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
Room for Love
Summer of Love
An A to Z of Love
Sophie Pembroke
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, which should be about romance and writing, but is usually about cake and castles instead.
For Mum and Dad
Contents
Book List
Copyright
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
About the Publisher
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