Goddess Rules

Kate Disney was having sex with her ex when the legendary Mirabelle Moncur first came into her life. Actually she came into the wooden garden shed that Kate called home just as Jake's naked bottom appeared over the top of the sheets in anticipation of his last few enthusiastic thrusts. It was the moment that Kate had been waiting for since she and Jake had broken up a month ago. Since that Sunday night she'd existed in a fathomless abyss of pain, memories of Jake, and tears. Until about an hour ago, when Jake, in answer to her prayers and a good deal of amateur witchcraft, had shown up on her doorstep on his way home from a night out. "Hello, angel, I've missed you." It was three in the afternoon and he smelled of whiskey and cigarette smoke, his shirt was half unbuttoned, and his jacket was torn. "Jake." Kate had been cleaning her paintbrushes when she'd heard the tap on the shed door. She'd wiped her hands down her old T-shirt and unbolted it. Jake was the first and last person she expected to see standing there. "It was my birthday yesterday," he told her, and propped himself up in the door frame. "And the only present I really wanted was you." "Jake, you're drunk," Kate said. Though she knew he wasn't. "You've got paint in your hair." He leaned forward to touch her bangs. Kate shrank back but knew that she'd already lost the battle. She knew that she was going to let Jake in. "You look terrible," she lied. "Don't I even get a birthday kiss?" "You're lucky I haven't punched you." "I love you." Jake looked at Kate and she felt her will dissolve. Maybe he really meant it this time. Because even though she and Jake had been together on and off for almost three years, he had told her that he loved her only once before, the same night that he'd been signed to a small record label. And that night he really had been drunk. "We're only going to talk," she said, and stood back to let him through the door. "I know." Jake pretended to believe her. "I'll make some tea." Kate turned her back on him and with shaking hands filled the kettle in the large butler's sink in the corner. This wasn't how she'd imagined it would happenJake coming back to her. And she had imagined itnight and day, waking and sleeping. She'd hoped that it would be a bigger momentthat it would involve a declaration and a diamond rather than a cup of tea at the end of a long night out. But then after three years with Jake, Kate was accustomed to being underwhelmed. Thankfully the sex wasn't underwhelming. It was fabulous. It was even more fabulous right now because they hadn't so much as laid eyes on one another for a month. And as Jake kissed her neck and Kate trailed her fingers down his freckled brown back, she forgot about the underwhelmingness, and about the note he'd written to her, telling her that it was over because he had nothing left to give; she'd even forgotten that it was Jake's fault that she was living in her boss's garden shed. Well, not strictly his fault, but she and Jake had been saving for a place together and she'd agreed to give up her overpriced studio flat so that they could buy somewhere quicker and be together. But Kate forgot all these things and bit hard into Jake's shoulder and let bygones be bygones. Until Mirabelle Moncur walked in and ruined everything. "Kate Disney?" she demandeNaylor, Clare is the author of 'Goddess Rules', published 2005 under ISBN 9780345470539 and ISBN 0345470532.