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Emma Ever After: A feel-good romantic comedy with a hilarious modern re-telling of Jane Austen
Brigid Coady
’Smart, sexy, romantic, and enormous fun’ – Keris Stainton‘I loved it! Wicked humour with a big heart’ – Liz Fenwick on Persuading AustenEmma Woodhouse knows the world loves nothing more than a celebrity romance. And, as a rising star at Mega! Management, she match-makes some of the biggest names in the business. Who cares if it’s all for show? For Emma, fauxmance beats the real thing any day!But Emma has a huge task ahead. She needs to find fake girlfriends for every member of Breach of the Peace, the world’s hottest new boy band. Rich, talented heart-throbs, they should have their pick of the ladies – but, with band mates Will and Ed determined to undermine her every move, and her best mate Gee voicing disapproval about her chosen profession, Emma’s carefully ordered world begins to fall apart.Is it possible that Emma doesn’t know best after all?A new laugh-out-loud retelling of a Jane Austen romance, perfect for fans of Lindsey Kelk and Fiona Collins, from the winner of the 2015 Joan Hessayon New Writers’ Scheme Award. Available to pre-order now!Praise for Brigid Coady:‘Awesome, awesome, awesome! … Fans of Paige Toon, Sophie Kinsella and Lindsey Kelk, this will most definitely be your thing!’ – Sophie Bailey, ibloggbooks.com on Persuading Austen‘As the story moved from setting the scene and firmly entrenching the reader in a Persuasion rerun to the actual filming it stepped away from a faithful retelling of the story and came into its own right. If you loved films like Ten Things I Hate About You …you will really like this.’ – Alison Robinson, Netgalley on Persuading Austen
Emma Woodhouse knows the world loves nothing more than a celebrity romance. And, as a rising star at Mega! Management, she match-makes some of the biggest names in the business. Who cares if it’s all for show? For Emma, fauxmance beats the real thing any day!
But Emma has a huge task ahead. She needs to find fake girlfriends for every member of Breach of the Peace, the world’s hottest new boy band. Rich, talented heart-throbs, they should have their pick of the ladies – but, with band mates Will and Ed determined to undermine her every move, and her best mate Gee voicing disapproval about her chosen profession, Emma’s carefully ordered world begins to fall apart.
Is it possible that Emma doesn’t know best after all?
A new laugh-out-loud retelling of a Jane Austen romance, perfect for fans of Lindsey Kelk and Fiona Collins, from the winner of the 2015 Joan Hessayon New Writers’ Scheme Award. Available to pre-order now!
Also by Brigid Coady
Persuading Austen
Emma Ever After
Brigid Coady
ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES
Copyright (#ulink_28438286-3e1c-5da8-90a9-c4e69d655efe)
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018
Copyright © Brigid Coady 2018
Brigid Coady 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 © January 2018 ISBN: 978-0-00-827032-2
BRIGID COADY was born in the UK but raised round the world with most of her childhood spent reading.
Brigid works for a communications and digital marketing agency as a producer and storyteller. Much of her writing is done at weekends in various Starbucks around the world.
In the past, she has been the official Writer in Residence on the 06:37 train from London Victoria to Canterbury West.
Brigid is also a voice-over artist, loves country music and has had her own radio show. Brigid’s obsession with One Direction and Kenny Chesney is perfectly healthy, no matter what anyone else says. She lives in London.
For the One Direction fandom and the five boys that brought us together.
Thank you for the music and the muse.
Contents
Cover (#ud5195abb-1313-5261-8a64-e856e7046940)
Blurb (#u9afbd68f-6807-5f56-bfcb-e018d856370b)
Title Page (#u12722b07-a9ff-5633-b622-a8d90ed2b32b)
Copyright (#ulink_4f1da6b2-b3e7-59ec-b866-bcf48e0f9b45)
Author Bio (#u85c387c2-73a4-5fbe-87ec-f51e24633c89)
Dedication (#uc1abf86e-616a-56b8-9e61-af1a05383c36)
Chapter One (#ulink_8729476f-84c3-5337-b440-a46a5fb2452a)
Chapter Two (#ulink_5e633119-9627-5753-8a35-c9a2266c1c91)
Chapter Three (#ulink_f747526b-6c40-556b-9768-4ac2f8b941cc)
Chapter Four (#ulink_ca9d06a4-c270-5e6c-bbaa-b242182edd9b)
Chapter Five (#ulink_d39c6872-685f-5547-a46a-45083cb6709d)
Chapter Six (#ulink_deb6ec40-c0a6-5caa-b9f0-8f906bf53bb3)
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Letter from the Author
Excerpt (#u96c6e7b4-e28c-5555-81dd-867c36823c38)
Endpages (#uf3d1aec9-c30b-5905-bd62-2d8246c8a573)
Chapter One (#ulink_2bbe91de-25d3-5e8b-a168-2167abd7bc31)
‘Wipe that smug smile off your face, Emma Woodhouse,’ Gee said, punctuating it with his elbow in Emma’s ribs.
She absently rubbed her side, her eyes not leaving the newly married couple who were posing for photos.
‘They make such a wonderful couple, don’t they,’ she said, as the feeling of a job well done bloomed, making her smile bigger.
‘Yes, they make a lovely couple. And yes, their kids will be genetic masterpieces. Yada yada yada. And they’ll both have to keep working forever to pay for the psychiatric help they’ll need,’ Gee grumbled as he slouched next to her. ‘So, when do we get to the drinks? I need something to numb my pain. You promised me a free bar when you dragged me along to this.’
Emma could feel her smile slip from smug to exasperated. She should’ve known what she was getting into inviting Gee as her plus one to the wedding. Weddings alone were enough to make him snippy and judgemental but when you added in the celebrity factor it made him exponentially worse. Celebrity things always rubbed him up the wrong way and made him cranky.
‘There!’ She tore her gaze away from the picture-perfect scene that she’d helped to create and pointed to the tuxedo-clad waiters who were starting to pour out of the stately home venue carrying silver trays replete with full champagne flutes. They looked like a black and white tsunami, the sun glinting off the crystal as they came down the ‘so-green-it-looked-fake’ lawn.
‘At bloody last,’ Gee stood up straighter, pushed his sunglasses back up his nose and headed to cut off the nearest unsuspecting server.
Emma watched him stride away.
The long lean lines of his back shifting under his tailored suit jacket. His legs eating up the ground easily, the muscles on his thighs bunching and releasing under the material…
No.
She looked away, and held a hand to her cheek.
Damn this weather. She hoped that her make up wouldn’t melt.
She glanced back at Gee – the waiter he grabbed the glasses from was blushing and staring at him as if he were a god. He had that effect on everyone, she needed to give herself a break. She was only human, and although she should be immune to his general hotness after ten years, there was something about him in a suit… It made him look like her perfect man. As if he could be that ideal partner she’d imagined. The one she had subsequently written a full page of bullet points listing his attributes and which she kept in her planning file. But, she thought, looking at him, it was an illusion; he wasn’t that ‘ever after’ man, he was Gee. She wanted calm and ordered, not emotional ups and downs.
Bloody hell, this must be a good wedding if it made her resurrect her Gee crush. The heavy, overwhelming smell of roses causing her brain to short circuit and making her want to believe in the fairy tales she told the general public for her job. No, her Gee crush, which had lasted until midway through their first term at uni, had been dead and gone for almost a decade. Now, he was her best friend and flatmate. Anything else was not part of the plan. She didn’t need the mess of being with someone who believed in living in the moment or someone who had opinions on everything she did. No, everyone had to stay in their assigned roles.
That was the way the world worked.
She took a deep breath to steady herself.
Definitely no mess in her life – she wanted everything tied up in a bow, the t’s crossed and the i’s dotted. A perfectly realised strategy that would roll out with no blips. Just like this wedding.
Emma smiled. She couldn’t help it.
