Welcome to Mills & Boon. Jennifer Rae

darkened. “When I think of how I treated you in London, I don’t blame you.” He stroked my cheek. “I didn’t want you to feel guilty, or feel like you were under obligation, because I’d made some kind of sacrifice.... Because you were right. I hated that job. I hated the man it made me. Now I’m free.” He gave me a sudden grin. “In fact, there’s nothing to stop me from coming with you to Romania, as I’m currently unemployed....”

      Reaching up, I put my hands over his. “I don’t want to go.”

      He frowned. “What?”

      “I thought being an actress was my big dream. But I never wanted to audition.” The corners of my mouth quirked. “There was a reason. Whatever my brain tried to tell me I wanted, my heart stubbornly knew it wanted something else entirely.”

      He pulled me closer, running his hands over my face, my hair, my back. “What?”

      I thought of my mother, and the life she’d lived. Hannah Maywood Lowe had never been famous or celebrated. People who didn’t know her would have thought her quite ordinary, in fact, not special at all. But she’d had a talent for loving people. Her whole life had been about taking care of her friends, her home, her community, and most of all, her family.

      “You’re my dream,” I whispered. “You and our baby. I want to go home with you. Be with you. Raise our family.” I lifted my gaze to his. “I love you, Edward.”

      He breathed in wonder, “You do?”

      “I have just one question left to ask you,” I said, smiling through my tears. I took a deep breath. “Will you marry me?”

      Edward staggered back. Then he gave a low shout.

      “Will I?”

      As he took me in his arms, his handsome face no longer looked thuggish or brooding or dark. Joy made him look like the boy he’d once been, like the man I’d always known he could be.

      “I love you, Diana Maywood,” he whispered, cradling my cheek. “I’m going to love you for the rest of my life. Starting now....”

      Pulling me against his body, he kissed me hard, until I was gasping with joy and need, clutching him to me.

      “Um,” I heard the mechanic’s awkward mumble across the hangar, “you guys still know I’m here, right?”

      * * *

      We were married two weeks later in my mother’s rose garden. All the people we loved were there, Mrs. MacWhirter and the rest of our closest family and friends. Our wedding was nothing fancy, just a white cake, a simple dress and a minister. No twenty-carat diamond ring this time, either. Seriously, I was afraid I’d put my eye out with that thing. Instead, we gave each other plain gold bands in the double ring ceremony.

      It helps to have friends in the entertainment business. A musician friend of mine played the guitar, and a photographer friend took pictures. Madison was my bridesmaid, and Howard walked me down the aisle. As I held a simple bouquet of my mother’s favorite roses, in her garden on that beautiful, bright California morning, it was almost as if she were there, too.

      It was all perfect. The only guests were people we really loved. Rupert and Victoria sent their congratulations and a very nice blender.

      After the ceremony, when we were officially husband and wife, we held an outdoor dinner reception beneath fairy lights. Howard and Madison openly wept, throwing rose petals as Edward and I roared off in a vintage car, before jetting off to Las Vegas for our honeymoon. We spent two lovely nights at the Hermitage, a luxurious casino resort owned by Nikos Stavrakis, a friend of Edward’s, happily married himself with six children.

      Our luxurious, glamorous hotel suite overlooked all the lights of the Strip, which we mostly ignored because we were too busy discovering the joys of married sex. Holy cow. I had no idea how different it would be. How it feels to possess someone’s body when you also possess their heart and soul and name—and they have yours. There’s nothing in the world like it.

      “I’m just sorry the honeymoon has to end,” I murmured as we left Las Vegas.

      Edward looked at me. “Who says it does?”

      “What do you mean?”

      “We’re both unemployed now.” He lifted a dark eyebrow. “We can go anywhere you want. Rio. Tokyo. Venice. Istanbul. After all,” he gave a wicked grin, lifting a dark eyebrow as he said, “we do have a jet....”

      But there was only one place I wanted to go.

      “Take me home,” I said.

      “Home?”

      I smiled. “Where we first began.”

      Hannah Maywood St. Cyr was born a few weeks later in Cornwall, at a modern hospital near Penryth Hall. We named her after my mom. She’s the sweetest baby, with dark hair and beautiful blue eyes, just like her father’s.

      The three of us like to visit California in the winter. We even bought the Malibu cottage as a vacation house. But now we’ve been married a year, we’re already starting to outgrow it.

      It’s summer again, and Hannah is starting to walk. Cornwall is a sight to behold, all brilliant blue skies and fields of wildflowers. I’ve started a small theater company in a nearby town, just to be creative and have fun with new friends—because who doesn’t love a play? But most of my time has been spent on my project of remodeling Penryth Hall, to let the light in. A dangerous endeavor. Yesterday I smashed my thumb with a hammer. I have no idea what I’m doing. But that’s part of the fun.

      Edward opened his new business a few months ago, manufacturing athletic gear for adventure sports like skydiving and mountain climbing, renting a old factory in Truro. It’s a small company, but rapidly growing, and he loves every day of it. We live a mostly simple life. We got rid of the jet, sold the townhouse in London. Honestly, we didn’t need that stuff. We took most of the payout from his St. Cyr Global shares to create a foundation to help children all over the world, whether they need families or homes, water or school or shoes. I think my mom would approve.

      We aren’t filthy rich anymore, but we have enough, and we’re rich in the things that matter most. Love. Hope. Most of all, family.

      Madison was nominated for a prestigious award for that little movie she did in Mongolia, which left her unrecognizable as a gaunt slave of Genghis Khan riding bareback across the steppes. She was thrilled, but she’s even happier now she’s found true love with someone totally outside the industry—a hunky fireman. “He actually saves lives, Diana. And he’s so funny and makes this amazing lasagna....” My stepsister is a loving aunt to Hannah and often sends pictures and toys. Madison is happy, even with all the minor annoyances of being a movie star.

      Annoyances I’ll never have to worry about, since my agent fired me, as threatened, when I told him I was turning down that movie after all. I called Jason next, to tell him I was leaving Hollywood to marry Edward. He got choked up, telling me in his Texas drawl that he’d never get over me, never. Then he replaced me with a beautiful blonde starlet in the five seconds it took you to read this sentence.

      Howard visits our little family in England when he can, on breaks from his zombie series; or else we visit him on set, as we did recently in Louisiana where he was directing his upcoming TV Christmas movie, Werewolves Vs. Santa. (In case you’re wondering, Santa wins.) He’s just started dating a gorgeous sixty-year-old makeup artist named Deondra. After almost a decade alone, he’s giddy as a teenager.

      He’s also the proudest grandpa alive, and the love is mutual. At just eleven months old, Hannah is already showing a scary amount of interest in covering her face in gray makeup and making “ooh—ooh” noises, just like all the zombie “friends” of her Grandpa Howard. Maybe she’ll go into that particular family business. Who knows?

      But here in Cornwall, it’s August and the world is in bloom. As our little family sits together on a blanket, having a picnic amid the newly-tended garden behind