Second Chances Boxed Set: 7 Sweet & Sexy Romances in 1 Book

by Tracey Alvarez

  She swallowed painfully. "So there's no other way?"

  Bridget tapped her pen. "Unless you can come up with a way to start selling books in the next four weeks, no. Not that I can see. You would have to come up with some sure fire promotional tool and get people off the main road and down this street, get new clientele and even if you came up with an idea, marketing and promotion cost a fortune and you haven't got the budget to do it. If you had the money I'd suggest rebranding." She shook her head. "But you'd just be biding time before, let's face it, you'd have to shut Poppy's down. I'm so sorry, Daisy."

  Daisy glanced out the window. It had been a risky move to begin with. She was down a side street of mainly offices and most people only came down here if they couldn't get a park on the main road or were trying to find the internet cafe or the latest hot restaurant the critic had raved about in the local paper, which was never in this street anyway.

  Why did she ever think she could go into business when she had a perfectly good – albeit soul destroying – job playing nice with grieved mobile phone customers at a call center?

  The shop had been her dream. That's why.

  Bridget said, "So Daisy. What are you going to do?"

  Poppy's had been her dream.

  Daisy inhaled sharply and felt something – determination maybe – resolve in her gut.

  She wasn't going to let it die. She straightened her shoulders.

  If she had to change, she was going to change.

  She announced, "I'm going to fight."

  Bridget's eyes nearly bulged. "Fight? How?"

  Daisy's mind was careening into overdrive. "That, I don't know."

  Bridget rolled her eyes. "Daisy, you need to see sense, you need to–"

  "No." She pushed herself away from the table and went to look out to the cars below, and further up to Ponsonby Road, up to where the people were. Driving to and from work in their expensive cars.

  The Ticking Clockers were up there. And she needed to get the Ticking Clockers in here.

  She repeated, "I'm going to fight."

  For Poppy. For the readers who wanted real books. For herself.

  She heard Bridget stand up behind her, the scrape of chair feet on floor boards. "Well, it sounds like you've made up your mind. And all I can say is, good luck. I really hope it works."

  Bridget began to shove her papers back in her satchel, and they walked downstairs and out onto the street. She'd managed to nab a park across the road and in silence she pulled her keys from her pocket, then glanced at Daisy.

  "Sorry to rush off like this but I've got a lot to do at home. I'm doing a talk on preparing for retirement at the school Old Girls' Association breakfast tomorrow. Seven thirty start. You'll never guess who's on the organizing committee?"

  Daisy shook her head as she glanced back up at the light on in her apartment above the shop. How much longer would it be hers, her home?

  "Lisa Carter," Bridget was saying. "She was a year ahead of you at school, right? She says 'hi'."

  Daisy dragged her gaze away from her window. From the curtains she'd made to co-ordinate with the cushions she'd embroidered. "Lisa? I haven't seen her in years. How is she?"

  "Funny you ask that because it is so obvious she is getting work done." Bridget indicated her nose, chin and lips.

  Daisy winced. "At our age? Why bother? But then she was really into her looks. Do you know," she mused, "that we once got set up on a double blind date and she didn't show? Neither did my date. It was so embarrassing." Daisy felt her face heat just thinking about it now, how she'd been stuck in that restaurant not knowing what to do. Her first and only blind date.

  "I can imagine." Bridget shuddered, hauled her satchel over her shoulder and held her beeper out towards her car. "So what happened? Did Lisa take one look at the guy and leave?"

  "Pretty much." Lisa had told her all this the next day. She'd heard his nickname was Big Ben which had not gone down well with a girl who took extreme measures to keep her weight down. Naturally, when she laid eyes on him – he wasn't massive but he was certainly chubby – Lisa had turned right back around and walked out.

  Daisy never knew what happened to her date but she suspected it had been the same thing. He'd clearly taken one look at her and high-tailed it out of there.

  But the thing was... Daisy thought back hard, frowned. Lisa's guy had been – he'd been nice. She tried to remember what he'd looked like but it was hard considering they'd polished off a bottle of chardonnay and she'd never been all that good with drink to begin with, and it wasn't as if she'd been interested in – Ben? She'd been looking out for... What was his name, the guy she was meant to have been on the date with?

  Bridget gave her a quick hug. "Bye, Daisy. Call if you need me," and with a wave, she climbed into her car and headed up the street to Ponsonby Road.

  Daisy shivered at the sudden rush of cold and went back inside, locked the door, and climbed thoughtfully up the narrow staircase to her apartment.

  She and Ben had chatted, they'd chatted a lot, but there'd been none of the nerves you got on a first date because they weren't on a first date. They were the rejects and they'd just joked about it. Then he suggested they might as well eat, and after the meal she remembered there was a 24-hour film festival on and neither of them felt tired so they'd watched a couple of subtitled Italian movies and ended up down at the waterfront at six am to watch the sun rise.

  Daisy went to re-heat her coffee in the microwave and tried to remember Ben, tried to recall what he looked like. For the life of her, she couldn't. He'd been tall with dark hair and she supposed he was cute looking enough. His hair had been around his face in no particular style, as if he couldn't be bothered getting it cut. And he'd worn glasses.

  The microwave beeped and she took out her coffee. Yet she remembered that exact moment at the waterfront.

  She'd felt oddly alert, even after being up all night, but most of all she remembered how he'd put his arms around her and rested his chin on her head with just the right amount of pressure so it didn't hurt, and it had felt unbelievably nice.

  He had made her feel protected.

  And she had never seen him again.

  He was getting ready to leave Auckland and move to some place – she couldn't remember where.

  She'd sometimes wondered – if he'd stayed, would they have had a chance, she and Ben? Would he have asked her out on a "real" date? Probably not. He was smart. An intellectual. The worst kind of man for her.

  She went over to the window and looked up to Ponsonby Road, and forced all thoughts of Ben from her mind.

  She had to focus on the shop. Had to make it work, had to save it. She had to do it. She breathed in. But not for the reasons Bridget had said. Not because it was a soppy connection to their grandmother.

  No. She had to do this for herself.

  To prove she wasn't the failure her family thought her to be when up to now there'd been little to tell them otherwise.

  Twenty-four hours later, Daisy had the solution.

  It had taken her a sleepless night and much brainstorming.

  She had brainstormed with herself in the shower, then she had brainstormed all over Ponsonby.

  She had walked the streets of Ponsonby and St Mary's Bay and Grey Lynn to get a handle on what these women wanted when they seemed to have it all.

  She scoured bookshops to see what she was competing with. There were women's bookshops, cookbook shops, rare book bookshops and general stores stocking popular fiction.

  She stopped at a Turkish cafe and watched Ticking Clockers and women who had once been Ticking Clockers but were now frazzled professionals approaching menopause with babies.

  That'll be me one day, she thought. If she was lucky. These were women like Kate – Dr Joel's sister.

  She paused to consider Dr Joel a moment as she sat down at a table on the footpath outside the cafe.

  Just thinking about him sent a shiver up her spine. His voice. His height. The power in th
ose shoulders. His slim hips in those jeans. That blurry picture of him in the gladiator costume.

  He was vaguely familiar so clearly there was some Benjamin resemblance in the family genes after all, and even though they'd all grown up in Auckland, Kate and Joel had been posh eastern suburbs while Daisy was working class west.

  She focused back on her plan.

  On trying to tap into that Ticking Clocker market.

  They didn't want self help, that much was clear. They were confident. Educated. Contented enough. If they wanted babies, they had science and money at their disposal.

  At times they might not believe it, but they were in fact living the dream.

  A dark haired man walked by, making her think of Joel again. Clearly this was a sign.

  Daisy finished her coffee and took the inner link bus to the city and to the university where she bought Joel's introductory book to ancient Rome. It was a first year text, he'd said, accessible to all. Back home she paused for a moment across the road from her shop and with a sinking heart, examined the store.

  It was painted in blue and yellow with splashes of pink. The writing was swirly and quaint and had been painted by Michelle's brother, Adam, a graphic designer. He had also designed her business cards and flyers.

  She glanced at her window display of china teacups, artfully arranged books by Michelle who had an eye for such detail, and a quilt with co-ordinating cushions. It had been designed to look as though someone was relaxing there, sipping tea and reading on a cool afternoon.

  It made her heart melt just looking at it. She'd made the quilt last year and incorporated a log cabin pattern with gorgeous lavender and baby blue.

  But what was the point? No one could see it if no one came by her store and Ticking Clockers didn't have time to make quilts. They just went to expensive interior design stores and paid obscene amounts of money for something that wasn't actually that hard to do anyway.

  She went back up to the cafe on the corner of Ponsonby Road, ordered two flat whites, and took them back to Poppy's.

  Inside Michelle was re-arranging books on shelves, and Daisy made her way thoughtfully to the counter. Naturally there were no customers in the shop.

  She set the coffees down and took Joel's book out of her bag.

  There had been something about the way he had lectured that had made her forget she was sitting on a little padded seat in a cold lecture theatre. She'd never heard that lecturers could be like that. All her friends who'd gone to university had just whined and complained and then they'd drifted apart from her as they'd forged ahead and she'd...

  Failed?

  Determination gripped her. She was not going to lose Poppy's. She was going to make it work.

  She carefully pulled the book out from the paper bag.

  On the back cover was a photograph of Joel. A head shot. He looked grim.

  He was far better looking in real life which was unusual. Most authors she'd ever met had gorgeous photographs but were a bit of a disappointment in the flesh.

  She put the pages to her nose and breathed in deep the smell of the fresh, new paper. Wonderful. Every time.

  Michelle shot her a cursory glance and came over.

  “So that’s what that is. I should have known." She balked at the price sticker on the cover. "Crikey. I thought you were in dire financial straits?"

  "I am. This is my very last splurge. It's like giving poverty the finger."

  "And yet you nearly had heart failure at the ninety nine bucks I spent on the A to Z of Guys and Girls. Interesting. Still, it’s good to see you preparing for his next great lecture. Teacher’s pet.”

  Daisy turned the page and was confronted by pictures of something called Etruscan bakeware.

  “Although," Michelle said, "I'm not sure in your dire situation there's a lot of use to be had in reading about...” She glanced down at the page. “Etruscan bakeware?" She shuddered. "Reading about cooking pots that have been dug up out of centuries of disease-infested filth while you avoid taking any concrete action when your shop is in potential crisis–”

  "I've got a solution." Daisy handed Michelle her coffee, pulled the lid off her own and said, "Here it is." It was the answer. She just knew.

  She announced, "It's Dreams By Poppy."

  Michelle screwed her face up. "You've lost me."

  "I'm going to rebrand the shop and call it "Dreams." Then underneath. "By Poppy."

  "Dreams?"

  Daisy nodded.

  "Dreams By Poppy," Michelle repeated dubiously.

  Daisy could see it so clearly she could taste it. "It's not about your life sucking and feeling like a failure or about feeling inadequate and wanting to change yourself in to a different person or to be a 'better you' and all that stuff. It's about dreaming. Everyone dreams. Even people who have everything dream because that's how they got there. They had a dream and they followed that dream. You, for example, dream of Mr. Right."

  "True," Michelle admitted.

  "And I dream of the shop being a success."

  "So," Michelle said thoughtfully, "where does patchwork and the knitting and the embroidery fit in?"

  Daisy felt a sharp pang in her chest. "Most of it is going to have to go." That was the hard bit, the truly painful bit. As she'd clutched Joel's book for dear life, standing because the bus was full and the driver appeared to be in a hurry judging by his speed around corners, she had realized she had to cut back on stocking crafts to make way for new stock. She was in fact going to have to cut back drastically, but the truth was she wouldn't have time to indulge herself anyway. Not when she was going to have to embrace social media, keep her website updated, drop leaflets off around the neighborhood – all the stuff that didn't take a lot of money but took time.

  She was facing hard slog, and stocking shelves with knitting and patchwork and beadwork books was not financially viable. She rubbed her chest.

  "I'm also going to have to stock more stuff like The A To Z of Guys and Gals," she admitted. "Let's face it. We all dream of a great relationship even if we don't want to admit it."

  Interest began to glow in Michelle's eyes. "Go on."

  "We stock a wider selection. Some fiction. What's Star Trek and regency romance if it's not dreaming?"

  "Agreed," Michelle murmured approvingly.

  "But it's the non-fiction we change. For example." Daisy breathed in deep, felt anticipation rise inside her. "We could do themes." Her mind flicked to Joel Benjamin. "Say a French month. We take the French-related books we've got and get a few more in. French cooking, fashion, furniture, movies. We play French music, put up travel posters."

  "That's not a bad idea."

  "I think it might appeal to the Ticking Clockers. Even they have dreams."

  Michelle nodded. "I like it."

  Daisy held her breath. "You really do?"

  "Yeah. I think it's so inspired, yet it's so broad. And you keep Poppy's dream alive in the name of the shop."

  "I'll need new signage." She glanced around. She'd need a total repaint most likely.

  "Do you want me to call Adam, see if he can do the work?"

  Daisy breathed out a sigh of relief. "Would you?" He'd done such a good job on the original Poppy's artwork. "There's not a lot of time though and we need to start working on it now. It's not like I can close the shop for weeks and do some posh re-launch."

  Michelle nodded. "I'll call him tonight." She took another sip of her coffee. "I'll give him one of those flyers for the lectures series, too. He used to be in to roman battle re-enactments a few years back. Dr Handsome's talk might appeal to him."

  Daisy grinned. "I'm sure Dr Handsome would appreciate another male to counteract all that French perfume. Did we have spare flyers?"

  "A few. And I'm not sure if Kate was trying to tell us something but there was also some notice about a new TV show called Mystery Date in there. Do you know anything about it?" She pulled a folded piece of paper from her pocket. "I wasn't sure what it had to do with a un
iversity lecture but I went to the website and it's for real. It's a dating show like the ones they used to have back when we were kids."

  "You don't have time to find romance, Michelle." Daisy turned the page of the book to more photos of Etruscan bake ware.

  "I don't know," Michelle murmured. "I know it's crackpot but I've been thinking..."

  Daisy stared at the pots in Joel's book. They were cracked pots. The floral rose and lavender inspired bowls on the home wares shelf at the supermarket were better.

  "I actually wonder if it's not such a dumb idea."

  Daisy glanced at her. "You what?"

  Michelle focused on the leaflet. "I'm thinking of trying out for this TV show."

  Daisy glanced over at the advertisement. "A dating show? On the TV? You're not serious."

  Michelle shrugged. "I kind of am."

  "You would seriously go on a trashy, reality TV show?"

  Michelle pounced. "But that's the thing. This isn't trash reality TV. Reality has gone. It's dead. Buried. Everyone's had a guts full of it. That’s why the dating show is making a come back in a big way on the network. Auditions are next week. I want you to come with me."

  Daisy glanced out across the small store to check no one was inadvertently privy to this and said, “Michelle." She massaged her forehead with her fingertips. "I’m as game as the next girl for a bit of excitement." She thought of how many nights she'd spent in front of the TV quilting. "Within reason. But do you honestly, from the bottom of your heart, believe I would do something like this?” It was enough to make her shudder just thinking about her friends, her neighbors, her mother tuning in for a nice quiet night’s viewing with a cup of tea and a bran muffin only to witness her daughter trying to get herself hooked up with a stranger.

  Michelle pulled up the stool next to her and leant her arms on the counter. “I've kind of made the decision. I’m going to audition.”

  Exposing yourself on TV was real, that was the end of it. Real. Why on earth would any one do that?

  "It's your life," Daisy sighed.

  "It's not so bad really. For a start, you don't get losers on this show. You should see the criteria and the application process. Anybody who gets past the process could advertise the fact and be flooded with marriage proposals.”