Boot Camp Bride Read Online Free PDF

stacked up. The hours she’d spent getting ready, the new clothes she’d bought on her MasterCard but couldn’t really afford, the fun she and Poppy had planned on their way over in the taxi. The fact that her Christmas flash and glitter had been hidden behind a grotty apron, the misspelled label which had marked her out as a ditsy, Essex Blonde. And now, Mr-friend-of-the-gallery-owner was about to ask her to stay behind, to count the takings and help with the clearing up. Well, he could go hang.
    ‘It’s personal,’ she said with all the hauteur of a grand duchess. ‘So if you’ll excuse me?’ She turned on her heel and stepped away from him.
    ‘Something tells me there’s more to you than a waitress and a grand master at rock, paper, scissors.’ He paused, giving her the chance to put the record straight.
    ‘And you’d be right.’ Charlee not only took the bait but snapped it right up. ‘Actually,’ she drew the word out, arching her eyebrows and giving him a haughty look that dared him to laugh. ‘I’m a journalist.’ He didn’t need to know that she spent most of her life in a rank smelling cupboard or collecting Vanessa’s designer clothes from the dry cleaners.
    ‘Really?’ He looked impressed. ‘In that case I really would value your opinion of the exhibition.’ He took her by the elbow and steered towards a large photo of an indigenous South American female with a fierce expression and three porcupine quills threaded through her nose.
    Charlee's brain was in danger of complete meltdown as she thought of something clever to say. Something that would mark her out from the crowd and indicate what an amazing journalist she would, someday, become. A pithy phrase, some witticism which would show Posh Boy that he was dealing with a sophisticated, articulate professional.
     ‘Now that’s what I call an extreme makeover,’ she blurted out.

 
     
    Chapter Five
Your Starter for Ten
    Within moments, Charlee realised that instead of putting him in his place she’d made a complete arse of herself. She gave the woman in the photograph a considering look while she searched for a telling phrase to undo the damage. However, judging from his boot-faced expression, the time for damage limitation had passed.
    It was plain that he thought he was dealing with a total flake.
    And, as the seconds drew out, Charlee imagined she could hear the slow, sonorous tick of a grandfather clock marking time; feel the chill wind of disapproval whistling round her ankles. In fact, she half expected clumps of tumbleweed to come rolling across the gallery towards her, like in an old cowboy film.
    She suppressed a groan of dismay. He was right. She was a complete flake.
    Now that she looked at him more closely, it was evident that he belonged to the moneyed, metropolitan-artsy-fartsy world of gallery openings and first nights. He probably had a mantelpiece bristling with exclusive invitations. He wouldn’t appreciate the flippant, throwaway remarks that passed for humour in the subs’ office where she worked, the facetious one-liners used to deflect the sarcastic comments considered fair game for newbies like her.
    Time to move on, head off into the night before she made another gaffe.
    First, she had to leave him with a more favourable impression; you never knew where a casual encounter at a party could lead. Five years down the line, his opinion of her could mean the difference between an exclusive scoop and a libel suit. She simply had to shatter the cringe-making silence stretching out between them.
    Thinking on her feet, she read the tiny inscription at the bottom of the photograph. Then, as casually as possible, she cleared her throat and regurgitated the information with all the aplomb of an expert at the Natural History Museum; the BBC’s go-to anthropologist.
    ‘Ahem - Not everyone knows that, due to the characteristic whiskers the women place in their noses, the Matsés Indians are often referred to as the Cat