Free Lindsey Kelk 5-Book 'I Heart...' Collection by Lindsey Kelk Page B

just don’t get it.’
    The cab ride was so short, I hardly had time to find my wallet inside my beautiful new bag when we pulled up outside the hotel. And it was only six dollars! This was the best city and clearly, clearly offset the insanity of my purchases.
    The thing I loved best about my hotel room was that no matter how messy I left it, how many towels I’d used and how many of the mini Rapture toiletries I’d used up in the shower, it was always blissfully restored to pristine condition when I returned. I gently placed my Marc Jacobs bag on the side table and pulled my laptop out of the desk. Setting up a selection of soft drinks and snacks on the tiny table I’d dragged across the room, I grabbed a pillow from the bed and perched the computer onto my knee. The hotel had supplied me with a UK power adaptor without me even asking. Wow. I couldn’t remember the last time Mark had so much as intuitively supplied me with a cup of tea. I also spotted a note from Jenny, reminding me tonight was Gina’s leaving party and that I was to meet her in reception at nine.
    Within fifteen minutes of settling into my chair and not typing a single word, my laptop had gone to sleep and so had I. I was back to dreaming my New York life, instead of living my New York dream. For the last six months or so, while Mark had been putting in extra hours at the office and at the tennis club (and in Katie as it turned out) I’d thought about joining gyms, taking yoga classes, even teaching creative writing classes, but I hadn’t actually acted on any of them. Maybe, if I tried, I could genuinely see the positives in what had happened. I had already made a friend in Jenny, even if I didn’t really know her that well. I’d got a new do, a new wardrobe and I was now in possession of the most beautiful handbag I’d ever seen in almost twenty-seven years of life. Who needed what I’d left behind?
    While all these thoughts ran through my head, I started typing. For the want of a plot or a storyline, I started writing every single thing that had happened to me in the last week. It seemed like a good place to start, documenting everything for fear of a single second of it escaping. It all came out, the wedding ceremony, the dinner, the toasts, finding Mark in the car with his pants down, bashing Tim’s hand, and my bolt to New York. Before I knew what had happened, it was almost eight, I’d been typing for more than three hours and in just over one, I had to meet Jenny, Gina and Vanessa.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    Dead on the dot of nine, fuelled by a hastily necked vodka from the mini bar, I stepped out of the lift and into the lobby.
    ‘Jesus, Angela Clark,’ Jenny said as I skulked into the bar. I’d never in my life been one of those girls who can look in a mirror and think, yeah, I look good. Even at Louisa’s wedding, after an hour and a half at the mercy of a hairdresser and make-up artist, I hadn’t looked good – I’d looked like a bridesmaid, but things were changing. If I didn’t look at least OK tonight, I knew I never would. It had taken me twenty minutes and three attempts at Razor’s smoky eye make-up tips, but I was more or less there (and he’d promised it would only look better the more smudged it got). My hair was elegantly messy and I’d gone for a simple black v-neck dress I’d bought that afternoon, with my Louboutins, new clutch and bare legs. I’d never felt so great but so nervous in all my life.
    ‘Hey,’ I held my hand out in a small wave.
    ‘Remind me again why I’m giving you shopping advice?’ Jenny kissed me on both cheeks and presented me to the girls. ‘Gina and Vanessa, you know, this is Erin.’ They all raised a hand and I ordered a vodka and cranberry hoping it would come soon. ‘I’ve told the girls all about you but I didn’t tell them you were a complete glamazon,’ Jenny said, checking me out from every angle. ‘You did me proud, doll!’
    ‘I didn’t really know what I should wear so I