A Christmas Cracker: The only festive romance to curl up with this Christmas!. Trisha Ashley

Chapter 30: Unfettered and Free

      

       Chapter 31: Four-Legged Friends

      

       Chapter 32: Out of the Box

      

       Chapter 33: Give Peace a Chance

      

       Chapter 34: On the Tiles

      

       Chapter 35: False Start

      

       Chapter 36: Charm Offensive

      

       Chapter 37: An Absolute Cracker

      

       Chapter 38: Give Me a Ring

      

       Chapter 39: Sweet Liberty

      

       Chapter 40: Missed Connections

      

       Chapter 41: Spats

      

       Chapter 42: Not Waving

      

       Chapter 43: Christmas Every Day

      

       Chapter 44: Snowed Under

      

       Chapter 45: Guilt-Edged

      

       Chapter 46: Picture Perfect

      

       Chapter 47: True Lovers’ Knots

      

       Chapter 48: Santa’s Little Helper

      

       Chapter 49: On the Case

      

       Chapter 50: Fireworks

      

       Chapter 51: True Lies

      

       Chapter 52: Daggers Drawn

      

       Chapter 53: Advent

      

       Chapter 54: Box of Delights

      

       Chapter 55: Hasty Pudding

      

       Chapter 56: The Big Picture

      

       Chapter 57: Crowned

      

       Recipes

      

       Keep Reading …

      

       About the Author

      

       By the same author

       About the Publisher

       Chapter 1: Bottled

      ‘You mean you’ve known for ages that your boss at Champers&Chocs was passing off bottles of cheap fizz as vintage champagne, and you haven’t done a single thing about it?’ Kate exclaimed incredulously, her pale blue eyes wide and a cup of herbal tea the exact colour of cat pee suspended halfway to her rose-tinted lips.

      Kate was my opposite in looks, being small, fair and cute, though she wasn’t as cute as she thought she was, unless you were really fond of rabbits. And speaking of rabbits, she should long since have put her penchant for pale pink fluffy jumpers behind her, even if the angora had been ethically sourced, which I doubted.

      I sighed and stirred my Americano, starting to wish I hadn’t said anything about it because, after all, she and her husband were Jeremy’s old friends, not mine, and she’d been less than welcoming when we’d first got engaged. But sometimes Kate and I would meet up for coffee and, that day being one of those occasions, my worries had spilled out of me the moment we’d sat down.

      It wouldn’t have happened if I’d been able to tell my best friend, Emma, but since she’d remarried she’d increasingly been having problems of her own with her husband, Desmond, so I hadn’t wanted to burden her with mine.

      Still, at least she wouldn’t have gazed at me in the sad, accusing way Kate was, when I looked up.

      ‘The idea that anything fraudulent was going on never crossed my mind until I found out by accident,’ I explained. ‘I mean, I don’t think I’d even seen a real bottle of champagne, other than on the TV, until I got engaged to Jeremy.’

      ‘No, I don’t suppose there are champagne bars on every corner of council estates,’ she said snidely. ‘Just cheap booze shops.’

      For the last years of her life, Mum and I had shared a specially adapted council bungalow on a very nice estate, but Kate always talked as if I was dragged up in a slum and had made some giant social leap by getting engaged to a member of the teaching profession.

      ‘Oh, forget it,’ I snapped.

      ‘No, you can’t just leave it there without telling me how you found out and why you didn’t report it to the police,’ she insisted.

      ‘Because I thought it had stopped. It was before last Christmas, when I was packing special orders one evening and my boss and I were the only people there. There was a phone call and I walked