The Little Vintage Carousel by the Sea: A gorgeously uplifting festive romance!
Don’t miss the heartwarming holiday romance coming soon from the author of The Little Wedding Island!Pre-order now!
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JAIMIE ADMANS is a 32-year-old English-sounding Welsh girl with an awkward-to-spell name. She lives in South Wales and enjoys writing, gardening, watching horror movies and drinking tea, although she’s seriously considering marrying her coffee machine. She loves autumn and winter, and singing songs from musicals despite the fact she’s got the voice of a dying hyena. She hates spiders, hot weather and cheese & onion crisps. She spends far too much time on Twitter and owns too many pairs of boots. She will never have time to read all the books she wants to read.
Jaimie loves to hear from readers; you can visit her website at www.jaimieadmans.com or connect on Twitter @be_the_spark.
The Château of Happily-Ever-Afters
The Little Wedding Island
It’s a Wonderful Night
The Little Vintage Carousel by the Sea
JAIMIE ADMANS
HQ
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019
Copyright © Jaimie Admans 2019
Jaimie Admans 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 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 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.
Source ISBN: 9780008330866
E-book Edition © April 2019 ISBN: 9780008296964
Version: 2019-02-25
Table of Contents
For Mum and Bruiser.
You will forever be my little family who I wouldn’t change for the world, now and always.
Why does every man in London think that eight o’clock on a warm June morning is the ideal time to remove their shirt and get on the tube? I consider this as I peel myself away from a sweaty back and turn around to find myself face to face with someone’s wet armpit. There’s often a good time for shirtlessness, but the middle of rush hour on a crowded train is not it.
I sigh and stare at my feet. Every morning I get on this train and get off feeling like a floppy sardine that’s just been let out of a tin and probably smelling worse. All to go to the soulless office block of the women’s magazine where I work as a fact-checker, and then do the exact same thing at half past five with all the other sweaty, irritable commuters who would really love nothing more than to poke their boss in the eye and run away to a beach somewhere.
Someone stands on my toe and a handbag hits me in the thigh as someone else swings it over their arm. Ow. Only four more days to go until the weekend, and then I can have two whole days of not having to leave the flat and face the crowds of London. Two whole days of uninterrupted Netflix, apart from when Mum calls to update me on my ex-boyfriend’s latest news, which she knows because they’re still online friends even though I deleted him over two years ago.
I jump back as a briefcase threatens to take out my kneecaps. There’s got to be more to life than this.
I look up and my eyes lock on to a man near me. Train Man is going somewhere today. Usually he only has a backpack with him, but today there’s a huge suitcase leaning against his leg, rucksack straps over both shoulders, and a holdall bag hooked over one arm. He’s standing up and holding on to a rail like I am, his attention on the phone in his hand, the lines around his eyes crinkled up as he looks down at it, and the sight of him makes something flutter inside me.
I see him quite often, but he’s always already on the train when I get on, and we’re usually much further apart. Up close, he’s even more gorgeous than I’d always thought he was. He’s got short brown hair, dimples denting his cheeks, and the kind of smile that makes you look twice, which I know because he’s one of the rare London commuters who smiles at others.
The noisy tube train full of other people’s body parts in places you don’t want other people’s body parts, the noise of people sniffing and coughing, an endless medley of beeps as people play with their phones, snippets of conversation that aren’t meant for me … they all fade into the background and the world turns into slow motion as he lifts his head, almost like he can feel my eyes on him, and looks directly at me. If it was anyone else, I’d look away instantly. Staring at strangers on the tube is a quick way to get yourself punched or worse, but it’s like a magnet is holding me, drawing my gaze to his, and his mouth curves up a tiny bit at each side, making it as impossible to look away now as it is every other time he smiles at me.
