Sleeping with the Soldier. Charlotte Phillips
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THE FLAT IN NOTTING HILL
Love and lust in the city that never sleeps!
Izzy, Tori and Poppy are living the London dream—sharing a big flat in Notting Hill, they have good jobs, wild nights out … and each other.
They couldn’t be more different, but one thing is for sure: when they start falling in love they’re going to be very glad they’ve got such good friends around to help them survive the rollercoaster …!
THE MORNING AFTER THE NIGHT BEFORE by Nikki Logan
SLEEPING WITH THE SOLDIER by Charlotte Phillips
YOUR BED OR MINE? by Joss Wood
ENEMIES WITH BENEFITS by Louisa George
Don’t miss this fabulous new continuity from Modern Tempted™!
Well, here we are again—but this time I’m part of a team! This is the first book I’ve ever written in collaboration with other authors, and I hope you have as much fun reading it as I did planning and writing it.
Writing is usually very solitary—just me and my laptop—but with this book I’ve had three other fab authors to brainstorm and chat with. We shared photos and decor plans for the flat in Notting Hill, and bounced around ideas for the café where all the flatmates meet up.
The best bit has been seeing glimpses of Lara and Alex in the other books in The Flat in Notting Hill series. For once the road to happy-ever-after for my couple isn’t the limit of their story, and I can see a bigger picture of their friendships and their lives together. Add to that the wonderful vibrancy of the Notting Hill setting and this story really leapt off the page for me. I hope it does for you too!
Love
Charlotte x
CHARLOTTE PHILLIPS has been reading romantic fiction since her teens, and she adores upbeat stories with happy endings. Writing them for Mills & Boon® is her dream job. She combines writing with looking after her fabulous husband, two teenagers, a four-year-old and a dachshund. When something has to give, it’s usually housework. She lives in Wiltshire.
Sleeping with the Soldier
Charlotte Phillips
For Sam, who keeps me smiling when I think I’m rubbish. I am so proud of you.
Table of Contents
LARA CONNOR WAS aiming to corner the rich Notting Hill market in boutique lingerie and she wasn’t about to achieve that heady dream with French knickers that looked as if a club-fingered chimp had sewn them together.
She stared in disbelief at the mass of pale pink silk and delicate lace now rucked up in a tangle of mad stitches beneath the foot of her sewing machine and gritted her teeth hard enough to make her jaw ache. Above her head the banging started again with a new urgency that really brought out the hostility in her.
She liked to think she was a glass-half-full kind of person, laid-back, live and let live, default mood: happy. But the noise pollution emanating from the flat above all night, every night, had meant her sleep had been broken for weeks now. Tiredness had pushed her normally sunny attitude to the brink of her patience and, frankly, if it didn’t stop now, murder might be on the cards.
She lifted the foot of the machine, disentangled the ball of expensive fabric from the needle and examined it. Beyond saving. She lobbed it across the room into the ‘remnants’ bin. The knickers weren’t even salvageable enough to go into the ‘seconds’ bin. And having sunk every penny into this venture, she couldn’t afford to keep slipping up like this. The ‘remnants’ bin was looking far too full for her liking, and it was all the fault of the Lothario upstairs, who apparently couldn’t let a day pass by without getting laid.
The clanking and banging in the pipes had begun a few weeks ago, not long after Lara had moved in. The sudden increase in noise coincided with the return of the soldier brother of Poppy, who owned the flat upstairs. Lara had got to know Poppy quite well over the last four or five weeks, and her flatmate, Izzy. A brief hello on the stairs had quickly progressed to coffee and chat in the downstairs café. Both girls were excited to hear about Lara’s lingerie designs. Izzy had even bought a couple of samples. On her own in a new place, Lara was especially pleased to have made friends. If only Poppy’s brother could have a smidge of her consideration.
Sitting in Ignite, the ground-floor café, while Lara updated her blog courtesy of the free Wi-Fi, she’d picked up plenty of gossip from the other old-fire-station residents about Alex. He was rumoured to be some military hero, honourably discharged from the army after frontline action abroad. The building was also awash with gossip about his endless stream of women; the word was