Come Away With Me: The hilarious feel-good romantic comedy you need to read in 2018
Somewhere beyond the sea…When Alexa Fisher finds herself trapped on a twelve-day cruise to celebrate her younger sister’s hen-do – just the two of them – she wishes she’d jumped overboard.Despite the age difference, India has always been the judgemental sibling, and there’s been even more friction than usual since ‘the big engagement’. With India constantly obsessing over wedding plans, Alexa has never felt more single, or more of a failure.She longs to find a man who was funny, handsome and faithful, but when she meets the enigmatic (and gorgeous) Gabriel Frost on the cruise, he seems to be as cold as his name suggests. Or is he…?Set sail for an adventure on the high seas, it’s time for Alexa to discover that sometimes, romance can surprise you!Praise for Maddie Please:'A breezy feel-good read that made me laugh out loud!' Phillipa Ashley, bestselling author of the Cornish Cafe series‘I can't wait to read what Maddie writes next.’ Chrissie Manby, author of The Worst Case Scenario Cookery Club
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Come Away With Me
Maddie Please
Avon an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers
The News Building
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Copyright © Maddie Please 2018
Cover design © D Meacham Design 2018
Cover image © Shutterstock.com
Maddie Please asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © August 2018 ISBN: 9780008305208
Version: 2018-07-23
For Arthur
For Henry
With much love.
Table of Contents
Aggravation
Scotch Whisky, Coffee Liqueur, Single Cream, Sugar Syrup
So, it was Friday night. Six-thirty. I’d got in at half past seven that morning and was still working. Everyone else was entitled to a social life, but not me, apparently. India had left at five on the dot as usual, trilling happily about some party she and Jerry had been invited to. Something that necessitated an extended lunch hour so she could get her nails done. Wouldn’t that be nice? No such excitement awaited me when I got home.
I started to clear up; Tim was always very good but India thought she had staff. She’d left a half-eaten prawn sandwich on her desk that was curling gently as I swept it into the black bin liner. Mercifully it looked too revolting to eat, otherwise I would probably have been tempted. I had no willpower. As I went round the office, emptying the bins and wiping crumbs off India’s desk, I reminded myself of things I had to do.
I was supposed to be losing weight for India’s wedding in December.
I was supposed to be organising her hen weekend.
I was supposed to be looking forward to being her bridesmaid.
*
Don’t get me wrong; usually I loved my job. But I loved it a lot more before my sister started working there.
Dad took over our grandfather’s estate agency in 1998 and it was in a glorious old building in the middle of the high street, next door to the baker’s, perfect for foot traffic and the odd tourist to wander in and enquire after a little place in the country. Actually, thinking about it, we’d had quite a few of those recently.
In my teens I used to help Dad out in the office at weekends and in the school holidays, learning how to answer the phone (smile, Alexa, smile), draw up floor plans and conduct viewings. It was in my blood. The thrill of waiting for an offer to be accepted, of being able to look around gorgeous houses I couldn’t afford, pointing out exciting things, like underfloor heating, ten-inch attic insulation or garden water features, never left me.
It was almost perfect, if only Dad had stopped harking back to the glory times of property when you used to be able to buy a flat in London for buttons and sell it for millions a few years later. Even when we were small he would bang on about getting on the property ladder. It wasn’t as though he’d done badly in recent years, despite the property crash in 2008, but he was only too keen to tell stories of the good old days. Perhaps it was because I was three years older than India, but I paid attention and found something I really loved doing.
I started working with Dad straight out of school, never considering doing anything else. Pretty soon, Dad was happy to leave me to run the office while he and Mum took more and more holidays.
India floated off to a polytechnic to do media studies. Heaven only knew what she actually did there. Having never been to uni myself, it seemed her three years away were punctuated with rancid arguments with flatmates, complaints about everything and tearful phone calls for money. The vacations were worse. India spent all her time lounging about the house, eating all the biscuits and having long telephone calls with her friends, which seemed to consist of little more than India saying: ‘Yes, no,
