Rumours and Red Roses Read Online Free Page A

quite liked the cheeky smile but he would be a wild one, she reckoned, and she hoped the girl had the sense to make it tough on him if or rather when he eventually moved on. For herself, she wanted a man who was reliable and sexy at the same time but it was beginning to look like an impossible combination.
    The smile that guy had shot her way left her with a good feeling for it was nice to know she still had it in her, after the disaster of Terry and her mum’s prophesies of doom, to attract a man. Terry had called her a cold cow at the last but she had not resorted to a slanging match with him, keeping her cool, knowing that, underneath it all, she had upset him a good deal more than he was letting on. Finally, the certain knowledge that her dad would have been none too keen on Terry and his decidedly dodgy family had tipped the balance. What was wrong with her? Next time, if there was a next time, she would have to be very sure before she let a man slip an engagement ring on her finger.
     
    The air conditioning was making her shiver and she slipped on a cardigan when she reached the staffroom for her lunch break. She went to the loo and checked her make-up before trying to flatten her wayward naturally blonde hair. She had quite distinctive green eyes, like a cat’s, and although men had complimented her on them, she was never sure. One guy had once accused her of having coloured contacts. As for her hair … it was the bane of her life. It was meant to be smooth and newsreader smart, but it never quite managed it, for the curls just refused to be squashed. She had her hair done at Crystals but she would like to try one of the salons here in town because Ivana, her mum’s employer, was a bit hit and miss depending on how she was feeling that day. Her mum had taken the huff and refused to do her hair any more after she had once complained so Ivana had come to the rescue – which was OK when Becky was eighteen but not so good now. Going to the same hairdresser’s for nineteen years was loyalty gone mad.
    She had to find a way to disentangle herself from Ivana’s flashing over-zealous scissors without causing an international incident. Ivana was scary. She was from Eastern Europe originally, still with that heavy accent, and if Becky left her client list she would take it as a personal insult and very likely spit on her or give her a tongue-lashing in her own language. Ivana had bagged her as a client and she couldn’t escape.
    How pathetic was that.
    Becky sighed as she ate the ham sandwich she had prepared at eight o’clock this morning. That, plus an apple and a strawberry yoghurt, was her lunch, the same lunch, give or take the flavour of yoghurt, for the past year. Throwing her rubbish in the bin, she checked the time and pulled a paperback out of her bag. She had time in her lunch hour toescape the shop but if she did that she spent money and this week money was particularly tight.
    She slipped down into the only comfortable chair in the staffroom and opened the book. Since the break-up with Terry, she was into escapist romance, a genre she normally steered clear of. The beautiful girl in the book with the impossible name of Trinity had two men chomping at the bit and could not make her mind up between them. Her dotty dithering was beginning to annoy Becky for she could make it up for her, no problem. As she saw it, there was no contest and she was just willing the girl to make the right decision.
    Like the girl in the book, she must stop being such a wimp. Being a wimp had very nearly landed her as Terry’s wife because she had got on with his mother so well and hadn’t wanted to upset her by calling off the wedding, but she had rallied at the last, thank goodness. She did have it in her to be strong if she was so minded but it would help if just sometime her mum could be on her side.
    Shelley was too often caught up with her own unsatisfactory love life. In spite of doing her best to look it, she was not