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Something Old, Something New
Darcie Boleyn
A heartwarming, giggle-inducing romance from Darcie Boleyn, just in time for the wedding season!Will you marry me…again?When Annie Thomas agrees to give her ex away at his wedding to his boyfriend, she thinks she’ll be fine. With her three children at her side, she can handle anything. Then she finds out her gorgeous first ex-husband Evan Llewellyn is flying in from his glamorous life in New York to attend as well!An unexpected pregnancy ended their relationship and as she stumbles through the ups and downs of life as a working single mum – helping everyone else find a happy ending along the way – Annie refuses to believe their old and incredibly hot spark can still exist.It’s only when she and Evan are forced to face up to the past together that they’ll discover if they can have their own happily-ever-after too!Praise for Darcie Boleyn:‘A beautiful and heartwarming tale, that really tugged at my heart strings…a delightful debut novel from Darcie Boleyn.’ ― Gilbster (Top 1000 Amazon Reviewer)‘The sort of book you want to read on a cold winters night, put on your fluffy pyjamas, grab a hot chocolate and immerse yourself in the delights of Wish upon a Christmas Cake.’ ― The Book Review Café‘What a gorgeously delicious book this is! It just makes me wish I was reading it by a roaring fire, with snow outside on the ground and a plate full of mince pies beside me!’ ― Goodreads Review‘Wish Upon a Christmas Cake is very much a story of loss and true love with a sprinkling of Christmas thrown in for good measure.’ ― By The Letter Book Reviews
Will you marry me… again?
When Annie Thomas agrees to give her ex away at his wedding to his boyfriend, she thinks she’ll be fine. With her three children at her side, she can handle anything. Then she finds out her gorgeous first ex-husband Evan Llewellyn is flying in from his glamorous life in New York to attend as well!
An unexpected pregnancy ended their relationship and as she stumbles through the ups and downs of life as a working single mum – helping everyone else find a happy ending along the way – Annie refuses to believe their old and incredibly hot spark can still exist.
It’s only when she and Evan are forced to face up to the past together that they’ll discover if they can have their own happily-ever-after too!
Also by Darcie Boleyn (#ulink_df33abd6-eaf6-515b-9c8f-cf2c374104b8)
Wish Upon a Christmas Cake
Something Old, Something New
Darcie Boleyn
Copyright (#ulink_778fd4ab-0df9-5471-950d-1a7b8884b898)
HQ
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2016
Copyright © Darcie Boleyn 2016
Darcie Boleyn asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for 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, 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 HarperCollins.
E-book Edition © June 2016 ISBN: 9781474047487
Version date: 2018-06-20
DARCIE BOLEYN
has a huge heart and is a real softy. She never fails to cry at books and movies, whether the ending is happy or not. She loves to travel and is happiest in the snow with a pair of skies strapped to her feet. Darcie is in possession of an overactive imagination that often keeps her awake at night. She always wanted to be a Jedi but she hasn’t yet found suitable transport to take her to a galaxy far, far away. She also has reservations about how she’d look in a gold bikini, as she rather enjoys red wine, cheese and loves anything with ginger or cherries in it – especially chocolate. She fell in love in New York, got married in the snow, rescues uncoordinated greyhounds and can usually be found reading or typing away on her laptop. Darcie loves to hear from readers, you can follow her on Twitter at: @DarcieBoleyn
Contents
Cover (#ufbd2ccc7-9bbe-503a-901c-b9e95ff863e6)
Blurb (#u8183a78e-ce99-58a4-8f3b-42b21fe7e06d)
Book List (#u65af4952-3dc7-5ac1-b046-89c38ea9061d)
Title Page (#u27d45ea3-90c2-5668-a261-6b9ae70b0c38)
Copyright (#uba073dae-b5f2-5419-b5fd-d6e4242884c8)
Author Bio (#ua7ba14de-ca7d-5649-8dbf-26215f5c616c)
Acknowledgement (#u0d6fc600-cca6-5757-90bf-9589a81049c4)
Dedication (#uf9feefbc-80aa-5510-9b35-3b1e53af030b)
Chapter One (#u5d99fc08-45ee-5bf1-ad51-0c5dcf9d5ad6)
Chapter Two (#uf911795a-5b88-5761-8f3f-7ce8ea51ce88)
Chapter Three (#u4b48ed95-69cf-5dcc-ae53-24f0137d116b)
Chapter Four (#u290a0306-2d66-5827-9681-db9252bbbfb1)
Chapter Five (#u77d4e9cb-5099-5509-bc6f-03c2eaeac608)
Chapter Six (#ue6bfab6d-1b96-537f-b38c-a4fdbb3419d4)
Chapter Seven (#ucfa6eaa7-a441-59bf-9802-adae937f9d43)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Excerpt (#litres_trial_promo)
Endpages (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Thanks as always to my nine. I love you all so much and I am so proud of you!
Huge thanks to my editor Charlotte Mursell, for your patience and encouragement, especially when I thought I needed to start all over again!
To my fellow Carina authors, thanks for answering my many questions during research, writing and editing, and for your support and friendship.
To the authors, readers and bloggers I interact with daily – you guys are stars!
Love,
Darcie xxx
For LK, with love.
XXX
Chapter One (#ulink_ec703b47-df14-5d55-a93c-da7334c4b198)
Dog Poo Divorce
Coffee. Check.
Fresh air to clear head after last night’s leftover Christmas Shiraz. Check.
Dogs in the garden for morning poo. Check.
So here I am, shivering on the back doorstep early on a Sunday morning. It’s cold but dry for once. Dawn is breaking on the horizon and… wait, okay, I can’t see the horizon because of the six-foot fence and the house behind mine, but the English teacher in me is being poetic.
The sky is a beautiful shade of red and… okay, it’s not really dawn either. It’s eight-thirty but it does feel really early. On a weekday, I’m used to being up at five-thirty and I begin hurtling through the day until I flop exhausted on the sofa at nine p.m., yet on Saturday and Sunday, rising any time before ten o’clock feels early.
Perhaps it has something to do with the wine haze this morning. In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have finished off the bottle, but then, I don’t drink through the week – well, not every day anyway – and is one glass after a hard day at work actually binge drinking? So I feel entitled to a glass or two at the weekend. I rarely go out anywhere so wine and chocolate tend to be my little treats. The trouble with red wine is that it just sends me off to sleep so quickly. It’s a legal and easy way to get hold of a sedative. Besides, the youngest two are at their father’s this weekend and my eldest, well, she was busy studying.
Janis turned seventeen last summer and has her A-levels coming up in May and June. She tells me she’s studying and I hope that she’s being honest. It’s so important to me that Janis succeeds, that she doesn’t follow in my errant footsteps and make the same mistakes. I know I’m lucky in that Janis is fairly sensible. She’s always had an old head on her shoulders. I wonder sometimes if it’s because I had her so young, as if nature sought to compensate for my youth and naivety by giving me a wise baby. After all, she got ten A* grades at GCSE. She’s bright and she works hard. She’ll be fine with the jump to A-level, I’m sure. She is, sadly, going through a bit of a phase regarding me and I seem to irritate her more than I used to, but I’m hoping that it’s just hormones and possibly tiredness from all the studying, and that she’ll soon adore me in the way she always used to – before she turned into a serious teenager.
My attention is dragged to my two British bulldogs Dragon and Fairy Princess. Yes, interesting names for pets dogs but Henry named one and Anabelle the other.
What on earth is that?
Dragon has just divested himself of the BIGGEST poop in the world – please excuse my vulgarity, talking about dog faeces, but when you have three children, no subject is taboo – and…
Oh no, not again! There’s something white and stringy in it.
Eek!
Worms.
Shit!
Literally.
I jump up and down on the spot, forgetting my half-full cup of coffee, which spills over my fluffy white dressing gown. I just get squeamish at the thought of parasites, especially with young children around. I’ve seen the warning posters at the doctor’s surgery about dog poo and how young children can get it into their eyes and go blind, or pick up worm eggs that they then digest and…
I approach the offending pile, which steams mockingly in the cool morning air, for a closer inspection. I don’t want to do this but as the responsible adult of the house I have to. I mean, who else would do it? Who else would mow the grass, sort the recycling and take the rubbish out? I brush away the cloud of loneliness before it can engulf me. I’ve no time for self-pity, especially not today.
I hold my breath as I lean forwards.
Yes, there is indeed a long white stringy thing wound into the mocha swirl. But part of it is sticking out of the top and waving in the breeze. And… is that writing?
I glance around the garden, looking for a tool, something to probe the smelly pile with. Dragon watches me, his big pink tongue hanging out of his wide mouth as he dons his happy face. I hope he doesn’t think that this is a game. His stubby tail wiggles with excitement. I shoot him a warning glance. He raises his eyebrows in the way that only bulldogs can, then hurries off to sniff Fairy Princess’s behind.
So…
An abandoned lollipop stick on the step of the moss-covered plastic playhouse attracts my attention. That will be my weapon of choice.
I crouch next to the brown swirl of stinky matter, well aware that I will have to clean this up before the kids come out here, and assess how best to extract the worm. Or whatever it is masquerading as a worm. But worms don’t have writing on them, do they? So it’s not worms. I sigh with relief.
But then, if it’s not worms, what has my dog eaten?
I roll up my sleeves.
Here we go.
I wiggle the stick into Dragon’s waste and lift out the white material. Yes; it’s definitely paper, and if I’m not mistaken, it’s… ‘Dragon!’
