Better Off Wed

Portia Macintosh

Description

The brand new laugh-out-loud friends-to-lovers romantic comedy from international bestseller Portia MacIntosh!

Save the date...!

Olivia can’t believe it when her boyfriend, Teddy, proposes out of the blue. She loves him (of course she does!) BUT it does seem sudden, especially when they don’t even live together yet…

There is only one place that Olivia has ever wanted to get married - a gorgeous venue on the Cornish coast, built by her grandfather. The problem is they only have one date available - and it's only a few weeks away! Olivia isn't so sure about rushing but Teddy jumps at the chance to be married within the month.

Thrown into a whirlwind of wedding planning, alarm bells start to ring for Olivia. Are they doing this for the right reasons? Why is Teddy in such a rush? And when he fails to help with any part of the preparations, Olivia must find help elsewhere, with unexpected results...

As the countdown begins, will the wedding go ahead? Or will Olivia find that her future happiness lies elsewhere...?

Don't miss bestseller Portia MacIntosh's brand new laugh-out-loud friends-to-lovers romantic comedy, guaranteed to put a smile on your face.

Sujets

• Mashups
• Feminist
• Siblings
• Humorous
• Women
• 21st century
• Friendship
• Contemporary history
• Romantic Comedy
• Sibling
• General officer
• Woman
• Marriage
• Feminism
• The Women
• Wedding
• General
• Contemporary
• Family Life
• Romance
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Boldwood Books
• Date de parution: 10 avril 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781804266588
• Langue: English

Extrait

BETTER OFF WED


PORTIA MACINTOSH
For Joe – who I am much better off for marrying
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

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37


More from Portia MacIntosh

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Portia MacIntosh

Love Notes

About Boldwood Books
1

You only get one chance to make a first impression. Absolutely nailing it, the first time you meet someone, is all that matters. The details, the long story, the truth – all of that can be figured out later.
‘Olivia Knight?’ a tall, skinny man with longish blonde hair and dark blue eyes asks me.
‘Yes?’ I reply, with enough (but not too much) enthusiasm. ‘Scott Mason?’
I instantly feel stupid for saying his last name, but he did say my full name. Wow, I’m overthinking things already.
‘The one and only,’ he replies unenthusiastically. ‘Take a seat.’
I sit down at the table opposite him. The butterflies in my stomach are going berserk.
‘So, how are⁠—’
‘Listen, I’m a busy man, I’m sure you’re a busy woman, so I’m thinking why don’t we skip the pleasantries and cut to the chase?’ Scott suggests.
Scott has seriously pronounced smile lines, which is ironic, given how immediately unfriendly he seems. His light auburn hair is receding, but only from the sides, so he has this sort of vampirical peak of hair in the middle of his forehead, only made worse by the way he quite literally is looking down his nose at me. Oh, this is going so well.
‘Oh, right, yeah, okay,’ I babble. ‘Sure, let’s skip the formalities.’
‘Why are you still single?’ he asks me.
Oh, boy, that really is cutting to the chase.
‘You’re, what? Thirty-five? Thirty-six?’ he presses.
‘I’m thirty-one,’ I reply.
Yikes. I hope he’s read my profile wrong, as opposed to getting a much older read from my face in real life. I don’t feel like anyone looks thirty-six. Either you can still pass for your twenties, you’re wrongfully assumed to be in your forties, or you simply look ‘in your thirties’. No one can pinpoint thirty-six. At least, I’m hoping not, anyway. I’ll be fiercely maintaining that I’m in my ‘early’ thirties until I hit thirty-five. After that, I imagine I’ll style out ‘mid-thirties’ for as long as I possibly can. It’s not so much that I’m bothered about my age – it’s just a number, and one you can’t do much about anyway – but when you’re in the position I’m in, you have to think about these things.
‘Thirty-one?’ he replies.
God, don’t say it like that , whatever that is.
‘Thirty-one,’ I say again.
‘Okay, why do you think you’re still single at thirty-one?’ he asks. He awaits an answer with a furrowed brow and a curious stare.
Wow, he makes it sound even worse when he puts it like that.
‘Well, I do think it’s worth noting that thirty-one isn’t really the sort of age where you’re still single,’ I point out. ‘I guess single is just single these days. Some people are “still” single, I suppose, but lots of people are single again. And it’s a tough world to figure out when you’re thrown back in the deep end – especially with dating apps.’
‘Surely the good thing about dating apps is that it shows you that there’s plenty more fish in the sea, though?’ Scott replies. I feel like he’s making a point, rather than asking a question.
‘I mean, yeah, there’s plenty more fish in the sea, but do you know what else there is in there? Loads of rubbish, and a whole host of terrifying creatures that would murder you in a heartbeat.’
Scott smiles.
‘Do you think women especially are embracing single life?’ he asks curiously.
I glance across the table at Scott as I sip the glass of water in front of me. God, I feel like some sort of experiment, some scientific sample he’s curiously trying to figure out, except I’m nothing fancy like a cell or a blood sample (as you can tell, I’m not a scientist, I don’t even remember how I secured that impressive GCSE C grade), I’m more like a bit of dung being pawed through, to try to work out what some animal ate to kill it.
‘I don’t think women feel like they need a man to be happy,’ I point out. ‘I think plenty of women live very happy, full, contented lives without a man or a woman – I think lots of us are doing it without cats these days too.’
I narrow my eyes ever so slightly as I try to work out whether or not my jokes are landing.
‘You think women are single by choice then?’ he persists.
‘Yes,’ I reply. ‘Either by their own choice or the choice of all the people who meet them.’
‘At least you have Galentine’s Day now,’ he reminds me, as though it’s some sort of big win for women’s rights.
‘Yes, we’d been waiting for that one, since we bagged the right to vote,’ I reply, deadpan.
‘Do you find Valentine’s Day hard?’ He continues his line of questioning.
‘I keep myself busy,’ I reply. ‘If I’m not touring the restaurants near my apartment, walking up to random couples and pointing at perfect strangers, screeching, “Oh my god, I knew you were cheating on me,” then I stay at home and enjoy the free time. I clean, I binge shows on Netflix. I sit, staring at the wall, wondering if it’s possible to forget how to have sex because it’s been so long…’
Okay, I definitely got an amused snigger out of him for that one.
‘Sleeping alone doesn’t bother you?’ Scott asks. ‘That other half of the bed doesn’t feel empty during the cold winter months?’
‘Oh, the other half of my bed is never empty,’ I reply. ‘If not because I’m sleeping diagonally across the bed then because I usually pile up clothes on the other half as I routinely try on everything I wear before going back to the first outfit I chose. I suppose, if I were ever that lonely, I could form some sort of man-shaped pile out of it all. Of course, in the rare event I did bring someone home with me, I’d have to make sure I moved it all first – that would look pretty tragic.’
‘One-night stand?’ Scott asks, shuffling in his seat, briefly far more interested than he has been thus far.
‘Nope, I have two,’ I joke proudly. ‘One on each side of the bed. One is full of condoms, the other is full of flat AA batteries, so make of that what you will.’
Scott tilts his head curiously. There’s a look in his eyes, something that suggests he believes that he knows exactly why I’m single. I guess I’m lucky that this is a job interview, and not a date, or it would be a definite non-starter.
‘Well, I can tell that you can make jokes,’ Scott says – which is not the same thing as telling me I’m funny, but never mind. ‘We have several comedians up for the role. What do you believe makes you the best person for the job? Why are you a relatable host for a dating show?’
Welcome to Singledom is a new reality TV show where sexy single twenty-somethings all live together in a made-for-TV compound for a number of weeks. It’s like a cross between Love Island , I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! and Married at First Sight (if you can imagine such a thing) where people who aren’t just looking for love but specifically are unable to find it live together and complete crazy challenges – all with a view to figuring out why they’re single and helping them improve. I suppose the winners will be the newly formed couple who, I don’t know, seem the most in love? Win the public vote? Something like that. I read in the brief that they have to get married live on air, if they want to win the prize money – imagine that.
At this stage, show bosses are looking for a male–female duo to host it – they specifically want comedians for the tone of the show which, roughly translated, I think means they want to try to come across as something light-hearted, rather than something harshly judging people for not finding love yet and subsequently trying to fix them in a way that makes good TV. Yes, of course I’m pretty cynical about the whole thing, but when you work from job to job, project to project, doing something like comedy, you have to take what you can get. It’s one of those jobs that, when you haven’t quite been able to show that you’ve ‘made it’ yet, people find quite funny (not in the way you want them to, though). My bank balance is no laughing matter – I need this shitty job, in the hope that it leads to other less shitty jobs, which eventually result in me getting a good one.
‘I think I’m someone who understands what it’s like to be single,’ I reply. ‘I know all about the good, the bad and the ugly – and most of my routines are on love and dating, so I feel like I could bring exactly what you need to the presenting.’
‘And you would be okay with potentially long filming days – say, in the middle of a forest, even in horrible weather conditions?’
‘Oh, yes, definitely,’ I reply. I knew that farms and forests were going to be the potential filming locations. ‘An old boyfriend once told me he was taking me on a weekend break to Nottingham Forest – you can imagine my disappointment when it turned out to be an away game. Crystal Palace was another place that sounded like it was going to be a lot cooler than it was. The only time I was ever truly excited was when he sent me a message saying, “Reading tonight?” and I assumed he meant books, rather than a trip up the M4 to watch the footie.’
I’m so pleased I got to do that bit because, last night, when I was looking up football teams, I wondered if I might be wasting my time.
Scott doesn’t seem overly amused, so perhaps I was.
‘Well, Olivia, I think we’ve covered everything we need to today,’ Scott informs me, his face giving nothing away. ‘We’ll be in touch.’
‘Great,