Acknowledgments

Thank you to Nia, Amanda and everyone behind the scenes at Boldwood Books for all of their hard work on this book.

A massive thank you to Joey, James, Kim and Aud for all that they do for me.

Thank you so, so much to Joe, for absolutely everything.

Finally, thank you to everyone who reads and reviews this book. I really hope you enjoy it.

More from Portia MacIntosh

We hope you enjoyed reading Honeymoon For One. If you did, please leave a review.

If you’d like to gift a copy, this book is also available as a paperback, digital audio download and audiobook CD.

Sign up to Portia MacIntosh’s mailing list for news, competitions and updates on future books.

Portia’s next novel, My Great Ex-Scape, is available to order now, just click the image below! Read on for an exclusive sneak peek…

Chapter 1

‘How would you like £50,000?’

I never expected to hear those words this evening. Who am I kidding? I never expected to hear those words ever.

I always try to look on the bright side of life, searching high and low for the positive in every negative situation. My mum calls this The Rosie Outlook – an obvious pun combining my name, Rosie, and my ability to always try and find the good, even when it seems impossible.

For example, not beating around the bush, I hate my job. I realise that hate is a strong word and not the kind of chat you would usually expect to hear from someone who prides herself on being positive, but I do, I absolutely hate my job.

When I was a kid, all I wanted was to be a detective. Not a police detective though, a private detective, the kind you see in film noir. You know the sort, the cigarette-toting, low-key sexist, wisecracking type in the long, plain coat with a fedora on top of their head – the only kind I saw on TV growing up. As I matured into my teens and this no longer seemed like a viable job (if it even seemed like a real job at all), I realised that a job did exist that involved exposing the truth. I wanted to be an investigative journalist, and this actually seemed like a goal I could achieve.

Flash-forward to me, here today, thirty-one years old, and I am a journalist… just not the kind I wanted to be. I work for the Salford News, just outside central Manchester. It’s only a small, local paper though, so not only is there not much room for an investigative journalist, but every page of the weekly paper is pretty much an advert. I spend most of my days writing paid advertorials – which is basically an advert hiding inside a news article – and given that the clients are paying for exactly what they want these pieces to say, it’s not exactly a challenge.