Sisters Like Us. Susan Mallery. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Susan Mallery
Издательство: HarperCollins
Серия: MIRA
Жанр произведения: Контркультура
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9781474074728
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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

       Chapter Thirty-One

       Chapter Thirty-Two

       Reader’s Guide

       Suggested Menu

       Discussion Questions

       Potatoes Grand-Mère

       Strawberry Avocado Salad

       Chapter One

      THERE WASN’T A holiday on the calendar that Harper Szymanski couldn’t celebrate, cook for, decorate, decoupage, create a greeting card about or wrap in raffia. There were the biggies: birthdays, New Years, Fourth of July. But also the lesser celebrated: American Diabetes Association Alert Day, Auntie’s Day, National Massage Therapy Awareness Week. Why weren’t there greeting cards to honor that? Didn’t everyone need a good massage?

      Despite a skill set that made Martha Stewart look like a slacker, Harper had never figured out a way to monetize her gift for setting a table to commemorate anything. She’d tried catering about ten years ago, but had quickly discovered that her need to overbuy and overdeliver had meant losing money on every single job. Which left her in the awkward position of trying to make a living the hard way—with two semesters of community college and sixteen years of being a stay-at-home mom.

      Retail jobs and the pay that went with them hadn’t been close to enough to support herself and her daughter post-divorce. Three online aptitude tests had left her even more confused—while getting her degree in biochemistry and going on to medical school sounded great, it wasn’t actually a practical solution for an over-forty single mom with no money in the bank. Then an article in the local paper had provided an interesting and almost-viable idea. Harper had become a virtual assistant.

      If there was one thing she knew it was how to take care of the details. You didn’t get good at a basket weave Fourth of July cake without paying attention. One year after filing her business permit, Harper had five main clients, nearly a dozen more who used her services intermittently and almost enough income to pay her bills. She also had her mother living in the apartment over the garage, an ex-husband dating a gorgeous blonde who was—wait for it—exactly fourteen years younger than Harper because they shared a birthday—a sixteen-year-old daughter who had stopped speaking to her and a client who was desperately unclear on the concept of virtual in the world of virtual assistants.

      “You don’t have to drop off your bills every month,” Harper said as she set out coffee, a plate of chocolate chip scones that she’d gotten up at five-thirty that morning to bake fresh, a bowl of sugar-glazed almonds and sliced pears.

      “And miss this?” Lucas Wheeler asked, pouring himself a mug of coffee. “If you’re trying to convince me coming by isn’t a good idea, then stop feeding me.”

      He was right, of course. There was an easy, logical solution. Stop taking care of people and they would go away. Or at least be around less often. There was just one problem—when someone stopped by your home, you were supposed to take care of them.

      “I can’t help it,” she admitted, wishing it weren’t the truth. “It’s a disease. I’m a people pleaser. I blame my mother.”

      “I’d blame her, too, if I were you.”

      She supposed she could take offense at Lucas’s words, but he was only stating the obvious.

      In