuttled backwards, right up against the countertop, cursing herself for her total lack of cool. She was so anxious to keep a distance between them she didn’t register the discomfort of the dorsal fin of the wooden dolphin pressing into her back.
It wasn’t fair a man could be so outrageously handsome. The Black Irish looks he’d inherited from his mother’s side gave him the currency he could have chosen to trade for a career as an actor or model. But he’d laughed that off in a self-deprecating way when she’d teased him with it.
Which had only made him seem even more appealing.
How very wrong could she have been about a man?
‘I only just got here from Sydney, after a four-hour drive,’ she said. ‘I...I haven’t really thought where to start.’
‘Can I get you a drink—some water, a coffee?’ he asked.
He sounded so sincere. All part of the act.
‘No, thank you,’ she said, regaining some of her manners now the shock of seeing him had passed. After all, he was her sister’s brother-in-law. She couldn’t just ask him to leave, the way she’d like to. ‘I stopped for a bite to eat on the way down.’
Despite herself she couldn’t help scanning his face to see what change six months had brought him. Heaven knew what change he saw in her. She felt all the stress of the last months had aged her way more than her twenty-nine years.
He, about the same age, looked as though a care had never caused his brow to furrow. His tan was deeper than when she’d last seen him, making his eyes seem even bluer. A day away from a shave, dark growth shadowed his jaw. His black hair was longer and curled around his ears. She remembered the way she had fisted her hand in his hair to pull him closer as she’d kissed him.
How could she have been so taken in by him?
She squirmed with regret. She’d known of his reputation. But one champagne had led to one champagne too many and all the tightly held resolutions she’d made after her divorce about having nothing to do with too-handsome, too-charming men had dissolved in the laughter and fun she’d shared with Jesse.
Was he remembering that night? How they’d found the same exhilarating rhythm dancing with each other? How, when the band had taken a break, they’d gone outside on the balcony?
She’d been warned that Jesse was a heartbreaker, a womaniser. But he’d been fun and there hadn’t been much fun in her life for a long time. It had seemed the most natural thing in the world to slip into his arms when he had kissed her in a private corner of the balcony lit only by the faintest beams of moonlight. His kiss had been magical—slow, sensuous, thrilling. It had evoked needs and desires long buried and she had given herself to the moment, not caring about consequences.
Then a group of other guests had pushed through the doors to the balcony with a burst of loud chatter, and broken the spell.
It had been the classic wedding cliché—the chief bridesmaid and the best man getting caught in a passionate clinch.
Lizzie cringed at the memory of those moments. The hoots and catcalls of the other guests as they’d discovered them kissing. ‘Jesse’s at it again,’ someone had called, laughing.
She’d never felt more humiliated. Not because of being caught kissing. They were both single adults who could kiss whomever they darn well pleased. She’d laughed that off. No. The humiliation was caused by the painful awareness she’d been seen as just another in a long line of Jesse’s girls. Girls he had kissed and discarded when the next pretty face had come along.
But, despite knowing that, it hadn’t stopped her from going back for more with Jesse that night. Why had she imagined he’d be any different with her?
What an idiot she’d been.
Now she cleared her throat, determined to make normal—if stilted—conversation; not to let Jesse know how shaken she was at seeing him again. How compellingly attractive she still found him.
‘Aren’t you meant to be gallivanting around the world doing good works? I thought you were in India,’ she asked. Jesse worked for an international aid organisation that built housing for the victims of natural disasters.
Jesse shook his head. ‘The Philippines this time. Rebuilding villages in the aftermath of a gigantic mudslide. Thousands of houses were destroyed.’
‘That must have been dangerous,’ she said. Jesse was a party guy personified, and yet his job took him to developing countries where he used his skills as an engineer to help strangers in need. She’d found that contradiction fascinating.
Just another way she’d been sucked into his game.
‘Dangerous and dirty,’ he said simply. ‘But that’s what we do.’
She shouldn’t feel a surge of relief that he had escaped that danger without harm. But she did. Though she told herself that was just because he was part of the extended family now. The black sheep, as far as she was concerned.
‘So you’re back here because...?’
‘The “good works” led to an injured shoulder,’ he said. He raised his broad right shoulder to demonstrate and in doing so winced. His so-handsome face contorted in pain and the blood drained, leaving him pale under his tan.
Her first reaction was to rush over and comfort him. To stroke his shoulder to help ease the pain. Or offer to kiss it better...
No! She forced her thoughts away from Crazyville. Gripped her hands tightly together so she wouldn’t be tempted. She was furious with herself. Wasn’t she meant to now be immune to his appeal?
Getting together with Jesse Morgan at the wedding had been like nibbling on just one square of a bar of fine Belgian dark chocolate and denying herself the rest even though she knew it would be utterly delicious. Quite possibly the best chocolate she had ever tasted.
But she prided herself on her willpower when it came to chocolate. And men who offered her nothing more than a fleeting physical thrill.
Her aim was to build a new life for her and Amy. She didn’t want a man around to complicate things. Not now. Maybe not ever. And if she did decide to date again it wouldn’t be with someone like Jesse Morgan. She’d been there, done that, with her good-looking charmer of an ex-husband who had let her down so badly.
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