Kiss a Falling Star Read online

  Kiss a Falling Star

  Barbara Elsborg

  How far can you fall? Caspar had once shone brighter than any star in the sky. He led an exciting life, had a good job and the love of his family. Now he barely survives in a village where he’s shunned by everyone, even his parents. Unemployed, unemployable, he consoles himself with stringless sex—lots of it.

  How hard can you land? Ally escapes death by a whisker when she falls in front of a train. Not an accident, someone pushed her, and she doesn’t hang around to give them another shot. But she finds herself falling in a different way when she meets Caspar, and she plummets hard and fast. He’s dark, he’s brooding, he’s hotter than any man she’s ever met, and she wants him—bad.

  How high can they soar? With Ally’s adversary closing in, plus Caspar’s tendency to screw things up, if they don’t open their arms and catch each other, they’ll burn up in an atmosphere determined to keep them apart.

  An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

  www.ellorascave.com

  Kiss a Falling Star

  ISBN 9781419933042

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Kiss a Falling Star Copyright © 2011 Barbara Elsborg

  Edited by Mary Moran

  Cover art by Syneca

  Electronic book publication March 2011

  The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.

  With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

  Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/). Please purchase only authorized electronic or print editions and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted material. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Kiss a Falling Star

  Barbara Elsborg

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  BBC: The British Broadcasting Corporation

  Cadbury Cream Eggs: Cadbury Limited

  Cambridge: Chancellor, Masters & Scholars of the University of Cambridge, The

  Catwoman: DC Comics E.C. Publications, Inc., a New York corporation and Warner Communications Inc.

  Dr. Seuss: Dr. Seuss Enterprises, L.P.

  Dumpster: Dempster Brothers

  Facebook: Facebook, Inc.

  Harry Potter: Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

  Ikea: Inter IKEA Systems B.V. Besloten Vennootschap

  James Bond: DANJAQ S.A. Corporation

  Land Rover: Land Rover Company, United Kingdom

  Lord of the Rings: The Saul Zaentz Company DBA Tolkien Enterprises Corporation

  Mars bar: Mars Incorporated

  Monsoon: Monsoon Accessorize Ltd

  Superman: DC Comics composed of Warner Communications, Inc.

  Velcro: Velcro Industries B.V.

  YouTube: Google Inc.

  Chapter One

  Ally Everton didn’t want to believe she was cursed, but she was seriously beginning to wonder.

  Day One.

  A flowerpot crashed to the pavement in front of her, spraying her with wet soil, geranium petals and shards of painted terracotta. Ally thanked her lucky stars she hadn’t been walking any faster otherwise there might have been fragments of her on the pavement too.

  Day Two.

  She arrived at Paxton’s Precious Metals to find three fire engines blasting water over the smoldering remains of her place of employment. Ally was out of a job.

  Day Three.

  A few steps onto the escalator at Angel Station, the steepest in Europe, Ally’s legs tangled with someone’s bag. Only the quick reaction of a guy standing below stopped her falling all the way to the bottom. When she looked behind, there was no one anywhere near her.

  Day Four.

  A car clipped Ally’s bike, sent her sliding into traffic and the guilty driver raced off without stopping. Not unusual when cyclists and motorists waged a daily war of attrition on London roads. Ally escaped with cuts and bruises, but two cars collided trying to avoid her and one of them ran over her bike.She threw the pieces in a Dumpster.

  Day Five.

  In search of her neighbor’s lost cat, Ally spent four hours locked in the basement of her building after a door slammed behind her. Why would someone remove the handle from the inside?

  Day Six.

  Jack, her married boss—ex-boss now that he’d decided not to start up the business again—had asked to meet her for lunch and made a pass at her. Ally spent the next twenty hours bolting between her bed and the bathroom. She must have eaten something dodgy.

  Ally had never thought of herself as unlucky, but the incidents of the last few days had changed her mind. Maybe she’d broken a mirror and not noticed. Invisible black cats could have crossed her path or perhaps she’d been reckless with salt.

  The police had been called to the traffic accident and she’d told them about some of the other stuff. Mishaps, they’d said. Coincidences. Simply accidents. When Ally babbled to her friends—after showing due concern—they’d laughed and nicknamed her Calamity Ally.

  So on Day Seven, when commuters jostled for space behind her on the platform at Angel Station, and Ally glanced down to see her toes being edged over the cross-this-and-you’ll-get-eaten line, she dug in her heels and pushed back into the crowd. This wasn’t the place to have an accident. A rush of warm wind tousled Ally’s blonde hair, heralding the arrival of the underground train.

  Thank goodness for that, she thought, but as the train emerged from the tunnel, Ally found herself flying into its path. Her shocked scream morphed into a gasp of pain as she slammed into the gap between the rails.

  Oh God. I’m going to die.

  The sound of squealing brakes filled her head and Ally turned. With seconds remaining before she was splattered by two hundred tons of screeching engineering, she struggled partway to her feet and raised her hands in a futile attempt to stave off the inevitable.

  I’m dead.

  The slowing train caught her arm, knocked her into the drainage channel and the wheels missed her flailing limbs by inches. As death passed over her face, Ally lay trembling on her back. Bright blue sparks flew in the darkness as metal grated against metal until the train came to a shuddering halt. She took a gulp of thick, oily air and counted to three before she dared let herself have the next thought.

  I’m not dead.

  Amazed to find her arms and legs still attached, let alone her head, Ally squirmed over in the tight space and crawled toward the front of the train, taking care not to touch the live rail. She emerged to gasps of astonishment, though no one was more astonished than she was. Ally pushed herself up on wobbly legs and twisted ’round to see a white-faced train driver staring at her through his window.

  “Here!”

  She turned toward a man’s voice and hands reached to haul her up to the platform. Ally wobbled when her feet touched safety.

/>   “Are you okay?”

  No.

  “Sit down.”

  Can’t.

  “What happened?”

  Pushed.

  “Did you trip?”

  I was pushed.

  “Did you jump?”

  I was pushed.

  She cowered under the press of questions, unhappy to be the center of attention. No one had seen what happened. There was no hue and cry for whoever shoved her. She wanted to shout out that someone had deliberately pushed her in front of the train, but she kept quiet. Ally didn’t want it to have happened. She preferred to run away. If she didn’t muster energy from somewhere, she’d be carted off to the hospital, forced to give a statement to the transport police and probably have to convince a psychiatrist she didn’t have a death wish.

  Uniformed employees of London Transport pushed through the crowd to reach her. The questions started again.

  “Are you okay?” asked a man.

  “What happened?” asked a woman.

  Ally opened her mouth but nothing came out.

  “Did anyone see what happened?” asked the woman.

  “She just seemed to throw herself in front of the train,” said one of the men who’d pulled her onto the platform.

  The female employee took Ally’s hand. “We’ve called for paramedics.”

  “I’m okay,” Ally blurted. “I didn’t jump. I was pushed.”

  But no one backed up her story. No one had seen anything. The train moved on. Commuters continued on their journey. CCTV cameras showed only her flight, no hands behind her. By the time she’d been checked over and told she could go, Ally accepted there was no point making a fuss. If anyone had seen what happened, they’d long gone. The person who’d pushed her was hardly going to hang around to admit it.

  Once Ally emerged at street level, a whimper of relief burst from her mouth. She clamped her lips together in case something louder escaped and kept moving, heading home, back the way she’d come a short while before, her heart racing, her head pounding.

  Only when she was safe inside her little bedsit with the door locked did her legs finally give way. She slithered to the floor and curled up, her teeth chattering so loudly she could almost make out what they were saying.

  “OhmyGodbloodyhellwhatthefuckohmyGod.”

  Someone just tried to kill me.

  She tried to swallow the lump in her throat and failed. Had those accidents not been accidents at all? The flowerpot? The crash on her bike? This made no sense. I don’t have any enemies. I never let people down. Everyone likes me.

  Clearly someone didn’t.

  There was no point going to the police. With no one to back her up, they’d conclude it was the work of the attention-seeking weirdo they’d probably already labeled her.

  Ally pushed herself to her feet, stumbled to the bathroom. While she ran a bath, she removed her ruined clothes, ripped and smeared with black grease. Her cheek already sported a bruise and long grazes marred her legs and arms. Could have been so much worse.

  She sank up to her chin in the tub, pressing her lips together against the sting of warm water kissing raw skin. As tension seeped from her body, Ally let her worry subside. Perhaps she’d imagined the hands on her back. Maybe it was the chaos theory rippling through the jostling passengers, a feather touch at the rear transformed into a hard shove by the time it got to the front.

  Ally sighed. The more she thought about it, it was ridiculous to think someone had tried to kill her. It had to have been an accident. For the first time since she’d dumped him, she wished Mark was there to give her a cuddle, but Ally reminded herself what he’d done and knew any strong arms would be better than his.

  Perhaps she should put her succession of crappy boyfriends down to bad luck. Easier than blaming her poor taste. Mark seemed blind to the notion that his infidelity might upset her, unable to understand why she was insulted by his confession that he couldn’t resist Belinda’s breasts. Bastard. Unbelievably, Mark had the nerve to ask Ally to go to a dinner party at his boss’s and pretend they were still together. What planet was he living on?

  By the time she emerged from the bath, Ally had a plan. She needed a job and a new start away from London. Nothing like almost being hit by a train to shake some sense into her. Her brother Finn had left her a key to his weekend cottage in Wyndale in the Derbyshire Peak District while he was in the States for three months. The two months before he returned would give her time to sort herself out. Forget she was a city girl, if Ally could survive being run over by a train, she could survive anything the countryside threw at her. Except snakes, because she had a morbid terror of anything that slithered like her lying, cheating, fucktard ex.

  Less than three hours after the incident with the train, Ally was on her way to Euston Station by taxi.

  She wasn’t running. Just relocating.

  * * * * *

  “The lucky bitch.”

  After all that fucking effort, it was hard to believe Ally still walked and talked and breathed. How the hell could she be hit by a train and live? Knowing she could have turned at any moment and seen who stood behind her on the platform, it had been surprisingly simple to act without hesitation. A surreptitious shove in the back and she tumbled onto the track. In the melee, no one had observed what happened and it was easy to slip away through the crowd.

  Except there’d been no screams of horror echoing around the station, no spray of blood, no traumatized commuters. Ally had been hauled back onto the platform with all her limbs attached. Maybe Angel Station had been a poor choice. Seems there’d been a bloody angel watching over her. Ally’s good fortune wouldn’t last. Couldn’t last.

  Chapter Two

  “He’s a spoiled, lazy, good-for-nothing excuse for a man.”

  About to open the door to his parents’ dining room, Caspar paused at the sound of his father’s gruff voice.

  “Don’t say that,” his mother replied.

  “Why not? It’s his own fault he’s in such a mess. He’s the only one who can put things right.”

  Caspar bristled.

  “He’s trying.”

  Yes, he was. Thank you, Mother.

  “Not bloody hard enough,” snapped his father. “And that’s the problem, isn’t it? He never tries hard enough. Not at school, not at Cambridge, not over…”

  Caspar held his breath but his father, Leonard, Earl of Lynham, couldn’t even utter Jemima’s name. Before Caspar heard his parents say something he found hard to forgive, he pushed open the door and sauntered in.

  “Caspar.” His mother smiled at him.

  The lines on her face grew deeper every day. His fault. It hurt that he’d disappointed her, and while he was not quite the villain his parents believed, neither was he the decent, upright son they wanted.

  He walked over to kiss her cheek. “Sorry I’m late.”

  His father harrumphed as Caspar nodded at him. About as much of a greeting as Caspar expected. He sat opposite his mother at the place laid for him at the long mahogany dining table and braced himself. The only reason he came for dinner on Wednesday nights, apart from the food, was for his mother, but it was unavoidable that in pleasing his mother, he also aggravated his father.

  While the meal was served by Barnes, their sour-faced butler, Caspar responded politely to his mother’s inane chatter about village life and people in whom he had no interest. Her deliberate avoidance of any topic that might enable her husband to use his knife and fork on Caspar’s heart was well-intentioned but ultimately doomed to failure. His heat-seeking missile of a father waited until the main course to strike.

  “Found work yet?” The tone of his father’s voice made it clear he’d guessed the answer. Caspar was tempted to say yes to see what would happen.

  “No.”

  Three more rejections since last Wednesday and seven companies hadn’t even acknowledged his application. None were jobs he even wanted.

  “We are in a recession, Leonard,” his mother
said.

  His father huffed. “I bought you that laptop to make it easier to find employment. What the hell are you doing with it?”

  Caspar swallowed the words watching porn and said, “Looking for a job.”

  “At least volunteer for the local Mountain Rescue Organization,” his father snapped. “You might as well put your climbing skills to some use. Being part of the MRO would look good on your CV. A positive spin to counteract the gap in employment.”

  Caspar sucked in his cheeks.

  His father narrowed his eyes. “Am I wrong?”

  “No,” Caspar said.

  He had volunteered for the MRO and was in fact on their books as available for call-out but had never been asked to assist in a rescue. Not hard to work out why. They didn’t trust him, didn’t feel he was a team player, didn’t want to have anything to do with him.

  “Tom Morton has something to do with the local rescue team, doesn’t he?” his mother asked. “Wasn’t he at school with you, Caspar?”

  “Once upon a time,” Caspar said. When they both wore short pants and caps and only fought about football.

  He hoped he had a chance to finish eating before the conversation breached his tolerance level. Much as he dreaded these dinners, it was the only decent meal he had all week. Martha, the cook, had been with his parents as long as Caspar could remember and she always prepared something she knew he liked.

  “I’ll have a word with Tom’s father,” his father said. “John’s a Mason.”

  “No,” Caspar snapped. He could sort out his life himself.

  “What do you mean—no? I’m trying to do you a favor here.”

  The reddening face warned Caspar his father had begun to simmer.

  “There’s no point,” Caspar said. “Nothing’s going to change people’s opinion of me.” Particularly not if you interfere.

  “Perhaps if you tried harder to be worthy of A. Better. Opinion?” His father shot the words out like bullets.