TRISHA ASHLEY
Trisha Ashley 3 Book Bundle
Table of Contents
Title Page
Chocolate Wishes
Sowing Secrets
Wedding Tiers
Exclusive extract of Good Husband Material
About the Author
By the Same Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chocolate WishesTRISHA ASHLEY
Chocolate Wishes
Dedication
I think it is time my wonderful agent had a dedication all to herself, so this one is for Judith Murdoch, with love and thanks.
Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue Mortal Ruin
Chapter One There Must Be an Angel
Chapter Two Satans Child
Chapter Three Chocolate Wishes
Chapter Four Falling Star
Chapter Five Pay Dirt
Chapter Six Stupid Cupid
Chapter Seven Brief Encounters
Chapter Eight Good Libations
Chapter Nine Drawing the Lines
Chapter Ten Comparative Evils
Chapter Eleven Birthday Wishes
Chapter Twelve Desperate Dates
Chapter Thirteen Ashes of Roses
Chapter Fourteen Fairy Dust
Chapter Fifteen Welcome Gifts
Chapter Sixteen Dead as My Love
Chapter Seventeen Written on the Cards
Chapter Eighteen Charm
Chapter Nineteen In the Mix
Chapter Twenty Fallen Angels
Chapter Twenty-one Garnish
Chapter Twenty-two Darker Past Midnight
Chapter Twenty-three Pax
Chapter Twenty-four Gift Bag
Chapter Twenty-five Mixed Bag
Chapter Twenty-six High Maintenance
Chapter Twenty-seven Pure Criollo
Chapter Twenty-eight Home Alone
Chapter Twenty-nine Rites
Chapter Thirty Grave Concerns
Chapter Thirty-one Party Animals
Chapter Thirty-two Delivering Angels
Chapter Thirty-three Candy-Coated
Chapter Thirty-four Melting Moments
Chapter Thirty-five Proposals
Chapter Thirty-six Behind the Scenes at the Museum
Chapter Thirty-seven Gran Couva!
Acknowledgements
Prologue Mortal Ruin
When the normally innocuous radio station she always listened to while she was working suddenly started pumping out Mortal Ruins first big hit, Dead as My Love, Chloe Lyon was in the kitchen area of her small flat, carefully brushing a thick coating of richly scented dark criollo couverture chocolate into moulds, to make the last batch of hollow angels before Christmas.
That seemed pretty appropriate, because a hollow angel was what Raffy Sinclair had proved himself to be, but it meant that it was a couple of minutes before she had a hand free to reach across and snap down the off button. By then theyd moved on to Eric Claptons Tears in Heaven, so it was becoming obvious that the guest on Desert Island Discs (shed missed the start) had much happier memories of 1992 than Chloe did. In fact, shed take a bet on the next song being Whitney Houston and I Will Always Love You, and that really would finish her off.
But the music carried on playing in her head even after the radio was silenced and it was already too late to suppress the memories. The dark, viciously searing tide of anger and pain at Raffys betrayal was rushing in as sharply as if it had all happened yesterday and she was once again that love-struck nineteen-year-old, thinking shed found a kind of magic more potent than any of her grandfathers chants, charms and incantations.
Shed loved that Clapton song, though Raffyd teased her that it was mawkish. But then, as well as being keen on Nirvana, hed had a worrying penchant for Megadeath and older bands like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Black Sabbath, all of which influenced the lyrics he wrote for his own band, Mortal Ruin. This obsession with the dark side was part of the reason why shed never mentioned her grandfather to him he might have been too interested had he known about her connection with Gregory Warlock.
But actually, there had simply not been enough time to explore their family and backgrounds, since theyd met and fallen in love at the start of her first university term and those few weeks spent intently engrossed in each other encompassed the whole span of their relationship.
It wasnt surprising that shed loved him at first sight he was tall and handsome, with long black curling hair, a pale, translucent skin and eyes the greeny-blue of the Caribbean Sea in a holiday brochure but hed seemed as transfixed as she wasAnd anyway, the Tarot cards, when she consulted them, had told her that change was coming and she would meet her soul mate, so shed naturally assumed he was the one.
Big mistake.
She hadnt believed it was the end, even after that final argument on the last night of term, when hed told her he and the other three Mortal Ruin band members had decided to gamble their futures on a recording contract and hed asked her to go with him, rather than head home for the holidays as shed intended. She hadnt explained why she absolutely had to go home either, though she might have done if she hadnt been so angry or if he had been capable of talking about anything other than Mortal Ruin by that point.
If only shed known she wouldnt be going back for the next termIf only they hadnt had that final, bitter argument, so she never even gave him her home addressThere was a whole series of ifs, but they probably wouldnt have made any difference in the end, because he turned out to be so not the man shed thought he was.
A hollow angel: dark and handsome on the outside, an emotional void within. A Lucifer echoing with false promises.
Of course, she hadnt known that then. Looking after Jake, her baby half-brother, while waiting for her mother to come back from her latest fling, shed had plenty of time to worry about what would happen when Raffy finally got her letter. Shed sent it via her former roommate, Rachel, to hand to him when he came to his senses and went back to look for her. Because, despite their last argument, shed been quite sure of his love and that somehow they would find a way of being together, of working things out. Hed told her he loved her often enough
Even in her darkest moments shed believed that, right up to the day she received the note from Rachel, telling her that Raffy had returned briefly at the start of the new term and she had given him the letter, but after reading it hed simply crumpled it up and shoved it in his pocket without comment.
She hadnt needed the tear-stained confession on the next page to know how easily and quickly he had replaced her, or how little she meant to him. Out of sight, out of mind.
It was not so easy for her to forget him, when his music seemed to be out there everywhere, assailing her at unexpected moments, but eventually her searing anger had cauterised the wounds and given her a certain measure of immunity.
So why now was she sitting at the kitchen table weeping hot, scalding tears?
Saltwater and chocolate are never a good combination.
Chapter One There Must Be an Angel
You know those routines most people have, the ones they fall into automatically when they wake up? Well, until a few years ago, my morning rota had read Tarot cards neatly sandwiched between brush teeth and breakfast.
It was just the way I was brought up, and nothing to do with magic or not the sort my grandfather practises, where the effects of his rites are so hit-and-miss that most positive results are probably sheer coincidence, like the way the sales of my Chocolate Wishes went stratospheric right after he gave me part of an ancient Mayan charm to say over the melting pot. FlukeI thought. I have to confess that Ive never been entirely sure.
But really, apart from the novelty value of the concept, my success was probably more the result of my having finally perfected both my technique and the quality of my moulded chocolate, mostly by trial, error and experimentation and the really good thing about working with chocolate is that you can eat your mistakes.
What originally sparked the whole thing off was coming across a two-part metal Easter egg mould at a jumble sale when my half-brother, Jake, was a small boy. I made lots of little chocolate eggs and put messages inside them from the Easter Bunny, then hid them all over the flat and courtyard for him and his friends to find.
And while I was making them I started thinking about fortune cookies, which are fun, but not really that good to eat. And from there it was just a short bunny hop to creating a line of hollow chocolate shapes containing Wishes as an after-dinner novelty and selling them in boxes of six or twelve.
The Wishes are encouraging thoughts or suggestions, inspired by the Angel card readings that have replaced my earlier devotion to the Tarot, and Im positive that each person will automatically pick the appropriate Chocolate Wish from the box their own guardian angel will see to that!
It was all very amateur at first, but now the Wishes come in printed sheets and the boxes are also specially made to hold and protect the chocolates in transit, because most of my orders come through the internet, via my website, or by word of mouth.
Nowadays I favour mainly criollo couverture chocolate, the best and most expensive kind, which not only tastes delicious but has a superior gloss and good snap. I temper it in the machine Jake christened the Bath and then, with an outsize pastry brush, coat specially made polycarbon moulds in the shape of angels or winged hearts until I have a thick enough shell. When theyre cold, I glue the two halves together with a little more chocolate but before I do that, I put in the Wish.
And I am so much happier since I began to read the Angel cards instead of the Tarot! They never seemed to come out right when I read them for myself and I often wonder if my future would have been different if I hadnt always looked for signs and portents before I did anything. Do we make our own futures, or do our futures make us?
Granny, who was of gypsy descent and taught me how to read the cards in the first place, said they only showed what might be the future, should the present course be held to; but Im not so sure. She would have approved of the Angel cards, though, which is more than my grandfather (whom Jake and I call Grumps, for obvious reasons) and Zillah, who is Grannys cousin, do.