Love notes

Avis Exley opened her first
romance novel at the age of fourteen and has been reading and
writing them ever since. A slave to research, she’s travelled the
world in the company of international playboys, property magnates,
ultra-successful businessmen, medieval knights and even a Viking
prince. A typical day sees Avis lying on a silken cushion and
sipping champagne whilst auditioning handsome, well-muscled men for
a starring role in her next story.

Although brought up in the
English countryside, Avis heard the streets of London were paved
with gold and headed for the capital. It was love at first sight.
She instantly fell for the city’s history, energy and iconic
sights, and she’s so proud it’s been the focus of the world during
the Jubilee and Olympic year. Now London and Britain’s lesser-known
locations provide the inspirational backdrop for the first of
Avis’s novels to be released in e-book form. Find Avis Exley’s
extracts on Tumblr, Pinterest and Facebook to see if you can fall
in Brit Love too.

This ebook is licensed for your
personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given
away to other people. If you would like to share this book with
another person, please purchase an additional copy for each
recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or
it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to
Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting
the hard work of this author.

E-books are so easy for illegal
sites to copy redistribute without any payment going to authors.
This e-book is only available through Amazon, Lulu or sites related
to Smashwords and is not being offered for sale anywhere else. If
you downloaded this from any other website, it’s an illegal copy
and I’d be grateful to hear where you found it. [Don’t worry, I
won’t make you pay for it again!]

If you’ve enjoyed this book,
please tell your friends about it, or lend them your e-book reader
so they can read it for free, but please don’t share the electronic
file. Pirate sites prosper at the expense of authors – so put the
money where it deserves to go and there’ll be plenty more books for
you to enjoy in the future.

Thanks so much for your help,
Avis xx
[email protected]

Copyright

2012 Avis Exley

All rights reserved. This e-book
[or any portion thereof] may not be reproduced or used in any
manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the
author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Whilst I’d love the characters
to be real, this is a work of fiction. Except for London’s iconic
hotels and landmarks, all other names, characters, events, places
and brands are a product of the author’s imagination. Any
resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.

Advisory – 18+ content. This hot
romance is intended for an adult audience only.

To make this story even more
exciting, it has its own Tumblr and Pinterest pages, with pictures
of the novel’s iconic locations and story extracts. Share the
romance by finding out more about the book’s settings and visiting
the places the characters live, work and fall in love.

Pinterest
http://pinterest.com/avisexley/
Tumblr
http://avisexley.tumblr.com/

Please friend me on Facebook too
http://www.facebook.com/AvisExleyRomanceAuthor

“I hate England!’ Marty Cooper
glared out of the helicopter window at the rain-soaked Yorkshire
countryside, barely visible in the gathering dusk. “How the hell
can they say God was an Englishman when he created this miserable
place? Does it always rain?”

He had no idea Erika had
switched off her headphones shortly after take-off so she wouldn’t
need to listen to his constant complaining.

Everything about Marty Cooper
irritated her these days – from the way he rushed his food, to the
fact that his mobile phone was pressed permanently against his ear.
His loud, lazy drawl, barking and whinging into the phone, had
become the soundtrack to her life lately and she tuned out as often
as possible.

“…it’s like stepping back two
hundred years every time I set foot here,” he continued, nudging
Erika with his knee until she looked at him. “We need to get back
to the States as soon as possible.”

Erika lip-read the last although
she knew well enough how he felt. For two years Marty had shouted
down every suggestion that she return to England for a break and
invented one excuse after another to keep her in Los Angeles – her
concert tour had to be extended because every date had sold out;
the record company were pushing for the next album and there was a
penalty clause in her contract; there were guest appearances booked
on one talk show after another; a commitment to record the
soundtrack for the next big rom-com movie.

This endless round of
appearances month after month, had eventually brought Erika to the
point of exhaustion – and it wasn’t just those around her who’d
noticed. Celebrity magazines ran articles on how painfully thin
she’d grown and their photographs highlighted the signs that she
hadn’t slept properly in months.

More seriously, her lowered
immune system meant she’d caught every cold and virus going and a
series of throat infections had taken their toll on her voice. To a
trained ear, its once-sweet tones had been reduced to something far
more stretched and raw until every note put irreparable strain on
her throat.

Erika thanked heaven for the New
York doctor who’d finally recognised her precarious state of her
health and ordered her to rest for at least a month. He’d even
recommended a colleague in London – a throat specialist who looked
after the world’s most famous voices – finally giving Erika the
perfect excuse to return home, against all of Marty’s better
judgement.

“I still say California would
have been better for your health than Yorkshire,” Marty continued
above the noise of the helicopter, not caring that Erika wasn’t
answering. He enjoyed the sound of his own voice too much to ever
fall silent. “Sunshine, the beach, windows that don’t let this
stinking weather in. What’s to choose?”

Fortunately for Erika, the
flight from Leeds airport to the hotel was mercifully short and she
clung to the fact that, within a few minutes, she’d be in her own
room with a locked door between her and Marty Cooper. If she had
her own way, she’d stay there for a year, letting in no one except
room service and the occasional beauty therapist.

All she wanted to do was sleep,
eat, read and take some long walks across the moors to gradually
build up her strength again.

She owed herself this time and
nothing short of an earthquake would dislodge her from England
before the month was up, no matter how much Marty complained

The rain cleared slightly
allowing a distant view of the hotel and Erika’s heart lifted. All
the way back from Los Angeles she’d pinched herself, unable to
believe she was actually going to England. It was purely
psychological but she’d felt better the minute she’d set foot on
British soil, as if drawing new energy from finally being home.

She touched Marty’s arm and
pointed at the country house hotel half hidden by leafless trees
but his reaction was rather less enthusiastic than hers and he
grimaced. The helicopter touched down on the front lawn, the rotor
blades slowing as a porter unfastened the door. Within an instant,
Marty was out, had taken the umbrella from the porter’s hand and
was sprinting across the lawn toward the hotel.

“Don’t worry,” Erika said to the
embarrassed young man. “You have no idea how often I’ve dreamed
about standing in cold, English rain. This is heaven.”

She inhaled deeply, feeling the
icy air burnish her sore throat and sting her lungs. The occasional
gust of wind whisked her breath away and the rain lashed at her
cheeks but she was in no rush to go inside, despite the drips that
found their way under her coat collar. She couldn’t remember the
last time she’d been so unobserved – not a camera in sight – and
she savoured the feeling by slowing her walk.

When she eventually stepped
inside the hotel she found it exactly as she’d remembered it. It
had been five years since she’d last been there but it every detail
had remained the same as the picture in her head. A perfect
re-creation of understated luxury, where country-house elegance met
boutique hotel, and all were underpinned by Yorkshire hospitality.
The pressures peeled away like layers of uncomfortable clothing and
the knots of tension across her shoulders began to slacken as Erika
finally relaxed.

“It’s a pleasure to have you
staying with us, Miss Fenn,” the desk manager said.

Erika glimpsed curious faces
peering at her from around the office door and smiled again,
knowing the staff would have been warned to keep their distance and
that she didn’t need to worry about being pestered here.

She picked up her key and was
half way to the lift when she heard Marty calling her back.

“I’ll see you downstairs in an
hour,” he said, breaking off from a complaint over the size of his
suite. “I want to go through the schedule for the next month.”

“Schedule?” Erika thought for a
minute she must have misheard. “There is no schedule. I’m here to
rest, not work.”

“No one stands still in this
business for that long. I’ve lined up meetings in London with the
European tour promoters for the day after tomorrow…”

“I don’t care.” Erika cut him
short, made brave by her return to England and the jet lag nagging
behind her eyes. “I’m here to relax and, right now, my schedule
involves having a bath, going to bed and probably sleeping for the
next two days.”

“So what am I supposed to do?”
Marty’s threadbare patience finally gave way and he shouted so
loudly everyone in the lobby turned to listen. “We’re not exactly
in downtown L.A. here and there’s enough rain coming down outside
to float the Ark. Now you want to abandon me for the next two
days.”

“The next month, actually.”
Erika dropped her voice, determined not to make a scene like
Marty’s. “And in any case, I didn’t ask you to come. I can sleep,
read, walk and swim perfectly well without your help. Do us both a
favour – catch the next train to London.”

“And leave you here alone? I
have my assets to protect. You wouldn’t be safe without me.”

Erika objected to being
described as an “asset” but let it go. The sooner she escaped to
her room, the better.

“Hotel security is perfectly
adequate,” she told him instead. “And most of the time I’ll be
either locked in my suite or walking the grounds. Plus, no one even
knows I’m here.”

Marty raised his eyebrows at her
naivety. “Are you kidding? The whole world knows you’re here by
now. Anyone at the airport, or the hotel, could have phoned the
press. This time tomorrow, the place will be crawling with
paparazzi.”

Someone living in the harsh
glare of publicity didn’t need reminding that there was no real
hiding place and that information was a commodity to be traded to
the highest bidder. However, Erika failed to see how the presence
of Marty – a heavy drinking, unfit, insomniac – could add anything
to her personal safety, but she knew better than to say so.

“I’ll cross that bridge when I
come to it,” she told him. “In the meantime, I’m going to bed.”

Marty’s protests followed her to
the lift where the porter waited. Anticipating her need to escape,
he put himself between Erika and Marty and closed the doors,
leaving Marty looking as though he would cheerfully have strangled
Erika had she not been the goose that laid the golden eggs.

It had been Erika’s intention to
sleep until noon but it was barely light when she woke the next
morning. She stretched, turned over and tried to fall asleep again
but she’d been in bed for fifteen hours, her body clock was still
on Los Angeles time and she felt wide awake. After tossing and
turning for a few more minutes she propped herself up on a pile of
pillows and switched on the TV in time for the six-thirty
headlines.