Chapter 6

The nasty showdown with Sebastian and the pernicious Piers only strengthened Posy’s resolve. This was no bad thing, because her resolve was usually weak in the extreme. If she started the week with a diet, she hardly ever made it to Monday lunchtime before diving headfirst into a packet of biscuits. And when she and Nina had decided to do a Dry January, Nina had gone all the way to February without a drop touching her lips whereas Posy had spectacularly fallen off the wagon on the third of January when she discovered that Sam hadn’t done any of the homework he’d been set for the Christmas holidays.

As she’d watched Sebastian and Piers depart, Posy’s resolve had been so strong it was as if it had been forged from titanium. And yet the next day as she sat behind the till with a new notebook on the counter next to her, opened to the first page where she’d written ‘Happy Ever After’, she could feel it wavering.

It was one thing to have an idea, a bullet-proof, recession-proof plan to transform Bookends back into the palace of stories and dreams that it used to be, but she had no real idea of how to make those three words she’d written into a reality. It was going to take more than wafting about with paint charts. Perhaps she really wasn’t the right woman for the job.

Posy sighed. In Lavinia’s letter not once had she mentioned leaving Bookends to the tender mercies of someone who wasn’t Posy. On the contrary. ‘Because you, my dear, of all people know what a magical place a bookshop can be and that everyone needs a little magic in their lives,’ Lavinia had written.

Lavinia had put her faith in Posy. She’d bequeathed Bookends to her and Posy couldn’t let her down. She didn’t doubt that, if she did, Lavinia would find a way to come back and haunt her. She’d leave ghostly messages on mirrors that said soul-destroying things like ‘I’m not angry, I’m just very disappointed with you, young lady.’ ‘I expected better from you, Posy.’ Alive or dead, Posy didn’t doubt Lavinia’s ability with a crushing put-down.

Ghost-Lavinia would shelve books out of order, Jane Austen cosying up to Wilbur Smith, Jackie Collins next to George Orwell. Word would get around that the shop was haunted and then no one would buy it.

Not even Sebastian would want it. Posy could only imagine what Ghost-Lavinia might do to her grandson if she got wind of his plans for the mews. She’d start with his suits, Posy decided. The thought of Sebastian coming home from a hard day of being rude to people and womanising only to find all his suits covered in ghostly green ectoplasm made Posy laugh out loud, drawing a perplexed frown from the man who’d just come up to the counter to pay for a book.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Posy murmured as Nina bustled out from the back office where she’d been logging new stock to serve him.

‘How you getting on with the plans for the shop?’ Nina asked frostily. Clearly she was still annoyed with Posy for behaving like an over-protective Victorian mama and dragging her away from Piers Brocklehurst the day before, even though Posy had been doing Nina a favour – when even Sebastian thought a man was behaving abominably then it was time to rethink your taste in men.

Posy was saved from having to explain this to Nina, or confess that the plans for the shop consisted of three words written in her notebook, by her phone beeping.

It was a text from an unknown number.

It had to be from Sebastian as if he could immediately sense when a woman was thinking about him, however uncharitable those thoughts might be. Posy didn’t know how he’d got her number.

It was probably better to talk to Sebastian face-to-face. Tell him a few home truths. Then again, if he came to the shop at least there’d be witnesses to tell the court that Posy had only brained Sebastian with The Complete Works of Shakespeare in the face of extreme provocation.

Her phone buzzed again.

Lavinia’s house was situated in a pretty garden square off Gower Street, the white stucco houses studded with blue plaques proclaiming that anyone who was anyone from legendary explorers to Victorian government ministers, Pre-Raphaelite artists and literary hostesses had once lived there.

Posy always thought that Lavinia’s front door, painted a sunny yellow, was a glorious sight even on the greyest day, especially as Lavinia was always waiting behind it ready with tea and cake and good cheer.

Not today, and not just because the memory of Lavinia was still an aching wound, but because today the door was already flung open.

There was a removal van parked outside and Mariana, swathed in black lace, her official mourning period obviously still in full force, was supervising two men as they loaded Lavinia’s dining room table into the back of the lorry. ‘Please be careful, darlings, that was designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh.’

Then Mariana, from her doorstep eyrie, caught sight of Posy, who was watching this tableau with dismay. Of course, Mariana and Sebastian couldn’t keep Lavinia’s house intact as some kind of museum to its former inhabitant but it still felt as if it were far, far too soon.

‘Posy! Darling girl!’ Mariana held out her arms and Posy had no choice but to be swept into her Fracas-scented clutch. ‘Kiss kiss,’ Mariana murmured as she brushed the air above Posy’s cheeks. ‘Just taking a few bits and bobs,’ she explained, though the lorry was piled high and stacked deep. ‘Mummy inherited them from Granny Aggy, so it’s only right and fitting they pass to me. Though, I don’t want to sound churlish, they’re simply never going to work in the chateau. Still, these things are sent to try us.’

Posy nodded. ‘They are.’ She gestured at the house behind them. ‘Is Sebastian in there?’

‘Yes, my darling little viper’s in the sitting room. Such a ghastly boy.’ Mariana put a hand to her bosom. ‘Just as well I love him so.’

Holding her breath, Posy stepped into the hall. Immediately, she could see that Lavinia’s house was already a shadow of its glorious, eclectic former self. There were gaps, darker patches on the walls, where furniture and paintings had once been – even Lavinia’s lovely Tiffany lamps had been removed. No doubt they were on the lorry, which was now pulling away from the kerb.

With heavy feet and heavier heart, Posy climbed the stairs to the first-floor sitting room. Not just in dread of having to talk to the ghastly viper but because the last time she was here Lavinia had been sitting in her armchair by the huge picture windows that opened out on to a little Juliet balcony. Though somewhat scraped and bruised from falling off her bike a couple of days earlier, and a little fragile, a little preoccupied with the past, Lavinia hadn’t seemed like a woman who’d be dead within the week.

But then, as Posy was leaving, Lavinia had taken her hand and held it to her papery soft cheek. ‘Dearest Posy, don’t look so anxious,’ she’d said. ‘Everything will turn out fine, you’ll see.’

Nervously Posy pushed open the sitting room door, but before she could step into the room an exceedingly querulous voice rang out.

‘God, you took your time! I told you it was an emergency. Mariana’s gone and she’s taken most of the good stuff with her.’

Sebastian was standing by the pretty tiled fireplace, one hand resting on the mantelpiece like he was posing for a menswear editorial. Today’s suit was herringbone tweed with a pink fleck to it, picked up by his pink shirt and accessories. It should have looked ridiculous – it would have on anyone else – but even ridiculous looked good on Sebastian. Damn him!

Still, Sebastian’s beauty was no match for his obnoxiousness. ‘What did you want me to do?’ Posy asked. ‘Form a human barricade across the front door?’

‘Hardly, but it’s your tough luck. There’s nothing much left for you to pick over now,’ Sebastian said, his hands spread wide to indicate the room, though it looked as if Mariana’s trolley dash hadn’t extended this far.

‘There must be things that you want to keep,’ Posy said.

‘Not really.’ Sebastian picked up a brass figurine from the mantelpiece. ‘What am I going to do with all this? Most of it is art nouveau. I hate art nouveau.’

‘But Lavinia loved these things, and you loved Lavinia …’

‘Yes, but loving Lavinia means she’s in here.’ He tapped the breast pocket of his suit right where his heart should be and just as Posy felt herself soften, he took his hand away and said, ‘Doesn’t mean I have to give houseroom to that sofa. It hurts just to look at it.’

It was a perfectly nice sofa, covered in a William Morris pink and green floral fabric. ‘I’d love it for the shop, if you don’t want it. We could do with a few more reading areas.’

‘It’s not a library, Morland. The last thing you need is customers who linger without buying anything, but you can have the sofa, and the armchairs too. Now what else do you want?’

Then he grabbed her by the hand, as if they were hand-holding buddies, and yanked Posy from one room to another, ignoring her protests that it was in bad taste to pick over Lavinia’s things like they were first through the door at a Black Friday sale.

It was the books that did for Posy in the end. She called dibs on Lavinia’s collection of Georgette Heyers, all first edition hardbacks with their original dust jackets. She also couldn’t resist a complete set of Angela Thirkell’s Barsetshire novels and was just stacking up some Nancy Mitfords when she admitted to Sebastian that she already had them all ‘but these editions are so pretty,’ and he pulled her away.

‘That’s enough,’ he said sternly. ‘I’m staging an intervention.’

‘You might as well ask me to stop breathing,’ Posy complained.

Sebastian rolled his eyes to the heavens. ‘One day you’ll be buried alive under the weight of all those books and it will be weeks before anyone discovers you.’

After that, Sebastian was absolutely intent on keeping her away from the bookshelves, hissing and swiping at Posy each time she tried to reach for a book. She gave it up as a bad job when he accidentally (or so he said) grabbed hold of her right breast in the melee.

‘Well, at least you’re wearing a bra this time,’ he said, peering at the area in question. ‘I don’t know why you’re clutching it like that,’ he added as Posy pressed both hands to her chest as if she could cancel out his touch. ‘I barely got a feel. It was a glancing blow.’

‘You are impossible!’ Posy said, and Sebastian grinned as though she’d paid him a huge compliment.

She added Lavinia’s lovely primrose yellow tea set to her hoard, along with a couple of recipe books, and then stood outside Lavinia’s bedroom as Sebastian strode to the wardrobe.

This was too much. It felt like trespassing.

‘Here, take some dresses.’ Sebastian turned back to her with armfuls of beautiful bias-cut evening dresses made of silk as fragile as tissue paper.

‘Oh God, I could never get into any of them,’ Posy said, aghast. Unlike Lavinia and Mariana, who were both tiny, Posy came from sturdy Welsh peasant stock.

Sebastian looked at her breasts again, then her hips, making Posy regret every single one of the cheese crackers she’d eaten straight out of the box last night. ‘True,’ he said. ‘Your hips. Are those what you call child-bearing?’

Posy bristled. Actually bristled. She was sure that every hair on her body was in a state of bristledom.

‘Let’s add all my body parts to the long list of things that are none of your business,’ she snapped, but it was like talking to a breezeblock.

‘And you might as well take the TV,’ he said, tossing the dresses onto the bed. ‘I only bought it for Lavinia a few weeks ago. After she had her fall.’

Posy kept forgetting that, despite the fact Sebastian was rude, unspeakably rude, he’d been devoted to Lavinia. Each day that Posy had come to see Lavinia after her accident, stopping on the way to buy out-of-season strawberries, or cinnamon buns from lovely Stefan who ran the deli, anything that might tempt Lavinia’s appetite, Lavinia would mention that Sebastian had been in the night before. Her face had always lit up when she spoke about him, no matter how exasperated she sounded as she regaled Posy with his latest antics.

‘Lavinia always said it was just as well that she only had one grandchild because she could never have loved the others the way she loved you,’ Posy told him.

‘Did she?’ Sebastian turned to stare out of the window, arms folded. ‘I don’t think that’s strictly true. She always said that she considered you and your brother to be honorary grandchildren, and that the pair of you had much better manners than I did.’

Usually Sebastian was a bit of a sloucher, as if the effort of holding himself straight was too much of a bore, but now his shoulders were so stiff that Posy’s ached in sympathy. For a moment she contemplated going over to him and placing a comforting hand against the rigid line of his spine.

She stayed where she was though. ‘We, Sam and I, always thought of Lavinia and Peregrine as our honorary grandparents.’

‘Don’t you have grandparents of your own?’ Sebastian asked, still gazing out of the window as if the sight of the rain-soaked garden was absolutely riveting.

‘Well, my dad’s parents live in Wales, in a small town in the Vale of Glamorgan. We have a couple of aunts and uncles up there too, so we try to visit in the school holidays. My mum’s family are Welsh too, but she was an only child … My grandfather, her dad, had had a heart attack and my parents were coming back from seeing him in hospital when they had the accident. He died shortly afterwards and my grandma was already showing signs of dementia, but after all that had happened, well, she deteriorated and now she’s in a home …’ Posy spluttered out the last few words, then stopped. Those few months had been horrible, heart-breaking; a catalogue of catastrophes and grief. And then Peregrine had left them and now Lavinia, so it was no wonder that tears were streaming down her face.

She sniffed and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, then realised that Sebastian had turned away from the window and was looking at her in horror, even though it couldn’t be the first time he’d been in the presence of a weeping woman. It had probably happened an awful lot – with Sebastian responsible for ninety-seven per cent of the tears shed.

‘Stop it! Stop crying immediately, Morland.’ He reached for his pocket square then stopped himself. ‘I’m not going to lend you a hankie because you’ll only get snot all over it. Stop it right away! Now, these things of Lavinia’s – you’re not to lock them away and never use them.’

Sebastian’s last edict shocked the next sob away. ‘Rude! You really are the rudest man in London. Have you no filter?’

He shrugged. ‘Filters are for the weak and the dull. Now, shall we talk about the shop?’

Posy sniffed long and hard to dispel the tears. ‘Yes! Let’s talk about the shop. I’m only going to say this once, so listen carefully. There is absolutely no way I am giving up the shop just so that you can parcel it together with the rest of the mews and go into partnership with some sharky property developer, who just happens to be one of your old school chums, and has no moral compass and worships at the altar of low investment and high returns.’

Sebastian assumed a bemused expression that Posy wasn’t buying for a second. ‘So, you’d be all right with it if I found another property developer, one who was less evil, that I hadn’t gone to school with?’

If he was deliberately trying to wind her up then he was doing a very good job of it. ‘No! No property developers. No dice. And while we’re on the subject, please think carefully about why Lavinia left you the mews.’ Posy willed herself to calm the hell down because her voice was becoming very squeaky and it felt as if the tears were rallying for an encore performance. ‘Maybe, like you said, things can’t stay the same, they have to move forward, but there are enough soulless apartment buildings, fancy boutique hotels and Michelin-starred restaurants in London already. I swear I will never, ever forgive you if you raze Rochester Mews to the ground to make room for some more.’

‘You wouldn’t forgive me?’ Sebastian leaned against Lavinia’s art deco wardrobe and folded his arms. ‘Not ever?’

‘Not ever,’ Posy confirmed. ‘And stop being so flippant. I’m deadly serious.’

‘No, Morland, what you are is completely overreacting,’ Sebastian said wearily, as if he found Posy’s squeaky-voiced sincerity unduly taxing. ‘I have no plans to raze the mews to the ground, as you so melodramatically put it. All I’m doing is exploring my options and throwing the odious Brocklehurst a bone so he’ll stop pestering me with investment opportunities.’ Sebastian threw his head back in annoyance. ‘Some people don’t understand the meaning of the word no, do they?’

Posy stared at him incredulously. ‘They absolutely don’t. In fact, I know someone just like that and …’

‘Anyway, I couldn’t flog the mews or demolish its sad collection of buildings even if I wanted to,’ Sebastian continued blithely. ‘It turns out – and no one could be more surprised than me – the place is Grade Two listed.’

‘Really?’ Posy was definitely more surprised than Sebastian. She loved the mews and its ramshackle and empty shops, but they had absolutely no historic merit that she could see. ‘Why on earth would they be Grade Two listed?’

‘Who knows? Who cares? Too boring. Now, let’s talk about Bookends, shall we?’

‘There’s nothing to talk about. I’ve already told you: we’re going big on romance. All the staff are in complete agreement and that’s that.’

As far as Posy was concerned, the discussion was over so she walked out of the room. She also wanted to wipe her runny nose on the back of her hand without Sebastian lambasting her for her slovenly ways.

‘I can’t let you do this, Morland! The fortunes of the shop should not rest on the whims of a bunch of sad old women who can’t get a man so they’re forced to read about it in the saccharine pages of a romantic novel instead.’

Posy had been hurrying down the stairs but she came to such an abrupt halt that Sebastian went cannoning into her and had to grab her around the waist so they didn’t both plunge to their deaths. That’s what he’d claim, but it just seemed like another sly attempt to cop a feel.

‘Get off me!’ Posy dug her nails into Sebastian’s grabby hands until he released her with a yelp. ‘God, if we were at the shop, I would totally write you up in the sexual harassment book.’

‘You really need to work on your threats.’

Posy raced down the last few stairs so she could shout at Sebastian without the risk of personal injury.

‘Never mind that! How dare you say that about our customers? All sorts of women read romantic fiction. All ages! And, newsflash: some of them are happily married. Imagine that! And even if they aren’t, there’s nothing wrong with believing in romance, believing that two people are meant for each other.’

‘Ridiculous! All romantic fiction does is foster completely unrealistic expectations in the minds of impressionable women. How long have you been single? I’ll tell you: too long. And all because you think every man should be held up to some impossibly high standard and that …’

‘I date! I go on dates,’ Posy insisted because she did. Once a month. She and Nina had a pact that they would go on one date once a month, in the hope that the one date would lead to more dates. That said, Nina tended to average at least ten first dates a month while Posy struggled to find one. It wasn’t her fault that the pickings were slim. No matter which dating site Posy chose, and no matter how much she tried to exert some quality control, she invariably spent two hours a month in the company of a man who made nothing stir inside her. Not the faintest fluttering. Not so much as a gossamer-light breeze ghosting around the parts of her that had lain dormant since her last boyfriend, Alex, had made his excuses and left.

When she and Alex had started going out at university, after their eyes met across a crowded room during a very dull lecture on Beowulf halfway through their first term at Queen Mary’s College, Posy had been a different girl. The kind of girl who could down a pint of lager in ten seconds and finish up with a delicate ladylike burp. She was always the last to leave a party, usually in a shopping trolley stolen from the local supermarket. She was ten pounds lighter and giggled approximately fifty-seven per cent more, and she was infinitely more loveable, more dateable, more fun than she was now.

Alex had thought so anyway. He was studying Medieval History, Posy was studying English Literature and they were made for each other. Took day-trips to obscure museums and ancient monuments. Had big nights out with their group of friends and lived together in their final year in a small studio flat in Whitechapel.

It was a cliché, but it didn’t feel like a cliché when Posy told her friends that without Alex she didn’t feel complete. Didn’t feel right unless his hand was in hers. Hadn’t been able to sleep without him spooning her. They could spend hours in the pub yammering about everything from Beat poets to why the BBC should replace the cast of EastEnders with pugs. But then they could spend hours not saying a word, happy just to be in each other’s company.

Posy had memorised Alex’s every freckle, every smile, even his every unkind word – because they did argue sometimes. Then they’d always make up and, God, yes, she missed the sex. Not just THE sex, but sex with Alex, with someone who loved and cared about her and also knew that there was no way that she was going to come without prodigious amounts of digital stimulation.

But then she’d stopped being that kind of girl who partied as hard as she loved, and all their vague plans for a future had to be rewritten because now Posy hardly giggled at all. Plus she came with an added Sam and none of it was what Alex had signed up for.

‘I love you, Posy, you know I do, but you’re not the you that I fell in love with,’ Alex had told her one night, six weeks, five days and three hours after her parents had been killed. He’d come home from his temporary summer job at Hampton Court Palace to find Posy lying on the living room floor, crying with her fist in her mouth so Sam wouldn’t hear.

Alex had pulled her off the floor, washed her face, tucked her into bed and then had broken up with her very gently and very kindly.

‘It’s not the right time for us,’ he’d said as he’d wrapped her in his arms and stroked her hot, tear-swollen face. ‘There’s a museum in York that’s asked me along for an interview and, if things were normal, I mean, different, we could do a long-distance thing for a year or two, but things are different. Maybe a couple of years from now, you’ll be in a better place …’

‘A couple of years from now my parents will still be dead and I’ll still have a little brother who needs me,’ Posy had told him in a dull voice, because Sam was the most important person in her life now. Not Alex.

They’d talked around it for hours, for days, for weeks it seemed, but it was over and it was a relief when Alex landed the job in York. They’d promised to keep in touch but sooner, not even later, the awkward phone calls and the emails petered out. Now Alex was simply a name that popped up on Posy’s Facebook newsfeed a couple of times a week. He’d emigrated to Sydney, not that they had any medieval history in Sydney, where he was assistant manager of a wholefood restaurant and was going out with an ethereal-looking redhead called Phaedra, who was an environmental campaigner. Posy couldn’t imagine that, if she and Alex happened to bump into each other, they’d find any common ground.

Still, Posy knew the difference between being in love and reading about being in love in a book. And she dated once a month, to keep her hand in even if her heart wasn’t, so Sebastian could bloody well shut up.

‘I date,’ she repeated forcefully. ‘But I’d much rather be single than lower myself to use your HookApp or whatever you call it.’

‘It’s HookUpp, with two p’s.’ Sebastian came slowly down the stairs, eyes fixed on Posy, who huffed.

‘Like anyone is ever going to form a meaningful relationship based on mutual admiration, trust and passion by swiping up or down on someone’s picture based on their geographic location and whether they conform to some narrow definition of attractiveness,’ she said with icy disdain.

Sebastian had reached the bottom step now so he could loom over Posy and smirk in that smug way that made her blood pressure start the long climb upwards. ‘Not everyone wants a meaningful relationship based on mutual admiration, trust and passion.’ He parroted her words back at her with glee. ‘Some people, Morland, just want to get laid.’

‘Good for them! Meanwhile I will be selling romantic fiction for the vast numbers of people who want to read it. And unless you can come up with a better plan for the shop, I don’t want to hear another word out of you. Is that clear?’

‘Ma’am! Yes, ma’am.’ Sebastian clicked the heels of his handmade leather brogues and saluted smartly. ‘By the way, you seem to know an awful lot about my app for someone who has such a low opinion of it.’

Posy closed her eyes. She couldn’t do it any more. Deal with Sebastian. She would probably cry again. And she would definitely shout at him and then, when he continued to smirk and loom and make smartarse remarks, she’d snatch up Lavinia’s poker from the fireplace in the hall and use it to pierce holes in him.

Far better to leave now and close the door behind her so firmly that it might even be classed as slamming it.

That done, she stomped her way through the streets of Bloomsbury, which were no longer bathed in sunshine as they had been when she left the shop, but lashed by torrents of rain. The inclement weather was probably Sebastian’s fault too, Posy decided. Each raindrop stoked the fiery flames of her temper so that by the time she flung open the door of Bookends in a way that would have had Sebastian suing for copyright, she was in a fury. Fuming. Seething.

‘He’s not just the rudest man in London, he’s the rudest man in Britain,’ she told Nina and the two Pac-A-Mac-ed ladies she was talking to. ‘The rudest man in the whole bloody world.’

‘So, you had a nice chat with Sebastian, then?’ Nina asked. ‘Also, do you know when Eloisa James’s next book is out?’

‘If by chat you mean he made several personal and unkind remarks and put his hands on my breasts on two separate occasions, then yes, we had a lovely chat.’ Posy had to put her hands on her own breasts then, to wipe away Sebastian’s phantom touch. It was no wonder the two Pac A Macs were staring at her like she was spewing black ectoplasm out of her ears. ‘I’m sorry, what must you think of me? Eloisa James. Nothing out for a while, but have you read any Courtney Milan? Her Brothers Sinister series is very good. Not available in the UK, but we have some on our US import shelves, if you’re interested.’

By the time Posy had sold them three books apiece and had a lively discussion about tropes in Regency romances (‘Why is it the heroes always have a matching set of high-stepping grey horses? Must be the Regency equivalent of a sports car!’) her blood pressure was out of the danger zone.

It threatened to rise again when Verity presented her with a provisional timeline for transforming Bookends into Happy Ever After. It featured all sorts of onerous tasks like dismantling each room one at a time for repainting and restocking, returning unwanted stock to the publishers while at the same time wooing said publishers for discounted romantic fiction, promo items and author visits.

‘You want us to be ready to relaunch by the end of July? That’s only five months away!’

‘Ideally we should relaunch at least a month before then to take advantage of the start of the tourist season and the school holidays, but there’s so much to do.’ Verity peered over her shoulder at the list that Posy knew would haunt her every waking hour. It would probably cut into her sleeping hours too and give her quite a few nightmares about never-ending bookshelves curiously resistant to fresh coats of paint and books turned into slabs of cheese. ‘We’ll all chip in to help. I don’t mind doing the grunt work, as long as I don’t have to do anything that involves talking to complete strangers.’

‘Not even on the phone? Not even for the greater good?’ Posy asked in dismay. She got that Verity was an introvert in an extrovert’s world and that the happiest day of her life was when the self-service checkouts were installed in the big Sainsbury’s opposite Holborn tube, but it was very hard to have an assistant manager who greeted a ringing telephone with the words, ‘What fresh hell is this?’

‘I don’t mind emailing people. I love emailing people,’ Verity said brightly. ‘It will be fine. Is this also a good time to tell you that the bank called?’

‘Really not,’ said Posy, deciding this would be a good time to hide away upstairs with the box of cheese crackers that she hadn’t completely decimated the night before.

The three sheets of paper that Verity had given Posy seemed to taunt her, so she turned them over, but then she felt guilty.

Posy switched on her laptop and thought about doing something useful, like emailing her favourite sales reps or drafting a letter to the bank, but instead she thought back to Sebastian being absolutely impossible. Not that his behaviour today was any more impossible than usual.

Except, today he’d accused her of being some lovelorn, dried-up old hag, smitten with the smouldering heroes in romantic fiction because she couldn’t get her jollies on with a real man.

Posy pulled up a blank document and instead of any one of a number of worky things she ought to have been getting on with, she found her fingers pounding over the keys on something else entirely.