Hey guys. Well, this is my new stories. I've officially finished the six chapters. And I'm going to update once a week (every wednesday, my time) so that if I get bogged down with school stuff, I'll always have chapters to update with :)

Here's a full summary: Gabriella is a bestselling author and has spent the last three years on book tours. With a recently adopted three year old daughter, Gabriella moves back to Scarborough, her hometown, to write her latest challenge set by her agent: a love story. Whilst losing faith in her talent, Gabriella meets her father's assisstant manager, Troy Bolton. He's everything she despises: arrogant, conceted and he has a beard! She thinks there are no way they can ever get along and they'll never have anything in common. She comes to learn that the black and white colours she had imagined love to be is a lot more blurry than she thought.

I hope you enjoy it. Sorry about the suckish summary. You guys know I don't do summaries well! Btw, Scarborough is a small seaside town on the East coast of England.


Chapter 1

"I can't believe you're a mum!" Kelsi exclaimed as she placed her coffee cup down.

Gabriella smiled appreciatively to the young girl who had just asked for her autograph. "Kels, calm down. You're starting to sound like Sharpay," she joked, referring to their extravagant, over-dramatic friend.

Kelsi gasped in horror. "You take that back." Despite her quiet demeanour around strangers, Kelsi was quite loud around her friends and had several ongoing arguments with a few of them, especially with Sharpay. They had several differences, especially their fashion sense but they were so close, they were practically sisters. And because Gabriella had Carmen, she knew sisters when she saw them.

Gabriella laughed heartily. "Oh come on, Kels! It's not like I got knocked up. I just adopted her. It's a little different, don't you think?"

Kelsi sipped her coffee and glanced at her friend. "I guess. But even so! I never thought I'd see the day when Gabriella Carolee Elizabeth Annalisa Loretta Montez had a kid before she was married," Kelsi exclaimed.

Gabriella glanced around Costa Coffee, the closest thing Scarborough had to a Starbucks. "Kels, I invited you to coffee so that we could have a mature conversation. I have a lot I need to talk about. Stop making it sound like I got pregnant."

Kelsi's face softened. "I'm sorry, Gabs. I guess I was a little shocked to see you after three years with a daughter."

Gabriella cradled her cup in her hands. It was true. She'd been away from Scarborough, the greatest place in the world, just for her book tours. It wasn't so bad. She'd travelled the world, seen so many beautiful places and had had each of her books at number one on the New York Times hardback and paperback bestseller lists for longer than a year. She'd met some of her heroes and she'd met loads of her fans, too. The worst part was that she spent the last three years sleeping in hotel rooms. Truthfully, it got a bit lonely. She knew she was lucky and she was honestly grateful. Not to mention how she treated her fans like best friends and so she had spent the last three years meeting thousands of her closest friends. But nothing could beat sitting on the roof of Greg's stables and watching the sunset. No horns, no engines and no arguing drivers. Just...bliss.

Now she had someone to share it all with. Amber Montez. Well, she was a Montez now that the paperwork had been finalised. There had been some issues considering Gabriella wasn't married or had a partner but she had one kick ass lawyer and she had won custody of Amber.

She had never planned to adopt Amber. In fact, considering that her agent had given her a challenge that was unbelievably difficult for her to do, adopting a child had been the very last thing on her mind. It was an honest and genuine adoption. It wasn't a publicity stunt like some reports were claiming. Earlier in the year, Gabriella had visited an orphanage in Wales to read stories to the children. Now that had been a publicity act. Once story time was over, she had had the opportunity to interact with the children and had noticed that Amber was sat alone in the corner with a book.

And that was that.

Stirring her coffee absentmindedly, Gabriella turned her attention back to Kelsi. "The thing is," she began, "I'm not sure if I'm able to do this anymore."

Kelsi frowned. "But, you love writing. You always have. You constantly had a notebook with you throughout school."

The Colombian woman nodded glumly. "Of course I love writing. I blame my grandpa. The problem is what my agent wants me to do."

Kelsi shrugged worriedly. "Well, what is it?"

"My agent wants me to write a romance," Gabriella admitted. She sighed when she saw Kelsi struggling to hold a laugh in. Gabriella shrugged and sat back, lifting her now lukewarm coffee to her lips. "Go ahead."

Kelsi burst out laughing, attracting the attention of a few nearby customers. Gabriella shot them a few apologetic glances but she honestly couldn't blame her friend's reaction. She had reacted in the same way when her agent made the proposal. She had only stopped laughing when she realised that her agent had actually been serious. She couldn't wait for Sharpay's reaction. The thought of the Gabriella Montez being involved with anything to do with love or romance had always been highly amusing for anyone that knew her.

It wasn't that she didn't believe in love, far from it. With Greg and Maria being happily married for thirty years, it was hard not to believe in love. It was simply that she had no interest in it. Her love had never stretched further than books, horses, ballet and now Amber.

Kelsi took a deep breath and proceeded to take a soothing sip of her latte. She took her glasses off and wiped them as she spoke. "You? Write a romance? Why the hell would you do that?"

"To complete my image. That's what my agent reckons it'll do, anyway. With the whole I-can-write-any-genre thing, romance will just complete it. In an ideal world, I'd agree. It's only logical and I'd get a lot more readers. But, I'm realistic and I just find it i-"

"Ah!" Kelsi cut in, holding her hand up as if that physically stopped Gabriella's ability to speak. "I don't want to hear the 'i' word. Imagine what Shar would say if she knew you were just about to say something was 'impossible?' Remember the last time that you said that something was impossible? Now you're a bestselling author."

Gabriella rolled her eyes. "Kels, think about that. When I said that the prospect of becoming an author was impossible, I actually had the manuscript in my hands in this very coffee shop. At this moment in time, I don't even have an idea for a central character."

Kelsi stared at the other woman. "You're really worried."

Gabriella shrugged. "Not yet. I've got time. Who knows? Maybe a bolt of inspiration will hit me tomorrow."

Kelsi smiled. "That's the spirit."

Gabriella stirred her coffee absentmindedly and looked at her friend. "It's time that Carmen came home."

Gabriella sighed blissfully as she moved smoothly on the back of her black mare, Chica. She had been the first horse that Gabriella had successfully broken in after she returned home from studying English at Cambridge University. Greg had bought Chica as a foal and Gabriella had risen to the challenge of breaking her in despite having to resort to Greg's help every time she'd tried to break horses in the past.

Gabriella had always had three passions. She loved writing because of her grandfather. She loved ballet because of her mother. And she loved horse riding because of her father. Writing was, and always will be, her one true passion. But there was always something magical about riding Chica through the fields that Greg owned. Gabriella would feel the northern breeze in her hair, the sun on her face and feel like the world had stopped spinning. When she rode Chica across Greg's piece of land, it was just her and Chica riding together.

Gabriella slowed Chica's gallop to a gentle trot, wanting to prolong the time she had with Chica. She had no worries. Amber was safe, back at the ranch and spending time with Greg and Maria. Gabriella had been overjoyed when Amber had immediately taken to Maria and Greg. She had known that Greg and Maria would spoil her rotten. She knew they had been waiting for grandchildren ever since she had graduated from Cambridge.

In fact, Amber had been a major hit with all of her friends and their kids, especially Charlie, Sharpay and Zeke's son. The only person left to meet her was Carmen and Gabriella was positive they'd get on like a house on fire. Amber was a sweet, innocent little girl who only ever wanted to please people and Carmen was a lively, bubbly person who always had a knack for knowing how to get on with everybody. Gabriella couldn't remember Carmen arguing with anyone at all. She even had Greg wrapped around her little finger. That annoyed Gabriella. She loved Greg immensely and missed him so much when she had been on her book tours but he annoyed her, too. He was always too protective, even now that she was approaching thirty and with a daughter of her own. It confused her, if she was honest. Wasn't the father supposed to be overprotective of the youngest? In any case, he was overprotective of Gabriella, not Carmen, and no matter what Gabriella tried, he wouldn't let up.

Gabriella took her cowgirl hat off and fanned herself with it. Gabriella had returned to Scarborough, expecting the usual moderately warm summer with the occasional shower of rain. But, she had discovered that Scarborough was suffering with an out of character heat wave, resulting in a hosepipe ban. The last time that the council had declared a hosepipe ban, Gabriella had been just five years old. As a result of the hosepipe ban, the grass was brown, the trees looked pathetic, and all of the horses were irritable. As if to prove her point, Chica huffed through her nose.

"Behave," Gabriella scolded.

She turned back to the spectacular scene before her and swept her gaze across something that could never be replaced by Tiffany jewellery, Gucci flip flops, and Prada handbags. The sun was fairly low in the sky, making shadows much longer and the tops of the hills in the distance turn the most perfect blend of pink and gold. The day wouldn't last much longer and Gabriella was thankful that the setting sun lessened the oppressive heat a little bit. She looked up at the sky and felt her heart rate slow to a gentle thump...thump... The sky was like a paint palette of blues, purples and the tiniest flecks of silver. She felt her body sigh with satisfaction when she realised she could still identify some constellations.

She placed her hat back on her head and patted Chica's neck. "Don't worry, baby, I'm going to stick around this place now." Especially with the way this romance book is going.

She shook the thoughts and worries of work out of her head and clicked her tongue, making Chica break into a slow trot. The motion of being on the back of a trotting horse brought a great sense of belonging to Gabriella. All of her friends teased her about how she was a horse in a past life. She couldn't exactly disagree. During high school, she spent the majority of her five years trying to find out who she was and she was also trying to fit in with her fellow students. These worries made her spend hours and days in the stables, alone with the horses, and more often than not, she would be curled up in a corner of the stable with a book of Grandpa Montez's.

She figured that, given her agent's latest challenge for her, she'd be spending a lot of her time with the horses. It wasn't like a love story was going to just pop into her head. She knew she'd have to actually work on this book and not just assume it would come to her as she typed away at her laptop.

When Chica was safely in the paddock, Gabriella dismounted her. "What am I going to do, Chica?" she murmured as she took the saddle off the back of the horse. Once the saddle was put back with the others, she went back over to the horse. "I don't suppose you have any ideas?" Gabriella stroked Chica's neck. "No? Oh well. I'll see you tomorrow, girl."

Gabriella expertly climbed over the wooden fence and wandered over to the main house on the ranch. It was the main building that was a home for everybody, not just Greg and Maria. Workers gathered there before their shifts started and after they finished. The white fridge, which was by the back door in the kitchen, was always covered in multicoloured post-its, reminding Greg of stock, staff who were taking leave or new horse riding students.

The outside of the house looked almost comical on the foreground of the muddy, farm-like landscape. The whole of the wall which people saw when they drove up was glass, giving people an expansive view of the inside which had a soft warmth emanating from the dimly lit lamps. The white walls were covered with pictures of Gabriella and Carmen throughout their lives.

Gabriella ran a hand through her raven curls and smiled softly when she spotted Greg knelt on the floor with an elephant mask on his face. God only knew what they were doing. Ever since Gabriella had returned home, Greg and Maria had taken great pride in showing Amber off to other people and they were also spoiling her rotten.

The wooden steps that led to the front door were part of the foundation of Gabriella's childhood. She had spent days and nights on the steps, savouring the beauty of Seamer. During the times she spent on these steps, whether it was with family or friends, it always seemed to her that time seemed to slow down. The wood was worn by weather and the trampling of feet. She stepped into the house that had captured her whole life and inhaled deeply. Coffee and lasagne. The comforting scents made her tense muscles relax gently. She headed towards the opening to the lounge and leant against the doorframe as she watched her father and her daughter interact together. The squeals and giggles of Amber made her heart burst with happiness. She had seen nothing in her whole life that had seemed so beautiful and perfect. It looked like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Gabriella flinched when she felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to see Maria standing there with a quirked eyebrow. She smiled at her mother. "Hey, Mami. How long have they been like that?"

Maria shrugged. "I don't know. An hour maybe. I've been-"

"-cleaning Carmen's room." Gabriella laughed. "Don't look so shocked. I know you."

"Mummy!" Amber yelled.

Gabriella looked over and grinned as she picked her daughter up. She rested her on her hip and kissed her forehead. "Oh, mi ángel," Gabriella murmured. (A/N: My Angel) She brushed Amber's blonde locks from her forehead. "Have you been having fun?"

Amber nodded enthusiastically. "We did. Grandma made some brownies and then me and Grandpa were playing together."

"Can I have a little help?" Greg groaned from his place on the living room floor.

Maria sighed and sauntered over to her husband and held her hands out for him. "Greg, what have I said about getting on the floor?" She pulled him up and dusted down his white button up shirt.

Greg frowned as he threw the elephant mask to the side. "It's not fair. She," he pointed accusingly at Amber, "made me do it. Her eyes are evil. They make you do crazy things."

Amber giggled. "Grandpa! You said that I'm sweet."

Greg grinned and took her off Gabriella. He threw her up into the air and caught her easily. "Ah! Of course you're sweet. You're the best granddaughter I could've asked for."

Gabriella smiled at him. She looked over at Maria and noticed that her mother was gesturing to the kitchen with her eyes. "Mum, do you need some help with loading the dishwasher?"

Maria nodded. "I thought you'd never ask."

They wandered into the kitchen and Gabriella leant against the worktop. "What's up?"

Maria regarded her daughter. "How are you feeling?"

Gabriella tilted her head back and breathed deeply. She looked back to Maria. "I feel like I'm home. If there's anywhere in the world that I can write this stupid romance book, its right here."

"Do you have any ideas? Plots? Characters?" Maria asked.

Gabriella shook her head. "No. Not a single one."

Maria touched her daughter's hair. "Don't worry. Sometimes things happen when you don't expect them to."

Before Gabriella could ponder her mother's words, Amber ran in and hugged Gabriella's legs. "Mummy!" she squealed excitedly.

Gabriella crouched down. "Whatever's the matter, mi hija?" she laughed.

"I vant to drink your blood," Greg exclaimed as he walked in, arms outstretched with two pens dangling from his mouth.

Maria raised her eyebrows at Gabriella. "I didn't plan that but there we go."