HarperImpulse an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2014
Copyright © Debbie Johnson 2014
Cover images © Shutterstock.com
Debbie Johnson 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.
Ebook Edition © November 2014
ISBN: 9780007594559
Version 2018-02-15
Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.
Jimmy Choo’s finest. Pleated white satin. Four inch heels. £500 a pop. For that, you’d expect them to be waterproof, thought Leah Harvey. Or at least to come with jet packs so she could fly out of this godforsaken frozen wasteland, and off to the nearest hotel. Ideally one with a spa, hot and cold running chocolate and Greek god waiters who hand-feed you peeled grapes.
Instead, she was here. In the snow. On Christmas Eve. In the middle of Scottish countryside so remote even the bloody sheep looked like they’d need a sat nav to find their way home.
The lights on the dashboard flickered on and off, casting a final ghostly neon glow before fading into nothingness. She turned the key in the lifeless ignition for the fifteenth time; held her frozen hands in front of the now defunct heating vents, and swore. Long, loud, and with such creative use of foul language that eventually she honked the horn to drown herself out. A self-imposed bleep machine to hide the fact she could make a flotilla of sailors blush.
She undid her seatbelt, noticed that the elegant satin of her ivory dress was now crushed and creased beyond redemption. Not that it mattered. It’s not like she’d be using that particular piece of haute couture again.
Climbing out of the cocoon of the car, her feet immediately sank ten inches into freezing cold snow. Her bare shoulders shook with cold, and her fingers and toes decided they weren’t even connected to her body as the chill factor took hold. More swearing. This time without the bleep machine. Nearby foxes were probably holding their paws over their cubs’ ears.
Great, she thought, turning round to kick the broken-down piece-of-crap car that belonged to her cheating bastard husband-to-be, scuffing the Jimmy Choos in the process. Just great. The perfect end to a perfect day. A gust of icy wind howled up the skirt of her dress, frost nipping at places it had no right to be. Not on the first date, at least. She should be wearing bearskin in weather like this, not a skimpy stretch of silk masquerading as underwear.
She had two choices, Leah decided, teeth chattering loud enough to turn her into a one-woman percussion section. Option One: stay in the car. Wait for help that might never come, as nobody had a clue where she was. Including her. Freeze overnight, and potentially get pecked to death by starving crows she’d be too weak to fight off. The only things left of her would be satin stilettos and her engagement ring.
Option Two: do a Captain Oates and head off across the field to the light she could just about see in the distance. A light must mean habitation, which must mean a human being. Possibly a psychopathic serial killer, or maybe a sex-starved sheep farmer planning Christmas dinner with his collection of blow-up dolls, which, she decided, hitching up the soggy hem of her gown, was still preferable to the crows-pecking-out-eyeballs scenario. She headed for the light.
As she trudged through the fields of snow, she conjured up a playlist of Christmas songs in her head to try and cheer herself up. Or at least help her resist the urge to simply lie down in the ice and sleep. Feed the World. Santa Claus is Coming to Town. Chestnuts Roasting On an Open Fire. Merry Christmas, Everyone…Yeah, right, she thought, slinging her bag over her shoulder and continuing the slow, painful trek to her saviour.