RIVA's back! Now meet your new best friend, Ella from RIVA's "A GIRL LESS ORDINARY" by Leah Ashton

ebook & paperback only from millsandboon.co.uk

Name: Ella Cartwright

Age: 29

Occupation: Image Consultant

Vital Stats: Always perfectly presented – sleek long dark brown hair, immaculate makeup, super fashionable clothes. Pretty, but not really beautiful – but she makes the most of what she’s got.

Who'd play her in the movie of her life: Melanie Lynskey

Instant BFF or Gotta Earn Her Trust: You definitely have to earn Ella’s trust!!

Friends or Family: No family – and while she’s constantly surrounded by people and is out socialising most nights of the week – she has no close friends. She finds it impossible to let people in, believing if anyone gets to truly know her, they’ll reject her.

Satin Teddy or Cotton Comfort :Cotton comfort, no question!

Shower or Bath:Bath – with lots of bubbles!

What she doesn't want the hero to know:As they were best friends at high school, the problem with Jake is that he already knows all of Ella’s secrets! Ella wants nothing more than to keep her past buried, but Jake is the only person who sees straight through her carefully crafted façade.

We'd be her friend because...  She’s heaps of fun! She knows all the coolest bars and is invited to the swankiest parties. Plus – once she does lower her guard and become your friend, she is your friend for life.

In her words…

“How do you do it?” he asked, “all this?”

Her lips quirked. “You mean have a good time?”

“I think you know this isn’t my idea of a good time.”

“So what is?” she asked, curious.

“Coding,” he said, quick as a flash.

Ella smiled fully. Always such a geek.

Then he shrugged. “And, I guess hiking with my dogs up in the mountains. Mountain bike riding – sometimes with a mate or two. Climbing.”

“Let me guess – in the mountains?”

Now it was his turn to smile. “It’s the best place in the world. I’ve got my own place up there.”

She knew that, of course. No self-respecting tabloid journalist could let an article go by without some reference to his home. Sydney’s Blue Mountains Billionaire, Software Mogul’s Mountain Hideaway and so on and so forth.

Ella wrinkled her nose. “I know it’s supposed to be beautiful, but I reckon I’d go crazy living that far away from Sydney.”

“I’d go crazy if I lived any closer.” He rested both hands on the balcony railing, and looked out over the harbour. Beneath them, along the edge of the marina, flowed a steady stream of Friday night revellers, muffled snippets of their conversations mixing with the heavy bass emanating from the party behind them.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” he said, after a while. “I genuinely want to know – how do you stand this?”

“It’s really not all that complicated,” she said. “It’s fun. It’s the buzz of getting ready. Of meeting new people. Of laughing and chatting and dancing. What isn’t there to love?”

He shook his head. “It’s exhausting.”

She shrugged. “For me it’s the opposite. I’d go mad stuck in my apartment all the time. I need noise, and chatter and people. It gives me energy.”

“But you must need a break, occasionally?” he asked. He was looking at her like she was some bizarre software glitch – one that if he stared at long enough would offer up a solution.

“Nope,” she said. “I like to keep myself busy. Most nights I’ve got something on – salsa dancing, pilates, any classes I feel like taking - or just catching up with friends. Cocktails. Dancing, that kind of thing.”

He turned, and leaned back against the railing, studying her.

“But that’s new. You used to say you were happiest in your own company. Or, with…”

Me. With Jake.

But of course – he’d left.

Ella laughed, but it sounded about as artificial as it was. “Ah, the words of a girl not invited to any parties, and with no money to go shopping or to riding lessons.”

 “Really?” he said, the word a little hollow. A beat later she realised exactly what he was thinking.

 “Oh! I don’t mean I didn’t like hanging out with you. You were my best friend.” It felt bizarre to say something like that, something so juvenile, to the tall, dark and devastatingly handsome man before her. But it had been true. He’d been her best friend, her only friend. “But, you know, I also kind of wondered what it would be like to be one of the popular girls.” She held her hands up in a helpless gesture. “What can I say. I guess it’s kind of natural to want what you can’t have?”

It was a cliché – a nothing, thoughtless sentence – and yet it was as if they both temporarily stopped breathing.

What they both wanted suddenly made the air between them impossibly thick with delicious, unignorable tension.

 “What did you want, Ella?”

Oh, that wasn’t fair. He knew. She’d told him – a very long time ago.

The memory still had the power to make every last remnant of awkward, shy Eleanor want to cringe, then run away and hide.

 “What do you want, Ella?”

Need to know what Ella really wants?  Buy A GIRL LESS ORDINARY here!

So what's the book about?  She dreamed of being a girl less ordinary…

Eleanor had worked hard to transform herself from the sad, lonely girl she once was. Switching braces for a breathtaking smile, dowdy clothes for fabulous dresses, and heartbreak for flirty, fun-only dates, she’s now Ella! But one man can see through her glamour-plating to the real woman beneath.

Fiercely private billionaire Jake Donner has never forgotten Ella, and he’s shocked to see how she’s changed. Sparks begin to fly as old memories haunt Ella and Jake – for the innocent attraction they’d once resisted is all grown up and won’t be denied again…

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