Mills & Boon Showcase - Christy McKellen Mills & Boon e-Book Collections

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      It was a rhetorical question she wished she hadn’t uttered as soon as she’d said it. But Ben just nodded.

      He picked up the photo frame and then put it back down again. ‘If you’re okay with it, I’ll keep it here.’

      ‘Of course,’ she said, speaking through a lump of emotion in her throat. ‘And I don’t expect you to keep photos of Jodi buried in a drawer while I’m around.’

      But, please, no photos of Liam on display. No way could she deal with that while she was dealing with the thought that if it worked out with Ben she would see the demise of her dream of having her own kids.

      ‘She was a big part of my life. I’m glad you don’t want to deny that.’

      ‘Of course I recognise that. Like...like she did about me.’

      She looked again at the long-ago photo and wondered how Jodi had felt when she’d seen it. How sensible Jodi had been not to deny Ben his past. She had to do the same. But there was still that nagging doubt.

      ‘I still can’t help but wonder if I can compete with the memory of someone so important to you.’

      He cupped her chin with his big scarred hands. ‘As I said before, it’s not a competition. You’re so different. She was the safe harbour, calm waters. You’re the breaking waves, the white-water excitement.’

      ‘Both calm waters and breaking waves can be good,’ she said, understanding what he meant and feeling a release from her fears. She hoped she, too, could at times become a safe harbour for him.

      If she were to carry the wave analogy to its conclusion, Jason had been the dumper wave that had started off fast and exciting and then crashed her, choking and half drowning, onto the hard, gritty sand.

      But what she felt for Ben defied all categorisation. He was both safe harbour and wild wave, and everything else she wanted, in one extraordinary man. And she longed to be everything to him.

      But she couldn’t tell him that. Not yet. Not until the three days were over.

      ‘How long until you have to be back at the shop?’ Ben asked.

      ‘How long do we need?’ she murmured as she slid her arms around his waist and kissed him.

      CHAPTER FOURTEEN

      SANDY TURNED THE ‘Back in One Hour’ sign—it had stretched to one and a half hours—so it read ‘Open’ and dashed into the shop. She spent a few minutes fixing her hair and make-up so the next contingent of too-interested ladies who came in wouldn’t immediately guess how she’d spent her lunch hour. Wouldn’t that make the Dolphin Bay grapevine hum...?

      But customers were few—maybe she wasn’t such a novelty any more. Or maybe, because it was such a hot day, people would rather be on the beach. She lifted her hair from her neck to cool it. It was warm in here today, despite her fiddling with the air-conditioning controls.

      In the lull, after a lady had been seeking the latest celebrity chef cookbook and a man had wanted a history of the Dolphin Bay fishing fleet, she pulled out her fairy notebook. The glitter shimmered onto the countertop. It was time to revisit her thirtieth birthday resolutions.

      She read them through again, with her Hotel Harbourside pen poised to make amendments.

      1. Get as far away from Sydney as possible while remaining in realms of civilisation and within reach of a good latte.

      Tick.

      Dolphin Bay was four hours away from Sydney, and Ben’s hotel café did excellent coffee. But her stay depended on a rekindled relationship of uncertain duration.

      2. Find new job where can be own boss.

      Tick.

      The possibility of owning Bay Books exceeded the ‘new job’ expectations. She scribbled, Add gift section to bookshop—enquire if can be sub-franchisee for candles.

      But, again, the possible job depended entirely on her relationship with Ben. She wouldn’t hang around in Dolphin Bay if they kissed goodbye for good on Wednesday.

      She hesitated when she came to resolution number three. As opposed to the flippy thing, her heart gave a painful lurch.

      3. Find kind, interesting man with no hang-ups who loves me the way I am and who wants to get married and have three kids, two girls and a boy.

      She’d found the guy—though he came with hang-ups aplenty—and maybe he was the guy on whom she’d subconsciously modelled the brief. But as for the rest of it....

      Could she be happy with just two out of three resolutions fulfilled? How big a compromise was she prepared to make?

      Now her heart actually ached, and she had to swallow down hard on a sigh. Children had always been on the agenda for her—in fact she’d never imagined a life that didn’t include having babies. Then her mother’s oft-repeated words came to mind: ‘You can’t have everything you want in life, Alexandra.’

      She put down her pen, then picked it up again. Channelled ‘Sunny Sandy’. Two out of three was definitely a cup more than half full. Slowly, with a wavering line of ink, she scored through the words relating to kids, then wrote: If stay in DB, ask Maura about puppy. She crossed out the word ‘puppy’ and wrote puppies.

      Unable to bear any further thoughts about shelving her dreams of children, she slammed the fairy notebook shut.

      As she did so the doorbell jangled. She looked up to see a very small person manfully pushing the door open.

      ‘Amy! Sweetpea!’

      Sandy flew around the counter and rushed to meet her niece, then looked up to see her sister, Lizzie, behind her. ‘And Lizzie! I can’t believe it.’

      Sandy greeted Lizzie with a kiss, then swept Amy up into her arms and hugged her tight. Eyes closed at the bliss of having her precious niece so close, she inhaled her sweet little-girl scent of strawberry shampoo and fresh apple.

      ‘I miss you, bub,’ she said, kissing Amy’s smooth, perfect cheek.

      ‘Miss you too, Auntie Ex.’

      Her niece was the only person who called her that—when she was tiny Amy hadn’t been able to manage ‘Alexandra’ and it had morphed into ‘Ex’, a nickname that had stayed.

      ‘But you’re squashing me.’

      ‘Oh, sorry—of course I am.’ Sandy carefully put her niece down and smoothed the fabric of Amy’s dress.

      Amy looked around her with wide eyes. ‘Where are the books for children?’ she asked.

      ‘They’re right over here, sweetpea. Are your hands clean?’

      Amy displayed a pair of perfectly clean little hands. ‘Yes.’

      ‘Then you can take books and look at them. There’s a comfy purple beanbag in the corner.’

      Amy settled herself with a picture book about a crocodile. Sandy had trouble keeping her eyes off her little niece. Had she grown in just the few days since they’d said goodbye in Sydney? Amy had been a special part of her life since she’d been born and she loved being an aunt. She’d looked forward to having a little girl just like her one day.

      Her breath caught in her throat. If she stayed with Ben no one would ever call her Mummy.

      ‘Nice place,’ said Lizzie, looking around her. ‘But what the heck are you doing here? You’re meant to be on your way to Melbourne.’

      ‘I could ask the same about you. Though it’s such a nice surprise to see you.’

      ‘Amy had a pupil-free day at school. I decided to shoot down here and see what my big sis was up to!’

      ‘I

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