Rosa Temple - Playing by the Rules - The feel-good heart-warming and uplifting romance perfect for Valentine’s Day

On the 3rd of August, I died. Well, not literally, but it felt like my life was over. Melodramatic? Me? Just a teensy bit…

When work-shy socialite Magenta Bright learns that inheritance comes with one horrific condition, she mentally kisses the money goodbye. Get a job and keep it for a year? Not likely.

Naïve CEO Anthony Shearman is persuaded to hire her as his PA, and Magenta decides to stick it out, if only because of her sexy boss. But between the bitchy receptionist, Anthony’s beautiful fiancée and not having a clue how to be a career girl, Magenta barely makes it to the end of her first day.

So, just 364 to go then…

Playing by the Rules

Rosa Temple

Contents

Cover

Blurb On the 3rd of August, I died. Well, not literally, but it felt like my life was over. Melodramatic? Me? Just a teensy bit… When work-shy socialite Magenta Bright learns that inheritance comes with one horrific condition, she mentally kisses the money goodbye. Get a job and keep it for a year? Not likely. Naïve CEO Anthony Shearman is persuaded to hire her as his PA, and Magenta decides to stick it out, if only because of her sexy boss. But between the bitchy receptionist, Anthony’s beautiful fiancée and not having a clue how to be a career girl, Magenta barely makes it to the end of her first day. So, just 364 to go then…

Title Page Playing by the Rules Rosa Temple

Author Bio ROSA TEMPLE is the pseudonym of writer, Fran Clark. A ghost-writer of romance novels, Fran was awarded a Distinction in her Creative Writing MA from Brunel University in 2014. To date, Fran has penned three publications as Rosa Temple; Sleeping With Your Best Friend , Natalie’s Getting Married and Single by Christmas . A mother of two, Fran is married to a musician and lives in London. She spends her days creating characters and story lines while drinking herbal tea and eating chocolate biscuits.

Part 1 PART 1 THE LAST DAYS OF SUMMER

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Part 2

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Part 3

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Part 4

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Endpages

Copyright

ROSA TEMPLE

is the pseudonym of writer, Fran Clark. A ghost-writer of romance novels, Fran was awarded a Distinction in her Creative Writing MA from Brunel University in 2014. To date, Fran has penned three publications as Rosa Temple; Sleeping With Your Best Friend , Natalie’s Getting Married and Single by Christmas . A mother of two, Fran is married to a musician and lives in London. She spends her days creating characters and story lines while drinking herbal tea and eating chocolate biscuits.

PART 1

THE LAST DAYS OF SUMMER

Chapter 1

On the 3rd of August 2015, I died. I was in the London offices of solicitors Bartholomew and Tooke, along with my family: Mother, Father and my three sisters. It was no ordinary death. After losing control of all my bodily functions, my eyes rolled back in my head and I stopped breathing altogether. I crashed to the floor and heard the high-toned, continuous beep of a heart monitor and imagined the great big flatline across the screen, confirming the inevitable. I was dead.

But I wasn’t attached to a machine; there was no beep and no flatline. In fact, I wasn’t actually dead. But I could easily have been. One minute the incredibly handsome (for a sixty-year-old) Mr Bartholomew was reading Nana Clementine’s last will and testament, saying I’d just inherited £250,000 and in the next breath he was saying that I couldn’t actually have it.

In a matter of seconds, I’d gone from exhilarated at having landed a vast sum of money for doing absolutely nothing and then back to being flat broke and desperate. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely loved and adored Nana Clementine and couldn’t have been more heartbroken when we lost her, but she was far too astute for a ninety-year-old for my liking. You see, if there was one member of my family who knew me well, it was Nana Clementine – and that’s why the will reading hadn’t gone to plan.

Nana had come to England from Ireland as a six-year-old with wild flaxen hair and rosy cheeks. She came from strong, Northern Irish stock and a family who knew how to work hard and get ahead. Her father, Damon Burns, also knew that if his beautiful Clementine was ever going to do well in England and be able to rub shoulders with English gentry, she’d have to get rid of the thick accent and smooth out that hair.

Damon Burns signed Clementine up for elocution lessons and had the Queen’s English drummed into her until she could pass for a member of the royal family. Damon worked as a handyman in a women’s underwear factory and his wife was a seamstress in said factory. Damon worked an additional two jobs so that their only daughter could go to private school.

He didn’t stop working until he and his wife eventually bought out the underwear factory and, in years to come, thanks to some astute business sense from the Irish couple, the small factory became one of the largest women’s lingerie designers and wholesalers in Europe. When Nana Clementine took over the company at age twenty-one, she made it a global success.

Unlike Nana Clementine and her Irish family, I hated to work. A fact she was fully aware of. But yet here she was, and from beyond the grave I might add, trying to drum some of those hard-nosed, working-class family values into me.

In her will she had left her estate to Mother, her only child, and to each of her granddaughters she’d left a tidy sum of £250,000. My sisters – Amber, Indigo and Ebony – all got away scot-free with their stash but there was a proviso attached to my payout. As Mr Bartholomew put it:

‘Magenta Clementine Bright will take possession of her inheritance at age forty-five; but at any age prior to her forty-fifth birthday, she may take possession of the inheritance if she has been in continuous employment for the same employer for exactly 365 days.’

The mention of waiting to get hold of the money until age forty-five had caused the failure of my bodily functions; that is, I felt faint and I needed to wee. I was twenty-eight for crying out loud. The words ‘continuous employment’ had caused my eyes to roll back in my head. The loss of breath occurred straight after he’d said, ‘same employer’, and I’d crashed to the floor as if dead when I heard him say, ‘365 days’.

By 365 days Mr Bartholomew meant a year. A whole year of work. Since I was twenty-three and had left university, the longest I’d held down a job was two months . In between jobs there’d been months of unemployment – not a good look for any curriculum vitae. Five years of living precariously doesn’t look good for anyone but I’d been consistent in the type of job I’d had. I’d always been a PA of some description. I can’t organise myself for shit but I’m brilliant at organising other people. Well for two months at a time, it would appear.