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Boldwood Books - Phoebe MacLeod

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149 pages

English

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Description

The gorgeous and hilarious new rom com from the bestselling author of An Un Romantic Comedy. Discover the author fans of Sophie Ranald, Catherine Walsh and Mhairi MacFarlane can't get enough of!

Ella’s life is about to be hit by a wrecking ball…

On the surface, Ella has it all. A great job, a penthouse apartment and the perfect boyfriend, Lee. There's just one snag: their relationship has to be kept secret due to their employer's strict rule about not dating colleagues.

When Lee quits to join a competitor, Ella discovers they haven't been as discreet as they thought and she finds herself out of a job. Stuck in an apartment she can't afford with a man she's beginning to suspect loves himself much more than her, Ella's life quickly unravels.

A job offer could be her ticket to a new start, but it's miles away on a construction site, an industry she knows nothing about. Can Ella prove everyone wrong and make a go of her new career? And will guidance from foreman Noah help her build a new, even better life for herself?

What readers are saying about Phoebe MacLeod:

'A perfect love story' ★★★★★

'Humorous, light and romantic!' ★★★★★

'I absolutely loved it. Heart-warming, just perfect!' ★★★★★

'I loved every minute reading this book, light hearted and fun, finished in a day!' ★★★★★

'I smiled so much' ★★★★★

'What a wonderful book' ★★★★★

'Fantastic' ★★★★★

Sujets

Mashups

Contemporary history

Workplace

Contemporary

Romance

Fiction

Informations

Publié par	Boldwood Books
Date de parution	25 juillet 2023
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781804262948
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0900€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

LOVE AT FIRST SITE

PHOEBE MACLEOD
To my fantastic boys, Matthew and Charlie.
CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Acknowledgments

More from Phoebe MacLeod

About the Author

About Boldwood Books
1

Ella,
I’m just putting together the slide deck for the final presentation to the trust tomorrow. Can you send over your project plan for the initial phase, including costs, as soon as possible so I can integrate it into our overall proposal?
Thanks
Lee
I close down the email and, with a sigh of pleasure, open up the project plan to give it a final once-over before sending it to Lee. It’s not surprising that project plans give me joy; I’d be a pretty rubbish project manager if I couldn’t take pleasure in a well-honed plan, and this one is a doozy. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been through it, both on my own and with other people in the company. As I study the Gantt chart, looking for any tiny holes I may have overlooked, I’m filled with confidence that this really is a work of art, as project plans go.
I’ve always liked order, and my sister Ava used to tease me relentlessly when I was doing exam revision at school, because I’d spend nearly as long putting together my colour-coded revision plans as I would doing the actual revision. Having assembled the plan, I’d print it off and stick it on my bedroom wall, meticulously ticking off the tasks as I completed them.
‘This is borderline OCD,’ she’d remarked when she first caught sight of my A-Level schedule, ‘but you’ve missed something.’
‘What?’
‘There’s nothing here about organising your knicker drawer. How will you cope if your knickers get out of sequence?’
‘Piss off,’ I’d replied as she’d sauntered out of my room, grinning.
Since joining Orchestra, the somewhat bizarrely named payroll and accounting software firm in Leeds where I’ve worked for the last five years, I’ve put together countless project plans, but this one matters more than any of them. We’re down to the final two in a bid for a contract with a cluster of NHS trusts across the north of England. Not only does this deal involve pretty much all of the components of our software suite, but it could also become a template for deals with other NHS trusts going forwards if the project is successful, so to describe it as ‘massive’ would be something of an understatement.
The other reason that this deal matters so much is that our opposition is a company that goes by the equally bizarre name of Harmony. Harmony was founded roughly ten years ago by a couple of disgruntled Orchestra consultants who left to set up on their own. It’s widely believed that they chose the name of their company as a deliberate snub to their ex-employers, but this all happened before I joined, so I don’t have any firm evidence. However, most of their products have similar names to ours. For example, our database component, which all the other applications sit on top of, is called ‘Maestro’, and theirs is called ‘Conductor’ – go figure. To begin with, they didn’t pose much of a threat, but Lee tells me that their offering is now on a par with, and in some ways better than, ours, so this deal really could go either way. Needless to say, this is as near to ‘personal’ as business gets. Everyone in the company is rooting for us to shut Harmony out and close this deal.
Having gone through the plan one last time, I convert it into a format that Lee can embed into his presentation and attach it to my reply.

Hi Lee,
Plan attached. Trust me, a lettuce leaf has more fat on it than this plan does. I’ve already included contingencies, so you can use the numbers in the attached spreadsheet as they are.
Good luck for tomorrow!
Ella
I attach the spreadsheet with the costs to back up the plan and press send. My part in the sales pitch is now done; it’s up to Lee, as the Customer Relationship Manager (basically an upmarket term for salesman), to bring everything together into a compelling argument to put to the trust tomorrow.
‘Have you seen Lee’s email asking for the project plan?’ my boss, Jonathan, asks, plonking his backside on the edge of my desk and manspreading. I don’t think he does it on purpose, but it’s definitely a subconscious power play because he never does it when he’s talking to people at the same level as, or above, him. Today, he obviously feels a special need to assert himself, because he’s spreading so wide that I’m having to tuck myself into the corner of my desk to prevent my arm from coming into contact with his thigh.
‘Yes. I’ve just sent it,’ I tell him.
‘Oh.’ He looks momentarily annoyed. ‘I thought you were going to walk me through it before you committed it.’
‘I did. That’s what we did this morning, remember?’
His face clears. ‘Of course. I’m sorry. Baby brain, I’m afraid. Even though Lucas is six months old now, we’re still not getting any sleep. So, are you excited? There’s a lot riding on this deal for you, isn’t there? I’ll be sad to lose you from my team, but I think you’ll really flourish as an account manager. I’ll put in a good word for you, of course, when the time comes. I’ll tell them what a model of efficiency you are, and how much you deserve the job.’
‘I’m not counting any chickens,’ I tell him firmly. ‘Let’s see whether we manage to close this deal before we start celebrating my possible promotion.’
He is right, though. Although I really am trying very hard not to think about it in case I jinx it, I really need this deal to go through too. Nothing has been promised, but there have been heavy hints that Orchestra will need a new account manager, among other positions, if we land this, and I’ve been left in no doubt that my name is in the frame. Having delivered his speech, Jonathan obviously feels that our little motivational chat is over and strides off back to his own desk. As he does so, I look up and meet my friend Ruth’s eye. She’s grinning broadly and surreptitiously forms a T with her hands. I grab my mug and we head for the kitchen.
‘I couldn’t see everything, but it looked like we were quite high on the manspread scale just then,’ she giggles as soon as we’re safely in the kitchen and out of earshot of the rest of the office.
‘Oh, yes,’ I reply. ‘I’m calling a solid nine as he pretty much had me pinned against the side of my desk.’
‘Surely that’s a ten?’
‘No. Wrong trousers for a ten. You only get a ten when he’s wearing the dark blue ones that emphasise the crotch bulge. Come on, Ruth, that’s elementary.’
‘You’re right. I’m so sorry. How were we on the fertility score?’
‘That’s a disappointing eight, I’m afraid.’ I try to arrange my face into an expression of regret, but I’m not really succeeding. ‘He didn’t mention the baby until the third sentence.’
‘Ah, well, better luck next time,’ she sympathises. ‘Are you sure you want this promotion? Who am I going to play the game with when you’re gone?’
‘I haven’t got it yet, remember? And, even if Lee knocks their socks off tomorrow, it’ll still be ages before they announce who’s got the contract, so I’m not going anywhere for a while. Plus, assuming all of that comes off and I get the position, I’m still going to be in the same office as you.’
‘You won’t be, though. You might drop in occasionally, but you’ll be on the road, schmoozing clients and having lavish dinners on expenses.’
‘Fair point, but I think you overestimate the glamour,’ I laugh. ‘It’ll mainly be dinners for one in various Holiday Inns.’
‘Well,’ she replies, expertly flicking her used teabag into the bin, ‘good luck anyway. I’m rooting for you, even if I will miss you. Let’s hope they replace you with someone interesting who’ll keep me entertained. Otherwise, I’ll have to resort to wearing low-cut tops and breaking my computer just to torment the IT guy.’
‘You wouldn’t! That’s so cruel.’
‘Of course I wouldn’t,’ she laughs. ‘What do you take me for?’
I’m ashamed to admit that I only learned that the IT guy is actually called Ian a few months ago. He’s always just been ‘the IT guy’. He’s good at what he does, there’s no doubt about that but, if his lack of social chit-chat is anything to go by, he’s generally happier talking to machines than he is to people. Until recently, he also had a frankly creepy habit of staring at women’s chests whenever he thought he could get away with it. Unfortunately for him, he wasn’t very subtle about it and someone made a complaint around six months ago. Rumour has it he got a verbal warning from HR and, ever since then, he makes such a point of looking into your eyes when he’s speaking to you that it’s possibly even more creepy than having him stare at your chest; you’d almost wish he went back to his old ways. Ruth is, to put it tactfully, generously proportioned in the chest department, so a low-cut top on her would probably be more temptation than poor Ian could bear.
I take my cup of tea back to my desk and spend the last hour or so of the working day replying to emails and making sure all the documentation I’ve prepared for the NHS trust project, including my beautiful project plan, is uploaded to the relevant internal SharePoint sites. I’m full of nervous energy; even though I won’t be in the final pitch meeting tomorrow and there’s nothing more I can do, I can’t seem to sit still. The next month is going to be agonising.
‘I know it’s only a Thursday, but do you fancy a drink before going home?’ Ruth asks, as I’m packing up at five-thirty. Our office is in one of those redeveloped commercial areas, with herringbone-patterned