The Chocolate Lovers’ Wedding Read Online Free PDF Page B

there was passion – rather a lot of it – in all the right places. Autumn smiled to herself.
‘What are you grinning at?’ Miles asked.
     
She threaded her arm through his. ‘I’m just thinking that I’m very lucky.’
    ‘And here’s me thinking that you were happy that the fairy princess found her true love – even though it was an ogre.’ ‘That too,’ she conceded.
They headed to the nearest restaurant for an early meal. It
    was a cheerful, fast-food type of place, but they gave Flo a rainbow range of crayons and a sheet of cartoons to colour in which kept her happy. Plus she’d get a balloon to go home with – no greater treat when you’re nearly four.
    When they were seated in their booth by the window, Autumn watched how Miles helped his daughter with her colourful creation.
‘The dog needs to be pink , Daddy,’ Flo insisted. ‘Pink is an excellent colour for dogs,’ Miles agreed, amiably. ‘You don’t see nearly enough of them.’
    He winked at Autumn while Flo scribbled furiously, tongue out in concentration. She was a lovely little girl and looked just like her dad. She had his hazel eyes, his wiry chestnut-brown hair, his full mouth, the same smattering of freckles over the bridge of his nose. Two peas in a pod. Autumn had fallen as much in love with the child as she had with her dad.
    It was lovely to see how much Miles adored Flo – she was his life. Autumn knew that it was difficult for him to be a part-time dad, but he did a really great job. Miles was the first man she’d had a relationship with who she thought was excellent father material. He was a natural parent and, one day, she’d love to have children with him. As always, it made her think of her own daughter and how much she’d missed out on.
    Autumn had been forced by her parents to put her baby girl, Willow, up for adoption when she found she was pregnant at fourteen. It had been the worst moment of her life and there wasn’t a day that went by that she didn’t regret her compliance. Recently, she’d started to come to terms with it and had begun to reach out to her daughter through sites that aimed to reunite separated families.
    She never imagined that Willow would be looking for her and yet, at Christmas time, she’d had a call out of the blue from the Find Families agency to say that her daughter would like to make contact. At that moment, she felt that her heart would burst with joy. In her mind, she’d imagined a tearful reunion, a tentative period of getting to know each other and then they’d all live happily ever after. Perhaps she had been watching too many princess-based films. Instead, they were still to get out of the starting blocks.
    Months had passed and she’d yet to make contact with her daughter. Autumn was reliant on the Find Families agency, and spoke to Eleanor there regularly. She was the go-between between Autumn and Mary Randall, Willow’s adoptive mother. They’d organised phone calls and a few times had tentatively set up a date with a view to meeting. Then it seemed that Willow shied away from making contact again. It was like a slow-motion game of cat and mouse. Mary wasn’t very forthcoming, Eleanor told her, and was clearly worried that Willow was too young to handle the situation. And although Eleanor was supposedly facilitating the meeting between Autumn and her daughter, she didn’t seem to be in much of a rush either. Her advice was to take it at Willow’s pace. Which meant that Autumn was calling on all her reserves of patience. But, having got this far, she didn’t want to frighten her daughter away by being pushy. That was the last thing Willow needed. She would just sit tight, continue to be there and wait for her daughter to choose her time.
    Reaching into her handbag, she turned on her phone again after silencing it for the film. There were a few missed calls: one from Lucy, one from Nadia and, more surprisingly, one from Eleanor.
    ‘I need to make a call. Eleanor’s