As she wiggled her aching fingers and tried hard to ignore the smell of cinnamon buns that was drifting down from the first-floor coffee shop, Gemma couldn’t help thinking that life was very weird indeed. Here she was sitting at a table with a giant cardboard cut-out of herself on one side (couldn’t they have Photoshopped it a bit thinner?) and a viscountess on the other, and signing a cookery book that contained her own favourite recipes. This whole experience had felt even more dreamlike when her old English teacher had shuffled forward in the queue to have his copy signed. Apart from the fact that Gemma had fancied Mr Fuller like crazy when she was fifteen (and even as a twenty-nine-year-old still turned redder than Santa’s hat when she spoke to him), she felt a total fraud signing a book for somebody who knew she couldn’t spell and wouldn’t recognise a complex sentence if one bit her on the bum.
But, then again, life for Gemma Pengelley had taken on a rather unreal quality lately, and she wasn’t always certain that she liked this feeling…
“Come on, Gem! Wake up! We’re done!” Her best friend and new addition to the aristocracy, Angel Elliott – otherwise known as Lady Kenniston, nudged her with a bony elbow. Her big blue eyes bright with excitement, Angel added: “Now the real fun begins! Let’s go shopping!”
“Angel! Ssh!” Gemma glanced around the shop, mortified in case her friend’s tactless comment had been overheard by somebody who had just given up an entire Saturday morning to meet them, but the crowds were thinning now that it was lunchtime. The shoppers were all making their way to the smart little bistros and cafés that had sprung up in Truro over the past few years. The city had certainly changed a bit since Gemma and her school pals had spent many happy Saturdays rummaging through the bargain bin in Tammy Girl and eking out a Whopper in Burger King. Now it was all White Stuff and trendy Seasalt clothing, and skinny fries with moules at a chic pavement café on Lemon Quay for lunch – diners cheating the Cornish winter by basking beneath a patio heater.
At the thought of food Gemma’s stomach rumbled loudly and she grimaced. She always seemed to be hungry lately. In fact, skip lately. She was always hungry, full stop. Gemma guessed her passion for food was good news for a girl who earned her living running a baking business and writing recipe books, but it did make keeping the weight off bloody hard work. She’d lost quite a bit when she and Cal, her ex-footballer partner, had first moved to Kenniston to set up their business, but almost two years on Gemma had noticed that her waistbands were getting a little snug again. She blamed Cal, whose bread and buns really were to die for, as well as her own dreadful habit of sampling whatever latest cake she was creating. Writing the book hadn’t helped either. She must have put on a pound for every page! Thank God she’d stepped back from appearing on the show, Gemma thought. Apart from discovering that she actually didn’t enjoy the attention fame brought with it, the old saying that television added ten pounds in weight was an understatement. There was no way Gemma wanted to be on national TV with all her fat bits on display. No way at all. She’d rather drown herself in a latte. A skinny one, obviously.
“Hungry, babe?” Angel, who seemed to live on a diet of fresh air and adrenalin, threw Gemma a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry we didn’t stop for breakfast. Let’s go and get something now and have a mooch round the shops.” She glanced down at the watch on her slender wrist, something hugely expensive that Laurence had dug out of the rapidly emptying Elliott vault, and laughed, holding her arm up. “Typical Elliott family watch. I forgot it doesn’t work – a bit like the rest of them! I haven’t a clue what the time is but I’m sure it’s time we got some grub.”
Gemma looked at her own far more modest Baby-G. It was a present from Cal and she treasured it because it was one of the few things he’d bought her. Paying his monster tax bill and getting solvent had been his prime focus since he’d signed up for Bread and Butlers. He must be getting nearer the goal though: the business was thriving and even her own cake-making branch of it was turning a healthy profit. Maybe they’d soon be able to focus on this one hundred percent and step right away from the television side of things.
“Earth to Gemma?” teased Angel. “The time?”
“Sorry! Sorry! It’s almost noon.”
“Great, that gives us bags of time,” said Angel, shoving her Montblanc pen into an LV tote. “We’re not due to film until seven, so I reckon we’ve got a couple of hours to enjoy Truro before we have to head back to Devon. Let’s go and grab some lunch.”
Flustered, Gemma returned her attention to the present. God, she kept doing this lately, drifting off into little daydreams and fantasies about the ideal life for her and Cal. One minute she was mixing the ingredients for a cake and the next she was miles away – maybe in a cottage surrounded by children with Cal’s golden ringlets and her snub nose, or perhaps with Cal down on one knee and asking her the one question she was longing to hear. Gemma shook her head. She couldn’t dwell on these thoughts; they only made her increasingly frustrated and impatient to move on with their lives. Like Cal had said only yesterday, she really needed to concentrate on the present, which right now meant packing away her things, saying goodbye to the bookshop staff and signing a couple more autographs for latecomers.
The signing well and truly over, Gemma wound her scarf tightly around her neck, shoved a hat onto her curly hair and put her sunglasses on. There, that was better. Now she was just an average shopper in the crowd, not Gemma the celebrity cake maker or the girlfriend of Callum South the legendary Premier League footballer, but just a rather plump girl dressed up for some Christmas shopping on a sunny December Saturday. Yes, the days of Gemma wanting fame were long gone. Now she enjoyed acting in an amateur group and was happy to let others have the limelight. Celebrity was, in Gemma’s book, seriously overrated.
Unlike Angel, whose need to be recognised was almost as great as her need for oxygen, Gemma preferred to go incognito. She managed to achieve this most of the time but today with Angel, who was busy flicking her blonde extensions about and making a big show of putting her giant Bvlgaris on, she stood no chance. As the girls linked arms and wandered through the town, eyes followed them and people pointed and whispered excitedly. Gemma shrunk further into her coat and buried her nose in her scarf. Fame was no fun at all and, much as she knew it was going to upset Cal, she couldn’t carry on like this for much longer.
She was going to have to make some changes.
Ruth Saberton is the bestselling author of Katy Carter Wants a Hero and Escape for the Summer. She also writes upmarket commercial fiction under the pen names Jessica Fox, Georgie Carter and Holly Cavendish.
Born and raised in the UK, Ruth is now based in Grand Cayman for two years. What an adventure!
And since she loves to chat with readers, please do add her as a Facebook friend and follow her on Twitter.
www.ruthsaberton.co.uk
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter One
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapte
r 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter One
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