Baby It's Cold Outside. Kerry Barrett

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      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

       Chapter 9

       Chapter 10

       Chapter 11

       Chapter 12

       Chapter 13

       Chapter 14

       Chapter 15

       Chapter 16

       Chapter 17

       Chapter 18

       Chapter 19

       Chapter 20

       Chapter 21

       Chapter 22

       Chapter 23

       Chapter 24

       Chapter 25

       Chapter 26

       Chapter 27

       Chapter 28

       Chapter 29

       Chapter 30

       Chapter 31

       Chapter 32

       Chapter 33

       Chapter 34

       Chapter 35

      Chapter 36

      Chapter 37

      Chapter 38

      Chapter 39

      Chapter 40

      Chapter 41

      Chapter 42

      Chapter 43

       Excerpt

       Endpages

       About the Publisher

      Friday

       Chapter 1

      I was happy. Really happy. So happy my cheeks hurt from smiling. I found Jamie’s hand under the table and squeezed his fingers. He turned to me and grinned.

      ‘We’re getting married,’ he said.

      ‘I know!’

      ‘Finally,’ my cousin Harmony – who was always called Harry – said with an arch of her perfectly shaped eyebrow. I scowled at her across the empty dinner plates, but I wasn’t going to let her spoil my mood, not tonight.

      We’d just arrived in Claddach, the tiny Highland town where we’d grown up, and we were enjoying a welcome family dinner. My mum was there, my sharp-tongued cousin Harry and her wife Louise, and Harry’s mum, Suky – my mum’s twin sister. It was brilliant.

      In exactly one week and one day from now, Jamie and I would be married. Harry was right, it had taken us a long time to get here, but now we had arrived. And everything was going to be perfect.

      ‘Can I just say,’ I said looking round the table. ‘That I am so excited and relieved to finally be here. I know this week – and of course Saturday itself – is going to be the best week of my – of our – lives.’

      Mum, who was sitting on the other side of me to Jamie, squeezed my arm.

      ‘It’s going to be wonderful,’ she said.

      A commotion at the back door made us all look round, and our great friends Eva and Allan fell into the kitchen, stamping snow from their boots.

      ‘It’s coming down very heavily out there,’ Eva said in her brisk Yorkshire accent. ‘It’s bloody freezing.’

      She spotted me and swooped, gathering me into her considerable chest and hugging me so tightly I couldn’t speak.

      ‘There’s nothing of you, love,’ she said. ‘Have you been doing that five:three diet?’

      I wriggled out of her hug and grinned. Eva always told me and Harry – and now Louise too – we were too thin.

      ‘I’ve got a dress to fit into,’ I said. ‘A beautiful, wonderful dress.’ I looked at Allan. ‘How’s everything at the café?’

      ‘It’s grand,’ Allan said, pulling up a chair. We all shuffled round, and almost imperceptibly the table seemed to grow, just enough, so we all fitted. I glanced at Mum and she winked at me.

      Allan produced a fat, green cardboard file.

      ‘We’re all set,’ he said. Jamie and I were getting married at the café that was owned by Mum, Suky and Eva. It had a gallery upstairs, called The Room Upstairs, which was run by artist Allan, and where they held functions. Its big windows gave it an amazing view over the loch, and it was the ideal venue for our wedding.

      Allan opened the folder.

      ‘Hang on,’ I said. I waggled my fingers over the table, which was covered in dirty plates, and watched in satisfaction as they all rose into the air in a shower of pink sparks and stacked themselves neatly in the dishwasher.

      ‘Ah witchcraft,’ said Jamie happily, leaning back in his chair and taking a sip of wine. ‘It makes life so much easier.’

      He was right. I came from a family of witches – me, Mum, Suky and Harry all had the gift. We could clear a dirty kitchen with a flick of the wrist, produce bottles of wine on a whim, and help people with all sorts of problems. Mum, Suky and Eva – who was also a witch – enchanted the cakes and biscuits they sold at the café. Sometimes the help they gave was asked for, sometimes it wasn’t, but it always worked. Harry had built a whole career out of her talents, with a website for witches called Inharmony.com and a luxury spa in Edinburgh where she offered up spells on demand for extortionate prices. Me, I was a lawyer and for years I’d shied away from my witchcraft. Now, though, I embraced it – mostly. Jamie, who was a doctor like both his СКАЧАТЬ