Since You've Been Gone

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my boys, who I love more than snow

Thanks always to Jimmy Kay, for giving me the freedom to try new shoes and for dusting me off when I stumble.

To Radley Bo and Lochleberry Wolf, for stoically surviving weeks of pizza and computer games while mummy learned to type with more than two fingers—we’ll be back to vegetables and homework soon boys, hold on!

To Tarien, for your calm, and Mena, for your crazy.

I love you.

Thanks immensely to all of my family—Clans Knight, Howell and Charles—who have been quick to encourage and slow to criticise.

To my rambunctious friends—you know who you are—for laughing with me, at me and for me; I’m told you can choose ‘em … thank you for choosing me.

To my editor, The Don, for your insight and guidance, and for cracking a very scary whip with a gentle hand. Thanks a mill; you’ve been incredible.

To the inimitable Jackie Collins and the super-sassy Victoria (The) Fox—along with the powers that be at Harlequin (UK) Ltd, Mills & Boon and ITV—for opening this door to us. Thank you all so much.

And to all of those who I should know to thank and shamefully haven’t—I’m a rookie! I’m sorry! Thank you!

Finally, to Gertie and Egg Man and your unequivocal faith in me. Thank you. I love you.

CHAPTER 1

It was supposed to be a day off. He’d promised me he wouldn’t be gone long. He just needed to check that the lads were behaving themselves, staying safe; he didn’t want to be writing up any more incidents of severed anythings for a while, and that meant keeping on top of them. I’d promised to make his favourite, lemon and basil linguine, and he’d promised to be home on time, before it had chance to spoil.

I looked down at the cool clagging mess of pasta I’d been pushing around the plate in front of me and tried not to feel abandoned. I automatically set my knife and fork neatly on top, handles parallel in the four o’clock position as was appropriate for a meal finished, and wondered again why the hell I bothered.

Table manners were one of those ironies, superfluous to those who for the most part ate with company who really didn’t care whether elbows were on the table or not.

My mother Pattie had drilled them into us when we were kids, and would be less than impressed to see her little girl roughing it out over the breakfast bar instead of using any one of the twelve redundant dining chairs. Catching wind of how often I ate over the sink would be enough to trigger her mouth to twitch.

The tic of disapproval—I’d seen that a few times.

We all knew that my mother had endured a life of discomfiture, not quite able to keep up with her friends on my father’s average income. She loved him, we knew that too—how could she not?—but my mother hadn’t resisted overcompensating by raising Martha and me as though we were enrolled in some sort of finishing school, prepping us for the best chances of bagging ourselves a lawyer or doctor—anyone, in fact, with means. She thought little girls should be ladylike, grow up to find husbands who could provide them with a good standard of living, therefore guaranteeing their happy ever after.

But I know all about those.

With my sister Martha, Mum’s strategy had largely stuck, although Martha had been deft enough to find a lawyer with a big heart. But when I’d first seen Charlie, loading logs onto his boss’s truck, sun-kissed forearms flexing from underneath his forest-issue jacket, and absolutely no concept of how attractive he was, I knew right then who my table manners were for.

Mum had warned me that Charlie was rough around the edges; unrefined, she’d said, with too much charm for his own good. That twenty-five was too young to get married—to a forester at least—and that it would all end in tears.

She’d been right. Charlie had a lot to be sorry for these days.

I watched as flecks of basil cemented themselves to the plate in front of me.

I needed to call my parents.

I hadn’t spoken to them for nearly three weeks and I was supposed to keep them updated on the size of Martha’s ankles. Being twenty-seven didn’t afford me much respite from my mother’s rightness, but thankfully the three hour flight between the UK and their retirement home on Menorca did.

The stool wobbled from under me as I slid from it and rounded the breakfast bar, plonking my things into the left of two adjacent Belfast sinks. We’d gone for his and hers, Mr Jefferson and I. Largely because I couldn’t stand it when Charlie barged into the kitchen with an armful of muddy veg, and partly—quietly—because there was an element of charm having two sinks sat side by side in front of the best view in the house. Those are the kinds of uncharacteristic decisions you make when you’re love drunk. That blissful time before the tears arrived.

I looked for more washing up on the worktops while water thrashed into the sink over the handful of items I’d deposited there. It was six forty-five.

Where is he? I wondered, squirting a generous dose of washing liquid into the steaming bowl. I’d called dinner already.