HarperImpulse an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2015
Copyright © Charlotte Phillips 2015
Cover images © Shutterstock.com
Cover layout design © HarperCollâinsPublishers Ltd 2015
Cover design by HarperCollâinsPublishers Ltd
Charlotte Phillips asserts the moral right
to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for 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 authorâs 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 e-book on screen.
No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted,
downloaded, 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.
Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.
Ebook Edition © June 2015 ISBN: 9780008119393
Version 2015-06-29
Amy straightened the grey jacket with the pink piping, the standard uniform for the Lavington Hotel, London, still unfamiliar against her skin after only a few daysâ wear. She adjusted the name badge pinned to her lapel.
Amy Wilson â Wedding & Events Manager, it said in glossy black letters.
The M-word. How long had she been waiting to have that job title? Years of playing second-fiddle as she worked her way up from trainee via a string of provincial three-star chain hotels, doing the hard graft to pull together business meetings, courses, then later charity dinner dances, Christmas parties and weddings while someone else took the credit.
Now she was at the Lavington, the position of her dreams having dropped out of the blue into her lap via a word-of-mouth tip off. It almost felt like being headhunted. The Lavington had been left in the lurch when her predecessor had walked off the job without so much as a by your leave, and by lucky chance Amy happened to go way back with the Head Bar Manager here. Theyâd waited tables together one summer in the distant past. A word or two in the right ear from her friend and the job was as good as hers. To be fair, the Lavington did have its back against the wall, but that didnât detract from the fact that she was ready for this promotion. Had been ready, in fact, for years. This was her chance at the big time. This was an up and coming boutique hotel in a fashionable area of London with its quirky décor and a sprinkling of celebrity guests beginning to lend it a bit of kudos. It was a world away from the motorway junction hotel chain sheâd spent the last few years in, organising endless cheap as chips buffet events while the manager bandied the phrase âsqueeze that marginâ about.
Still, she might have the badge but the job wasnât quite hers â not yet. There were hoops to jump through in the form of a three month trial period. Not that she intended to need it. She knew all eyes would be on her this weekend for the first wedding of the season, one half-planned by her predecessor before her swift unexpected exit. It was up to Amy to fine tune those plans and pull the weekend off seamlessly.
With enormous effort she reined in the squiggling butterflies of excitement in her stomach as she walked down the thickly carpeted hallway toward the lounge bar where a welcoming choice of champagne or fruit juice should be set up and ready to go for theâ¦she ran a sensibly short, nude-lacquered fingernail down the page on the top of her clipboardâ¦Pemberton Wedding.
Pemberton.
Her quick pace faltered momentarily as the name sent a curl of nostalgia folding through her. Here was that mental stutter that has the ability to stop you in your tracks when you hear a name that takes you back to the past. Not that far into the past in this case. It had been just over a year since Luke Pemberton had left her in the back of beyond that was Purton, Wiltshire. What had seemed a happy enough relationship that would one day be taken to the next level had been stopped in its tracks when heâd had a job offer that meant moving away.