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Playing for Keeps: A fun, flirty romantic comedy perfect for summer reading
Rosa Temple
Love, Life, and a Whole Lotta HandbagsHaving papered over the cracks in her relationship with artist boyfriend Anthony, Magenta Bright is fully focused on opening her first shop on the King’s Road – and on coaching her best friend – vodka-swilling, catty supermodel Anya – through her unexpected pregnancy.But with Anthony away in Italy on a lucrative commission, the distance between them is more than metaphoric. And then Magenta’s ex, Hugo, shows up, the man she once lost her heart to. At one time there was nothing more important to Magenta than fashion and fun, and throwing herself into every drama that passes her way. But now Magenta’s world is rocked by questions of life and death, and how she would cope if the people closest to her were gone for good.At work, she can’t seem to put a foot wrong, but in her personal life she’s her own worst enemy. And the stakes have never been higher…Readers love Temple:“A great little series…most enjoyable”“I loved these characters”“an enjoyable read”“A light hearted read”
Love, Life, and a Whole Lotta Handbags
Having papered over the cracks in her relationship with artist boyfriend, Anthony, Magenta Bright is fully focused on opening her first shop on the King’s Road – and on coaching her best friend – vodka-swilling, catty supermodel, Anya – through her unexpected pregnancy.
But with Anthony away in Italy on a lucrative commission, the distance between them is more than metaphoric. And then Magenta’s ex, Hugo, shows up, the man she once lost her heart to. At one time there was nothing more important to Magenta than fashion and fun, throwing herself into every drama that passed her way. But now Magenta’s world is rocked by questions of life and death, and how she would cope if the people closest to her were gone for good.
At work, she can’t seem to put a foot wrong, but in her personal life she’s her own worst enemy. And the stakes have never been higher…
Also by Rosa Temple (#ue5692c53-3eed-573d-a51c-c41edbc36d59)
Playing by the Rules
Playing Her Cards Right
Playing for Keeps
Rosa Temple
ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES
Copyright (#ulink_07bc1f01-6280-5222-a859-a68db5a8a1ce)
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018
Copyright © Rosa Temple 2018
Rosa Temple 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 © February 2018 ISBN: 9780008260583
ROSA TEMPLE is the pseudonym of writer Fran Clark. A ghostwriter of romance novels, Fran was awarded a Distinction in her Creative Writing MA from Brunel University in 2014. To date, Fran has penned five publications as Rosa Temple: Sleeping With Your Best Friend, Natalie’s Getting Married, Single by Christmas, Playing by the Rules, and Playing Her Cards Right. A mother of two, Fran is married to a musician and lives in London. She spends her days creating characters and storylines while drinking herbal tea and eating chocolate biscuits.
Dedication (#ue5692c53-3eed-573d-a51c-c41edbc36d59)
For Mum.
I miss your stories. No one can ever tell them the way you did.
Contents
Cover (#ueafc0284-7cea-5536-9107-93bf0e712bae)
Blurb (#uc6c2723d-6a81-5df1-895e-be904f315c39)
Booklist (#u8a7dba94-c217-5b3d-bce7-83468fd50ec2)
Title Page (#u0bb4b1a9-e8e7-5a72-bf84-e530d58ce384)
Copyright (#ulink_d1abc529-8186-58d5-bcce-6fc409063851)
Author Bio (#u52c506f2-6d6b-56ea-a328-37f4fdeaeeed)
Dedication (#udbb2677a-f85c-5dca-a3b0-9203ac3098e5)
Prologue: Then (#ulink_9bc9dffe-b580-552f-acb1-205f36de129e)
Chapter One (#ulink_80e8f92c-edc4-55db-8fbe-7b115ebd4c00)
Chapter Two (#ulink_abe37d83-61d8-5e9b-99c7-3f58d5095711)
Chapter Three (#ulink_335e5993-0f3b-5c50-8287-06b4a8d01867)
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
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
Epilogue: After
Excerpt (#uad7fa3af-3e74-5da7-9ce4-210c91e12273)
Endpages (#u63802200-431f-5fd8-ba84-00c032df4fdd)
THEN (#ulink_5fe431a1-6809-5e6a-b076-a529bab69fbe)
It was the hottest day of the year. He stood on the top step at the front of my house. I didn’t dare cross the threshold, put my arms around him, apologise one last time. He had desperation in his eyes. He really loved me, I knew that, but the way he stood there, not moving an inch, I became scared he might pick me up, carry me away and I’d never see my friends and family again. I was wearing a top from Primark (don’t ask), and I didn’t want to spend years as an abduction victim in a £1.99 T-shirt for goodness’ sake. If the police ever found me the press would be there to take pictures of me in that T-shirt. Anya would be mortified and I’d never live it down.
I looked down at the mat, breaking his intense gaze by tracing the well-worn pattern with the toe of my Converse trainer. I wondered if a plan for my abduction had entered his mind and would he have thought to buy face cream, shampoo or conditioner for my life in captivity.
‘Magenta! Say something. You can’t just glaze over. This is important.’ He raised his voice and I snapped back to reality with a jolt. ‘This is our life we’re talking about.’
Making decisions. Something I thought I’d become a bit of an expert at. Any woman having a choice between two fantastic men would be happy, and I had been more than happy with the choice I’d made. But there, on the doorstep of the house, on a leafy, sweltering street in Holland Park, was the man I’d let go. And he wasn’t taking it well.
‘What if you regret this… this decision of yours? How can you tell me one thing one day and suddenly, out of the blue, you just change your mind? I went back, sold up practically everything to be with you, Magenta. You expect me to just go home? We were supposed to be starting something… together. This is just unbelievable.’ He didn’t drop his gaze, not once. Piercing blue eyes boring into mine. Of course, he deserved an explanation.
‘I’ll always hate myself for this,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t fair on you but I can’t keep apologising. I made my decision and it was a life-changing one, you know that, and it wasn’t easy. I promise you. I’m still reeling.’
‘Exactly. That’s why I want you to think about it. Think about what you’re throwing away. I told you before I went away – I need you, Magenta. You’re my life. I don’t know what happened in the few weeks I was gone for you to stop loving me. I never stopped loving you from the day I met you, you have to believe me.’
‘But you still left me. Ten years you were out of my life.’ I took a breath, stopped myself getting worked up again. This was no time to apportion blame. ‘Look, I know what it’s like to be on the receiving end… how it feels not to be the one.’ I was just about keeping it together. I didn’t want to cry. Not again.
‘So is this your revenge? You’re leaving me because I was the one who walked away the first time? Magenta, that was ten years ago and I was an idiot back then. Since we got together again, you can see, I’m a different person.’
I shook my head and folded my arms around my body.
‘I don’t know what to say any more. It’s over. You have to believe me. I can’t go on doing this with you, having the same conversation over and over again. Anthony has no idea you’re even in London.’
I had chosen Anthony over him. This was supposed to be the exciting start to a new life with him. It was fortunate that Anthony had had to fly out to Italy for work, which meant I only saw him on occasional weekends, so the fact I was being pursued by my ex could be hidden from him. I was a wreck. Here was I, trying to find a new flat in London for Anthony and me to move into when he returned from Italy, and here was Hugo, my ex, not taking no for an answer.
I couldn’t count how many sleepless nights I’d had, how hard it had been to tell him I’d chosen Anthony and was leaving him, after promising him so much. I’d promised him me, my heart, my love, but one kiss from Anthony after Hugo left temporarily for Brazil to sell up his business and I knew I’d made a mistake. Anthony was the one for me.
Hugo being back in London all the time Anthony wasn’t – it was flattering, it was heartbreaking, annoying and so totally, totally wrong.
As my best friend, Anya, would say, ‘This is messed up, Madge.’ And she’d be right.
Needless to say, the messed up-ness of it all went on for the whole time Anthony was out of the country – three months to be exact.
I never came clean to Anthony about the phone calls, letters, texts and virtual stalking during those three months. And just when Anya had convinced me to take out a restraining order, Hugo disappeared. Gone. Poof. I could finally exhale.
I assumed he’d gone back to his life in Brazil and I hoped that, after having sold his business to be with me, he could somehow put his life back together, forget me, forget the plans we’d made. I assumed that’s what must have happened, that he was in Brazil, that he’d stay there. And so a week went by and there was no Hugo, and then a whole month. Nothing. I’d not heard a word from Hugo and I thought I never would again.
That was over three years ago and I remember thinking to myself at the time, now my life with Anthony can finally begin. It was such a relief not to have to look over my shoulder any more.
NOW
Chapter 1 (#ulink_21c3e0d4-80ce-5d9e-a1a4-090098db2d43)
It was crazy really, or simply hard to imagine: my best friend was having a baby and I was opening a shop on London’s King’s Road. If you’d asked me three years ago if I’d thought such a thing was possible I would have laughed in your face. In fact, I would have been holding a Margarita and laughing in your face because I would have been swinging off a stool in a cocktail bar, half cut, sipping an endless stream of cocktails with my best friend, the now very pregnant supermodel, Anya Stankovic.
I turned the corner into Anya’s street, driving the flashy red Ferrari she’d brought back as a souvenir for me after one of her many trips abroad. Only weeks ago, or so it seemed, pink and lilac blossoms had filled every branch of every tree along the long, quiet road. And then, in the blink of an eye, the blossoms were scattered along the entirety of the pavement and road like a carpet of confetti. Now they’d been swept away by the breeze, disappearing as if they’d never taken pride of place on the overhanging trees. In no time we’d been catapulted from spring to mid-summer. It was hot, and I had the roof down in the car. The road gleamed with the heat.
Each time I’d visited Anya at her four-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bathroom house I’d found her flicking through old copies of Vogue, luxuriating on the sumptuous sofa in the lounge, her dazzling green eyes made larger behind pale skin and chiselled features, her pencil thin body (bar the five-month baby bulge), unwilling to leave the house. She was mourning her life as an international model and spent the days ignoring calls from her agent and personal manager. Anya was convinced her life was over now she was starting to show.
‘You’ve had offers to pose with your baby bump in several magazines, Anya,’ I’d said to her last time I visited.
‘But I’m the size of an elephant,’ she’d replied. ‘Vye vould I do it to my public?’
I’d had to bite my tongue. I desperately wanted to shake her and tell her to stop being so vain. I called her often, becoming more and more worried she might do something silly. I’d often follow up the call with a visit, no matter how brief, just to make sure she was all right.
The truth was Anya was becoming increasingly miserable; she was missing Henry, I could tell, although she’d never let on. She and her ex-partner, the baby’s father, had parted ways since she became pregnant. A complicated story, really, but her middle-aged ex had four daughters, all just a few years younger than Anya, and he couldn’t face nappies and teething again. But instead of giving up the baby, Anya decided to get rid of Henry. She hadn’t heard from him in months and, maybe because of vanity, she needed to hear from him even if it was just so she could tell him to drop dead.
Anya thought Henry had moved back to his Chiswick apartment and she was rattling around in their big house. She’d contemplated giving up the house in Richmond upon Thames and moving back to her empty one in Hampstead. I’d convinced her that this place, with its manageable garden and airy rooms, would be fabulous for raising a child. But then what did I know? The closest I’d come to being a mother was having a miscarriage at six weeks. A fact that nearly broke me and Anthony up for good.
But Anthony and I were hanging in there. Just. I wouldn’t say things were wonderful between us. Months ago we’d flown back from my parents’ second wedding in the Caribbean. It had been wonderfully romantic but just before the wedding took place Anthony and I had broken up. Our getting back together was as dramatic as the breakup and we’d returned to London vowing we’d be open and talk about our feelings all the time.
