Summer of Love Read Online Free PDF Page B

stylised white lily, a reminder of a much younger girl than the one he’d seen the day before. Still, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt to whom the shop belonged. And it was about time he paid her a visit.
    * * * *
    Even tea hadn’t been enough to improve Lily’s day.
    She struggled to open a tiny silver jump ring with her straight-nosed pliers, just enough to slip on the earring hook and a sparkling crystal star charm, cursing when the whole damn lot slipped out of her grip and clattered to the scarred and marked work table. With a deep breath and a sigh, she checked the clock above the shop door for the umpteenth time that morning. Still only twelve-thirty. And she still thought just writing the day off and going back to bed might be the best thing she could do.
    Except Edward would probably wake her up to talk weddings when he got home, even if she had the duvet over her head and her headphones in.
    Gathering up her beading tools and trinkets, Lily finally had to admit the avoidance tactic had run its course. Pretending the engagement hadn’t happened, or that it didn’t mean there ever had to be an actual wedding, wasn’t going to work any more. Which meant she had to make some decisions. Did she marry Edward, or did she call the whole thing off? Admit that she was too scared to go through with it?
    Time to own her decision and face the consequences.
    On the face of it, an easy choice. She loved Edward, had spent the last seven years building up their relationship to this moment. They were comfortable together. She knew exactly what her life would be if she married him. It would mean she’d finally grown up and settled down. Would show the town she wasn’t the girl they remembered any more. It would make her mother happy, her friends happy, and Edward happy.
    But the wiggling uncertainty in her belly told her it might not make
her
happy.
    Of course, she’d been wrong about that sort of thing before. Once upon a time, she’d been certain that the only thing in the world that could make her happy was Alex Harper noticing that she was a woman. Since she’d been fourteen at the time, with the benefit of hindsight she knew it was just as well he hadn’t. Then there was the time at seventeen when she’d been sure that moving out of her mum’s house and in with her much older boyfriend would make her life complete. It had lasted three weeks.
    Lily tossed the last of the findings back into her box and tried to stop her mind replaying the list of stupid decisions she’d made from the age of twelve to nineteen. It was lengthy, embarrassing and old news now, anyway, for all that her mother liked to relive them regularly. They didn’t matter now. None of the idiotic things she’d done as a teenager did. She was twenty-six, for heaven’s sake. She owned her own business, took care of herself, and was engaged to a successful businessman who loved her very much. She wasn’t that disappointment, that failure, any more.
    Straightening her shoulders, Lily decided a new mantra was in order. ‘I am a grown up,’ she told herself. ‘I am a successful person, not defined by my past.’ She grinned; it felt good, not just to say it, but to believe it.
    But then the shop door opened and Alex Harper walked in, bringing her past bang up to date with her present.
    ‘Lily Thomas,’ Alex said, his smile broad and warm. ‘You’ve turned into a veritable entrepreneur while I was gone.’
    Rolling her eyes, Lily reminded her fluttering insides of her mantra. A decade-old crush on her best friend’s dishy older cousin really had no place at all in her grownup life. ‘Hardly. I rent my space here, sell my jewellery, and still owe the bank my soul.’
    ‘Still, quite the set-up you’ve got here.’ Alex turned slowly around, making a big show of taking in the room, with its glass display cabinets along one wall, and the workbench at the back. People liked to see how her jewellery was made, Lily had learnt early on. She