Page 68 of Cooking Up a Christmas Storm
‘That’s not a problem, is it? I can say I’ve worked in a shop before. It doesn’t tie me to this place.’
‘No. Right.’ Jill nodded. ‘I don’t suppose it does.’
‘You don’t have any experience in tourism though, do you?’ Nina took a more direct approach. ‘Or being an executive whatever it was?’
‘How do you know I don’t?’
‘Because I’ve known you all my life and you were the receptionist at the doctors before that closed, and then you did the post office and then you retired and now you do the shop.’
‘Those were all perfectly good jobs.’ Anna pouted.
‘They were. Not saying they weren’t. But these’ll be looking for tourism and hospitality and that, won’t they? And, I don’t know, designing the internet and things.’
‘I have never designed the internet,’ Anna conceded.
‘And, although we appreciate the offer, you are really needed in the village, aren’t you?’
The group jumped on Bella’s words. ‘You are,’ Flinty agreed. ‘That shop would fall apart without you.’
‘It would,’ Nina confirmed. ‘And your Hugh. He wouldn’t know which way was up if you were off all day.’
Everyone nodded.
‘That’s true,’ Anna agreed. ‘You know what men are like. Sorry, lad. Laird. Laird lad. It seems like I’m needed here.’
‘That’s OK. We understand.’ Bella left a beat before she continued. ‘And I think we have someone who’d be even better…’ Anna shot her a look. ‘I mean, just as good. And nobody at McKenzie knows her and she already has her CV all polished and up to date.’
All the eyes in the room turned to Jodie. What was happening?
‘So what do you think?’ Bella asked. ‘Could you be our woman on the inside?’
‘I…’ Could she?
‘It would mean you’d have to trust us to handle most of the gala planning here,’ Bella added.
‘And you’d have to pick a pretend name, I guess,’ Darcy said. ‘I mean, Gemma Bryant is on our website now. No picture yet. But you’d have to pick a name and be a whole other person. That would freak me right out.’
‘So what do you say? Do you think you could handle that?’ Bella asked.
Everyone was staring at her. So the suggestion was that Jodie wouldn’t be here pretending to be Gemma Bryant and pretending to be an experienced events planner. She’d be somewhere else, pretending to be a brand-new executive assistant. And she’d be pretending to be a whole third person. No. Wait. It didn’t have to be that complicated. ‘Jodie,’ she announced.
‘What?’
She smiled as broad and confident as she could manage. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I’m Jodie Simpson and I’d love to be your new assistant.’
‘Did you get the email?’
Jodie was sitting at the kitchen island in the main castle after the rest of Bella’s council of war had left and Adam had retreated to his garden.
Jodie nodded. They’d been entirely unsuspicious about her request that they email her CV over to her because of her unfortunately spontaneously exploding laptop. And now Bella and Darcy were gathered to help her tweak and amend her CV to make sure Jodie, pretending to be Gemma, pretending to be Jodie, was perfect executive assistant material.
First she had to get through reading the real Gemma’s CV without looking like she had no idea what it was going to say.
She scanned through the personal details, changing Gemma’s name to her own. ‘I can’t say I live in Reading, can I?’ She glanced again at the job ad open on her phone. ‘They’re not offering accommodation, so they’ll be expecting local candidates.’
‘You can’t put here though.’ Bella frowned. ‘We’ll have to use someone’s address from the village.’
‘Nina’s?’ Darcy suggested. ‘She takes in lodgers sometimes since her dad died.’
