Charlotte Delaney has sworn off men. After one relationship disaster after another- including turning a guy gay!- Charlotte is so over the male species.
Isaac Fletcher had his heart cruelly broken. Yes, it was years ago. No, he never got over it. I...
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There are times when I hate having sisters. Like, when we were all teenagers and fighting over the bathroom. Or whenever Sophie and Emma would come into my room to steal my clothes. I even hated that we would sometimes fight over the same boy, seeing as Sophie is two years older than I am and Emma's four years younger. Honestly, having sisters is hard work.
Take now, for example. I'm trying to sort out the next two-week rotation rota for my staff and Sophie's decided that she wants to spend her rest day with me. She's running the London Marathon tomorrow and the day before, she likes to relax, but for the life of me, I can't work out having her lingering in my work's office is somehow relaxing to her.
Sophie's been here since ten a.m. and already I'm planning to get rid of her. Not in the murderous kind of way, although I can't deny that those types of thoughts have run through my head, but in a more, 'Please, get out of my office!' kind of way. Where is her husband, anyway? Surely he could help her relax. Take her shopping. To the zoo. To anywhere that's not here. I really don't care where Sophie goes, as long as she takes her annoying mouth with her.
"How's little Joey doing?" She suddenly asks, plopping into the chair opposite my desk. I look up from the spreadsheet on my computer and stare at her, wondering if this is where she's finally lost her flipping mind. It's overdue. When I don't entertain her with an answer, my sister points at my stomach. "The baby, Charlotte. How's the baby doing?"
"The baby is fine," I reply. I click to print preview the rota and frown when I see there are a few gaps. With Aimee's exams coming up, she's asked to scale back her hours at La Petite Pâtisserie, which now leaves me half a person down in my workforce. I'd blackmailed my cousin, Keira, into covering some shifts but she was useless and ate all my profits. Picking up a Post-It note, I scribble a reminder to advertise for new staff and then click to print the worksheet. When I've finished that, I turn to my sister and scowl. "Why do you call the baby, 'Joey'? We don't even know if it's a boy and even if it is, we're not calling it Joey."
Sophie laughs. "Joey is a baby kangaroo." Her laughter continues, even though I don't understand the joke. "You know, Australia has kangaroos. Isaac's Australian. Kangaroo daddy, joey baby. Any of this making sense to you?"
"Unfortunately, yes," I say.
Leaving my office to walk to the other end of the hallway, I hear a commotion coming up the stairs as two loud voices talk to one another. Not wanting to come between another Nate-Joanne argument over how the display should be styled, I duck into the secondary office and wait for the print job to finish. I'd forgotten that I'd sent about fifty pages of Health and Safety regulations to print earlier. Actually, that's lucky. The longer I'm out of the office, the longer I don't have to put up with Sophie.
Taking my phone from my pocket, I see that I've received a message from Martha. Today, she was leaving to go back home to Australia with her mother and the crying emoji that littered all her texts since last night indicates that she is not happy about it. When Martha arrived two weeks ago, I thought that having Alyssa in the same city as Isaac would be disastrous. What if she wanted to initiate something with him? It shouldn't have bothered me, but it did. Thankfully, during their stay, I never saw Alyssa.
