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An A To Z Of Love
Sophie Pembroke
Everyone's talking about Mia Page. Again.Mia Page has been the subject of gossip in Aberarian for half her life, ever since her father ran off with his secretary–and the contents of the local museum safe–when she was fourteen.Still, Mia loves her hometown, loves working at the A to Z shop, eating seafood with her best friend Charlie at his restaurant, catching the classic midnight movie at the crumbling Coliseum cinema. And if she ever wonders if things might be even better if Charlie were more than just a friend, well, it's only an idle thought in a lonely moment. After all, friendship always trumps romance, doesn't it? And she's never been one to rock the boat.But everything she loves is suddenly under threat from Charlie's ex-girlfriend, Becky, and her plans to turn Mia's beloved Coliseum into a casino, transforming the sleepy seaside town forever. As Mia tries to pull the people of Aberarian together to save the town they adore, her father reappears, and people start asking what he wants to take from them this time…Praise for Sophie Pembroke's Love Trilogy'A very sweet story which I really loved; I finished it in no time.' - Rachel Cotterill Book Reviews'What a delightful story! I loved the descriptions of the old inn and surrounding countryside and the occupants of the inn were irresistible. This book is a real treat' - cayocosta72 – Book Reviews'Well, I have never met a sweeter hero! ' - Random Book MusesThe Love trilogy by Sophie Pembroke:Room for LoveAn A to Z of LoveSummer of Love
Everyone’s talking about Mia Page. Again.
Mia Page has been the subject of gossip in Aberarian for half her life, ever since her father ran off with his secretary—and the contents of the local museum safe—when she was fourteen.
Still, Mia loves her hometown, loves working at the A to Z shop, eating seafood with her best friend Charlie at his restaurant, catching the classic midnight movie at the crumbling Coliseum cinema. And if she ever wonders if things might be even better if Charlie were more than just a friend, well, it’s only an idle thought in a lonely moment. After all, friendship always trumps romance, doesn’t it? And she’s never been one to rock the boat.
But everything she loves is suddenly under threat from Charlie’s ex-girlfriend, Becky, and her plans to turn Mia’s beloved Coliseum into a casino, transforming the sleepy seaside town forever. As Mia tries to pull the people of Aberarian together to save the town they adore, her father reappears, and people start asking what he wants to take from them this time…
WARNING: Some sexual scenes. Also contains seafood.
Also available from Sophie Pembroke (#ud6f620ce-0275-57ce-b758-cfdffdf8eed5)
Room for Love
Summer of Love
An A to Z of Love
Sophie Pembroke
Copyright (#ud6f620ce-0275-57ce-b758-cfdffdf8eed5)
HQ
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2014
Copyright © Sophie Pembroke 2014
Sophie Pembroke 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 © June 2014 ISBN: 9781472096395
Version date: 2018-07-23
SOPHIE PEMBROKE has been dreaming, reading and writing romance ever since she read her first Mills and Boon as part of her English Literature degree at Lancaster University, so getting to write romances for a living really is a dream come true!
Sophie lives in a little Hertfordshire market town with her scientist husband and her incredibly imaginative five-year-old daughter. She writes stories about friends, family and falling in love, usually while drinking too much tea and eating homemade cakes. Or, when things are looking very bad for her heroes and heroines, white wine and dark chocolate.
She keeps a blog at www.SophiePembroke.com (http://www.SophiePembroke.com), which should be about romance and writing, but is usually about cake and castles instead.
For Mum and Dad
Contents
Cover (#ud8ff81a5-d30e-5035-b18c-ccec08287436)
Blurb (#u4cfd85f1-1781-59d2-8a02-407de31b88ed)
Book List
Title Page (#uc24a648d-9222-5f19-934b-0254d21c2b23)
Copyright
Author Bio (#uc1e97216-c62d-59e0-a50c-10e26042ff09)
Dedication (#u0d208deb-f5ec-54b4-b18e-c83f96729f10)
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
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Endpages (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher
Chapter One (#ud6f620ce-0275-57ce-b758-cfdffdf8eed5)
People could say what they liked about Welsh seaside towns, but in Mia Page’s opinion, there weren’t many better ways to start a June day than walking barefoot on the beach.
Shoes in hand, she wriggled her toes against the dry sand and stared out over the glistening waves, cheerfully ignoring the line of dead jellyfish left behind by the retreating tide. Even at eight-thirty in the morning, the salt air was already filling with the familiar seaside scents of frying chips and a hint of sugary rock.
‘Magda’s trying to persuade me to open StarFish for breakfasts, and close two nights a week,’ Charlie said, walking beside her with his hands in his pockets. He still had his shoes on, even though Mia had tried to explain to him a hundred times over the course of their friendship that the only proper way to walk on a beach was barefoot. ‘Says we’ll get more customers that way. More people can afford a quick breakfast than a three course dinner.’
‘Makes sense,’ Mia said. ‘But you don’t want to?’
Charlie sighed, and Mia snuck a sideways glance at him as they walked. He looked tired, his broad shoulders slumped. ‘I just always wanted StarFish to be a proper seafood restaurant, I guess. Not just another café diner surviving on serving coffee.’
‘Can’t you be both?’ Mia laughed at the filthy look he gave her. ‘Your problem is that you still think you’re in London, where enough people can afford to eat out every night of the week if they want.’
‘Oh, it’s pretty clear I’m not in London any more,’ Charlie said, gesturing to the seafront and then the rows of pastel coloured houses up above. ‘The smell apart from anything else.’
‘You mean the glorious, reviving sea air,’ Mia corrected him.
‘Something like that.’ Charlie shook his head, then gave her a lopsided smile. ‘Besides, as Magda keeps pointing out, without a few more customers I’ll never be able to afford to move back there anyway.’
A chill hit Mia’s chest, and she tried to convince herself it was the breeze. It was easy to forget, sometimes, that Charlie didn’t want to be in Aberarian. That, but for an evil ex-girlfriend and an economic downturn, he wouldn’t be there at all. When it was just them, catching a midnight movie or tasting new dishes at the restaurant, she could almost believe this was enough for him – their friendship, her hometown.
But every now and then, she couldn’t forget that her best friend would be hightailing it back to London, the first chance he got. Which was just enough to make sure she never let on how much she didn’t want him to.
‘I can’t imagine why you’d want to,’ she said, as lightly as she could. ‘I mean, who could bring themselves to leave all this?’
Mia turned slowly around, surveying her domain as Charlie watched her with an amused grin on his face. The caves, just up the coast, where A to Z Jones’s smuggler gang were said to have hidden, back in the day. The lighthouse on the cliff above, and beside it the tumbledown lighthouse keeper’s cottage she’d dreamt of owning as a child. The Esplanade, with its dated hotels and faded guesthouses, spanning the length of the beach.
Her boss, attacking the postman on the Esplanade.
‘Oh hell. What is she doing now?’ Mia gave her toes one last wriggle, then tugged her shoes back on. ‘Sorry, it looks like I have to rescue Jacques from Ditsy. I’ll see you later, though?’
‘Yeah, sure.’ Charlie stared up at the Esplanade. ‘And you’re right. I can’t imagine how I could ever think of leaving this place,’ he added, as Ditsy walloped Jacques in the stomach with her handbag.
Mia stuck her tongue out at him and dashed up the stone steps from the beach to the town above. Ahead of her, Ditsy Levine, seventy-six and still spectacular, dressed in a shocking pink and green floral tea dress, had Jacques’ arm twisted up behind his back and was trying to prise a selection of envelopes from his hand. Jacques was not giving in easily.
‘Ditsy, what on earth are you doing?’ Mia grabbed the much older woman around the waist, more to steady her than stop her, since Ditsy looked about to topple over.
‘Getting our post,’ Ditsy said through gritted teeth, succeeding at last in peeling one of Jacques’ fingers out of the way.
Jacques – who’d arrived in Aberarian from France two months before Mia was born, twenty-eight years ago, yet still complained about the weather – was not the world’s most efficient postman. But he did have a system. He started his deliveries on the outer streets of the small seaside town and spiralled his way in to the centre until he reached the post office again. Ditsy’s A to Z shop, being next door to the post office-cum-newsagents on the main street, was his last stop. Quite often, the workday had effectively ended by the time he handed Mia her mail.
‘If somebody would employ a sensible delivery system,’ Ditsy carried on, separating another finger from the letters, ‘I wouldn’t have to resort to such actions.’
‘Fine, fine!’ Jacques finally released the post, and the sudden action caused Ditsy to jerk backwards, pushing Mia against the railing separating the Esplanade from the rocks leading down to the sandy beach. Glancing down, she could see Charlie walking back along the beach the way they’d come, heading for StarFish and another day not serving breakfasts. From the slump of his shoulders, he didn’t look happy about it.
With a sigh, Mia turned back to see Ditsy settling her skinny frame onto a nearby bench and sorting through her mail. Jacques rooted around in his inside pocket and pulled out another envelope. Ditsy made a disgruntled noise from the bench, obviously personally offended he’d kept any mail hidden from her.
‘Since we’re ignoring any sense of order today, you might as well have this too.’ Jacques shoved the letter into her hands. ‘It was addressed to your mother’s old house, but I would have brought it over to you.’ He sounded hurt at the accusations thrown at him for doing his job in an orderly manner, and for a moment Mia wondered if he was hanging around for an apology from Ditsy, in which case she suspected everyone’s post would still be waiting to be delivered tomorrow.
Then she glanced down at the envelope. Written across the reverse flap was a return address: G E Page, 15 Cottle Way, Cottlethorpe, East Yorkshire. Well, at least she knew where dear old Dad had got to now. And it had only taken him fourteen years to write. Suddenly it was very clear why Jacques was still there.
Mia pushed the letter into the corner of her handbag. She wasn’t giving Jacques, and by extension everyone on his post round, the satisfaction of knowing what her father had to say to her. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to know herself.
‘Thank you.’ She turned away and grabbed Ditsy’s arm, pulling her up from the bench. ‘But we’ve got a shop to open.’ Ditsy followed, after returning to Jacques all the letters addressed to other people. They left him reordering it according to his spiralling system.
‘You really shouldn’t attack people in broad daylight, you know,’ Mia said, once Jacques was out of earshot and they were safely headed up Water Street. ‘It’s not going to make these people like us any more.’
Ditsy bristled. ‘They like me just fine, thank you very much. They just preferred my sister.’
‘They think you’re ornery,’ Mia corrected, peeking through the window of StarFish seafood restaurant to see if Charlie was at work yet. He wasn’t.
‘I’m seventy-six. It’s my right.’ Mia didn’t have an argument for that. As far as she was concerned, Ditsy had earned the right to do whatever the hell she liked. It was just a shame the rest of the town didn’t always agree.
Passing the crumbling Coliseum cinema, with its peeling yellow paintwork and faded movie posters three years out of date, Mia waved to Walt Hamilton, who was opening up for another day of classic movies and stale popcorn. Walt raised a hand to wave back, but lowered it when his wife, Susan, glared first at him then at Mia.
Susan thought Mia was more than ornery. Mia was pretty sure Susan thought she was a disgrace. Another reason to be glad that she’d turned down Dan Hamilton’s proposal and gone to university instead, ten years before. Susan as a mother-in-law would have been unbearable.
‘So, who’s the letter from?’ Ditsy went on, sounding like she didn’t care, as they turned onto Main Street and the tarnished brass sign above the A to Z shop came into view.
Mia rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t pretend Jacques didn’t tell you. I’m sure he’s told every single person on his rounds this morning. And I don’t for a second believe you were actually attacking him to get the phone bill and a Fish Festival flyer.’
‘I just can’t believe he was hiding it in his pocket,’ Ditsy grumbled, fumbling for her keys. ‘All that wasted energy. I’m going to need a nap today. You might not get your afternoon off, after all.’
Ditsy’s A to Z shop was an institution in Aberarian. It had been there all of Mia’s life, and before, and any visitor to the town always remembered it long after they’d forgotten the jellyfish and the boat trips. Usually because they’d spent twenty-five minutes searching for mustard before realising every item in the shop was stored alphabetically on the twenty-six antique wooden shelves, each with a gilt letter resting atop them. It wasn’t practical, or particularly profitable, but it was certainly memorable.
‘Speaking of the Fish Festival,’ Ditsy said, pushing the door open, ‘they’re in trouble again.’
Ditsy struggled out of her camel hair jacket, revealing the full glory of the floral fantasia of fabric draped over her skinny body and tied with a pink and yellow beaded necklace for a belt around the waist. ‘The only person who ever cared what I looked like died a decade ago,’ Ditsy always said. ‘Besides, I like flowers.’ The camel hair coat found its way onto the usual peg behind the counter, next to Mia’s apron, and Ditsy dropped onto the stool by the till.
