Harlequin E New Adult Romance Box Set Volume 1: Burning Moon\Girls' Guide to Getting It Together\Rookie in Love (31 page)

I thought I’d done a good job of my day-to-night look by adding a long silver necklace to my navy dress, but seeing Zara makes me feel underdressed. I self-consciously comb a hand through my tangled tawny-brown hair—as though that will make me look any better.

“You look great!” I tell her as we follow the waiter to our table.

“Thanks.” She slips off the jacket to reveal a tiny black top that shows off her bronzed shoulders and makes her look like Olivia Newton-John in
Grease.

I narrow my eyes. “I’ve never seen that outfit before. Is it new?”

“Charity shop new.”

“You didn’t go to Oxfam, did you?”

“Of course I didn’t. You weren’t there,” she jokes. “Are you staying on there, then?”

“I don’t know.” I chew on my bottom lip as I glance over the menu. “Maybe retail isn’t for me.”

“You don’t have to do all this stuff, Meg. It’s obvious it’s not working.”

“What?” I look over my menu at her.

I haven’t told her, have I? Zara doesn’t know that speaking to Nora actually worked. She’s been so busy I haven’t seen her, never mind spoken to her.

“I thought you were trying one more thing and that was it?”

“I did try one more thing. I asked Nora for a pay rise.”

“I bet that didn’t go down too well with the old witch.” She chuckles.

“It was fine,” I say airily. “She said no one else had ever asked her before.”

Zara drops her menu and stares at me. “You mean she’s actually going to pay you more money?”

“Well it’s not really her money, is it? It’s the company’s.”

“Even so.” She turns back to the menu as our waiter approaches, ready to take our order.

When he’s gone, I say, “I really think it’s working, Zar. I already feel more confident.”

“That’s what they want you to believe. These magazines.” She fingers the rim of her wine glass.

“You write for them,” I point out.

Zara shrugs. “I get paid to write crap like that.”

I want to ask her if that means she doesn’t believe all the things she writes, but a familiar high-pitched voice sounds from somewhere off to my left.

And there’s Bryony Hudson with her black hair pulled up off her bony face, scowling at one of the waiters.

She sees me as soon as the poor guy’s scurried out of her way, and her expression changes into one of a startled rabbit.

“You know that chick?” Zara nods towards Bryony. “She doesn’t look thrilled to see you.”

Bryony heads our way, having moulded her face into a tight smile. “Megan,” she says in greeting.

“Bryony,” I respond, mimicking her tone.

“What brings you here?” Bryony looks at Zara.

“This is my flatmate, Zara,” I explain. “Zara, this is Bryony, a family friend.”

I can’t remember if I’ve ever told Zara much about the Hudsons, but she picks up on the icy atmosphere between Bryony and me and offers her a brief, false smile.

“What about you?” I ask. “Are you here with Jeremy?”

Her gaze drops from mine. “No, I’m here on a sort of student-teacher conference thing. Terribly boring.” She rolls her eyes.

How could I forget that Bryony is a medical student? And when she graduates, Auntie Wendy will have a doctor and a lawyer for children.

“Are there a lot of you?” I scan the restaurant, looking for a large group of people.

“I’m waiting for some others to arrive.”

I have no desire to continue this conversation any longer than it needs to be with pointless small talk about our mothers. Anyway, Bryony probably knows more than I do about my mother, considering she’s practically her second daughter now.

Bryony’s eyes dart towards the door, where a fortysomething man in a brown jacket is waiting. “Well, I hope you have a good night.” She dashes towards the entrance.

Zara frowns. “That was weird.”

“You think that was weird?” I lift my eyebrows. “Be grateful you haven’t met her brother.”

Chapter Nine

After a busy day at work with Scarlett off sick, I’m finally released at five o’clock. I take a shortcut out the back of the building and across the car park.

Well, okay. It’s not technically a shortcut. But I like to think of it as “the scenic route,” meaning it takes me past loads more shops than the normal walk to my bus does.

Plus this way it means I won’t bump into Liam. I heard (after texting Scarlett to see how she was feeling and getting a Liam-related response) that his car has broken down. That’s why he was at the bus station yesterday.

I’m about halfway across the car park when I hear someone shout my name. Thinking that it might be Anna from marketing, who’s been promising me a spin in her banana-yellow Audi RS 4 since she bought it six months ago, I turn.

And there’s Auntie Wendy’s worn-out Punto in place of the shiny convertible I was expecting to see. And Tim is leaning against the bonnet with his arms hanging by his sides like he doesn’t know what to do with them.

“Tim?” I squint and walk towards him. “What are you doing here?”

He looks up at my office building. “This is where you work, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but why did you come?”

“To pick you up!” He moves to open the passenger door of the old car.

“You drove here?” I ask. “Through Leeds with all the one-way systems?” I don’t know a thing about roads, but apparently they’re a complete nightmare in the city centre.

“I do know how to drive, Megan. Anyway, I miss it. It’s a hobby I seldom I had time for in London. Hence why I don’t own my own transport.” He runs a hand along the car’s blue paintwork.

Tim thinks driving is a hobby? How do I respond to that?

He stares at me for a second his mouth hanging open. “Get in, then.”

I slide into the passenger seat, fastening my seat belt while Tim starts the engine.

“Did my mum ask you to pick me up?” I glance at the window as we drive off, checking that there’s no one I know around.

“No. I just thought maybe we should talk.”

I swallow. “About what?”

We haven’t spoken since the night of my mother’s horrible party, and I’m living at peace with that. What is there to talk about?

“I’ve quit my job in London.”

“You’ve
what?
Tim, you love that job!”

“My mum loves it,” he corrects. “I don’t. I realised that after you and I talked.”

“Wendy thinks it’s my fault.” I recall my recent telephone conversation with my mother. “What did you say to her?”

“I told her that you’d opened my eyes.” Tim turns to look at me as we stop at a traffic light, his hands still in their fixed position on the steering wheel. “There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?”

I lean forwards, rubbing my forehead. “After your sister put on that little show with her engagement ring? She hates me enough as it is.”

“She doesn’t hate you! And that’s all forgotten with Bryony, anyway.”

“I’m not sure your mother agrees.”

“She’ll come round.”

“And Bryony?”

“Like I said, it’s forgotten. I think Bryony’s a bit embarrassed, to be honest.”

Embarrassed
is not a word I would use to describe how she was acting last night.

“Speaking of Bryony,” I say, “I saw her yesterday at Zizzi in town.”

“Did you?” Tim furrows his brow, drawing his eyes even closer together. “She never said she was going. Was she with Jeremy?”

“No, she said it was a student-teacher thing.”

“So she was there with her friends from uni?”

“I don’t know, Tim!” I massage my temples. There was a man there. Probably one of her teachers.

Tim slows the car as we reach my road, carefully obeying the speed limit. “She may have forgotten to mention it.”

I nod and curl my fingers round the door handle, ready to make a polite escape.

“Who were you out with?” His eyes narrow as he looks at me.

“Just Zara.”

“Oh. It’s just that I…well, perhaps it would be nice if you and I went out for a drink.”

I turn away from his hopeful face and stare out of the window at the sloping garden outside my block of flats.

How am I supposed to answer that? What would Olivia Bright do?

Confident women do not accept dates with men they have no romantic interest in, simply because they’re too nice to say no.

That’s something she’d say, isn’t it?

I turn to face Tim with a tight smile on my face. “I’m actually really busy this week. Maybe some other time?”

It doesn’t have the same effect as storming out of the car after telling Tim that his chances of getting a date with me are about the same as my chances of winning that 99p Lulu Guinness handbag I’m bidding for on eBay. But I’m sure he gets the message.

Or at least I think he does.

* * *

Saturday morning starts off the way it always does. I wake up at my usual weekday time, clinging to my pillow with the desperate hope that I might be able to nod off again for half an hour.

When this inevitably fails, I get up to make a pot of tea and watch
Saturday Kitchen
with Zara.

Every time the phone rings, whether it’s mine or Zara’s (usually the latter), I hold my breath, panicking that it might be Sue Weaver calling from Oxfam, pulling me away from my planned morning of sitting in my pyjamas watching the telly.

I should phone up and tell her I don’t want to do it anymore. But I haven’t yet come up with a clever way of saying that I’ve changed my mind about my retail dreams because of one awkward customer, the mother of the guy my friends at work are trying to set me up with.

Well, that and the fact that I couldn’t figure out how to input multiple purchases into the till.

Oh, God. I must be a terrible person. I’m more interested in snuggling up on the sofa with a cup of tea than giving something back to the community by doing my voluntary job.

“No plans today?” Zara eyes my panda pyjamas.

“I might have a clear out later,” I say. “Get rid of old clothes and stuff.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Any reason for that?”

“I thought I might have a good sort out in my bedroom.”

“So it’s got nothing to do with point number four on this list of yours?”

“How do you know—”

“I’ve read it, too.”

“Should I keep going?” I look to Zara for validation.

She turns her body towards me, her eyes locked on mine. “Do you think I’m confident?”

I open my mouth to respond, then close it again. Why is she asking me this?

“I…I…of course I do.”

“But I didn’t follow some magazine article to get there.”

“I wanted to be good at this.” I flop back against the cushions. “Everything else I’ve done has been such a big failure.”

“That’s not true.” She places a reassuring hand on my arm. “Look at how you took charge with your boss. It paid off, didn’t it?”

“So you don’t think it matters that the other things haven’t gone so well?”

“There’s still four things left.”

I frown and rub my nose. “I thought you wanted me to give up?”

“But I know that you’re going to do it anyway.”

“I look towards my closed bedroom door. “But there’s no time limit, is there?”

Zara laughs. “None at all.”

I tuck my feet up on the sofa. “Then I’ll definitely start tomorrow.”

Chapter Ten

I haven’t sorted out my clothes since I moved in with Zara.

Okay. I’ll be completely honest. I didn’t do much sorting then either.

The walk-in wardrobe takes up almost half the space in my bedroom, so I didn’t think I’d need to streamline my clothes to fit in there.

And I might have made a few more purchases since then.

Oh, God. I never thought I’d find this difficult. When I first read about throwing away small or outdated clothes, I thought it would be one of the easiest things to do on the whole list. All I’d have to do is pull out the clothes that don’t fit, or that I don’t wear anymore, and chuck them into a bin bag. It even
sounds
easy.

The way I imagined it, I’d end up with a colour-coded, dream wardrobe that would practically ask me how my day was going every time I opened the door.

The reality is that I can’t bring myself to throw away a skirt that I saved up for, week after week, because of something trivial like it no longer fitting me.

You never know when you’re going to be struck with a rare stomach bug that will make you drop two dress sizes in a week, do you?

If I throw away all the things that don’t fit me, I’d have to buy a whole new wardrobe when I do eventually lose the weight.

And as for things that I hardly ever wear, well, it’s much the same principle. It’s the way of the world that I’d get invited to a ‘60s-themed party the minute I decide to get rid of my psychedelic, flower-print shift dress.

So on Sunday, I don’t do anything beyond stroking the fabric of my neglected dresses before deciding that I’m not ready to be so ruthless with the clothing that’s served me well since my teenage years.

But I’m definitely going to do something about it when I get home tonight.

“Have you ever sorted through your wardrobe?” I pose an open question to the other women in the office.

Scarlett is back at work today, claiming she’s had food poising all weekend, and even Nora is making a rare appearance.

“I’m twenty-nine years old,” says Helen. “Of course I’ve cleared my wardrobe out. If I hadn’t, I’d still have crop tops and hot pants in there.”

Nora looks up from her computer screen. “I’m quite willing to bet that you still own at least one pair of hot pants.”

Helen winks. “What about you, then? I’m sure you’ve gone through a few tweed jackets in your time.”

“Had this one nearly fifteen years now.” Nora pats the dusky pink jacket that’s hanging over her chair. “But I think everybody’s had a wardrobe purge at some point.”

Really? Everybody?

Scarlett is sitting hunched over her desk with her hands pressed up to her ears.

“How about you, Scar?” I try to draw her into our conversation.

“What?” She cups a hand over her mouth and leaps to her feet. “I’m sorry.”

The three of us watch as she runs out of the office.

“Food poisoning?” I suggest.

Helen shrugs. “She did look a bit green.”