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The Doris Day Vintage Film Club: A hilarious, feel-good romantic comedy
Fiona Harper
The amazing new romantic comedy from the #1 bestselling author of The Little Shop of Hopes and Dreams’Sweet and romantic, a story guaranteed to have you smiling’ - Milly JohnsonThe perfect pair for ‘pillow talk’?Claire Bixby grew up watching Doris Day films at her grandmother’s house and yearned to live in a world like the one on the screen – sunny, colourful and where happy endings were guaranteed. But recently Claire’s opportunities for a little ‘pillow talk’ have been thin on the ground.Until she meets new client Nic who comes into her travel agency looking to book the perfect get away. Too bad it’s for two!But as Nic and Claire get closer, the sparks start to fly, and Claire’s questioning everything Doris taught her about romance.Can true love ever really be just like it is in the movies?Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps…Praise for Fiona Harper’Perfect cosy feel you want from a good book' - Paris Baker's Book Nook’A nice warm hug’ - Fabulous Book Fiend’Fiona Harper writes with an abundance of warmth and wit’ -Dot Scribbles’I would whole heartedly recommend this and I will be looking what else Fiona has done’ - Afternoon Bookery’A great romantic read’ - Book Chick CityFans of Jenny Colgan, Abby Clements and Miranda Dickinson will love Fiona Harper's fresh, fun writing
As a child, FIONA HARPER was constantly teased for two things: having her nose in a book and living in a dream world. Things haven’t changed much since then, but at least she’s found a career that puts her runaway imagination to use!
Fiona loves dancing, so clear the floor if you’re ever at a party with her, and her current creative craze (one of a long list!) is jewellery making. She loves good books, good films and good food, especially anything cinnamon-flavoured, and she can always find room in her diet for chocolate or champagne!
Fiona loves to hear from readers and you can contact her through fiona@fionaharper.com (mailto:fiona@fionaharper.com) or find her on her Facebook page (Fiona Harper Romance Author) or tweet her! (@FiHarperAuthor (https://twitter.com/@FiHarperAuthor))
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover (#u645e5505-8ab9-54bb-88e9-6d9ee6d9a097)
About the Author (#ud4443166-a4ba-5dc2-9739-e217de2bcd3c)
Title Page (#uee997823-b696-50cd-9bcc-e27149a86e28)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (#ulink_a2db345a-9f48-5482-9ccb-5daff54b6353)
Chapter One: Nobody’s Sweetheart (#ulink_eb4edf18-a85d-59f7-b204-ae6371430f9b)
Chapter Two: Just One Girl (#ulink_d100ca13-ca25-56ba-ac6e-1cc1d2d6bcaa)
Chapter Three: Never Look Back (#ulink_1b230677-e80c-598a-9fb4-0d2525f0d898)
Chapter Four: I Can Do Without You (#ulink_e5cf71ab-f77d-5c59-a653-262df6d50c1b)
Chapter Five: Anything You Can Do (#ulink_551408a5-4d8e-51bc-9763-a10a414ba5fc)
Chapter Six: Ain’t We Got Fun? (#ulink_4f31126a-f2f3-5938-b672-cec1a72998a4)
Chapter Seven: There’s Good Blues Tonight (#ulink_0024df49-129c-5619-a6b1-0f362ee440d9)
Chapter Eight: Teacher’s Pet (#ulink_29ee8329-ef38-5db2-9d36-fedabf01d884)
Chapter Nine: By the Light of the Silvery Moon (#ulink_365414bb-3086-5f31-81c9-c14c78dd7c8c)
Chapter Ten: Ready, Willing and Able (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven: Send Me No Flowers (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve: I’ll See You In My Dreams (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen: A Wonderful Guy (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen: That Touch of Mink (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen: Three at a Table for Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen: There Once Was a Man (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen: Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen: A Woman’s Touch (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen: You’re Getting to Be a Habit With Me (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty: Everybody Loves a Lover (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One: Let’s Take an Old-Fashioned Walk (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two: I’m Beginning to See the Light (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three: Young At Heart (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four: I Got It Bad (and That Ain’t Good) (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five: Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six: Julie (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Cuddle Up a Little Closer (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Won’t You Dance With Me, Papa? (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Nine: What Does A Woman Do? (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty: Between Friends (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-One: The Party’s Over (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Two: It’s Better to Conceal Than Reveal (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Three: I Love the Way You Say Goodnight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Four: The Thrill of It All (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Five: The Man Who Knew Too Much (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Six: I’m Not At All In Love (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Love Me or Leave Me (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Quiet Night of Quiet Stars (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Nine: You Should Have Told Me (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty: Do Not Disturb (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-One: I Didn’t Slip, I Wasn’t Pushed, I Fell (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Two: I’ve Only Myself to Blame (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Three: Foolishly Yours (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Four: My Kinda Love (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Five: The Game of Broken Hearts (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Six: (Now and Then There’s) A Fool Such As I (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Seven: Softly, As I Leave You (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Eight: It’s Magic (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Nine: Sentimental Journey (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty: I Don’t Want to Be Kissed By Anyone But You (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-One: Hooray for Hollywood (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Two: He’ll Have to Cross the Atlantic (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Three: Que Sera, Sera (#litres_trial_promo)
Endpages (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (#ulink_f18c1cda-ef47-590d-8f6e-07e7facbd200)
I’d like to thank everyone at Mills & Boon, especially Anna Baggaley, my very patient editor, and the lovely Victoria Oundjian, especially as it took quite some time to help this author see the wood of this book through the trees of her wayward imagination. I also want to say a huge thank you to all of M&B’s marketing and promotion team, for their enthusiasm and hard work from day one.
Big thanks to my amazing agent Lizzy Kremer and also to Harriet Moore at David Higham Associates, for her calm encouragement in the midst of a deadline panic and her insightful suggestions.
My family definitely deserve my gratitude, especially my husband, Andy, who patiently listens to me warble on about difficult plot matters so I can get things straight in my head, even though he hardly ever knows who these people I’m talking about are, and to my lovely daughters, Sian and Rose, who cheer me on all the way, and who didn’t moan (much) when I hogged the TV for months, watching every film of Doris’s I could get my hands on.
Thanks to all my Facebook friends who helped me with football-related stuff. Sorry, those scenes ended up on the cutting room floor, but at least you have educated this football dunce a little.
Lastly, and most importantly, I want to thank Doris Day, for her captivating and charismatic performances that have charmed generations and continue to bring us joy and happiness, but also for her strength of character and resilience. The true story of the woman behind the Hollywood icon was the inspiration for this book.
Chapter One (#ulink_d8e04ccf-483f-53e4-8a5f-80efd5201258)
Nobody’s Sweetheart (#ulink_d8e04ccf-483f-53e4-8a5f-80efd5201258)
When Claire Bixby was nine, she decided that one day she’d like to live in Hollywood, because she wanted to be in movies. Not that she wanted to be an actress. Far from it. No, Claire wanted to actually be in the movies, to live there, a place where the sun always shone, everything was Technicolor bright and families lived happily ever after together. There would be no more shouting, no more crying. No hearing the front door slam, one parent leaving never to return – even if she’d discovered she could breathe out more easily after he’d left.
However, as all little girls do, Claire grew up, and she came to understand that nothing was what it seemed in Hollywood. The houses weren’t real. The outsides were just false fronts and the insides built on a sound stage, made up of plywood flats that could be wheeled around depending on where the camera needed to go. And while the sun might shine pretty regularly in California, she suspected that once the actors took off their make-up, they probably went home and shouted at the dog, or discovered their wife was cheating on them with her plastic surgeon, or maybe just went back to their mansion to sit there with the curtains drawn, wondering why their fabulous lives weren’t really that fabulous and if even one of the hangers-on who buzzed around them knew what their real name was.
So by the time Claire had turned thirty-four, she’d never once visited Hollywood, preferring to keep it a dim and distant bubble of fantasy she wasn’t quite yet ready to pop. As a travel agent, however, she did plan trips to Tinseltown for others, which was why on one sunny and rather muggy May morning, she hopped off the number fifty-six bus, thinking not only about the work of the day ahead but smiling slightly at the memory of her childhood naïvety.
She’d slowly been growing her business over the last two years and recently she’d taken the plunge and hired proper office space. It was only a couple of miles from where she lived in Highbury, North London. She’d moved into the premises two months ago, but she still loved turning the corner into an alley that led into a forgotten gem of a courtyard. Whilst most of the surrounding area had been levelled by the Blitz and had been reimagined into vast modern estates by some of Britain’s top architects during the sixties and seventies, a few narrow streets had survived and tiny pockets of nineteenth-century buildings nestled amongst the landscape of grey concrete and geometrical shapes.
Evidence of the old workshops and shopfronts still remained in Old Carter’s Yard. A couple of units were boarded up, yet to be renovated, but the others were filled with small businesses, many of which were wedding-related. It had started with a proposal-planning agency, of all things, and had grown from there. Now there was a bakery that did the most amazing five-tiered creations, a photographer’s studio, a stationer’s and even a wedding accessories shop, which did everything from garters and stockings to waterproof mascara for the big day and plastic tiaras for rowdy hen nights.
Claire walked across the cobbles carefully in her heels and smiled to herself as she saw the sign above the window. Far, Far Away. She still thought it was a great name for a travel agent’s, especially for one that specialised in romantic getaways, even though that hadn’t been part of the plan when she’d left her job as an advertising executive at Webster & Templeton and had set up an office in her living room.
She gave the window display the once-over before turning the key in the lock. The old-fashioned bay window of what had once been a fishmonger’s was now backed with a collage of elegant and romantic destinations: Paris, Venice, the Orient Express. A deserted Caribbean beach with a startling turquoise sea. A picture of a couple silhouetted by the sunset on the verge of what promised to be a meaningful kiss.
Knowing that brides-to-be were drawn to anything that hinted of weddings like a kleptomaniac to something shiny, Claire had draped white tulle around the window and had added a bouquet of silk flowers and a couple of wedding invitations. She’d then tossed a handful of rose petal confetti across everything, so it looked as if had been blown in by a soft wind. And at the bottom of the window in gold lettering it said, After the perfect wedding, the perfect honeymoon … Her post-wedding bookings had doubled since she’d opened up shop here.
She unlocked the door and stepped inside. Like many buildings in the Victorian courtyard, her shop stayed fairly cool in summer, but London was in the grip of a heatwave and this was the stickiest May on record for more than two decades. It had only been a short walk from the bus stop, but the back of her neck was already damp under her blonde bob and she could feel her tailored red shift dress sticking to her skin. Before she headed for her desk, she propped the door open to encourage fresh air to flow into the space.
She’d only just sat down in her office chair when she heard a rap on the glass of the open door. She looked up to find one of her fellow ‘wedding ghetto’ traders leaning against the jamb.
‘Hey,’ Peggy said, smiling. Today she was in all her vintage glory. Her platinum blonde hair was curled to resemble Marilyn Monroe’s and she wore a fitted pale pink dress covered with small white polka dots. The look was finished off with matching pink stilettos with spotty bows at the toes.
Claire had been friends with Peggy even before she’d rented the office in Old Carter’s Yard. It was through Peggy, who worked two doors down at Hopes & Dreams as a proposal planner, that Claire had discovered the shop space had been available to rent.
Claire smiled back. ‘Hi. Need help with a proposal?’
Peggy nodded and came and sat down in the chair opposite Claire. ‘Nicole asked me to pop down. We have a client who wants to pop the question – sunset at the top of the Eiffel Tower. That bit we can manage, but we’d like you to handle the first-class Eurostar tickets, and give us suggestions of half a dozen romantic hotels in Paris. He hasn’t got a five-star budget, but he’d like it if his fiancée-to-be didn’t guess that.’
Claire smiled. ‘I know some great little boutique hotels on the Left Bank, where you get a bit more pizazz for your euro. What sort of timescale are we looking at?’
‘Their anniversary is on the fourteenth of July. He’d like to do it then.’
‘No problem.’ Claire opened her browser and clicked through a couple of hotel websites. ‘I’ll have preliminary details to you by the beginning of next week.’
Peggy clapped her hands together and grinned. ‘You’re a star! And I’m so glad you took this office over. It’s so much more fun coming down for a visit than sending off a boring old email.’
‘I’m glad too.’ Carving a name for herself in the travel business had been hard. She needed a niche, she’d realised, and thanks to Peggy and Hopes & Dreams she’d found one. Six months after she’d started doing bookings for them she’d moved from general travel planning to concentrating on romantic trips of all kinds – proposals, honeymoons, special anniversaries.
She’d even planned a couple of holidays to help couples conceive. Okay, well, she didn’t actually help them conceive – that was up to them and God – but giving them some much-needed time together where they could relax and let nature take its course, that she could manage.
‘How about a Frappuccino?’ Peggy asked, nodding towards Sweet Nothings, the organic café and bakery just at the entrance to the yard.
Claire frowned. ‘It’s only ten past nine and you’re having a break? I thought you were supposed to be just “popping down”.’
Peggy’s smile didn’t fade one iota. ‘I’m still working,’ she said sweetly. ‘We’ll discuss the Paris trip while we slurp.’
Claire shook her head gently and considered Peggy’s temping offer. When she arrived for work in the mornings, she usually dived straight in and didn’t surface again until her stomach started to rumble, but this morning her throat was dry and a fine bead of sweat was tickling its way down between her shoulder blades. ‘Oh, go on then,’ she muttered.
Peggy sprung up from the chair, grinning harder. Then she held out her hand. It took Claire a couple of moments before she worked out what was going on. Rolling her eyes, she fumbled through her purse then dropped a ten pound note into Peggy’s hand. ‘I want change!’ she yelled after the polka-dotted figure that practically skipped out of the shop.
There can’t have been much of a queue in Sweet Nothings, she thought, because less than a minute later she sensed a presence in the doorway, hardly enough time to blend the ice, let alone dowse it in ice-cold milk and espresso. ‘I need to talk to you about the film club meeting tonight,’ she said, still looking at her computer screen. ‘How do you feel about being our new treasurer?’
