All Beth’s ever had on Valentine’s Day is unwanted junk mail and unpaid bills! But this year, when the post lands on her doormat, one item in particular catches her eye…

Could this be Beth first ever genuine Valentine’s Day card?! The handwritten card might be a cheesy cliché….but who cares! The big question is – who is it from?

Unfortunately, the only possibilities racing through her head are people she sincerely hopes didn’t send it, including all of her definitely-not-Mr-Perfect exes. (Oh, or the guy in Accounts with the comb-over!)

Sadly, Beth’s pretty sure it’s not from Luke – her dishy new neighbour with the super-glamorous model girlfriend, and dreamy eyes that have never once noticed her… Or have they?

For a girl who’s never received so much as a Valentine’s e-mail before, this February 14th Beth finds herself with a secret admirer…who could just turn out to be The One!

ELIZABETH PLAYER

In 2007 Elizabeth jumped on her husband’s early retirement opportunity, quit the rat race and moved to the glorious county of Cornwall. The first thing she did was join a local writing group to pursue what had always been her passion. She became involved with her local theatre and to see her first piece of work performed was quite a buzz. Over the past few years she’s been writing everything and anything from poetry to stage plays to her first romance novel, hopefully to find ‘her voice.’ From her teenage years reading Catherine Cookson and Georgette Heyer to present day chick lit, she’s always been drawn to the romantic genre, whether novels, films or plays, and she enjoy them all the more with a bit of mystery and intrigue thrown in. Having said that she’s a complete fan of John Grisham.

Four years ago she retrained as a Dog Groomer and now has a workshop in her garden, overlooking Mount’s Bay in Penzance ‘A Groom With A View.’ When she’s not grooming dogs she’s writing and when she is grooming dogs she’s plotting in her head, the dogs don’t mind. Elizabeth takes full advantage of living in Cornwall and goes walking as often as possible winter and summer. She gets great inspiration from the dramatic scenery and coastline that she has on hand as soon as she steps through her back door.

To Ray

The Girl Who’s Never Had a

Valentine

Elizabeth Player

Copyright

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2014

Copyright © Elizabeth Player 2014

Elizabeth Player 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.

E-book Edition © June 2014 ISBN: 9781472094667

Version date: 2018-07-23

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Author Bio

Dedication

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter One

Endpages

About the Publisher

Chapter One

Thank God for Saturday mornings. No work and a lie-in, what could be better? As I sat in my small kitchen, sipping tea and flicking through missed calls on my mobile, I heard the letterbox rattle and the post dropping to the mat with a thud. In amongst the unwanted junk mail and brown envelopes one item in particular caught my eye; pale lilac and the fancy handwriting was not one I recognised. They’d used proper jet-black ink too, not Biro. Intrigued, I fought the urge to rip open the envelope. Instead, I carefully examined the smudged postmark and noted it was local and the stamp was first class. Eventually the penny dropped. Valentine’s Day! Of course, today was fourteenth February. Now I was wide awake, my stomach clenching in anticipation. This could be my first, genuine Valentine’s Day card – ever. How silly to forget! Extracting the sharpest knife I owned from the kitchen drawer, I sliced open the envelope, making sure not to damage the contents. Decent-quality paper, no scrimping on cost, surely that was a good sign? Smaller than A4 but bigger than A5. Slowly, I pulled the card from its lilac sheath. Talk about gaudy! A kaleidoscope of purple and cerise leapt out at me. Dead centre, a fluffy kitten climbed into a champagne glass and the gold italic writing swirling about the stem read:

Be my Valentine

Gingerly, I opened the card, hoping against hope that there might be more, and there was. Again, in the same distinctive gold script:

You set my heart on fire,

You are the object of my desire

Good God! It was so cheesy I thought I’d have to hide it from the cat. So smarmy! Such a cliché! But it was wonderful. The handwritten part read:

I’ll love you for ever

It was in the same distinctive handwriting as on the envelope. I moved into the lounge and flopped onto the sofa, reading the card over again and again. Who on earth was my secret admirer? Did I know anyone that sentimental, so utterly love-struck? It was shocking and I felt responsible, well, just a bit. With my mind racing I thought, I hope it’s not that creepy guy from Accounts with the comb-over. I’d never given him any encouragement. Who could it be? I considered phoning my best friend Lucy and together we could chew over all the possibilities. The guy from the garage with the Alfred Hitchcock silhouette? He’d seemed overly attentive when I’d had my car serviced recently. I noted that my secret admirer had addressed the envelope: ‘To the ocupant’. Oh dear, he couldn’t spell. Perhaps he was dyslexic? That wasn’t a problem. What if someone had sent it for a joke? That would be cruel beyond words.

I’d often wondered why I’d never had a Valentine’s Day card and now here I was, worrying why I’d actually received one. My initial feeling had been one of enormous flattery and it was thrilling. But, at the same time, I felt a tad nervous not knowing the identity of said sender and he didn’t seem to know my name. What if this person was a stalker? At twenty-eight years old, I was beyond wishing for Valentine’s Day cards. My teenage years had come and gone and I’d never had one, not even from geeky Will, my brother’s best mate and my one and only long-time admirer. I’d asked him once why he’d never sent me a card and he’d shrugged saying, ‘I didn’t think you were “that type”.’ Of course I was ‘that type’. I was a girl. Every girl wishes for that one card at some point in her life, the one that says ‘you’ are desirable, alluring, sexy, wanted. What girl didn’t want that confirmation? The card my mother sent to me when I was seventeen didn’t count, such badly disguised handwriting! If truth be told, it was worse than not getting a card at all. Back in the day, one of my good friends always received a card from her dad! That was seriously wrong on so many levels. At school I was always the sensible one. Leader of the debating club, not afraid to speak up. At uni, I was the one solving other people’s problems. Did I put men off? I could never play the weak little woman, it just wasn’t in my DNA.

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