Yuletide Reunion

Yuletide Reunion
Sharon Kendrik

Mills & Boon are proud to present a thrilling digital collection of all Sharon Kendrick’s novels and novellas for us to celebrate the publication of her amazing 100th book! Many of these books are available as e books for the first time.The perfect recipe for Christmas….When cook Clemmie Maxwell returned to her childhood home in Ashford with her two daughters and without her ex-husband, she wanted a fresh start. But her teenage crush, Aleck Cutler and his daughter, seem to have other ideas in mind.Clemmie’s never been able to forget the intense, intoxicating taste of the kiss they shared all those years ago, and her fragile heart isn’t quite ready to risk the independence she’s only just regained.But Clemmie’s about to discover that the only ingredients she needs to make the perfect Yuletide reunion are three children, one gorgeous, powerful man, and one gold ring!

Dear Reader (#u9cad53be-284f-58ba-ad1a-d1f86d7bd4c6),

One hundred. Doesn’t matter how many times I say it, I still can’t believe that’s how many books I’ve written. It’s a fabulous feeling but more fabulous still is the news that Mills & Boon are issuing every single one of my backlist as digital titles. Wow. I can’t wait to share all my stories with you - which are as vivid to me now as when I wrote them.

There’s BOUGHT FOR HER HUSBAND, with its outrageously macho Greek hero and A SCANDAL, A SECRET AND A BABY featuring a very sexy Tuscan. THE SHEIKH’S HEIR proved so popular with readers that it spent two weeks on the USA Today charts and…well, I could go on, but I’ll leave you to discover them for yourselves.

I remember the first line of my very first book: “So you’ve come to Australia looking for a husband?” Actually, the heroine had gone to Australia to escape men, but guess what? She found a husband all the same! The man who inspired that book rang me up recently and when I told him I was beginning my 100th story and couldn’t decide what to write, he said, “Why don’t you go back to where it all started?”

So I did. And that’s how A ROYAL VOW OF CONVENIENCE was born. It opens in beautiful Queensland and moves to England and New York. It’s about a runaway princess and the enigmatic billionaire who is infuriated by her, yet who winds up rescuing her. But then, she goes and rescues him… Wouldn’t you know it?

I’ll end by saying how very grateful I am to have a career I love, and to thank each and every one of you who has supported me along the way. You really are very dear readers.

Love,

Sharon xxx

Mills & Boon are proud to present a thrilling digital collection of all Sharon Kendrick’s novels and novellas for us to celebrate the publication of her amazing and awesome 100th book! Sharon is known worldwide for her likeable, spirited heroines and her gorgeous, utterly masculine heroes.

SHARON KENDRICK once won a national writing competition, describing her ideal date: being flown to an exotic island by a gorgeous and powerful man. Little did she realise that she’d just wandered into her dream job! Today she writes for Mills & Boon, featuring her often stubborn but always to-die-for heroes and the women who bring them to their knees. She believes that the best books are those you never want to end. Just like life…

Yuletide Reunion

Sharon Kendrick

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

Contents

Cover (#u9cad53be-284f-58ba-ad1a-d1f86d7bd4c6)

Dear Reader (#u5bb2ca38-c63d-5c58-a729-a0242fb301c6)

About the Author (#u37d59906-fa92-5f09-8836-69a4806d6ce0)

Title Page (#u50474d33-ec42-54ec-b991-5e7b31c3f961)

CHAPTER ONE (#ue8fc5e7a-b966-5d2f-9154-145aa451403f)

CHAPTER TWO (#u07491da8-d8d5-5fc3-9a28-9f15aaca206d)

CHAPTER THREE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ONE (#u9cad53be-284f-58ba-ad1a-d1f86d7bd4c6)

THE first time Clemmie saw Aleck Cutler, she knew she had to have him.

There was only one tiny obstacle in the way—he just happened to be dating someone else at the time.

Worse. He might only be eighteen years old, but apparently he was serious about the girl. Everybody said so. Very, very serious.

Clemmie didn’t believe them. Not at first. People didn’t get married at eighteen, for goodness’ sake, so it couldn’t be that serious, could it? Okay, people could fall in love at eighteen, but they didn’t generally get married. What would be the point?

And anyway, Clemmie thought, staring hard at her fountain pen. He couldn’t possibly be in love with Alison Fleming, even if he thought he was. Because that wasn’t part of Clemmie’s life plan. He was going to fall in love with her, just as she had fallen love with him the first time she saw him. When he had held the door open for her and said, ‘Hi,’ his greeny-blue eyes crinkling at the corners as he gave her the most irresistible smile imaginable.

It was like being touched by magic—there was no other way to describe it. And if Aleck hadn’t realised yet what was as obvious to Clemmie as the writing on the wall—namely, that they were made for each other—well, he soon would!

Clemmie gave a great sigh as she glanced down at the open textbook in front of her. She was bored; that was the trouble. She had been bored for a whole month—ever since she had joined the sixth-form of Ashfield High. A month of trying to get used to a new house, a new town, new school, new stepfather...

Clemmie bit her lip and picked up her pen to write, but found herself unable to concentrate and put it down again almost immediately. She stared out of the window across the school playing fields. It wasn’t as though she didn’t like her stepfather—she did. Dan was a good man, who loved her mother, and her mother deserved that love. Clemmie’s father had died when she was little, and it had been a real struggle for her mother. It was just...

Clemmie sighed once more as she retied the ribbon at the end of one thick, shiny plait. Did the two of them have to be quite so ecstatic about each other all the time, and in front of her?

It wasn’t that they were constantly pawing at each other, or kissing, or anything like that. Just that sometimes the way her mother gazed at Dan, and the way that he gazed back at her—well, it just made Clemmie think she shouldn’t even be in the same building, let alone the same room!

The school was fine, too, if she was being honest, and much more relaxed than the city school she had been used to in London. It had a good academic reputation and it wasn’t too big, though it had lots of playing fields where you could walk at lunchtime and lose your soul up into the sky. And the other girls in her year were friendly. The boys, too, thought Clemmie, wincing; some of them had been very friendly.

Except for Aleck Cutler, of course.

Apart from that one blinding smile on her first day, he had remained cool and polite and indifferent.

He was in the year above Clemmie, and the unrivalled star of the school. He was the kind of person you wanted to hate because he was so perfect, but ended up sighing over. He loved sport and hated books, but he had the best grades in his year. He never showed any personal vanity whatsoever—in fact, he never seemed to bother what he looked like—yet he never looked anything other than thoroughly delectable, whatever he was doing. Covered in mud and wearing a pair of short-shorts, he attracted large audiences of swooning schoolgirls who normally couldn’t tell one end of a rugby ball from the other!

He lived on his parents’ farm on the edge of Ashfield, and he worked there every weekend and all through the holidays—and the hard, physical work made him fitter and tougher than anyone else of his age.

He was wonderful in just about every way, Clemmie had decided. In fact, there was only one blot on the landscape, and that was Alison Fleming, his girlfriend.

Clemmie had found out as much as she could without seeming too obvious. The facts were simple. Aleck had been going out with Alison Fleming for six months, and in that time he had not looked at another female. Worse was to follow. Alison Fleming was very beautiful, with pale, turquoise eyes and a mass of honey-coloured hair which always hung in an immaculate gleaming bell to her shoulders.

Clemmie did everything in her power to get Aleck to notice her, motivated by a deviousness she’d been unaware she possessed. She hung around unobtrusively until she saw him leave the building—with or without Alison—and then she would saunter along home on the opposite side of the road, with her long red-brown hair flying wildly and her skirt rolled over twice at the waistband so that it showed yards of long, stockinged leg.

She joined the School Debating Society, of which he was the Chairperson. The only problem being that whenever he was in the room all Clemmie’s brilliantly thought-out arguments went straight out of her head, and she stared at him, totally tongue-tied. It certainly put her off a career in public speaking!

But as time went on, and the end of the year approached, Clemmie gradually began to accept that maybe the love affair she longed for just wasn’t meant to be. Aleck would be leaving soon, and going off to university. And not alone either—but with Alison. He obviously just wasn’t interested in any other girl. Although sometimes, sometimes, Clemmie could have sworn that she had seen him giving her a hard, slanting look from beneath the dark lashes which shaded those amazing blue-green eyes of his.

It might have all died a quiet death had it not been for the night of the Summer Ball on the last night of term, which was thrown in honour of all those who were leaving the school. Clemmie didn’t particularly want to go—seeing Aleck for the last time, with his arms draped around Alison, would be like subjecting herself to the most awful form of torture.