New Zealander ALISON ROBERTS has written more than eighty romance novels for Mills & Boon. She has also worked as a primary school teacher, a cardiology research technician and a paramedic. Currently, she is living her dream of living – and writing – in a gorgeous village in the south of France.
The Fling That Changed Everything
Alison Roberts
ISBN: 978-1-474-03729-7
THE FLING THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING
© 2016 Alison Roberts
Published in Great Britain 2020
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
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Table of Contents
THE SOUND OF the telephone ringing could barely be heard over the cacophony as the Roselli family gathered in their kitchen for dinner.
It wasn’t a big room. If the whole family had been here, they would have had to use the huge, rustic table out in the courtyard, beneath the vine-smothered pergola, but it was raining today—the kind of tropical downpour that was familiar to people living in Northern Australia—and the vines weren’t enough protection from the wet.
So, here they were, piling into the kitchen that was a long room, where Adriana Roselli presided over the benchtop and oven at one end and the scrubbed pine table that could fit ten people—if they squeezed up—filled the other end of the room. Fitting a wheelchair in made it a little more complicated, of course, and that was why the noise level was so high right now.
‘Ow... You ran over my foot, Fiona. Watch where you’re going.’
‘If you didn’t have your stupid ears full of your horrible music, you would have seen us coming. Move yourself, Guy.’
‘Not until you say you’re sorry. You’ve probably broken my toe.’
‘You’re the one who should apologise. Look, you’ve made Angel cry...’
‘Look out, all of you. If I drop this lasagne, you’ll all be sorry. Mamma mia...’ Adriana held a vast steaming tray over her head as her youngest son elbowed his way past her. ‘Why don’t my children ever grow up and act their ages? What have I ever done to deserve this? Lia, why isn’t the bread on the table?’
‘I’m coming... Oh, is that the phone?’
It took a moment for the effect of her words to sink in. Adriana almost dropped the lasagne onto the centre of her table and then