Freya North - Freya North 3-Book Collection - Love Rules, Home Truths, Pillow Talk

She

‘Tantrums, tarts, tears and text-sex … what’s not to love about this cautionary tale for true romantics?’

Heat

‘A distinctive storytelling style and credible, loveable characters … an addictive read that encompasses the stuff life is made of: love, sex, fidelity and, above all, friendship.’

Glamour

‘Plenty that’s fresh to say about the age-old differences between men and women.’

Marie Claire

‘Sassy, feel-good read … Chick lit with a good sting in the tail.’

Cosmopolitan

‘Raunchy sex and realistic emotional wranglings make this chick-lit with class.’

Eve

‘An intelligent tale of chance encounters, long-lasting friendship and what it’s like to fall in and out of love.’

B Magazine

Dedication Dedication Epigraph Mark and Saul and Alice and Thea Thea Luckmore Mark Sinclair Saul Mundy Alice Heggarty Thea and Saul Barefaced Bloke and the Girl with the Scar Mr and Mrs Sinclair Mundy, Luckmore & Co. Quentin Beth and Hope Girls and Boys Adam A Year Between the Sheets The Isley Brothers Crowded House Peter, Gabriel Cohen & Howard La Grande Motte Le Retour What?! txt sex Table for Four P.I.C. Miss Heggarty and Mr Brusseque Loggerheads Thea’s Twelve O’Clock Thea’s Six O’Clock Cold Shoulders Black Beauty Alice? Thea? The Oldest Trade Thea’s Two O’Clock Thea’s Four O’Clock Thea and Sally’s Six O’Clock Ryanair’s 10.10 a.m. Saul’s Three O’Clock Peter’s 4.26 p.m. Alice, Thea, Mark and Saul Cold Feet Avon Calling Friends The simple lack of her is more to me than others’ presence Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own Love is often the fruit of marriage Mr Alexander’s Three O’Clock Acknowledgements

For Lucy Smouha, Kirsty Johnson and Clare Grogan

My glory is I have such friends.

Epigraph Epigraph Mark and Saul and Alice and Thea Thea Luckmore Mark Sinclair Saul Mundy Alice Heggarty Thea and Saul Barefaced Bloke and the Girl with the Scar Mr and Mrs Sinclair Mundy, Luckmore & Co. Quentin Beth and Hope Girls and Boys Adam A Year Between the Sheets The Isley Brothers Crowded House Peter, Gabriel Cohen & Howard La Grande Motte Le Retour What?! txt sex Table for Four P.I.C. Miss Heggarty and Mr Brusseque Loggerheads Thea’s Twelve O’Clock Thea’s Six O’Clock Cold Shoulders Black Beauty Alice? Thea? The Oldest Trade Thea’s Two O’Clock Thea’s Four O’Clock Thea and Sally’s Six O’Clock Ryanair’s 10.10 a.m. Saul’s Three O’Clock Peter’s 4.26 p.m. Alice, Thea, Mark and Saul Cold Feet Avon Calling Friends The simple lack of her is more to me than others’ presence Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own Love is often the fruit of marriage Mr Alexander’s Three O’Clock Acknowledgements

Something’s gotten hold of my heart

Keeping my soul and my senses apart

Greenaway/Cook

Contents

Cover Love Rules Home Truths Pillow Talk Keep Reading About the Author Also by Freya North About the Publisher

Title Page Love Rules

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

Epigraph

Mark and Saul and Alice and Thea

Thea Luckmore

Mark Sinclair

Saul Mundy

Alice Heggarty

Thea and Saul

Barefaced Bloke and the Girl with the Scar

Mr and Mrs Sinclair

Mundy, Luckmore & Co.

Quentin

Beth and Hope

Girls and Boys

Adam

A Year Between the Sheets

The Isley Brothers

Crowded House

Peter, Gabriel

Cohen & Howard

La Grande Motte

Le Retour

What?!

txt sex

Table for Four

P.I.C.

Miss Heggarty and Mr Brusseque

Loggerheads

Thea’s Twelve O’Clock

Thea’s Six O’Clock

Cold Shoulders

Black Beauty

Alice?

Thea?

The Oldest Trade

Thea’s Two O’Clock

Thea’s Four O’Clock

Thea and Sally’s Six O’Clock

Ryanair’s 10.10 a.m.

Saul’s Three O’Clock

Peter’s 4.26 p.m.

Alice, Thea, Mark and Saul

Cold Feet

Avon Calling

Friends

The simple lack of her is more to me than others’ presence

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence

Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own

Love is often the fruit of marriage

Mr Alexander’s Three O’Clock

Acknowledgements

Mark and Saul and Alice and Thea

Mark Sinclair liked to think that there was an inevitability to happy-ever-afters. He believed that they were granted to those who were good in life, to people whose thoughts were honourable, who had worthy goals, whose deeds and dealings were principled. However, at the age of thirty, Mark Sinclair understood that he would need to modify his belief, revise his dream and compromise. He intended to do this without turning into a cynic or allowing his ethics to suffer. He’d just have to let his dream of twenty years fade. It wasn’t going to be easy. But there again, the dream wasn’t going to come true, no matter how virtuous he was.

Mark Sinclair’s dream was Alice Heggarty. But she had gone and fallen in love with someone who wasn’t him. Again. Just as she had at the age of twenty-five. And at twenty-three. And before that, annually at university. And before that, with the captain of the first XV at his school. The girl Mark had loved for so long had gone and fallen in love again but this time Alice was nearly twenty-nine. Mark knew she’d have made a calculated decision that this love ought to take her into her thirties and onwards, into matrimony and children and a house in NWsomewhere. The time was right for her own happy-ever-after. ‘So dream on,’ Mark told himself sternly, ‘dream on.’

In the two decades he’d known Alice, Mark had always had hope because he’d always had the dream because, being a man of patience and principles, he’d taken a philosophical view on waiting. He theorized that Alice had never broken his dream because he’d never brought it out into the open. Besides, she’d been so busy, permanently falling madly in love and despairingly out of love with all those other men. At the time, Mark felt this to be a positive thing and he did not regret keeping his own feelings secret. After all, it meant that Alice had never made a decision against him, she’d never turned him down, never ditched him in favour of another, never suggested they revert to being ‘just good friends’.

As lovers charged in and stormed out of her life, and as girlfriends breezed into his and left quietly, their friendship had remained unscathed. Alice was never possessive of Mark and Mark accepted her periodic disappearance into the fast eddies of new love-lust. Indeed, Mark had always found it encouraging that Alice went for a type – and that the type she went for was the antithesis of him. It meant she’d never fallen for someone like Mark; she’d always gone for men who were diametrically opposed to all that he was. Tall, loud, movie-blond beefy blokes with heartbreaker reputations or ice-beautiful arrogance Alice was convinced she could conquer and melt. Consequently, Mark could not feel jealous of the men in Alice’s life though he envied them Alice. Rather, he was irked that they were delaying his personal happy-ever-after.

Very very privately, he was also relieved that invariably it was they who left her. Looking after Alice with her heart all hurt was actually even more rewarding than being in her company when she was hyper-effervescent with the distractions of love. Though it scorched Mark’s soul to see her distraught, he knew he could make her feel better. It was a job he could do brilliantly. And it augmented his hope. Because when his dream came true, he’d never leave her. Of that she could be as sure as he was.