A Winter Flame Read Online Free Page B

heavily for
a moment ‘—penguins’ feet.’
    ‘Great idea,’ Eve encouraged, although she wanted to gag slightly. Maybe they wouldn’t go with that idea either. Phoebe May had a bit of a way to go in marketing yet, but she
was spot on with the ice cream. Eve had made plans to ring her cousin Violet as soon as she got home. Violet was the queen of ice-cream making and it would be a good excuse for a long overdue
catch-up. Once upon a time they had been nigh on inseparable, but since Jonathan had blasted into Eve’s life, turned it upside down and left her so suddenly, Eve had been embarrassingly lax
about seeing her family and her friends. She had been reminded, after visiting Alison, how good it was to talk and have a coffee too – and how little time it took up really. Her business
hadn’t collapsed for taking a few hours off – she could have seen more of Violet and her mother – Auntie Susan – if she had really tried harder.
    ‘Lots of Christmas trees with sparkly lights and snow,’ continued Phoebe, on a roll now. ‘And nice shops and cakes and elves and a real Santa’s workshop. And mince pies
and rides and white horses.’
    ‘If I got this right, I could be sitting on an absolute goldmine,’ Eve mused as Phoebe reeled off a list of essentials from polar bears to snowball-fighting arenas. Shite Christmas,
with its smoking elves and Father Christmases not old enough to start shaving was a revoltingly brilliant money-spinner despite being absolute rubbish. So how much revenue would a really good,
top-notch, winter theme park bring in?
    Phoebe fell asleep an hour into the journey, exhausted from thinking up all her ideas. Eve’s brain was in overload. Having visited Shite Christmas, she saw first-hand just how much work
was involved in running a theme park, but boy was she excited about getting started.
    ‘I put it to you, Eve Douglas, that you could do this,’ said that silky, seductive barrister voice in her head. ‘If anyone can, you can.’
    And Eve knew that was true. She was a master at organization and covered every base. She had built up a reputation of being a shrewd, resourceful businesswoman who left nothing to chance –
her clients trusted her to do a polished job and she delivered every time.
    Eve hadn’t really known what she wanted to do when she left school, so drifted into office jobs and then to a building society where, eight years ago, she took a voluntary secondment into
the Events Coordination department and found her niche in life. When the secondment ended, she knew there was nothing else she wanted to do but more of the same and took a leap of faith by starting
her own events-organizing company. She’d been lucky, as one of her first clients had been let down at the eleventh hour when the organizers of his wife’s fiftieth birthday bash went
bankrupt. Eve found a barge, caterers, comedian and a band, set up a bar and had the boat decorated in pink balloons and bunting all within eighteen hours. That client was delighted – and
very well connected. Bookings began to fill Eve’s diary and recommendation followed recommendation.
    If people wanted a James Bond party, Eve Douglas didn’t just supply the music and a gold statue, she drafted in lookalikes of Bond villains complete with white cat, arranged for vodka
martinis (shaken not stirred) to be served on arrival, Aston Martin taxis, and on one occasion engineered an appearance by Pierce Brosnan. Eve went the extra mile with everything she did and the
result was that her accountant was a very happy man. Eve’s Events was a profitable and growing business and she had been approached on three separate occasions the past year alone by
companies wanting to buy her out. She had kept their details, never thinking she would open the file. But Eve knew that she couldn’t run Eve’s Events and Winterworld. Well, she could at
a push, but Eve’s style wasn’t diversifying – she liked her energies channelled