After the Honeymoon Read Online Free PDF

along the canal near her home. He’d been more nervous than he’d ever recalled, far more scared than when he’d run into that burning shack.
    ‘But will you love my children too?’ she had asked urgently.
    Winston thought of the girl – Alice – with her sharp, distrustful eyes: thirteen was a difficult age. He remembered it all too well. Freddie was friendlier; they’d already played a bit of footy together. No problems there, as far as he could see, especially if he could persuade her to put them into boarding school – something they hadn’t discussed yet.
    ‘Of course I will,’ he had promised, ignoring that little voice inside his head.
Kids? What do you know about them?
Nothing, he told himself firmly, that he couldn’t look up in some manual or work out for himself.
    ‘And you don’t mind living in my house,’ she’d continued, entwining her fingers in his, ‘so the children can stay at the same school? They’ve been through so much. They need continuity.’
    He’d put his arm around her, deciding that this wasn’t the time to discuss the boarding option. ‘Anything. Just as long as I make you happy.’
    After that, with her agreement, he’d arranged everything. The wedding at a registry office near her home. And the honeymoon destination: a simple rustic taverna in Greece which Melissa had cleverly found through someone at school. Provided no one spilled the beans, they’d be guaranteed privacy. Marvyn, the ex, was having the children and they would have a week together, just to themselves, before getting back to filming.
    Of course, the papers had a field day. A whirlwind romance, they all called it. One had run a cruel piece with a headline that had made his agent shudder: ‘Is Bachelor Boy Winston King Getting Married to Disprove Gay Rumours?’
    Still, if Melissa had seen the article, she hadn’t mentioned it, and Winston certainly wasn’t going to.
    Meanwhile, he privately swore on his life to protect this beautiful woman who could be so vulnerable one minute and so unreachable the next. She mesmerised him. If he went for more than a morning without talking to her, he felt as though part of his chest was missing. When they’d made love for the first time, he had silently cried in a mixture of relief and self-loathing.
    ‘I love you,’ he’d whispered.
    ‘I love you too.’ She’d turned towards him. ‘The last few months have been so difficult,’ she’d confided, biting her lip. ‘But now I feel safe.’
    Her words had filled him with both love and terror. Safe, he’d repeated, running the word round his mouth. He hadn’t been able to save Nick.
    But maybe now, Winston told himself, as he strode out of the television studio and unlocked his bike from the underground car park, he might finally be able to erase the past.

TRUE HONEYMOON STORY
    ‘We had one night in a really expensive hotel with marble floors. To our horror, confetti fell out of our clothes as we undressed and we spent the entire night scrubbing off the pink and blue stains from the tiles.’
    Jo, who got married last year

Chapter Three
    ROSIE
    Rosie woke, blissfully aware of the warm Mediterranean sun streaming in through the half-open white wooden shutters. If she opened her eyes just enough, she could see it dancing off the glittering aquamarine sea outside, in little sparkly lines. It was going to be a scorcher, she thought, sleepily stretching out like one of the stray cats who would, no doubt, be lazily licking themselves on the terrace outside.
    Even after sixteen years of living on Siphalonia, she still found herself counting her lucky stars. Paradise! That’s what the wide-eyed tourists called it – at least the ones who were adventurous enough to stray off the beaten track and find them.
    And it really was. Long, sandy beaches with clean, fine white sand. Whitewashed cottages with bougainvillea clambering up the walls and terracotta roofs, nestling next to each other like cloves studded on an