It was like picking up the final piece of the jigsaw but still being unable to fit it into the picture. I leant over and picked up the butterfly box, my fingers tracing over the intricate design. I pulled off the lid and raised the trinket to my nose, that familiar scent sending a stabbing pain to my chest, my stomach into free fall and bile rising at the back of my throat. My breath came in heavy, laboured motions. For a moment, I thought I might actually forget how to breathe. That I might stop doing that whole breathing thing, there on the bed.
He can’t really love her. Not if he can’t give me up. I just don’t understand it. It won’t last, I know it won’t. But he insists on going through with it. My only hope now is that she gets run over by a bus or that she has a sudden blow to the head and decides that she wants to join a nunnery. Or maybe she’s struck by Cupid and meets her soul mate who’ll whisk her off into the sunset. Sigh. To be honest, the nunnery is looking like my best option. Whichever. I’ll be waiting for him at the other side. However long it takes.
Furiously I hurled the silver box across the room, the lid parting company with the base and ricocheting off the wall, before spinning onto the carpet. I took a deep breath and returned the diary to its spot on the cabinet, before standing up, my legs wobbly like Sophie’s had been, but for entirely different reasons. My breathing laboured, I leant down and picked up the silver box, reuniting it with its lid, the familiar scent making me retch. I replaced it very carefully next to the diary.
CARINA™
ISBN: 978 1 472 09649 4
Hopelessly Devoted to You
Copyright © 2014 Jill Steeples
Published in Great Britain (2014)
by Carina, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited, Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR
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Hopelessly Devoted to You Page 21
