www.millsandboon.co.uk

      HELEN BROOKS lives in Northamptonshire, and is married with three children and three beautiful grandchildren. As she is a committed Christian, busy housewife, mother and grandma, her spare time is at a premium, but her hobbies include reading, swimming and gardening, and walks with her husband and their two Irish terriers. Her long-cherished aspiration to write became a reality when she put pen to paper on reaching the age of forty and sent the result off to Mills & Boon.

       Recent titles by the same author:

      SWEET SURRENDER WITH THE MILLIONAIRE

      THE MILLIONAIRE’S CHRISTMAS WIFE

      THE BOSS’S INEXPERIENCED SECRETARY

      Chapter One

      SURELY the run-up to Christmas wasn’t meant to be like this? Driving rain, a bitter wind and everyone looking as though they could do murder. Children all over the world were opening the first little window of their Advent calendars today; there should be excitement and anticipation and a warm snuggly feeling for them at least, even if snow wasn’t provided.

      Rachel Ellington looked after the grim-faced mother with two screaming toddlers and a baby in a pushchair who had just elbowed her out of the way with such force it had hurt. And the harassed mother wasn’t the only one with a face like thunder. The pavement was full of sullen schoolchildren with huge bags and even huger attitude; power-dressed commuters of both sexes hunched against the spray from passing traffic as they used their umbrellas like weapons; and a group of students jostling each other in a manner that suggested a fight might break out as they waited in a bus queue that stretched for ever.

      Rachel glanced in the shop window she was passing and an enormous Father Christmas with a sack of gaily wrapped presents and a somewhat hideous grin stared back at her. It had been there since October, along with the fairy-lights and tinsel and Christmas tree.

      Of course, that was half the trouble. The TV advertisements and shops and all levels of commerce began to whip up seasonal jollity so far in advance that by the beginning of December it was all used up. She grimaced as she realized she sounded just like her mother. But it was true, she thought, trying to ignore the drips of freezing water trickling down her neck. She’d forgotten her umbrella this morning—again.

      She wouldn’t go as far as her mother, who advocated a return to the days when the tree was dressed and decorations put up not an hour before Christmas Eve, and children should be presented with a stocking containing an orange, apple and nuts, along with a shiny coin and one present only, but there was something to be said for the old days when the latest ‘must-have’ toy costing an arm and a leg had been unheard of. And when a man saying ‘I love you’ meant more than just a nicety before getting you into bed.

      She stood stock still as she realized what she’d just thought, causing major chaos for a moment as the people behind cannoned into her and each other.

      Where had that little piece of cynicism sprung from? she asked herself as she apologised all round and started walking again. She was over Giles, she had been for months. And after the first caustic, devastating weeks in the summer when she had felt the whole world knew she’d been taken for a fool by the man she’d thought she’d be spending the rest of her life with, she’d become aware Giles had hurt her pride more than her heart. Which had caused her a few more sleepless nights. How could she imagine herself madly in love to the point of accepting his proposal of marriage one minute, and then be glad he was out of her life the next? It was positively scary when you thought about it.

      Not that it had exactly been the next minute, she qualified silently. She’d endured a few hellish weeks before that had come about, crying herself to sleep each night and losing nearly a stone in weight, which had given her a scrawny alleycat look. Already too thin by her own estimation it had been the spur she’d needed to start eating again, and she’d indulged in chocolate éclairs and other calorie-packed treats by the bucketful until her modest curves were back. Jennie and Susan, her flatmates, had been green with envy, which had been infinitely preferable to their pity of the preceding weeks.

      As she turned off the main thoroughfare into the maze of side streets that eventually led to the tiny mews in Kensington where her flat was situated, a gust of wind and rain almost blew her off her feet. She normally enjoyed the brisk fifteen-minute walk home from the office but tonight was an ordeal. She should have travelled by tube but she had an aversion to the underground at the best of times, and a rainy December day with damp bodies steaming and lethal umbrellas by the hundreds definitely wasn’t the best of times to journey in one of the packed rush-hour trains.

      By the time she turned the key in the lock of the door of the downstairs flat she’d shared with her two best friends since the three of them had left university five years before, she was soaked to the skin. Her hair was plastered to her scalp, her mascara had run in rivulets down her cold cheeks and she was frozen to the marrow. She wanted nothing more than to lie in a scalding-hot bath for an hour with a glass of wine and a good book, and as she was always home long before Jennie and Susan, there was no reason she shouldn’t.

      She almost fell into the small square hall and stood for a moment with her eyes shut. Today had been a foul day altogether. After leaving university with a very acceptable 2.1 in business studies and marketing, she had obtained a post as assistant to the marketing manager of a fast-food chain. The pay was excellent and she knew her strengths were a keen awareness of client needs and a very good business sense, along with a natural flair for organising and planning. Unfortunately, on the latest project the sales team had failed to adequately follow up their part of the master plan, but due to a catalogue of half-truths and downright lies, it had been she who’d been left with egg on her face when the whole job had collapsed.

      Rachel pulled off her sodden coat and kicked off her shoes, the memory of her manager Jeff’s face when he’d taken her to task earlier that afternoon humiliatingly vivid. He’d been livid, having had a roasting from the managing director himself, and hadn’t listened to a word she’d said in her defence.

      She had entered the marketing world knowing promotion could be fast, but her chosen career was not for the faint-hearted: pressures were intense and security was mostly non-existent. She had been earmarked to take on Jeff’s role when he transferred to the northern branch of the company early in the new year, but whether that would happen now was anyone’s guess.

      She frowned fiercely. All in all, she wouldn’t be