Read Online Forty Things to Do Before You're Forty by Alice Ross - Free Book Online

would never experience again. Nor did he want to. Because grief wasn’t the only emotion he had struggled with over the last five years. There was another emotion – much much stronger – and completely insurmountable. And that was precisely why he had no romantic interest in Annie Richards. None at all.
    Still, one of her many endearing qualities he acknowledged, as he pictured her with that squashed cupcake on her foot, was that she made him smile. And smiling was something Jake had not done a lot of over the last five years.
    â€˜So how are things in Utterly Buttersley?’ asked Portia a couple of days later. She’d called Annie at the shop from somewhere war-torn, thousands of miles away, ending in –astan.
    â€˜Oh, you know,’ said Annie, ever conscious that, compared to Portia’s world, anything that happened in Buttersley seemed trivial in the extreme. ‘The usual round of wife-swapping parties and drunken street brawls. And we very nearly had a riot on our hands the other day. The florist sold out of lilies and Mrs Coombes was not best pleased.’
    Portia giggled. ‘Life on the edge as usual, then. And talking about life on the edge … how you getting on with that list of things to do before you’re forty?’
    â€˜What list?’ asked Annie innocently.
    â€˜The one I stuck on your fridge door so you couldn’t possibly forget about it. I take it from that response that you haven’t dyed your hair purple and put the bin out in your undies yet?’
    â€˜Maybe next week,’ said Annie. ‘But I am training for the 10k race.’
    â€˜Boring. What about the exciting stuff? The stuff involving those creatures from the other side?’
    â€˜Aliens?’
    â€˜Men! Anything happening there?’
    â€˜Absolutely nothing,’ replied Annie.
    Five more minutes of goading from Portia and the call ended. Annie hung up, silently congratulating herself on saying nothing about Jake. If Portia got so much as a sniff of her fancying him, she would be unbearable. Not, of course, that she did fancy him – much. She’d simply been over-tired on Saturday which was why the sight of him in that towel had triggered her imagination to such a ludicrous extent. And why was she analysing the whole thing – again? She really didn’t have time for such trivia because today she was about to embark on her most ambitious project yet – the wedding cake for the demanding bride. Not only would it test every one of her technical skills, but the timescale was incredibly tight. Annie had thought long and hard before accepting the order, researching exactly what was required before she committed herself. And she wouldn’t have committed herself, had she thought it beyond her capabilities. Still, though, she had to admit that her excitement was tempered with a dash of nerves. Nerves she needed to quash. She had to think positively, feel confident. Which was why, in between serving customers, she attempted to set out a detailed plan of action, working back from the date of the wedding.
    As the day progressed, the task was proving more and more difficult, which she suspected had something to do with every female customer from eighteen to eighty wanting to gossip about Jake Sinclair. Annie quickly mastered the art of changing the subject. She didn’t want to gossip about Jake Sinclair. And she certainly didn’t want to see him. The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became that Jake was to blame for her nerves. Since his arrival in the village her confidence had taken a severe battering. Every time he was around she seemed to make a fool of herself. And she’d spent enough time in the past feeling a fool – thanks to Lance. It had taken her years to rebuild her confidence and she had no intention of having it shattered by another man.
    In his writing room at Buttersley Manor, Jake O’Donnell leaned back in his