EVE DEVON
A division of HarperCollins Publishers
www.harpercollins.co.uk
HarperImpulse an imprint of
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
77–85 Fulham Palace Road
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2014
Copyright © Eve Devon 2014
Cover images © Shutterstock.com
Eve Devon 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.
Ebook Edition © October 2014
ISBN: 9780007558469
Version 2014-09-11
Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.
For Rachel—my fellow Chiari ZipperHead Club member, because you understand not only what it is to be creative, but to be courageous too.
Contents
Cover
Title Page The Love List EVE DEVON A division of HarperCollins Publishers www.harpercollins.co.uk
Copyright HarperImpulse an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 77–85 Fulham Palace Road Hammersmith, London W6 8JB www.harpercollins.co.uk First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2014 Copyright © Eve Devon 2014 Cover images © Shutterstock.com Eve Devon 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. Ebook Edition © October 2014 ISBN: 9780007558469 Version 2014-09-11 Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.
Dedication For Rachel—my fellow Chiari ZipperHead Club member, because you understand not only what it is to be creative, but to be courageous too.
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Also by Eve Devon…
Eve Devon
About HarperImpulse
About the Publisher
‘What the..?’ Nora King strung together a stream of amazingly coherent swear words for so early in the morning as she flapped her hand around in a wide circle, trying in vain to dislodge the shoe she had just managed to superglue to her hand. This was so not happening.
‘Okay. It’s okay. Breathe,’ she instructed with an edge of panic when it became apparent she was going to do herself a serious injury if she continued to wang her arm about so insanely.
She counted to ten.
Then, calmly and without any sense of drama, lest the shoe somehow suspected she was going to try and wrench it free again, she placed her free hand on top of the harbinger of doom and pulled. Gently at first, then harder, as tears of frustration pooled at the outer rims of her eyes.
‘Damn it, budge, why don’t you?’ Desperate, she glanced around the private bathroom that connected to her office, looking for something to prise it off with. This was what she got for trying to be clever and fix her beloved shoes; the ones with the magical confidence-boosting properties, on the morning of her eight a.m. breakfast meeting with Eleanor Moorfield—designer of the shoe now attached to her hand—instead of the night before, where it had been clearly scheduled on her To Do list. But last night, after getting in late from a day of meetings, followed by an uncomfortable visit with her sister, Sephy, she had bypassed the shoe-fixing in favour of a large glass of red and some sleep.
‘A-hah,’ she exclaimed in a light-bulb moment. One-handed she upended the contents of her bag and rummaged for a nail file. Locating one and holding it aloft triumphantly, she smiled at her genius in the mirror, before trying to slide the file between the sole of the stiletto and the palm of her hand.
No deal.
A trickle of hysteria bubbled its way to the surface.
It was now one hour and fifteen minutes before she was due to deliver the pitch of her life. She’d been working on the presentation for six weeks. Six weeks of silly hours. Six weeks of devising, developing, practising and polishing. She had it on super-secret authority that Eleanor Moorfield, ex-model turned award-winning shoe designer, was looking to relocate her headquarters from Italy back to England. The Moorfield brand was right up there with Louboutin, Jimmy Choo, and all the other ‘have to have’ shoes women salivated over. Securing a contract to provide business premises for the Moorfield headquarters, shop units and manufacturing set-up would be a real coup for the King Property Corporation. Not to mention prove to herself that she hadn’t lost her touch. That she still had what it took to get out there and get the business in.
On her own. Without help.
KPC had been, and always would be, her life.
By the time her father had retired and she’d stepped up as CEO, KPC had over three hundred commercial buildings it owned and leased out and Nora’s first challenge had been to secure the company’s future against an economic downturn. Confidence had come from her passion for KPC, her unwavering dedication, and the knowledge that she could always get guidance from her father if needed.
But when her father suffered a major health crisis she’d been forced to approach her brother Jared in New York, and persuade him to return to the family he hadn’t been part of for ten years and the company he had declined to run—the company she loved, for help.
She had always known her brother’s expertise was on loan and ever since Jared had returned to his own life in New York, she had been working to implement the changes he had helped come up with. Changes that would add to KPC’s portfolio of property services and ensure the family-run company would recover from its dip and go from strength to strength.
Her confidence had taken a battering, though.
So get the Moorfield contract and hopefully she’d stop second-guessing every decision she made since the death of her father seven months ago and then Jared’s return to New York. Get the contract and she’d have so much work she wouldn’t have time to second-guess every decision she made.
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