The Honeymoon Arrangement. Joss Wood

scheduled for a couple of weeks. Three, to be exact. It was the end of a three-month rotation—but why, oh, why did it have to be now?

      She’d be home at exactly the same time as her mother would be in the city. That wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t do at all. She wouldn’t risk running into her, having her arrive on her doorstep, popping into Awelfor and seeing her here. She wouldn’t take the chance.

      She’d endured twenty years of silence and Laura didn’t just get to rock up now and make demands. She’d made her choice when she left—she had to live with it now.

      ‘Will you try to be here?’ Seb asked quietly, rephrasing his question.

      Callie shook her head before yanking her bag off the chair and heading for the door. ‘Hell, no. I don’t have a mother—I haven’t had one for twenty years. So Laura can just go back to wherever she came from and I don’t want to talk about her again. Ever!’

      ‘Cal—’ Seb pleaded.

      ‘Don’t mention her name again, Seb,’ Callie muttered, before stepping out of the door, blinking back tears. It had to be the bright sunlight making her cry because her mother—Laura!—wasn’t worth a single one of her tears.

      Looking down at her mobile in her hand, she thought that she couldn’t be in the country, breathing the same air as Laura. She’d rather do anything else, be anywhere else. Even—

      ‘Finn? It’s Callie. You called me last night? If you haven’t married, proposed to or found anybody else to be your wife since we spoke last night I might be your girl.’