Flawless Read Online Free PDF Page B

across her skin. “Help you, my arse,” she mumbled crossly. “I’ll be doing the whole darned thing, just like every other year.” And why on earth couldn’t her mother get the Harrods Hamper deliveredlike everybody else? Last year the stench of the stilton sweating on the backseat for fourteen hours had made the drive almost unbearable, and she kept having to reach into the back to prize Boxford away from the apple-and-clove-spiced sausages. Not to mention the fact that a trip into Harrods tomorrow on the busiest weekend of the year, followed by a second detour to her brother Cameron’s house in Chelsea, would mean they wouldn’t be able to set off until close to lunchtime, slap-bang in the middle of the worst of the holiday exodus traffic. Next year she was
definitely
taking a plane home for the holidays, carbon footprint or no carbon footprint. She’d rather plant a rainforest with her bare hands than go through that nightmare drive one more time.
    Also, darling, I know Cameron will want to share the driving
, Caroline went on,
but I do think it’s important you let him rest as much as possible. He’s been terribly busy at the office lately and he desperately needs a break.
    And I don’t?
thought Scarlett furiously. Cameron, her older brother, sole heir to Drumfernly and the rest of the Drummond Murray family fortune, had always been the apple of their mother’s eye. Now an investment banker, clawing his way up the ladder at Goldman Sachs and already earning a second small fortune, he’d become even more insufferably self-important recently, glued to his BlackBerry as though the world would stop if it lost contact with him for even a minute. Scarlett wouldn’t have minded so much if he, or any of her family, had taken her own career a bit more seriously. But none of them had given her the slightest praise or encouragement for her achievement with Bijoux, or for the huge strides she’d made in her Trade Fair campaign. The only thing Caroline Drummond Murray was interested in for her daughter was a successful marriage, which in her book meant marriage to the eldest son of one of a select group of Scottish families, no matter how dull or uninspiring he might be. And on this front Scarlett was determined to remain an abject failure.
    Too pissed off to read any more, she ripped open another white envelope and pulled out a glossy, stiff-backed card with a picture of the Rockefeller Center ice rink and Christmas tree on the front. Inside, to her joy and relief, was a letter from Nancy, her oldest and closest girlfriend, crammed with gossip and plans for Scarlett’s New Year’s shopping trip to New York. Nancy was based in LA, trying to make it as a scriptwriter, but her family were dyed-in-the-wool New Yorkers, and she always spent the holidays there. The thought of her five-day vacation with Nancy was the only thing keeping Scarlett even faintly sane as another Christmas at Drumfernly loomed.
    “Oh, shit! Bugger, bugger, bugger!”
    Leaping to her feet, she turned off the gas and pulled Boxford’s charred mince in its smoking pan off the hob. Climbing up onto the table, still in her underwear and T-shirt and with her long, damp hair stuck to her back like seaweed, she hurriedly disabled the smoke alarm before it could go off and annoy the neighbors. “Sorry, Boxie darling,” she said, opening the tiny barred window a crack to let out the fumes and salvaging what was left of the good meat with a wooden spoon as the dog padded through into the kitchen, tail wagging. “I’m afraid it’s half rations. I got a bit distracted.”
    Deciding that the rest of the post could wait, she gave him his meal, padded out with a bit of regular soft dog food, and set about preparing her own meal. When focused, Scarlett was actually a decent cook and had been an ardent fan of fresh organic ingredients long before it became fashionable. Not usually a big drinker, the prospect of tomorrow’s drive and all the wrapping and