The Desperate Bride’s Diet Club by Alison Sherlock Read Free Book Online Page A

slightly too long as it curled around his neck. His face was creased with too many lines for his relatively young thirty-odd years. But beneath that olive skin he had a kind of sensual magnetism.
    Violet, however, was beyond being flustered. She was humiliated. She didn’t know what to do. Orhow to get out of there quickly. This was terrible. Awful. Her cheeks burned with mortification.
    ‘Look, sit down,’ he said, gesturing at the chair on the opposite side of the desk from him. ‘Please.’
    She sank into a chair and stared down into the coffee. Beam me up, Scotty. If the ground could swallow her whole right now, that would be the answer to her prayers.
    ‘So, it says here you’re VioletSaunders,’ he said, looking at the paperwork in front of him. ‘Is that right?’
    She nodded, still staring down at the coffee.
    ‘I just need to get it right for the police when they come.’
    Violet whipped her head up and found his green eyes twinkling at her.
    ‘Well, at least I can see your face now,’ he told her. ‘I was only joking about the police, by the way. Shall we get on with the interview?’

    She stared at him, trying to figure out what he had just said. He was joking about the police. He really did want to interview her. The agony would have to last a little longer. She simply needed to fluff the meeting, fail to get the job and get the hell out of there.
    ‘I’m sorry about the cake,’ said Violet, finally finding her voice.
    ‘PMT, was it? Least of my worries, to be honest.’ He shruggedhis shoulders. ‘Anyway, you did me a favour. It was a leaving present. But I’m not sure Felicity ever ate anything anyway so you saved me wasting a tenner.’
    Violet didn’t reply. The humiliation was still rushing through her body.
    ‘So you’re out of work at the moment?’
    She nodded.
    ‘It says here you got made redundant before Easter.’
    She nodded again.
    ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any IT experience,have you?’
    This time she shook her head.
    Mark Harris stared at her for a beat. ‘Are you always this quiet?’
    She thought about it and nodded once more.
    His rumpled face split into a warm smile. ‘Are you sure you’re going to be able to answer the hotline if you’re always this quiet?’
    Violet blinked at him. ‘The what?’
    ‘You know, the job you applied for. The Hotline Assistant job.’
    She hadno idea what he was talking about but he didn’t seem to notice.
    He leant back in his chair, putting his hands behind his head. ‘Basically, you’d be answering the phone to our sales force when they are having trouble with their computers,’ he told her. ‘You log the call on the computer and then field the calls on to the rest of the department. Not exactly a laugh a minute but that’s probably whythe pay is so low.’
    Violet finally plucked up the nerve to string a sentence together. ‘I was sent here for a secretarial position.’
    ‘You were?’ He frowned and picked up the phone. ‘Cecilia? Mark Harris here. I’ve got a Violet Saunders in front of me. Says she’s a secretary, nothing to do with IT. Right. God, they are useless. I see.’
    He hung up and muttered a few words in a language Violetdidn’t recognise.
    Then he blew out a sigh. ‘Your agency is bloody hopeless. Turns out there’s a secretarial post in the marketing department that you should have been sent for. I should warn you, though. They’re not as much fun as us nerds. A right bunch of smarmy slimeballs.’
    So the humiliation could have been avoided if her useless agency hadn’t messed up. Violet sighed and shook her head.
    Mark Harris was watching her. ‘You should think about swapping agencies. They’re rubbish. You should have seen the bunch of weirdos they’ve already sent me today. All thought they were the next Bill Gates. Far too over-qualified for this role.’
    So it had all been a complete waste of time. Like everything in her life. Except Sebastian.
    Suddenly aware of a long silence,