Can she make room for love?
When wedding planner Carrie Archer inherits the crumbling Avalon Inn where she spent her childhood summers, she knows she’ll do whatever it takes to make it home. With no money for renovations, that means finding investors if she ever hopes to turn the Avalon into a dream wedding venue.
But Carrie has been left more than the inn—she’s also inherited its occupants, including three senior citizens, a single-father chef with childcare issues, a panicky receptionist, and one very gorgeous gardener.
So when her cousin Ruth declares her intention to get married at the Avalon on Christmas Eve, Carrie finds herself juggling decorating with dance nights, budgeting with bridge games...and sabotage with seduction.
Coming soon from Sophie Pembroke
An A to Z of Love
Summer of Love
Room for 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: 9781472096296
Version date: 2018-06-20
AUTHOR BIO
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.
Dedication
For Simon and Holly
Contents
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
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
About the Publisher
It’s a money pit, Carrie. You don’t have to do this. You can’t do this.
Carrie stared out of the car window at the familiar, crumbling form of the Avalon Inn, her father’s words still echoing in her head. Five years, and it barely seemed to have changed at all. The roof tiles still sat wonky, the terrace seemed to be sinking into the grass, and moss had crept so far up the building it appeared to have taken over the stonework.
In other words, it still looked like home.
The place she’d spent endless childhood summers, reading by firelight or adventuring through overgrown gardens. The scene of her first kiss. Fourteen years old, dressed in Grandma Nancy’s second-best silk gown, dancing on the terrace with one of the local boys. He’d sung along to the music, his breath warm against her ear as they’d hidden in the darkness, peering through the window at the women dancing, their long dresses swirling. Cigar smoke and music had filled the air, and Carrie had known in that moment that the Avalon Inn was where she truly belonged.
Even