Jules Wake - Covent Garden in the Snow - The most gorgeous and heartwarming Christmas romance of the year!

A division of HarperCollins Publishers

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Harper Impulse

an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Harper Impulse 2017

Copyright © Jules Wake 2017

Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2017

Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com| Cover design by Books Covered

Jules Wake asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of 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, down-loaded, 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.

Source ISBN: 9780008221973

Ebook Edition © October 2017 ISBN: 9780008221966

Version: 2018-02-16

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page A division of HarperCollins Publishers www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright Harper Impulse an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk First published in Great Britain by Harper Impulse 2017 Copyright © Jules Wake 2017 Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2017 Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com | Cover design by Books Covered Jules Wake asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue copy of 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, down-loaded, 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. Source ISBN: 9780008221973 Ebook Edition © October 2017 ISBN: 9780008221966 Version: 2018-02-16

Dedication For my Mum, Di, the real make-up artist and my children, Ellie & Matt, whose love of theatre has been infectious.

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

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading…

About the Author

About HarperImpulse

About the Publisher

For my Mum, Di, the real make-up artist and my children, Ellie & Matt, whose love of theatre has been infectious.

To: Felix@nutsmarketing.co.uk

From: Matilde@lmoc.co.uk

URGENT – Possible loo roll crisis

Working late tonight, pls record the Arsenal game and don’t forget loo rolls!!! Can you get some when you go shopping tonight – and remember no gummy bears or chocolate peanuts, we need food we can actually cook with!

And have you seen my book, The Rosie Project , I’ve got a horrible feeling I might have left it on the train.

Tilly x

No! No! Stop! Despite knowing it was probably completely hopeless, I stabbed at the keys on the keyboard, bracelets clinking like maracas as I watched the computer screen. It was the Sorcerer’s Apprentice all over again. With horrifying speed, the number of emails leaving the outbox increased.

Five!

Then ten!

Twelve, eighteen, twenty-one, thirty-three.

‘Oh hell.’ This couldn’t be happening. Emails with the title Urgent – Possible loo roll crisis which should have gone to Felix were busy whizzing off to goodness only knows where.

Jeanie, my boss, glanced up from the wig she was working on.

‘What have you done now?’ she asked, rolling her heavily kohl-lined eyes as she came over to stand behind me. ‘Don’t tell me, you’ve sent another email to Alison instead of Felix? Attached a picture of Dr Who instead of our leading man and sent it to the head of costume at La Scala?’

Give me a make-up palette, a couple of pencils and the right hair-piece, and with a deft touch of shading and brushing, I can transform a sixty-year-old granddad into an irresistible Lothario. Give me a computer and there’s more chance of me splitting the atom in my own kitchen with an egg whisk.

I blame my biospheres; apparently, I have dodgy ones. Mobile phones give up the ghost on a regular basis and I can’t wear a watch without it losing time. Me and technology are a disaster. I just don’t have the patience. Even so, I thought I’d cracked email.

Unfortunately, once you’ve clicked that mouse, there’s no going back. It’s Pandora’s Box all over again. And just like Pandora, how could I resist. After all, what’s a girl, on the wrong side of twenty-nine, to do, when it’s coming up to Christmas and her fiancé seems to be spending more time potting snooker balls than checking out her erogenous zones, and some random person sends her an attachment called ‘Santa Baby’.

It sounded cute and harmless. When I opened the attachment up, it was even cuter still – a very handsome Santa danced across my screen to the tune of jingle bells before dropping his trousers to reveal a full moon of pert buns, flashing a very naughty grin over his shoulders. The moment I moved the cursor to try and close the picture, Santa started zinging about, bashing the edges of the screen with the speed of a demented bluebottle.

Although amusing at first, after the initial dancing, his frozen image didn’t do much but ricochet off the sides of the screen as erratically as a pinball on speed. It was only when I tried to close the thing down that everything went haywire.