City Girl in Training. Liz Fielding

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      CONTENTS

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ONE

      The house is on fire and you only have time to grab one item of clothing. Would you choose:

      a. the kickin’ hot purple leather miniskirt that turns heads in the street?

      b. your expensive go-anywhere black suit?

      c. a pair of washed-thin jogging pants that you were wearing when you first met the man of your dreams?

      d. the designer skirt you bought in a sale? You’ll never get a bargain like that again.

      e. the sweater knitted for you by your grandmother?

      ‘ARE you sure you don’t want to take this sweater, Philly? Aunt Alice will expect to see you wearing it at Christmas…’ My mother looked up when I didn’t answer and caught me looking at the quiz in the magazine she’d bought me on her last-minute dash to the shops. ‘Save that for the journey, dear,’ she said, as if I were six years old, instead of nearly twenty-three, ‘or you won’t have anything to read on the train.’

      I heroically resisted the urge to tell her that while I was the baby of the family, the one who didn’t get a starred first at university, I was quite capable of buying myself a magazine, and instead gave her my full attention. Her question, however, had been purely rhetorical. She’d already unzipped the corner of my case and tucked away the sweater.

      It figured.

      I’d been haunted by that sweater ever since my Great-Aunt Alice had knitted it for me. It was pale blue and fluffy and I loathed it. I’d planned on putting it in a carton of clothes to be stored in the attic, hoping that a moth would consider it a suitable home for her offspring.

      ‘You really should have bought a new case. I’m not at all happy about this zip.’

      ‘The zip is fine,’ I said. At least it had been fine until my mother had added that sweater. ‘I’m catching a train to London, not flying to the other side of the world.’ Unlike my parents who were abandoning me, throwing me upon the mercy of strangers while they went on a world tour visiting their far-flung offspring.

      My father had taken early retirement and it was, my mother had told me, time for them to have a little fun visiting my three clever and adventurous brothers in New Zealand, California and South Africa, respectively. And my beautiful, and equally adventurous, clever married sister, and her new babies, in Australia.

      Fun! They were parents. Parents weren’t supposed to have fun. They were supposed to stay home, do the crossword, play Scrabble and drink cocoa and I told them so.

      They thought that was very funny.

      I WASN’T JOKING!

      But then, neither were they. They’d spent the last thirty-five years bringing up their family and now they were seriously intent on enjoying themselves. I was the only fly in the ointment. Twenty-two years old, still living at home. Still dating the boy next door. With no sign of a wedding any time soon.

      Worse was to come.

      I’d assumed they’d go on their extended holiday happy in the knowledge that I’d be there to take care of things while they were away. And the up side was that, with the house to myself, I’d have a real opportunity to move things along with Don. Get his mind out from under the bonnet of his car, away from his mother, and inject some physicality into our relationship.

      I was getting desperate for some action while I was still young enough to enjoy it.

      But my father’s successor had been looking for somewhere to rent while he and his family found a house in the district. The deal had been done before I’d even heard about it. I’d appealed

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