I hadn’t planned the romance part of it. Of course, I wouldn’t plan that. A romance is always a complication that, in my experience, life does not need.
And a romance with that man, the hyphenated name one. Even though I consider myself jaundiced about the topic, the thought of those two together—Jessica and Jamie, as I found out his first name is—pleases me in some way. Some people, maybe even most people, given time, seem to bring out the worst in each other, but somehow I believe those two will beat the odds.
I think they will bring out the best in each other.
“I’m getting soft in my old age,” I told Max. I could see from his hopeful expression he thought that meant the other half of the cookie.
I felt a sudden and completely unexpected longing for the life I had not chosen. Family, that most complicated of things, and children.
I shook off the thought.
Family, to me, has always been a source of great pain, not an experience I was eager to repeat once I had escaped my own. The constant worry about the health and welfare of my doggie companions has shown me I didn’t have the constitution to raise a child. The worry would have never stopped. If I’d had a child when I was twenty, that child would be in his or her fifties today, and I bet I would be as worried as the day they were born.
Maybe I would have had grandchildren, a forlorn voice inside me said wistfully.
No, I am better off alone. Me, with my gift for seeing so clearly what other people need, should have every confidence I have made the right choices about my own needs.
Still, I hope the other two young ladies are going to be easier, and not create such a sense of longing in me for the paths I had not taken.
Aubrey has been sick, poor thing. Not that there’s any good person to get sick, but she’s absolutely the wrong one: so independent and spunky. Her well-meaning brothers probably nearly suffocated her in their clumsy love. Well, hang in there, dear, all the adventures you ever longed for are coming at you soon.
And Daisy!
I’ve given Daisy the old house in Italy. She thought what she needed was success, as so many of us do, but I can tell you that it is not what it’s cracked up to be. What she needs most is a place to call home.
Extravagant some people might say, but I don’t see it that way.
With no family to leave all this to, why not be extravagant? I could walk down the street and give one-hundred-dollar bills to strangers for a whole week and not even make a dent in my fortune.
Maybe I’ll do that. Next week. Me and Max.
But today, I feel ready for a nap. All this meddling, as Jessica so unkindly called it, has left me quite exhausted.
Look out for the next story in A Fairytale Summer! quartet
Italian Escape with her Fake Fiancé by Sophie Pembroke
Coming soon!
And if you enjoyed this story, check out these other great reads from Cara Colter
Tempted by the Single Dad
Cinderella’s Prince Under the Mistletoe
His Convenient Royal Bride
Snowbound with the Single Dad
All available now!
Keep reading for an excerpt from Bound by the Prince’s Baby by Jessica Gilmore.
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Bound by the Prince’s Baby
by Jessica Gilmore
PROLOGUE
Eight years ago
THE CAR PURRED to a stop and the driver got out, walking as stiffly as if he were on parade to the rear passenger side and opening the door. Amber Kireyev pulled her hated kilt down to her knees before she grabbed her rucksack and shimmied out of the car under his always watchful gaze.
‘Thank you, Boris,’ she said with a smile, but as usual there was no glimmer of a return smile, just a curt nod.
‘Princess Vasilisa.’
‘Amber,’ she said, as she always did. ‘Call me Amber.’
But Boris didn’t acknowledge her words as he stood tall and imposing, waiting for her to walk through the entranceway; he wouldn’t move until he had seen her go into the building and the doors close behind her.
Amber suppressed a sigh. She knew that most people would consider selling their soul to occupy an apartment in this grand Art Deco building overlooking Central Park, especially a penthouse in one of the two iconic towers, but to her the apartment was more prison than home. Hefting her backpack onto her shoulder, she walked, chin held high, up to the doors and pressed the button for admittance. The doors swung silently and ominously open and, without a backward glance at the sun-filled afternoon, she walked inside.
The opulent high-ceilinged marble and tile foyer was so familiar to her she barely noticed its glossy splendour, but she did notice the smiling man behind the concierge desk, dapper in his gilt and navy uniform.
‘Miss Amber, Happy Birthday to you.’
‘Thank you, Hector.’
‘Do you have something nice planned to celebrate?’
Amber tried not to pull a frustrated face. Her fellow pupils at the exclusive girls’ school she attended had all thrown extravagant parties for their eighteenth birthdays, renting out hotel ballrooms or heading off to their Hampton Beach homes for the weekend. Even if they had invited her Amber wouldn’t have been allowed to attend, but they’d stopped asking her years ago. ‘Grandmama said that we might go out for dinner, after my lessons, of course.’ Not even on her eighteenth birthday could Amber skip her dancing or deportment or etiquette lessons.
‘I have something for you,’ Hector whispered conspiratorially and, after looking around, he pulled out a large brown envelope from under his desk and held it out to her.
Amber’s heart began to beat faster as she took in the familiar postmark. ‘Thank you
