Identified for titles like The Flatshare, The Change, and The Street Present, U.Ok. romcom expertise Beth O’Leary is again with one other good title that includes girls ending up in less-than-ideal predicaments. As an alternative of this romance novel progressing to a potential date, we start with three girls being stood up at a slightly massive one.
After being stood up by their dates on Valentine’s Day, three girls with virtually nothing in frequent understand the boys accountable are literally all the identical individual.
Siobhan is a quick-tempered life coach with method an excessive amount of on her plate. Miranda is a tree surgeon used to being handled as simply one of many guys on the job. Jane is a soft-spoken volunteer for the native charity store with zero sense of self-worth.
These three girls are strangers who’ve just one factor in frequent: they’ve all been stood up on the identical day, the very worst day to be stood up—Valentine’s Day. And, unbeknownst to them, they’ve all been stood up by the similar man.
As soon as they’ve every forgiven him for standing them up, they’re all in severe hazard of falling in love with a person who might haven’t only one or two however three girls on the go…
Readers of The Mary Sue get this post-Valentine’s Day present of studying an unique excerpt from O’Leary’s novel.
Miranda is midway up an oak tree when the primary name comes from Carter. She misses all ten of his calls, actually, since her cellphone is stuffed on the backside of her rucksack, for the very motive that if she has it in a pocket, she’ll be so eager to learn any message from Carter she’ll most likely find yourself checking it whereas hanging the wrong way up in her harness.
She’s being resolutely sunny at present. She had a really massive bowl of porridge for breakfast, washed her hair, and determined there’s lots to be cheerful about. She might need been a bit quick with AJ when he began asking questions on her “lunch date” (his air quotes, not hers), however frankly, that man would attempt the persistence of a saint. And now she’s up within the air, and the wind is blowing by the branches round her, and it’s a great day. Day by day is an efficient day, if you happen to look laborious sufficient.
Miranda is simply beginning on a again lower when Carter arrives on the backside of her tree with a big bunch of flowers.
She catches sight of him between the branches under her and loses her breath for a second. It’s simply so sudden; how can he probably be right here?
“Carter?” she shouts.
“Hello!” he yells up at her. “I’m so sorry! I’m right here to apologize!” “You . . .” She stares down on the floor, after which involves her senses and realizes she’s already lower midway by the department. “Get away from the tree, Carter!” she yells.
The place the hell are the others? She lifts her gaze and catches sight of Trey and Spikes on the chipper, and the small, incensed determine of Jamie, with AJ at his facet and Rip at their toes, making his method towards the oak.
Oh, crap. She must get down there earlier than they pores and skin Carter alive for wandering on-site.
She’s speeding. She’s flustered. She didn’t get a whole lot of sleep.
This is the reason, as Miranda turns round to place herself so she will be able to decrease again to floor, she cuts by not simply her major line, however her flip line, too.
She solely is aware of she’s finished it by the slightest contact of rope to her thigh. She’s balanced in a V between branches, so neither of her ropes are taking her weight; she may effectively not have observed it occur. However because the stays of her flip line drop round her knees, she feels the slither throughout her trousers, lifts her eyes to the principle line and clocks it.
Her chainsaw judders in her hand. She simply . . . lower by her ropes. And now . . .
Now Miranda Rosso is fifty toes up an oak tree, and there’s not a single factor holding her in place.
“Miranda?” Carter calls from beneath her. “Oh no,” Miranda says mildly.
Beneath her, Jamie and AJ are shouting, presumably at Carter. She checks how a lot rope she has left; nowhere close to sufficient to get her down. This wasn’t a simple climb. There’s no method she will be able to get again to the bottom with out ropes. She would virtually actually die.
She shifts her weight barely. Balancing on this department felt like nothing when her major line was anchored above her, however now it feels breathtakingly harmful.
“Rosso! Keep nonetheless! That’s an order!” Jamie’s voice rings up by the leaves.
Miranda freezes.
“I’m sending AJ up!” Jamie says. “Do. Not. Transfer!”
Even now, in a state of affairs that would actually be described as near-death, Miranda finds room to suppose, Oh bloody hell, not AJ.
“Get your arse down on the department to take the load out of your legs!” Jamie says.
Effectively, okay, Miranda thinks. It’s good to have a plan, even whether it is “Get
your arse down.” She shifts little by little. One fallacious transfer and she’s going to fall by lethal strong branches, buffeted from rib-snapping blow to blow, till she lands like a rag doll within the particles on the backside of the tree.
Time is stretching and pulling like an elastic band: it’s by no means felt slower, however as soon as she’s maneuvered herself so she’s straddling the department, all of it appears to be finished in a second. She breathes out, her coronary heart slamming.
She dangers a look down, and there’s AJ, throwing his major line to loop over a department to her proper. He’s already not far under her. Within the distance she will be able to see Carter, together with his bunch of flowers, standing beside Jamie. Subsequent to the stolid, grubby Jamie, Carter seems like a mannequin man in his go well with, his glasses winking within the mild.
“You damage?” AJ calls.
“No, I’m superb!” says Miranda. “Simply feeling like a little bit of an fool, actually.”
AJ says nothing to this, grunting with effort as he leaps throughout the fork in a department and latches on together with his thighs, already taking the slack out of his flip line. He’s virtually degree together with her now, simply one department away.
“I’m going to get my flip line across the trunk. Don’t flinch.” Miranda seems insulted. “I gained’t flinch.”
His flip line comes flying towards her, the carabiner inches from her head. She flinches. AJ acknowledges it with a twitch of a smile. He’s breathless from the climb, chest rising and falling laborious, however he’s completely calm as he swings himself round to Miranda, and—so quick she doesn’t have time to panic—catches her waist together with his arm. His harness is clipped to hers inside seconds.
The hazard hasn’t handed. They’re each hanging off the identical rope; as quickly as she shifts off this department her entire physique weight shall be dragging AJ down. He’ll be unsteady in his harness, he’ll be navigating the way in which for 2 our bodies as an alternative of 1 and, most significantly, she goes to should wrap her legs and arms round him, the very considered which is already making her sizzling with embarrassment.
“You realize what to do” is all he says, quirking an eyebrow. Miranda swallows. That is an emergency state of affairs. An aerial rescue. There’s completely nothing sexual about wrapping her physique round AJ’s, provided that they’re fifty toes within the air, sporting chainsaw trousers, and nonetheless fairly prone to die.
Besides . . . AJ is respiration laborious, and taking a look at her in that regular, teasing method he has, and all of the adrenaline has her buzzing. His arms are naked and muscled and coated in scratches; an extended crimson lower intersects the tattoo of a chicken in flight that sits simply above his elbow. She’s so shut she will be able to see the pale resin-colored flecks in his brown eyes.
It feels a bit sexual.
“Okay,” Miranda says, just a little extra breathily than she would love. “I’m going to . . . seize on to you now.”
“Uh-huh,” AJ says, and she will be able to hear the laughter in his voice. “Shut up,” she says, shifting her weight in his arms. He’s strong and robust and his arm holds her tight. “That is awkward, okay?”
“When you say so.” AJ tilts in his harness, mendacity again just a little so she will be able to climb onto his physique.
Even by her fleece, Miranda can really feel the warmth of him in opposition to her chest as she wraps her arms round him and lets her harness take her weight, sliding down his body. She turns her head so her cheek is flat in opposition to his chest. One in all his arms is round her shoulders, the opposite easing out the rope in order that they’ll start their descent by the branches.
They don’t converse as they make their method down; AJ’s lips are pressed tightly along with the trouble, and his chest rises and falls in opposition to Miranda’s cheek. Once they lastly attain the bottom, they land laborious, stumbling aside of their linked harnesses.
“Thanks,” Miranda says as they regular themselves. She swallows and appears as much as meet his eyes. “Actually. Thanks. You simply . . . effectively, saved my life, most likely.”
AJ smiles as he reaches between them to unclip their harnesses. “Will you let me take you out for a drink now?” he asks.
Miranda raises her eyebrows. “My boyfriend is correct there, AJ.” “Mir!” Carter calls, on cue.
“Keep the place you might be,” AJ calls to Carter over Miranda’s shoulder. “Fool,” he mutters, taking Miranda’s elbow and main her away from the tree. Rip dashes over, dancing clumsily between their toes, sniffing at AJ’s shins.
Miranda frowns, shaking off his maintain on her elbow. “I can stroll alone. And he’s not an fool, he simply doesn’t know the place he’s allowed to face.”
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