The Boy and the Bridesmaid: A Short Story. Katey Lovell
ection id="u9d03d416-047c-5ad9-8aeb-71a4e30aae94">
‘Magical and sparkly short stories, highly recommended’
Sky’s Book Corner
‘I’m so glad I picked this up, it’s gorgeous!’
Rather Too Fond of Books
‘Swooning all the way through’
Reviewed the Book
‘An absolutely wonderful debut’
Little Northern Soul
‘Quirky, cute and utterly romantic’
Bestselling author Rebecca Raisin
‘Sweet, romantic, perfectly formed coffee break reads. I loved them’
Bestselling author Carmel Harrington
The Boy and the Bridesmaid
The Meet Cute Series
KATEY LOVELL
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers
HarperImpulse an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2016
Copyright © Katey Lovell 2016
Cover images © Shutterstock.com
Cover design by Books Covered
Katey Lovell asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International
and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
By payment of the required fees, you have been granted
the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access
and read the text of this e-book on screen.
No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted,
downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or
stored in or introduced into any information storage and
retrieval system, in any form or by any means,
whether electronic or mechanical, now known or
hereinafter invented, without the express
written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © June 2016 ISBN: 9780008166663
Version 2016-05-09
For Andrea Seymour, my one and only godsister
Table of Contents
The Boy in the Bookshop
The Boy at the Beach
The Boy at the Bakery
The Boy on the Bus
The Boy with the Board
The Boy with the Boxes
The Boy at the BBQ
The Boy under the Mistletoe
The Boy and the Bridesmaid
Maria wished she’d been more prepared. She should have known her emotions would get the better of her, after all, weddings are notoriously tear-jerking events. Snuffling inelegantly into her napkin, she silently apologised to the hotel staff for sullying their table linen.
She didn’t used to be like this, crying at the drop of a hat. Now the smallest of things could bring a tear to her eye. She’d even cried at EastEnders the other night. Anxiety had changed her; not just the crying, but the panic attacks where she could hardly breathe, the feeling of a hole through the centre of her body, as though she were an apple that had been cored, the difficulty to remain focussed even if things interested her.
She was distracted now. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the band setting up. They were behind the white drape which acted as a partition, but being placed at the end of the top table she could see right around it.
There were four guys in all. One of them, Harrison, she recognised as her cousin Lucy’s boyfriend. He was one of those hipster sorts who wore skin-tight