A Will, A Wish...A Proposal (Contemporary Romance) by Jessica Gilmore

Author:Jessica Gilmore [Gilmore, Jessica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary, Fiction, Romance, Executive, Godmother's Will, Women Walk Away, Marry, Proposal
ISBN: 9780263258592
Google: Z5WOrgEACAAJ
Goodreads: 24885402
Publisher: Harlequin Romance
Published: 2015-08-01T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

ELLIE HAD ALWAYS thought that she hated small talk.

Standing at Simon’s side, her role had been to agree with him. It had been the easiest and the safest thing to do. He wouldn’t retreat into one of his terrifying sulks if she didn’t say anything wrong.

Of course she couldn’t be too mute—then he would accuse of her being dull, of not trying hard enough. No, it had been easier to agree with him at all times.

Tonight was as different from a night out with Simon as a glass of vintage champagne was from cheap lemonade.

Max had made no attempt to keep her near him. But his eyes sought her out as she moved from group to group, catching her gaze with an intimate smile that heated her through. And he’d made sure she was introduced to his companions, supplied with a drink. If she found herself alone even for a second then he was there, as if by magic, ready to introduce her to another key contact.

He would whisk her away, off into a corner, every now and then. She usually had to slip into the cloakroom afterwards and reapply her lipstick. Every time she did she would stop and look at the girl in the mirror. The girl with the emphasised eyes, the choppy hair. The girl in the red dress.

She couldn’t hide. Not like this. Her dress was so bright, the cut exposing far more of her arms and legs than she ever usually showed, her hair left her face and her shoulders bare, and her make-up was dramatic.

She was so used to hiding behind her hair she felt exposed without it. But she also felt free, reinvented. It had been long for so many years: one length for her ballet dancing youth, uncut in her teens because her father had loved it so, and her mother would have been devastated if it was cut.

And Simon had liked long hair on women.

She had thought about changing it, in the three years she had spent in Trengarth, but had clung on to the security blanket it offered.

There was no blanket now.

This girl had to mingle, to talk.

And people wanted to talk to her, to know her, to discuss her shop, the tentative festival plans. They were interested in her thoughts, in her perspective.

It was a heady experience. For so long she had listened to the voices in her head telling her she was too young, too inexperienced, that she was hampered by her lack of a degree, unable to follow her dreams—and yet at some point in the last three years she had accumulated huge amounts of industry knowledge.

She was on the front line. She knew what people wanted to read, how they wanted to purchase it, what made them angry, excited—and what left them cold. Her best book club meetings were always those where the participants were polarised. And here she was, surrounded by people who spoke her language, people who knew the prefix to most ISBN numbers, got excited by new covers and new releases.

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