Table of Contents

      Cover Excerpt About the Author The Crightons Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT EPILOGUE Copyright

       CHAPTER ONE

      JOSS saw her first. He was on his way back from visiting his great-aunt Ruth in her house on Church Walk and she was standing in the churchyard studying the headstones, her head bent over one of them, a tumble of thick, glossy blonde curls obscuring her face. When she looked up, alerted to his presence by the sound of a small twig cracking under his foot, Joss stared at her in open wonder and awe.

      She was tall, much much taller than him; at least six foot, he estimated.

      ‘And a couple of inches,’ she drawled in amusement as she watched the way he was assessing her height, ‘and then I guess you’d be somewhere roundabouts right. I-guess no one kinda likes to think of a woman being over six foot. Tell them you’re five-eleven, it’s okay and my, aren’t you lucky being so tall, but tell them you’re sixone going on six-two and they think you’re a freak. After all, what kinda right-thinking woman allows herself to grow too tall for most of your average guys.’

      ‘I don’t think you’re too tall,’ Joss told her gallantly, manfully squaring his own ten-year-old shoulders and looking up into her eyes.

      And what eyes they were, surely the deepest, darkest blue that ever was. Joss had never seen eyes like them before. He had never seen anyone like her before.

      She watched him gravely for a second before her mouth curled into a smile that made Joss’s insides turn to jelly and told him, ‘Why that’s mighty kind of you, but I guess I know what you’re really thinking ... that for a woman this tall finding a boy tall enough for me to look up to is kinda hard. Yes, well, you’re right,’ she went on with another dazzling smile, ‘and if you happen to know of any—’

      ‘I do,’ Joss told her quickly, already fiercely protective of her; already determined that no one should dare to criticise her or find her less than complete perfection, not even she herself. As he gazed at her, his eyes mirrored the intensity and immediacy of his first calf-love.

      Speculatively she hesitated, not wanting to hurt him and yet at the same time wary of any involvement that might deflect her from her purpose in being there.

      Haslewich might not be on any official tourist route like Chester, but she had been determined to visit it and, as yet, she had still not seen the remains of the castle and its wall, nor the newly sanitised salt-works that had recently been opened to the public as a tourist attraction, never mind the rest of the town’s historic sites. So far, in fact, all she had done was glance around the churchyard.

      ‘I’ve got two cousins,’ she heard Joss telling her. ‘Well, they aren’t exactly cousins,’ he acknowledged. ‘They’re really seconds, or maybe even thirds, I don’t know which. Aunt Ruth would know.

      ‘But anyway, James is six foot two and Luke is even taller and then there’s Alistair and Niall and Kit and Saul, too, I suppose, although he’s quite old—’

      ‘Gee...I’m really impressed,’ Bobbie interrupted him gently.

      ‘I could always introduce you to them,’ Joss offered enthusiastically. ‘That is, if you’re going to be here for a while...?’

      He let the question hang.

      ‘Well, that kinda depends. You see ... gee ... I’m sorry but I don’t know your name. We haven’t introduced ourselves yet, have we? I’m Bobbie, short for Roberta,’ she told him whilst inwardly acknowledging ruefully that she really didn’t have the time to waste on this sort of thing, but he was just so appealing and not a day over ten or eleven. Give him another ten or fifteen years and he was going to be dynamite. She wondered absently what his cousins were actually like.

      ‘Bobbie...I like that,’ he told her and she hid her smile as the look in his eyes told her that whatever her name had turned out to be, it would have got an equally enthusiastic response. ‘I’m Joss,’ he added, ‘Joss Crighton.’

      Joss Crighton. That altered everything. Thick eyelashes veiled her eyes.

      ‘Well now, Joss Crighton, suppose you and I go find a diner and get to know one another a little bit better and you can tell me all about these cousins of yours. Would they be Crightons, too?’ she asked him casually.

      ‘Yes, they are,’ he agreed. ‘But ... well, it’s a long story.’

      ‘I can’t wait to hear it. They’re my favourite kind,’ she assured him solemnly.

      As he fell into step beside her, matching