Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 121898 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121898 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
After eleven months of planning, the Christmas Eve wedding of her little sister’s dreams is only three weeks away, and professional wedding planner Sylvie is all hands-on deck from the moment she arrives home. Swept up in the magic that is Christmas in her hometown, the only thing that can possibly dampen her spirit is coming face to face with her childhood frenemy.
Thomas, the Duke of Castleton.
The man she spent her childhood feuding with thanks to an errant cricket ball is just as snarky, annoying, and gorgeous as she remembers. Despite running the village tree farm and his mother being the ringleader of all things Christmas in town, the past few years have turned him into a right little scrooge.
When a string of tragedies hit the wedding plans, Sylvie only has one person she can turn to: Thomas. Not that she has a choice—he has a habit of showing up exactly when she needs him to save the day, and she can’t stand it.
And when the ultimate disaster befalls the wedding just two days before the ceremony, Sylvie doesn’t see how it can go ahead.
But Thomas can.
And it just might be his chance to prove to Sylvie how he truly feels about her—and save Christmas at the same time
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
CHAPTER ONE – SYLVIE
There was a pig in the middle of the road.
I was more surprised than I probably should have been, but in my defense, the pig was wearing reindeer antlers.
How they were in place, I didn’t know. I couldn’t even begin to tell you how such a momentous feat was occurring, but it was a stark reminder of where I was.
Castleton. The Yorkshire Dales. Where pink and black pigs mooching about in the middle of the road wearing a reindeer antler headband wasn’t all that weird.
All right.
The reindeer headband was weird.
The pig, however, was totally normal.
Farm animals weren’t exactly known for staying inside their fields, and it wasn’t as if there was a shortage of those here.
Everywhere.
Fields were everywhere.
So were farm animals, to be fair, although they did tend to retreat to barns in the winter. The frosts up here were sharp—sharper than I was used to after ten years living in the south of England where it was decidedly warmer. Unless Jack Frost wanted to terrorise most of the population, of course, then all bets were off.
Especially when he got together with a pissed off Elsa.
Never mind. I was going off on a tangent.
The point remained that there was a tiny pig in the middle of the road, and the pig possessed a remarkably lacking sense of danger. Lone animals usually hightailed it into the nearest field when a car came, but this one was just standing there, staring at me.
All right. Not all animals. Like sheep.
Sheep didn’t count.
Sheep were absolute bastards.
And so were bloody pheasants on account of the fact they flew into your car instead of away from it.
Maybe a pheasant was where this miniature pig learnt its road safety.
I turned the key to stop the engine running, grabbed my phone, and got out, taking the key with me. The last thing I needed was to get locked out of my car on what I knew was an unnamed road with no serious civilisation for at least a twenty-minute drive.
Apparently, you could take the girl out of the countryside, but you couldn’t take the countryside out of the girl.
I turned on the torch on my phone, sighed, and looked at the pig. “What are you doing out here?”
The little black and pink porker that was either a piglet or one of those mini pigs looked at me.
Naturally, it didn’t talk back.
It was a shame. If it did, then I’d know where to return him. On the other hand, allowing animals the ability to speak sounded like a headache that should only be unleashed on Halloween.
Or, you know.
Never.
In hindsight, parrots were bad enough.
Gracious, could you imagine if cats were given the gift of speaking the English language? We’d never hear the end of their complaints.
Dogs? That I could get on board with. A great deal of their chatter would be saying how much they love us and how happy they were to see us, and that was the kind of thing you could never hear too many times.
That was why I wanted a dog more than I wanted a boyfriend.
The dog would appreciate me more. And they were trainable.
At least so said my dating history.
The pig stared at me for a moment longer before he turned away and walked towards the hedgerow. It disappeared into the darkness, and the branches of the roadside hedge snagged on its reindeer antlers, popping them off its head.