International bestseller Jill Mansell weaves a heartwarming tale
of love, family and friendship in her latest novel
1. A brief encounter that could have
become so much more…if only everything were different
2. Step-sisters, bitter rivals in
every area except one—by unbreakable pact neither will ever steal a man from
the other
3. A love triangle that starts out as
a mess of secrets and mix-ups, and only gets worse from there
Plus!
Friendship, family ties, crossed wires
and self-discovery, second chances and first impressions
Welcome to Jill Mansell’s blustery seaside world. Once you step
inside, you’ll never want to leave!
With over 10 million copies sold, New
York Times and USA Today bestselling author Jill Mansell writes irresistible
and funny, poignant and romantic tales for women in the tradition of Marian
Keyes, Sophie Kinsella and Jojo Moyes. She lives with her partner and their
children in Bristol, England.
Buy
Links: Amazon | Books-A-Million | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound
EXCERPT
When he’d gone out on the evening of
his twenty-fifth birthday, Sam had never intended to meet the love of his life.
It was meant to be a casual get-together for a motley group of his friends at
one of their favorite restaurants, followed by a visit to a club.
What he hadn’t banked on was catching
the eye of a blond girl at one of the other tables in the restaurant and liking
the look of her enough to keep glancing over in her direction. And each time he
did so, as if sensing his attention, she would look up and meet his gaze.
After an hour, it was getting
ridiculous. They were both doing it and trying so hard not to smile. Leaving
his table, ostensibly to pay a visit to the bathroom, Sam walked past her and
waited in the corridor outside.
Less than twenty seconds later she
joined him, and this time there were no attempts to hide the smiles.
“Happy birthday, dear Sam,” she said,
because his friends had sung the rousing chorus to him earlier before
clattering their glasses together for a toast.
Sam said, “It’s not shaping up too
badly so far.”
“You never know; it could get better.”
Reaching up, she murmured, “Happy birthday to you,” and gave him a kiss on the
cheek. Followed by a proper one on the mouth.
Her name was Lisa, she was a nurse at
King’s College Hospital, and she shared a flat with four other nurses in
Brixton. Having fulfilled her duty at the work party at the restaurant to
celebrate the retirement of one of the doctors in their department, Lisa and
two of her friends from King’s joined forces with Sam and his friends and spent
the next few hours in a club. At the end of the night, she kissed him once more
and said, “I’m not coming home with you. If you want to see me again, call me
tomorrow and invite me out properly on Saturday night.”
“Fine.” Simultaneously frustrated and
impressed, Sam said, “Give me your number then.”
“If you really want to see me again,” said Lisa, “you’ll
track me down without it.”
Was she joking?
“Are you serious?” said Sam.
“Absolutely.” She’d given him a
mischievous look. “I’m deadly serious about finding out if you’re serious about
wanting to see me again. Because if you aren’t, why bother?”
“And do you think I will bother?”
Lisa’s eyes sparkled. “Oh, I hope so.”
***
It hadn’t been difficult. He called
the restaurant, persuaded them to give him the number of the husband of the
doctor whose retirement party it had been, and worked forward from there.
Having been passed on to one of Lisa’s friends, he found out which ward she
worked on and what time her shift ended. That evening, he waited outside the
ward for her to appear.
When she saw him, Lisa said, “So you
tracked me down. But did you get my phone number?”
Sam took out his cell phone and
pressed a button. Seconds later, a jaunty tone rang out from inside the yellow
raffia bag slung over her shoulder. “You might want to answer that,” he said.
When she did, he stood just a few feet
away from her and said into his phone, “Hi, this is Sam. I was wondering if
you’d like to come out with me on Saturday evening.”
“Thank you.” Her smile broadened as
she stepped aside to make room for a patient on a gurney to be pushed into the
ward. Speaking into her own phone, she said, “I’d like that very much.”
It had never been Sam’s intention to
get married while still in his twenties. But sometimes fate took a hand, you
met the woman you wanted to spend the rest of your life with, and after a while
it seemed like the next logical step, so why wait?
A year after they’d first gotten
together, he and Lisa had moved into a tiny flat in Peckham. Six months later,
they had begun making plans for the wedding, to take place on the date of the
night they’d first met.
“If we get married on your birthday,”
Lisa said, “you’ll never forget our anniversary.”
“Fine, and you aren’t allowed to
forget it either,” Sam said.
Three months before the wedding, Lisa
suffered a week of increasingly severe headaches that culminated in an
epileptic seizure at work and admission to the hospital. A brain scan confirmed
what a physical examination had already given the doctors cause to suspect:
there was a large tumor growing in her brain.
And suddenly, the future they’d
expected to share was no longer the future they found themselves having to face
up to. Surgery swiftly followed, as much as possible of the malignant tumor was
excised in order to reduce the pressure inside the skull, and Lisa underwent a
course of radiotherapy. The tumor was a glioblastoma multiforme, not the kind
anyone would choose to have. But Lisa made a good enough recovery to be able to
insist that the wedding went ahead.
And for a few more months, she was
still herself, more or less, albeit weak and tired and with a frustrating
struggle to find the right words when she spoke. Eventually, the neurosurgeon
informed them that the tumor was on the march again, and Lisa begged him to
operate once more to reduce the mass. It was during this risky second bout of
surgery that a bleed occurred, and significantly more damage was done to her
brain. After that, she was confined to her bed on the neurosurgical ward, and
the surgeon explained to Sam that all they could do now was make her
comfortable.
This was when Sam realized he had to
come to terms with the fact that while he still loved Lisa, she was no longer
the girl he’d fallen in love with. Furthermore, he was on his own. Before,
they’d been a team, fighting the tumor together. Now, Lisa was—quite
literally—the sleeping partner. There was nothing more she could do to help him
through the nightmare that lay ahead.
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