Charlotte Phillips - Meet Me at the Honeymoon Suite - HarperImpulse Contemporary Fiction

CHARLOTTE PHILLIPS

A division of HarperCollins Publishers

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Harper Impulse an imprint of

HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Harper Impulse 2015

Copyright © Charlotte Phillips 2015

Cover images © Shutterstock.com

Cover layout design © HarperColl‌insPublishers Ltd 2015

Cover design by HarperColl‌insPublishers 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 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.

Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.

Ebook Edition © June 2015 ISBN: 9780008119393

Version 2015-06-29

As this is the final book in the series I’d like to take this opportunity to say a massive thank you to my amazing editor Charlotte, who has bailed me out of more head-crashing-on-desk moments in the past five years than I care to think about. Thanks also to all the team at HarperImpulse . With HI anything goes really, in terms of ideas, and that has made writing for them great fun.

Contents

Cover

Title Page Meet Me at the Honeymoon Suite CHARLOTTE PHILLIPS A division of HarperCollins Publishers www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright Harper Impulse an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk First published in Great Britain by Harper Impulse 2015 Copyright © Charlotte Phillips 2015 Cover images © Shutterstock.com Cover layout design © HarperColl‌insPublishers Ltd 2015 Cover design by HarperColl‌insPublishers 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 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. Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress. Ebook Edition © June 2015 ISBN: 9780008119393 Version 2015-06-29

Dedication As this is the final book in the series I’d like to take this opportunity to say a massive thank you to my amazing editor Charlotte, who has bailed me out of more head-crashing-on-desk moments in the past five years than I care to think about. Thanks also to all the team at HarperImpulse . With HI anything goes really, in terms of ideas, and that has made writing for them great fun.

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

Also by Charlotte Phillips …

Charlotte Phillips

About HarperImpulse

About the Publisher

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 days’ wear. She adjusted the name badge pinned to her lapel.

Amy Wilson – 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. They’d 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 didn’t 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 she’d spent the last few years in, organising endless cheap as chips buffet events while the manager bandied the phrase ‘squeeze that margin’ about.

Still, she might have the badge but the job wasn’t quite hers – 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 the…she ran a sensibly short, nude-lacquered fingernail down the page on the top of her clipboard…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 he’d had a job offer that meant moving away.