The Wrong Girl Read Online Free PDF Page B

too arched and thin. It aged her, and made her look mean, which she wasn’t. She was a big dork. As she walked towards the pair, she tip-tapped away on her chunky old BlackBerry.
    â€˜Nice break, everyone?’ She was yet to look up at them.
    â€˜Yeah, really great, thanks, Eliza, how was yours? How was Port Macquarie? How are your family?’ Lily asked, smiling.
    â€˜Mad and many, you know how it is!’ Eliza’s tinkly laugh rang through the room. ‘So, I have some
very
exciting news.’ Eliza’s news was always at least a week old. Lily knew not to get excited.
    â€˜We have our new in-house chef! His name is Jack Winters. He was the head chef at Simmer in Mudgee, a two-hat restaurant, he trained at
all
the fancy places in Paris and London – you’d probably know them, Lily – and, between us and the doorknob, he looks like he could be a Hemsworth brother . . . but better looking! He’s going to get the stay-at-home mums very worked up, let me tell you that right now . . .’
    Lily winced. Dale’s intel was spot on. They’d hired a no-name, no-experience beefcake to get the viewers all hot and bothered. Classy.
    â€˜Now, I won’t keep you, I’m sure you’ve loads to do; Ben will be in touch about the planning meeting tomorrow. Oh and Lily, we should talk about some new tea towels.’ Eliza was always ‘urgently noticing’ things that made absolutely no difference to the show. Last year she had called a meeting to discuss the importance of matching wooden spoons.
    â€˜Okay then, more soon. It’s great to be back, team!’ And with a smile and a swivel, she was off.
    Lily waited til she was safely out of view and earshot before turning back to Dale.
    â€˜So, you’ll hassle the Thermomix people again?’
    Okay,’ he said at a volume better suited to a church or library. Lily couldn’t help feeling like she was dealing with the work experience kid most of the time, despite Dale technically being a producer, albeit an assistant one.
    Back at her desk, Lily typed ‘Jack Winters Simmer’ into Google and hit search. A stream of restaurant reviews, but no videos or images, which was troubling. She read with interest the first one, written by Terry Durack, which awarded Simmer 19/20. Almost unheard of.
    â€˜Stalking your kitchen Adonis, huh? That allowed on your lame detox?’ Alice’s finest skill was sneaking up on people and spying on what they were doing.
    Lily spun around. ‘Can you pipe down? It’s my job to research, remember? Yours too, in case you forgot.’
    Alice slurped noisily from her Diet Coke – quite possibly her third or fourth for the day – and looked at Lily mischievously. ‘I’m going to make a bet with myself in my head right now that you fall for him.’
    â€˜Cool. Hope you win,’ Lily said, her back to Alice.
    â€˜You’ve got chewy on your jeans,’ Alice said as she turned and walked back to her desk.
    Lily looked down at the back of her jeans and saw a wad of green mess on her left calf. She cursed under her breath. Would she ever be a grown-up? she wondered as she took a pen and started to work at the glob of gum. It was roughly as effective as casting a spell. She deleted the words ‘Jack Winters Simmer’ from the search box and typed in ‘how to remove gum from jeans’ instead.

5
    â€˜But it’s RUDE, babe! And
such
bad karma.’ Simone looked at her friend in disbelief.
    â€˜I actually can’t believe how much you are missing the point here. Just because Chris Rich-guy texts does not mean you’re excluded from the detox. That’s like you, as a vegetarian, having just one meat pie.’
    Lily was flicking through one of Simone’s new swimsuit campaign lookbooks, shot in Cabo, Mexico, in which Simone was oiled up and depleting several layers of ozone with her smouldering