She raised both hands and stroked the sides of his face, looking just as fiercely back at him. ‘Oh, I love you too,’ she whispered, and pressed her trembling lips to his.
She had one thing left to ask. Just because she needed to be one hundred percent certain. ‘You do want children?’
Waiting for his reaction, she swallowed, trying to ease the thickening in her throat.
His hands moved from her back to splay over her still-flat stomach. She laughed. He looked as if he was expecting evidence there and then. He was just going to have to be patient.
‘I want it all. I want our baby. I want to change nappies and clean up sick and crawl around on the floor with him. I want to give him brothers and sisters and teach the whole lot of them to play cricket. I want to help our children with their homework, teach them how to drive, give our daughters away at the altar. And I want to do it all with you by my side. Will you do that with me, Ellie? Do you want that too?’
Ellie threw back her head and laughed with joy. Mark always had made everything seem so simple. She was the one who made it all so complicated. She kissed him with a fervour that surprised them both.
Then, for the second time that month, she said, ‘I do.’
EPILOGUE
ELLIE crept across the carpet in her bare feet and peered into the empty cot.
‘Shh!’ A low voice came from a dim corner of the room. ‘I’ve just got him off to sleep.’ Mark was pacing up and down, their two-week-old son cradled against his shoulder.
Baby Miles was sleeping the boneless sleep that newborns did so well. His mouth hung open and his brow was tensed into a frown. Mark and Ellie smiled at each other.
‘The trick to putting him into bed is to treat him like a stick of dynamite,’ he said, sounding like a total expert already as he lowered the infant into the cot with precision. ‘One false move and—’
‘The explosion is just as noisy and twice as devastating. I know. You’ve made that joke a hundred times in the last fortnight, and unfortunately I haven’t forgotten a single occasion.’
Mark grinned at her, then went back to what he’d been doing. He eased his hand from under his son’s head. They both froze as the little tyrant stirred and made a squeaky grunt. Mark’s mask of stern concentration melted.
‘I love it when he makes those noises,’ he said, reaching for Ellie’s hand and leading her from the room. She lifted their joined hands to look at her watch.
‘Midnight! Just the right time for a chocolate feast,’ she explained, and pulled him towards the kitchen. She delved into the fridge and pulled out a large bar of her favourite chocolate.
He turned the radio on low, and they ate chocolate and chatted until they were both doing more yawning than munching.
Ellie cocked her head. ‘Listen, Mark.’ He turned the radio up a notch. It sounded deafening in the quiet kitchen. They both looked at the ceiling and waited. When they were sure it was safe to make a noise, she added, ‘They’re playing our song.’
He started to hum along to Kat’s latest single, ‘All My Tomorrows’. It had been number one for three weeks already. The music-buying public couldn’t seem to get enough of the simple love song, performed with just the expressive huskiness of Kat’s voice and her acoustic guitar.
Ellie smiled and remembered the first time she’d heard it. She could almost feel the warmth of the Carribbean dawn on her skin and smell the hibiscus blossoms. Mark joined in the second chorus. She stood up and ruffled his hair before sitting on his lap. ‘Don’t give up your day job, sweetie. Kat might have you up on murder charges for doing that to her song.’
Mark pulled a face and Ellie hummed along with the music.
Treasure my heart and keep it safe, and I’ll spend all my tomorrows loving you.
Ellie wagged a finger at him. ‘Better do as the lady says, Mark.’
‘Always,’ he said, as he leaned in and stole a kiss.
The Ballerina Bride
Fiona Harper
Ballerina on the run!
Prima ballerina Allegra’s spent her life on stage. But now there are whispers that the superstar’s lost her sparkle... So when she’s offered a week on a tropical island, for survival expert Finn McLeod’s TV show, she leaps at it!
Finn’s frankly unimpressed—how will this fragile-looking girl survive life in the wild? But for Allegra, it’s not the island that’s the problem, but her all-consuming crush on the unavailable Finn! Gorgeous on TV, close up he’s devastating—and Allegra’s hours of disciplined dance practice are useless when it comes to resisting temptation....
When ordinary girls get their fairy-tale endings!
Who says fairy tales can’t come true? Once Upon a Kiss… is a miniseries featuring retellings of classic, well-loved stories. Immerse yourself in a little bit of fantasy for the modern-day girl, and be whisked away, along with our down-to-earth heroines, to the romances of your wildest daydreams!
Available this month is Fiona Harper’s captivating story The Ballerina Bride. We hope you enjoy this classic, beautifully written romance, based on The Little Mermaid but with a fabulous ballerina twist!
In love with the fairy tale? Go to www.millsandboon.co.uk to find the previous titles in this series:
Dear Reader,
We all love the magic of fairy tales, don’t we? There’s something in those enduring stories that resonates with us.
Some time ago now I was asked if I would like to write another book based on a fairy tale (I’d already done a modern-day Cinderella story in Invitation To The Boss’s Ball), and after researching many fairy tales, I settled on Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid. There was a sense of yearning in that story that stayed with me long after I’d finished reading it.
So that was how Finn and Allegra’s story was born, but I turned my “fish out of water” heroine into a privileged ballerina, thrust into the hero’s world, only to discover that reaching for her heart’s desire is much harder and more painful than she ever could have imagined.
I used the original fairy tale quite a lot for inspiration as I wrote this book. It influenced the major themes and plot points and even the colors of the hero’s and heroine’s eyes. I “borrowed” a hero who was looking for beauty in the wrong place, too blind to see what was just under his nose, and a brave heroine looking for a soul, who had the chance to destroy the object of her devotion in order to save herself. I hope you enjoy finding all the hidden—and not-so-hidden—parallels as much as I did putting them in between the pages of this book.
Blessings,
Fiona
As a child, FIONA HARPER was constantly teased for either having her nose in a book, or living in a dream world. Things haven’t changed much since then, but at least in writing she’s found a use for her runaway imagination. After studying dance at university, Fiona worked as a dancer, teacher and choreographer, before trading in that career for video-editing and production. When she became a mother, she cut back on her working hours to spend time with her children, and when her littlest one started preschool she found a few spare moments to rediscover an old-but-not-forgotten love—writing.
Fiona lives in London, but her other favorite places to be are the Highlands of Scotland, and the Kent countryside on a summer’s afternoon. She loves cooking good food and anything cinnamon-flavored.