Free Wanderlust: A Holiday Story (A Heroes and Heartbreakers Original) by Kitty French Page A

catch-your-breath before people arrived for the wedding tomorrow.
    The only person in the whole of the rambling building who seemed to be restless was its manager.
    Ford was back in England.
    Ruby had a ton of work to do, but all she could think about was the man who had taken her heart and travelled around the world with it in his back pocket. She’d re-lived their last evening together so many times that it was still as fresh as yesterday in her mind…
    Eight years earlier…
    “I can’t believe we’ve finally finished Uni. No more exams, no more classes,” Ruby said, kicking off her shoes and curling her bare feet beneath her on the old swing chair at the bottom of the garden. Mellow lights glowed in most of the upstairs windows of the house that had been her home for the last three years, along with two other girls who along the way had gone from strangers to close friends.
    “Halle-fucking-lujah,” Ford grinned, leaning forward and unscrewing the cap from the bottle of Jack Daniel’s among the used glasses and empty beer bottles on the rickety picnic table. The garden had seen its fair share of student parties over the last few years, and tonight’s had been up there with the best of them. Almost all of their fellow course mates had wandered in and out at some point during the evening, euphoric when sober and tearfully nostalgic as the alcohol flowed freely. One by one they’d meandered away again, until just Ruby and Ford remained, side by side on the swing chair beneath the old apple tree with fairy lights drooping from its branches.
    “You see the North Star, the brightest one in the sky right above us?” Ruby pointed skywards to indicate the general direction and Ford nodded, his head tipped against the back of the chair. “When I was a kid, my dad used to tell me that it was right above our chimney, so wherever I was in the world I could always look up and I’d know how to find home.”
    Ford gazed up at the star overhead. “Looks like he was right.”
    They fell silent, each privately acknowledging the fact that the home they’d known for the last few years would be someone else’s come the new term.
    “Will you miss me?” Ford passed her a replenished glass, then settled back alongside her.
    Ruby smiled lightly. “Stop fishing for compliments.” She shook her head and looked away, taking a little Jack Daniel’s into her mouth and letting it slowly burn its way down her throat. She’d deflected his question because the truthful answer was that she didn’t want to think about how much she’d miss Ford after he boarded that plane tomorrow.
    They’d spent the last few years living in and out of each other’s neighboring houses, and he’d quickly become her self-appointed protector and best friend. He’d kissed just about every other girl in university except for Ruby and been routinely scathing about her choices of casual boyfriends.
    Theirs was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of friendship; the sort that’s too precious to risk with a fumble because the idea of losing that person is too much to bear. Or else it had always seemed to be, until it was all drawing to an end.
    “Because I’ll miss you,” he said softly, his voice stripped bare of his usual humor. “Come with me, Ruby red.” Fords fingers settled over hers on the seat between them. “Come and see the world.”
    “You know I can’t. Phoebe needs me here.”
    “She’s fourteen, Rubes. Isn’t that old enough to cope without you?”
    But they both knew the answer. Phoebe lived with their grandparents officially, but she relied on Ruby as her only link to their lives before their parents had been killed in a car crash ten years before. At the tender age of eleven, Ruby had morphed overnight into half-sibling, half-mother to her four-year-old sister, and the two girls had grown up as close as two peas in a pod. Phoebe relied on her sister’s home visit every other weekend; Ruby could no more leave her than leave her own