Around the World with My Ex: Travel round the world with the latest book from bestselling author Maxine Morrey!

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Title Page

Copyright

Author Bio

Acknowledgements

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty One

Chapter Twenty Two

Chapter Twenty Three

Chapter Twenty Four

Excerpt

Endpages

Advert

About the Publisher

Chapter One

‘Take a seat, Mia.’ My boss, Jeremy, waved at the chair opposite his desk. I took it, trying to read his face in order to assess whether this was going to be a good or bad experience. I got nothing so I smiled, sat down and hoped for the best.

‘As you know, Olivia, my daughter, is getting married this Christmas.’

I nodded, still smiling. ‘I do, boss, and I can assure you I’ll write the best piece I’ve ever done for her special day.’ I tried to come across as genuine without sounding like a suck-up. To my ears, it didn’t seem to be working but he waved my comment away and didn’t throw out one of his verbal barbs like he normally did if he thought someone was trying to pull something – and I liked him for it. Jeremy was a good boss. He was tough and didn’t take crap from anyone. He’d tell you when you’d done a good job and didn’t hold back when he thought you could do better.

‘Yeah, yeah, I know that. You know you’d be out on your arse if you didn’t and you’re a bright girl, so…’ He did a palms-up kind of gesture to punctuate his statement. ‘This isn’t about that. That’s a given. This is a different assignment.’

My heart sped along a couple of beats. I’d been working on the ‘Hatches, Matches and Despatches’ section of the national weekend paper for the last three years. Our publication was unusual in that we still produced an actual weddings section, and despite the popular cynicism about marriage, readership figures for it continued to be high so it certainly seemed we were doing something right. Although my own life hadn’t exactly taken the route of skipping down a rose petal-strewn path, I enjoyed my job and loved the heartfelt feedback we received, both from the couples featured, and from readers. But I was ready to move on, and my real goal was to write for the travel section. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one with that ambition. There were an awful lot of people after that particular glittering prize and the current resident writers and freelancers guarded their posts jealously. Understandably.

‘Olivia and Sandeep are planning this big trip in the run-up to the wedding and now they’ve decided they want it documented.’

And like most young, rich and beautiful women, what Olivia wanted, she tended to get.

‘Bit last-minute, I know, but there we are.’

‘Right,’ I replied, slightly confused. If this was a travel piece, there were plenty of other journos he could use. With the exception of a couple of pieces on rural getaways in Norfolk earlier in the year, my portfolio of travel cuttings was pretty thin. Jeremy knew my goals – the original position I’d applied for had been travel writer. But I knew I’d only got that other assignment because the regular contributor had had “a prior commitment”. Privately, I knew that “commitment” was merely a commitment never to go to Norfolk if he could help it, accustomed as he was to such destinations as the Seychelles and Martinique. Luckily, I had no such prejudices. I’d had a brilliant time and absolutely loved writing the pieces. Jeremy had been pleased but nothing more had come my way – excepting a few dagger looks from the writer who’d supposedly been unavailable and who would have preferred me to have fallen flat on my literary face.

Jeremy leaned back in his expensive, custom-made leather chair and looked at me.

‘I want you to do it. More precisely, Olivia wants you to do it.’

‘You do? She does?’ Having never actually met Olivia, I was a little surprised to discover she even knew I existed.

‘She reads the wedding section religiously every Saturday. Absolutely loves it.’

‘Oh! Right. Wow. That’s…very flattering.’

‘It’s not flattering, it’s the truth. You’re a good writer and Liv knows good writing when she sees it.’

‘But this would be more of a travel piece?’

‘I suppose you could call it that, to an extent.’

I caught sight of one of the resident travel writers wandering past the glass walls of Jeremy’s office looking tanned and relaxed. As he should be, having spent most of the morning regaling us all with tales of his latest assignment at a luxury resort in Mauritius. Smug didn’t even begin to cover it. Jeremy followed my gaze.

‘He’s not still banging on about Mauritius, is he?’

I set my expression to non-committal.

Jeremy smirked. ‘Right. Very diplomatic, Mia.’ He shrugged. ‘He’s a pain in the arse, but he writes really good copy.’

‘That’s what it’s all about.’ I acknowledged the bare truth of it all before looking back at my boss. ‘But you don’t want him on this assignment because…’

‘This isn’t for the paper. It’s a private job and I want people on it who I trust. You’re going to have a level of access to my daughter that others might find tempting to use as a means of furthering their own career. People in this business can be pretty cutthroat. You know that. If someone thinks they can get something on the daughter of an internationally prominent media tycoon… Isn’t that what they call me?’ He pulled a face. ‘Anyway, getting to me via Liv? They know it’ll sell papers and magazines. It doesn’t matter that I might have given them their first break, or took them out for a ridiculously overpriced dinner the last time they were in town. They know what opportunities and financial reward this sort of access might offer them. And I won’t lie – it’s a hell of a lot more than I’ll be paying you for the job. But I’m asking you not only because Olivia – and I – love your writing, but because I know that, out of all the people I work with, you’re one of the few I’d trust with a secret. And about the only one I’d trust with my daughter’s privacy.’

I looked up, suddenly and very unexpectedly, feeling a little emotional.

Jeremy screwed up his face. ‘Oh shit. You’re not going to cry, are you?’