inform the guests, have you got a list? We can start ringing around.’
With a pained expression Anais nodded to the seating plan on the coffee table. ‘All the names are on there, but I wouldn’t have everyone’s phone number. Maybe the easiest thing to do would be to post in the Facebook event. The news will spread like wildfire… it gets it over and done with in one click.’
Julia felt just terrible for her friend and could see Anais’s heart was breaking. Julia thought this type of stuff only happened in the movies, she never thought it would happen in real life, especially not to someone she knew. Who the hell did Flynn Carter think he was? He might be a ruthless businessman, but this was another level. He’d humiliated Anais, kicked her to the kerb. It was unacceptable to treat anyone this way, especially on their wedding day. Julia didn’t know how she would cope if something like this ever happened to her – it was a girl’s worst nightmare.
The second Julia posted that the wedding was cancelled in the Facebook Group, Anais’s phone began pinging out of control with notifications. Once more, Julia took control and switched off the phone before topping up the tumblers of champagne.
Flynn Carter would get his comeuppance one day. Julia believed in karma.
Chapter One
Five years later
Julia breathed in a lungful of the late summer air as she arrived back at the bed and breakfast and sat on the wrought iron chair outside the back door. Closing her eyes, she felt the sun beating down on her face. The last person she’d expected to see in the pub in her little village of Heartcross that very morning was Flynn Carter. She’d frozen momentarily, in complete shock and had to look twice to make sure she wasn’t imagining things. She really wished she’d been hallucinating but he was very real, and he had been standing just a few metres away from her. Flynn was a face from the past she’d never expected to see again. He hadn’t acknowledged her even though Julia had recognised him the minute she’d set eyes on him. The man that had demolished her grandfather’s home and jilted her friend on her wedding day was now renting a cottage on Love Heart Lane for the next twelve months. What the hell was he doing in Heartcross?
Opening her eyes Julia stared out across the beautiful garden and smiled. The scenery was simply stunning, the high mountains rose steadily in the background, towering above the grassy pastureland, and the River Heart tumbled over the rocks. Foxglove Farm nestled in the distance and Drew was out on the quad bike riding over the fields with his son Finn clutching to his waist. This place was her own little piece of paradise, bought and paid for with the money from her grandfather’s house. Julia’s bed and breakfast was her whole world. The three-storey elegant country-style house dated back to the mid-1800s and was set in just over an acre of land, including the garden and its very own brook.
Julia had fallen in love with this place the second she saw it, and with its characteristic bedrooms and impressive living rooms with oak beams that ran the length of the ceilings alongside rustic log fires, she’d immediately put in an offer. Within months her own bed and breakfast business was up and running, and she never looked back.
Since Heartcross had been catapulted many times into the news over the last eighteen months, business was booming. The ‘No Vacancies’ sign had hung outside on the gate for months and Julia was continually turning customers away, so much so that she had decided to take the plunge and have plans drawn up for a two-storey extension on the back of the house with a luxury private annexe situated at the bottom of the garden. She couldn’t wait to extend her little empire and was waiting patiently with her fingers firmly crossed hoping the all-important letter would land on the mat and the planning permission would be granted.
‘Penny for them?’
Julia looked up and grinned. Eleni was standing in front of her wearing a long, lemon floaty dress with a beautiful bodice pulled in by a tight waistband. She was sporting a huge smile and swinging a parasol above her head, shielding herself from the afternoon rays.
‘You look like someone from the 1920s,’ Julia said and wished she was bolder with her dress sense. ‘In fact, you look like you