So Now You're Back
Halle Best, TV's Domestic Diva, is proud of everything she's achieved.Halle took her passion for baking and built her media empire alone after her ex Luke walked out on her sixteen years ago, leaving her a single mum to their two-year-old daughter Lizzie in a dingy flat in Hackney.Now a bona fide celebrity success, she only speaks to Luke via her lawyer. But as he is threatening to write a tell-all book exposing some of Halle's deepest secrets, keeping him at arm's length won't be so easy anymore.When Luke suggests a getaway to work through their past, Halle thinks he's crazy; if they can survive two weeks together it will be a miracle.Yet reconnecting with her past, could be the only way to start her future.
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HEIDI RICE’s first romance novel was published in 2007, followed by several international award nominated titles. So Now You’re Back is her commercial fiction debut.
To Rob, my hero.
Writing a book is supposed to be a solitary pursuit, until your publisher asks you to write the acknowledgements, and you suddenly realise how many other people got involved along the way. So here’s my chance to send big, shouty thank yous to just a few of those people … My husband Rob for his suggestion that I rip off Shakespeare when I couldn’t come up with a plot. My best mate Catri, who insisted we go to the Great Smokey Mountains for one of our US road trips. My best writing mate Abby Green, for telling me I so could write a longer book, over and over again until it stuck. My other great writing mates Fiona Harper, Iona Grey and Scarlet Wilson for consulting on everything from covers to sagging middles and dealing with my many, many anxiety attacks. To my editor Bryony Green for giving me revisions that made this story even better than I could make it on my own (the sulking was just for show, honest!). To the wonderful TonyB at Smokey Mountain Kayaking for his willingness to share his in-depth knowledge of kayaking and the Smokies. To culinary superstar Faenia Moore for her willingness to share her in-depth knowledge of baking and TV cookery shows. And finally to Anna Baggaley and everyone at Harlequin Mira for all your support on this, as it turns out, not at all lonely journey.
Table of Contents
Where ru Mum? Your late. AGAIN!!!
‘Bugger.’ Halle Best clicked furiously on the iPhone’s keypad as she shot out of the car park at St Pancras Station and crossed the loading bay.
There in 2 secs. Honest.
Magnifico-Multitask Mum strikes again, she thought triumphantly as she shoved the phone back in her bag. She kept her head down as the service tunnel at the back of the station led onto the strip of shops and cafés lining the route to the main concourse. Avoiding eye contact with members of the British public had become a habit in the past two years, because she’d discovered they only ever seemed to recognise her and want to waylay her for an autograph—or a chat about their latest baking disaster—when she was in a rush, chronically late or on a collision course with her daughter Lizzie’s prodigious temper. As all three defcon positions were currently in countdown mode, she absolutely could not risk it.
Darting past the YO! Sushi on her left and the ticket office on her right, she narrowly avoided a young mum with a pushchair while circumnavigating a group of backpack-toting foreign students going at a pace that would make a geriatric snail look like Usain Bolt.
She sucked in a couple of extra breaths, feeling winded as she hit the main thoroughfare.
Note to self: Get that bloody cross-trainer in the basement out of mothballs.
Raising her head to check her direction, she made eye contact with a sharply dressed office worker who sent her a don’t-I-know-you-from-somewhere smile. Halle returned it while shooting past on full steam before the woman figured out the answer.
She hated to be impolite or abrupt with people who recognised her. And up until two years ago, she had always been more than willing to stop and chat about collapsing soufflés or how to make the perfect choux pastry, because she’d gotten a major rush out of any kind of acknowledgement. She was still both humbled and chuffed to bits at any sign that people enjoyed and appreciated her Domestic Diva brand. But in the past twenty-four months, ever since The Best of Everything had moved from a morning slot on cable TV to an early evening slot on BBC Two and her third book—The Best on a Budget—had hit the bestseller charts, the attention had begun to interfere more and more with even Magnifico-Multitask Mum’s ability to keep all the plates in her life spinning.
Hence being a tiny bit tardy to collect her daughter from the Eurostar terminal after Lizzie’s four-day trip to Paris to visit her father. The production meeting had overrun, as it always did. But Halle thought she’d programmed in more than enough time to get from Soho to King’s Cross. And if it hadn’t been for that plonker trying to do a right turn in a no-right-turn zone outside the British Library, she so would have made it here in time. She mentally tucked her frustration away, pasting on what she hoped was her most competent and unflustered smile as she spotted her daughter, slumped glumly on one of the benches by the Eurostar exit, with her boots perched on her suitcase, her iPod earbuds in and her smartphone out as she texted furiously—probably about what an arsewipe her mum was to all her friends on Facebook.
