Summer Wedding, page 1
SARAH MORGAN is an international and Sunday Times bestselling author of several novels, including Snowed in for Christmas, Beach House Summer, The Christmas Escape, The Summer Seekers and One More for Christmas. She has sold over twenty-one million books worldwide.
Sarah lives near London, England with her family and when she isn’t writing or reading, she likes to spend time outdoors hiking or riding her mountain bike.
Join Sarah’s mailing list at sarahmorgan.com for all book news. For more insight into her writing life follow her on Facebook at facebook/AuthorSarahMorgan and on Instagram at @sarahmorganwrites. Contact Sarah at sarah@sarahmorgan.com
Also by Sarah Morgan
How to Keep a Secret
The Christmas Sisters
One Summer in Paris
A Wedding in December
Family for Beginners
One More for Christmas
The Summer Seekers
The Christmas Escape
Beach House Summer
Snowed in for Christmas
From Manhattan with Love
Sleepless in Manhattan
Sunset in Central Park
Miracle on 5th Avenue
New York, Actually
Holiday in the Hamptons
Moonlight Over Manhattan
Puffin Island
First Time in Forever
Some Kind of Wonderful
Christmas Ever After
The O’Neil Brothers
Sleigh Bells in the Snow
Suddenly, Last Summer
Maybe This Christmas
Copyright
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
HarperCollinsPublishers
Macken House, 39/40 Mayor Street Upper,
Dublin 1, D01 C9W8, Ireland
This edition 2023
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2023
Copyright © Sarah Morgan 2023
Sarah Morgan 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.
Source ISBN: 9781848458475
Ebook Edition © May 2023 ISBN: 9780008916732
Version 2023-04-15
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Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9781848458475
To my family, for all the happy memories of holidays in
Corfu, and to the locals who welcomed us.
Contents
Cover
About the Author
Booklist
Title Page
Copyright
Note to Readers
Dedication
Prologue
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Part Two
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Extract
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Read yourself happy with Sarah Morgan
About the Publisher
Prologue
For the first time in her life she was planning to kill someone.
She never would have thought herself capable of such a thing—she was a romance novelist! Romance novelists didn’t kill people, but she was now forced to consider the unsettling possibility that perhaps she didn’t know herself as well as she’d thought. Perhaps she wasn’t, after all, a person with a kind and gentle disposition. She’d always thought of herself that way, and yet here she was typing a variety of decidedly ungentle questions into her browser and feeling a thrill of interest. Her fingers shook on the keyboard.
How to kill someone and leave no trace.
Best way to kill someone.
Murders that remain unsolved.
It had to look like an accident, she’d decided. People would be sad, and probably shocked because death is always shocking even when it is expected. The one thing they wouldn’t be was suspicious, because she was going to be clever. It would be called an “accidental death.” No one would know the truth.
But was the truth really so bad? Was it truly wrong, when she was delivering justice?
The man deserved it, after all.
In fact, if she were truly giving him what he deserved, her search would read how to kill someone in the most painful way possible.
She stared through the window at the smooth calm of the Mediterranean Sea, so many shades of blue and dazzling in the sunshine. She’d decided long ago that the island of Corfu was her paradise. Sun-baked olive groves, soft sand, ocean waves, leisurely days, slow delicious dreams—those, surely, were the ingredients for a perfect life. It was a place where problems were suspended; a place for happiness, for relaxation, for nothing but good things. But expecting nothing but good was a fantasy. She knew that now, just as she knew that light and dark could coexist. The dark often lay hidden, simmering undetected beneath the surface, ready to take a bite out of the unwary, the trusting, those who believed in happy endings. She’d been that person. She’d made so many mistakes.
Lost in the view and her own thoughts, she didn’t hear him enter. She wasn’t aware of his presence until she felt his hand on her shoulder and the sound of his voice.
“Catherine?”
She jumped and slammed the lid of her laptop shut. Her heart hammered like a fist against a punching bag.
How much had he seen? She was annoyed with herself for not having had the foresight to lock the door. She’d been so absorbed by her thoughts that she hadn’t heard him enter the room.
Careless.
She needed to up her game if she was actually going to do this. She needed to think like an assassin. She needed to be inscrutable and reveal nothing.
She turned with a smile (did assassins ever smile? She had no idea). “I didn’t know you were awake. It’s early.”
“I didn’t mean to surprise you. I know you hate being disturbed when you’re working, but I woke up and missed you. I came to offer you strong coffee.” He brushed his fingers across her jaw. “You look tense. Is something wrong?”
So much for being inscrutable.
She wasn’t built for a life of crime, but fortunately she wasn’t considering a whole life, just this one teeny tiny murder. That was it. She had no expectations of enjoying it and didn’t intend it to become habitual.
“Nothing’s wrong.” She couldn’t even lie without feeling guilty, which didn’t bode well.
They shared everything—well, almost everything—but there was no way she was sharing this. Not yet. One day, maybe, if she actually went ahead with it. If it all went as planned, then of course he’d find out, but until then she had to keep silent. This was something she had to do by herself.
What would he say if he knew what was really going on in her head?
Would he try to talk her out of it? Tell her that her plan was foolish and dangerous? Or would he preach acceptance and tell her that she just had to let it go. That this wasn’t the answer. He’d probably tell her to move on.
And that was what she was doing, of course.
This was her way of moving on. And not before time.
He bent to kiss her. “I love you, Catherine Swift.”
She felt the brush of his lips and the answering warmth that rushed through her body.
It felt jarring to go from death to love but that was life, wasn’t it? Brutal in its extremes. And assassins were people too. They were allowed a love life.
For the first time in weeks, she felt optimistic and hopeful. She’d been smothered in a dark cloud of gloom, fueled by bitter resentment. She’d felt like a failure for letting it reach this point. She hadn’t been able to see a way forward, but now she could.
The future was clear to her. All she needed was courage.
It was a just a shame that someone had to die.
Part One
1
Adeline
Adeline Swift was on a call with the features editor of Woman Now when the letter was pushed through the door of her apartment.
“The thing is,” Erin was saying, “your advice column has the highest readership of any section of the magazine. People really seem to connect with it. With you. The market research we did recently suggests that seventy percent of people would rather ask you for advice than their best friend. Can you believe that?”
Yes, she could believe that. Few people reached adulthood without suffering some degree of emotional hangover from the past. Hurt. Resentment. Shame. Disappointment. Grief. Regret. Life left scars and you had to find a way to live with those scars. Some people chose denial as a strategy. Ignore it. Leave it in the past. Move on. Others confronted those emotions and spent hours in therapy trying to understand how the past affected the present, in the hope of reaching a point of acceptance. Most just struggled along by themselves, striding and occasionally stumbling, handling the ups and downs of life as best they could. After a few too many drinks they might confide in a friend, but more often than not they’d stay silent because revealing those deep secrets and fears, those most personal parts of yourself, was a risk. It said this is who I really am, instead of this is who I’m pretending to be.
It was those people, alone with their fears, who often wrote to Adeline.
Dear Dr. Swift…
They poured out their problems in the hope that in a few well-chosen words she would help them resolve their crisis, or at least feel better about their situation.
Adeline delivered calm analysis, sympathy, and the occasional pep talk. She employed a mix of empathy, experience, and plain speaking when crafting her answers. It was a combination that worked for people. She fulfilled the role of a sympathetic stranger, someone who would listen without judgment and respect anonymity. But that role meant she existed in a world of problems. In her working day, she was buffeted by the challenges of life, drenched in the pain of others, required to ponder at length on everything from infidelity to unemployment. When people asked how she coped with it, she pointed out that it was easy to cope with a drama that wasn’t your own.
When the drama was hers? That was different.
She stared at the envelope.
It rested innocently on the floor, dazzling white against wide oak planks. Even without picking it up, she could see that the paper was high quality, and embossed. Her name and address were written out in a bold script that was instantly recognizable.
Her heart beat a little faster. Emotions rushed her, buffeting her like a gust of wind. She placed her hand on her diaphragm and forced herself to breathe slowly. She was an adult with her own life, a good life, and yet this small inanimate object had ruined the calm of her day.
And she hadn’t even opened it yet.
Her first impulse was to tear it up without opening it, but that would be immature, and she tried very hard not to be immature and to always exercise self-control.
She tried to be the person she pretended to be in her advice column.
“Adeline?” Erin’s voice wafted into her conscious. “Are you still there?”
“Yes. Still here. I’m listening.” But her focus wasn’t on Erin.
She should open the envelope right now. Or she could simply drop it into the recycling without opening it. She imagined what “Dr. Swift” would have to say about that approach.
Avoidance.
With a sigh, she picked it up. She could put it to one side and open it later, but then she’d be thinking about it all afternoon. If she was advising someone in this situation, she’d say that no good ever came from delaying the inevitable and that the anticipation was often worse than the reality. That no matter what lay inside the envelope, she had the tools and mental fortitude to handle it.
Did she though?
Still holding the envelope, she walked across her apartment, opened the French doors and stepped onto her small balcony. The tension in her neck and shoulders drained away. She breathed in the rich scent of honeysuckle, the sweetness of jasmine. Bees hummed around slender spikes of purple lavender. The space was small, but she’d chosen the plants carefully and the end result was an explosion of bloom and color that felt like an oasis of calm in the busy, noisy city she’d made her home. She loved London, but she appreciated being able to retreat from the blare of car horns, the crush of people and the frenetic pace. Sometimes it felt to her as if everyone was living their lives on fast forward.
In creating her balcony garden, she’d followed the advice she’d given to a reader who had moved to the city from a rural area and was struggling with anxiety as a result.
Adeline had interviewed a horticulturist and compiled her answer accordingly.
Dear Sad in the City, you may not live in the country, but you can still welcome nature into your life. A few well-chosen houseplants can add calm to the smallest living space, and a pot of fragrant herbs grown on a sunny windowsill will bring a touch of the Mediterranean into your home and into your cooking.
After she’d finished researching her answer, she’d gone out and purchased plants for herself, acting on the advice she’d just given her reader. She’d also written two features for other publications on the same topic. It was how she made her living.
She’d trained as a clinical psychologist and had been in practice for six months when a chance meeting with a journalist had resulted in a request to give an interview on a morning chat show on managing stress in the workplace. That interview had led to more requests, which in turn had led to a writing career that she enjoyed more than practicing as a psychologist. Writing enabled her to maintain a level of detachment that had been missing when she’d seen clients face-to-face.
Adeline preferred to be detached.
She put the envelope down on the small table and forced herself to concentrate on the conversation.
“I’m glad the advice column is working out, Erin.”
She was glad, and not only because the column kept her profile high and led to more work than she could handle. The popularity of the column pleased her. It was gratifying to know that people were finding it useful.
She knew how it felt to be lost and confused. She knew how it felt to struggle with emotions that were too ugly and uncomfortable for public display. She knew how it felt to be alone, to be drowning with no lifeboat in sight, to be falling with no cushion to soften the landing.
If the skills she’d learned to help herself could be used to help another person, then she was satisfied. When she was writing her column, she thought of herself not as a psychologist, but as a trusted best friend. Someone who would tell you the truth.
The one truth she never shared was that there were some hurts that no therapist in the world could heal. That knowledge she kept to herself. People assumed she had her own life sorted, and she had no intention of destroying that image. It would hardly fill people with confidence if they knew she was wrestling with problems of her own.
“Good? It’s better than good.” Erin was buoyant, euphoric, proud, because she was the one who had originally had the idea for the “Dr. Swift Says” column. “You’re a hit, Adeline. The suits want to give you more space.”
Adeline deadheaded a geranium and removed a couple of dead leaves. “More space?”
“Yes. Instead of answering one question in depth, we were thinking four.”
Adeline frowned. “It’s important to give a full answer. If someone is desperate, then they need empathy and a full response. They don’t need to be brushed aside with a few lines of platitudes.”
“You wouldn’t be capable of producing an answer that wasn’t empathetic. It’s your gift. You write so beautifully—I suppose in that way you’re like your mother.”
Adeline clenched her hand around the leaves. “I’m nothing like my mother.”
“No, of course you’re not. What you write is totally different. But Adeline, this is huge. I don’t need to tell you what’s happening to freelance journalists right now. Everyone is scrabbling for a slice of a shrinking pie, and here you are being offered a big fat slice of your own. They’ll pay you, obviously.”
