Never Say Never

by Danielle Steel

Genres: General Fiction; Family Life; Women's Fiction; Romance; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

#1 New York Times bestselling author Danielle Steel’s deeply moving novel is the story of a woman who finds her life turned upside down while living temporarily in the French countryside.

Oona Kelly Webster has much to be grateful for. A striking woman with red hair and green eyes, she has a loving family and a job she adores, editing a prestigious line of books. To celebrate their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, she and her husband, Charles, have planned a visit to France.

But then Charles drops a bombshell. He has been living a lie—hiding an affair for a year—and he is leaving Oona for a younger male lover.

Although devastated, Oona decides to travel to France without Charles. She arrives in a charming village an hour outside of Paris, and settles into the house she has rented, called La Belle Florence—named after the king’s mistress for whom it was built. But just as she’s catching her breath, she’s dealt another blow: Her company’s merger will eliminate her job. 

In the space of a few months, everything she nurtured for decades has slipped through her fingers. The only silver lining is that she can remain in France, where the simple life in beautiful surroundings slowly begins to heal her, as does the little white dog she rescues, and her friendly neighbor hailing from Trinidad, who delights her with his openness and warmth. 

Though she does not recognize him at first, she soon realizes her neighbor is a well-known actor. As their feelings for each other begin to deepen, Oona wrestles with the risks of opening her heart again—especially to a younger, very famous man.

Never Say Never is an inspiring novel about a woman who finds a second chance at happiness and love, all because she understands the importance of being brave enough to stay open to change.

Release date: January 7, 2025

Publisher: Dell

Print pages: 256

Sample

Chapter 1

Oona Kelly Webster put the finishing touches on the Thanksgiving table with a critical eye, and made sure it looked as perfect as she wanted it, and her family expected it to be. Everything in Oona’s life was orderly, and impeccably planned well in advance. She didn’t like surprises, and tried to anticipate problems so that they would never happen. She’d had an impressive career in publishing at Hargrove Publishers, a small but highly respected house that existed under the umbrella of a larger publishing conglomerate. She had worked at the same company since she’d graduated from Princeton, and had taken classes from some of the greatest contemporary writers of our time.

From junior editor, over time she had risen to being the head of the small but most lofty literary imprint, publishing exceptionally fine authors. The house was prestigious, although its revenues did not compare to those that published commercial fiction. And as the publisher of her own imprint, Oona Kelly was a greatly respected, distinguished person in the literary world. She was very proud of the talented authors she had discovered, even if their sales figures were not as high as the blockbuster bestsellers of commercial fiction. Their work was for an elite readership who preferred obscure literary work, of a more intellectual nature.

Now almost forty-seven, Oona had discovered and published many very fine writers, several of whom were famous. She nurtured and encouraged her authors with great care. Unlike the world of bestselling commercial fiction, hers was not a dog-eat-dog existence. It was one of dignity, finesse and great literary minds. As head of the house, she had a protected and very secure situation, with considerable prestige. She didn’t abuse the power she had, but she enjoyed her position and all that it entailed.

In spite of the highbrow literary nature of the books she published, Oona looked a decade younger than her age, and the older authors whom she published were surprised and delighted to meet a pretty young woman with big green eyes, a youthful face, and a warm smile, who understood and appreciated their work, and had an excellent education and twenty-five years of experience. She was dedicated to the imprint she represented and to its authors, and defended their interests fiercely. She got them the best advances she could, given their somewhat limited sales. The owners of the publishing house were a brilliant, astute family who had owned it for three generations and grown their overall publishing, including nonfiction, some carefully selected fiction, and academic textbooks that were lucrative, it into a massive multibillion-dollar business. They valued Oona’s contributions, and the high-end relatively small imprint she ran. It wasn’t a big moneymaker but it gave them a great deal prestige in the publishing world. And keeping it small gave Oona the opportunity to run it impeccably, with full control of every detail, which was how she ran her personal life and home as well.

She had married Charles Webster six months after graduating from Princeton, and she was already working at Hargrove Publishing then. Charles was twelve years older, and thirty-four at the time. He was already a successful account executive in advertising and enjoyed it thoroughly. They had met at a party in New York, where they both lived, and had grown up, and it was a whirlwind romance, which turned into a solid marriage, with their two children, Meghan and Will, who were twenty-two and twenty-four now. Will was born on their first anniversary and Oona went back to work six weeks later because she loved her job. Oona and Charles both had big careers, busy lives, and too little time together, but they tried to have dinner together once a week. The kids were out of the house now.

Oona and Charles were about to celebrate their twenty-fifth anniversary in December, and had decided to put off a big party until the spring. Instead they had rented a very handsome house in France, an hour outside Paris, near Milly-la-Forêt in the department of Essonne. She and Charles were going to spend a month there from mid-February to mid-March. They were hoping that their children, Meghan and Will, would join them for a week, and the rest of the time they were going to enjoy three weeks alone in France. It was something they had said they had wanted to do for years, so Oona had organized it. The house looked beautiful and had a housekeeper who came on weekdays. The home and property seemed grander than what they needed, but they had decided to spoil themselves. It was owned by a Hong Kong Chinese family that rented the home out for weddings, and occasionally to foreigners looking for a comfortable, luxurious vacation experience in a lovely location.

Charles and Oona had both worked during their entire marriage, cared equally about their family and their careers, and had reached considerable status in their respective professional communities at a young age. Charles had switched to a more dynamic ad agency a decade earlier, and was the number two person at Hills, Rockwell, and Klein advertising. He’d been in line for the number one position for the past five years but had been passed over. Now he had to wait for another round, until the current CEO retired, which didn’t appear to be imminent, but Charles loved his job and didn’t mind the wait for the top position. He liked working there in the meantime. It fed his ego and his mind. He had status, respect, great perks, and fewer headaches than he would have had as CEO.

Their daughter, Meghan, was due to return to New York by the end of the year. She had graduated from George Washington University in Washington, D.C., in June, with a major in Global Philanthropy, and she was currently finishing an internship sponsored by the Carter Foundation, which had several programs in Africa that interested her. And she was looking for a long-term job, hopefully abroad for a few years.

Will had gone to UC Berkeley, graduated three years before, had stayed in San Francisco, and worked for Google, which he loved. He thrived on the California life—the weather, the athletics, the outdoors. He had no desire to move back to New York.

Their father, Charles, was fifty-nine, and was determined to become CEO of HRK before he retired. It was his one major goal. The status it would bring with it was important to him, which he admitted sheepishly to Oona at times, although his role as second in line to the throne was not an unpleasant one, and he had sufficient power to keep him happy in the meantime. But he wanted to achieve the status of CEO before he retired.

Both their children were on well-thought-out career paths, having been taught since early on to do so, although Oona was less pleased with Meghan’s determination to spend the next several years in underdeveloped countries, improving the lot of suffering people. She didn’t like the idea of Meghan going someplace dangerous, which was part of what appealed to Meghan. She couldn’t see herself wasting her time in some insignificant underpaid glamour job, like many of her friends working for the assistant beauty editors of major magazines. She wanted to make a difference in the world, face-to-face and hand-to-hand, on the ground, which Charles heartily approved of. Oona was concerned about the dangers of being exposed to tribal wars, health risks, and the threats to any beautiful woman as young as she was. But Meghan was strong-willed and almost sure to do what she wanted in the end, and Oona was bracing herself for it, once Meghan started looking for jobs in earnest at various foundations in New York that had projects and staff abroad.

Meghan and Will were both coming home for Thanksgiving, as they always did, and their parents were going to tell them about the house they had rented in France. Oona and Charles were both excited about it, and Oona, reading up on the local history, had already discovered that the house had an interesting history of its own. It had been built by Louis XVI, the last French king before the Revolution, for his favorite mistress, and it was named after her, La Belle Florence. It had numerous secret passages, and originally had a tunnel joining it to a nearby château, where the king had spent a great deal of his time, when that mistress was his favorite. She had died young, in mysterious circumstances, and he was said to be heartbroken at the time. The château where he had stayed had burned during the French Revolution and was gone, but the home of the king’s mistress was still standing, and had been lovingly restored and maintained by its various owners during the centuries since. It seemed like a romantic spot to spend their anniversary, and Charles was amused by Oona’s fascination with it.