Julie Caplin - Romantic Escapes

Harper Impulse

an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2019

Copyright © Julie Caplin 2019

Cover images © Shutterstock.com

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2019

Julie Caplin 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 e-book 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.

Source ISBN: 9780008323677

Ebook Edition © February 2019 ISBN: 9780008323660

Version: 2019-01-30

For the original Viking Princess, my marvellous editor, Charlotte Ledger, who probably wouldn’t have been a very good Viking, certainly not at the pillaging, because she’s far too kind, warm-hearted and generous.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Harper Impulse an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2019 Copyright © Julie Caplin 2019 Cover images © Shutterstock.com Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2019 Julie Caplin 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 e-book 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. Source ISBN: 9780008323677 Ebook Edition © February 2019 ISBN: 9780008323660 Version: 2019-01-30

Dedication For the original Viking Princess, my marvellous editor, Charlotte Ledger, who probably wouldn’t have been a very good Viking, certainly not at the pillaging, because she’s far too kind, warm-hearted and generous.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Epilogue

Keep Reading

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About HarperImpulse

About the Publisher

‘I’m afraid there’s still nothing. Like I said last week and the week before. You have to understand it’s a difficult time. The economy isn’t great. People aren’t moving around as much.’ This was said with a mealy-mouthed, pseudo-sympathetic smile and shark-like small eyes that slid away from meeting Lucy’s as if being unemployable was catching.

Difficult time? Hello! Lucy was currently writing the bloody book on it being a difficult time. She wanted to grab the recruitment consultant by the throat and shake her. Instead she shifted in her seat opposite the other woman in the brightly lit office, with its trendy furniture and state-of-the-art Apple Mac screen taking up most of the desk, trying to look serene instead of utterly panic stricken.

The other girl was now dubiously eying Lucy’s lacklustre blonde hair, which hung in limp rats’ tails, unable to hide an expression of horrified curiosity. Lucy swallowed and felt the ever-present tears start to well up. You try styling hair that’s been coming out in handfuls for the last three weeks, she thought. She didn’t dare wash it more than once a week because seeing the plug hole full of blonde strands seemed even more terrifying than all the other crap going on in her life right now. Things must be bad when your own hair started jumping ship.

Lucy could feel her lip curl. Oh God, any minute she might snarl like a wild animal. It was increasingly tricky to try and behave like a normal human being these days and, at this moment, a particular challenge as she looked back across the desk at the girl sitting there in her cherry red, fitted power suit, with her perfect glossy bob and darling plum gel nails. The epitome of success. What someone looked like when they were going places. When their career was on the up rather than going down the swanny faster than a canoe going over the Niagara Falls.

With a sigh, Lucy swallowed hard and forced herself to calm down. For the last twenty minutes, she’d fought the temptation to grab Little Miss Professional by the lapels and plead, ‘there must be a job somewhere for me’. She’d had to resort to sitting on her hands with her shoulders hunched up by her ears as she listened to the same spiel that she’d heard in the last ten other recruitment consultant offices; the market was down, people weren’t recruiting, no one had a career for life these days. And they didn’t need to bloody tell Lucy that, she’d discovered that inconvenient fact the hard way. But , whined the persistent voice in her head, she was looking for a job in hospitality, the whine became shriller and more insistent, there were always jobs in hospitality .

‘Perhaps if you could …’ The girl tried to give her an encouraging smile, which didn’t disguise her raging curiosity, ‘you know … get some more recent references.’

Lucy shook her head feeling the familiar leaden lump of despair threaten to rise and choke her. The girl tried to look sympathetic, while taking a surreptitious glance of her watch. No doubt she had an infinitely more placeable candidate for her next appointment. Someone whose CV was dripping with recommendations from her last boss and hadn’t had her shame shared among all in her professional world.

‘There must be something.’ Desperation chased the words out with the glee of naughty fairies escaping. ‘I don’t mind taking a step down. You’ve seen how much experience I’ve got.’ She heard herself utter the fateful words, which she’d promised herself, no matter how bad things got, she wouldn’t say. ‘I’ll take anything.’

The girl arched her eyebrow as if wanting her to elaborate on anything.

‘Well, almost anything,’ said Lucy, suddenly horribly aware that anything covered an awful lot of situations, vacant or otherwise and this woman’s income was derived from placing people.