Rachel Dove - The Wedding Shop on Wexley Street - A laugh out loud romance to curl up with in 2018

RACHEL DOVEis a writer and teacher, living in West Yorkshire with her husband, their two sons, and some furry pets.

In July 2015, she won the Prima magazine and Mills & Boon Flirty Fiction Competition with her entry The Chic Boutique on Baker Street , out now in ebook and paperback. The Flower Shop on Foxley Street followed this in 2017 and both books hit the Amazon top 200. Chic Boutique got to #2 in the rural life humour chart and is regularly in the top 100 of that chart.

Rachel was the winner of the Writers Bureau Writer of the Year Award 2016 and has had work published in the UK and overseas in various magazines.

The Long Walk Back came out in January 2018 and she is currently writing the next book in the Westfield series. She loves to write romantic fiction, both rom-com and harder-hitting women’s fiction.

In addition to writing, teaching and studying for an MA in Creative Writing, Rachel also likes to hang out with her family, read lots of books, and cross-stitch geeky homages and rude sayings.

The Chic Boutique on Baker Street

The Flower Shop on Foxley Street

The Long Walk Back

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Rachel Dove 2018

Rachel Dove 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.

E-book Edition © August 2018 ISBN: 9780008286064

Version: 2018-07-13

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Also by Rachel Dove

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

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

Acknowledgements

Coming Soon…

About the Publisher

To my mother, Sandra, who will never read past this page, but cheers me on in everything I do. 2f & 1w forever.

Love Goggle

The heat from the summer sun kissed the tanned and freckled skin of the wedding guests as they walked up the long path to the beautiful Grade II-listed church, the best Harrogate had to offer in terms of the ultimate IT wedding venue. One where God had a front-row seat anyway. Behind an oddly discreet line of police tape, a scoop of journalists jostled against each other, all dressed in their best uncrumpled clothes. All eager to snap the incoming guests, the first glimpse of the happy couple.

Quite the guestlist was walking up this pebbled drive too. The hottest reality TV stars, fresh from the villas and beaches, the latest hot things to rock football shorts on the field, today all suited and booted with the local glitterati, were all here to see the modern love story. Meghan and Harry had nothing on Harrogate’s very own playboy and tea baron, Darcy Burgess, who was today set to marry the girl of his dreams or, as the press had come to know her, the elusive girl next door. Uncharacte‌ristically, Darcy had kept his lady out of the spotlight, so today, in the sumptuously beautiful and historic surroundings of St Wilfred’s, all eyes would definitely be on the bride.

Past the line of paps, inside the church, the pews were festooned with flowers, laced into intricate ribbons and designs at the end of the aisles. A large, imposing centrepiece full of calla lillies, white roses and the best that taste and money could buy stood on a pedestal near the altar, and the whole church was fragrant with the scent of expensive perfumes and the ambience of flowers. Everything shone and gleamed, from the brass lectern to the cheeky sparkle in the excited guests’ eyes.

Today would be talked about for months, a real gem on the Northern social calendar. Taken up by the South, the Burgess wedding was certainly a networking event like no other. No one could wait to finally see the girl who had tamed the great player, Darcy. The girl next door. The young lass from the little village shop. A day of new beginnings, in more unexpected ways than one.

New beginnings came in all shapes and sizes. The day Maria Mallory was due to be married would be the first day of her new life too, but for reasons very different to those the average bride would ever think of. In fact, had she known what was coming, she might have stayed in bed that day, quivering under the duvet and throwing holy water on her wedding gown to expel the demons.

Ask any beaming child in the playground what they wanted to be when they grew up and you would get an enthusiastic answer. Thomas wanted to be an army man, Benjamin a vet just like his dad. Cassie wanted to be a ballet dancer, Alex to help sick people.

Kids wanted to be everything, from astronauts to bakers. But Maria had always been different. She didn’t dream of a job. She dreamt of a status, a milestone. Maria Mallory had always wanted to one day be a bride. She’d spent hours at home poring over her parents’ wedding albums, legs dangling off the couch as she studied the happy, radiant faces of her mother and late father on their special day. While other kids played video games and rode bikes, Maria made scrapbooks filled with magazine cutouts, scraps of fabric from her mother’s workbox, recipe ideas for the wedding breakfast. Elizabeth Mallory worked from home as a seamstress, and her daughter would check her diary fastidiously, looking for bridal appointments. Women would come to their house all the time, requesting custom gowns, having their dresses altered, looking through her mum’s designs for the perfect bridesmaid dress to match their perfect white gown. Maria loved every minute, and couldn’t wait to get married. When she hit her teens, her determination to be a bride hadn’t changed. She helped her mother after school, and eventually took over when her mother got sick, running the business and helping at home while doing her own business degree. Even with the bumps in the road, Maria had never once lost sight of her goal: to get married. To have the life her mother and father once had. In sickness and health, true love, till death do us part. To have the wedding of her dreams.

And what a wedding it was shaping up to be! Every man, woman and dog had been chatting about the nuptials for months, and the moony-eyed public were all rooting for the unlucky lovers to finally say I do, and prove that love really did conquer all. What girl wouldn’t want that? Even the tomboys among the fairer sex still had an odd glistening tear at the thought.