A Summer of Secrets Read Free

ploughed on regardless. Even persistent negative thoughts – that she might not be manning the stand; that he didn’t even know her name; that she could be married with three kids; and that she probably hadn’t given him a second thought since their one and only meeting – didn’t deter him.
    By the time he arrived at his destination, he’d been both mentally and physically exhausted. But the moment their eyes met, and her beautiful face lit up, he forgot all about the harrowing journey; all about the mental anguish. It had, he knew instantly, all been worth it.
    ‘Hi,’ she said, those incredible green eyes twinkling. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you here. I checked the attendees, but your company wasn’t listed.’
    ‘I’m not here on business,’ Rich informed her.
    ‘Oh?’ A slight flush touched her smooth, creamy cheeks.
    ‘I came to see you.’
    At which point her extremely kissable mouth broke into a wide smile and Rich’s insides turned to semolina.
    They became a couple immediately after that and, even now, fifteen years on, Rich still considered his wife the sexiest female on the planet. And a terrific businesswoman. They’d started Bubbles from scratch and, within the first year, had blasted to smithereens all of his meticulously considered financial predictions. Add to the mix his adorable six-year-old daughter, Bethany – a smaller version of Alison – and life was good. Or at least it had been.
    Until two days ago.
    When a nineteen-year-old girl appeared in the showroom.
    With news Rich could never have predicted.

Chapter Two
    ‘This tea’s cold’.
    Jenny Rutter opened her mouth to point out to her mother that the tea wouldn’t have been cold had she drank it within the first ten minutes of Jenny setting down the cup alongside her. But she promptly clamped her lips shut again. Arguing with Phyllis Rutter, she had long since concluded, was a pointless exercise. At eighty-eight, the woman was still as sharp – and as cutting – as a bacon-slicer; could surpass any politician in the oratory field; and was so set in her ways she made a block of concrete seem pliable. But by far Phyllis’s most distinguishing trait was that, whatever the subject matter – and however well or badly informed she was thereof – she always,
always
, had to have the last word.
    So, rather than stating the obvious, Jenny sucked in a calming breath and, on the exhalation, calmly asked, ‘Would you like me to make you another cup?’
    Phyllis gave a derisive sniff. ‘Don’t put so much milk in it,’ she sniped, without taking her eyes off the evening TV quiz show Jenny had heard so many times, she could recite the presenter’s banter off-pat.
    Jenny picked up the lukewarm drink and wandered into the kitchen, heading straight for the biscuit barrel. Removing the lid, she picked out a chocolate-coated digestive and, as she munched it, tried not to dwell on the fact that, unless something drastic happened to change the status quo of her life, she could be listening to exactly the same banal banter, from exactly the same TV presenter, at exactly the same time of day, for years to come. She had, rather depressingly, been attempting not to dwell on the same fact for the last thirty years.
    Jenny had made a relatively late appearance in her parents’ lives. Married for almost twenty years, any reproductive hopes the Rutters might once have harboured had long since evaporated by the time their daughter bowled into the world. To describe her arrival as something of a shock, therefore, was akin to describing Niagara Falls as a steady drip.
    And it was a shock from which they seemingly never recovered. Landed with this small being, they appeared dumbfounded as to her origin, and even more dumbfounded as to her purpose. Her intrusion into their well-ordered lives was immediately lodged in the Resentment category; something Jenny had become aware of when she was scarcely out of nappies.
    Of course, Jenny was also aware