After the Rain

Book 0: Destination Love

by Jo Watson

Genres: Friendship; Humor & Satire; Women's Fiction; Romance; Contemporary Romance; Holiday Romance; Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

From the author of the 100,000 copy-selling rom-com, Love to Hate You! No one makes you laugh like Jo Watson! ' Jo Watson's writing puts you in a better mood. Brilliant ' Goodreads reviewer Buy Jo's uplifting new rom-com, Truly, Madly, Like Me, now! One reader says, 'if you pick up one read this summer, make it this one'! Just search: 9781472265555 If you love Sophie Ranald, Sophie Kinsella and Paige Toon, you'll LOVE Jo Watson! Some opposites attract; some rip each other's clothes off. Stormy-Rain and Marcus could not be more different: she's a free-spirited, rainbow-haired hippie; he wears a suit and over-shines his already too-shiny shoes. She believes in auras; he's governed by logic and doesn't believe in Fate. But Fate believes in them... So what happens when their worlds collide - and they are forced to embark on an epic road trip to catch a plane to a wedding on the other side of the world? The clock is ticking...and they're seriously ticking each other off. But Stormy and Marcus are about to discover just how thin the line between love and hate really is. Don't miss Jo's laugh-out-loud rom-coms, Love You, Love You Not, Love to Hate You, Burning Moon, Almost A Bride, Finding You, After the Rain and The Great Ex-scape. Love funny, romantic stories? You don't want to miss Jo Watson: 'The perfect choice for fans of romantic comedies ' Gina's Bookshelf 'It was amazing, it was hilarious ' Rachel's Random Reads 'A brilliant read from beginning to end' Hopeless Romantics

Release date: June 19, 2018

Publisher: Headline Eternal

Print pages: 295

Sample

Stormy

“Lilly, that’s totally tubular!” Stormy-Rain was probably the only person outside of the 1970s that still used the word “tubular.” And when she wasn’t using words that hadn’t been uttered in decades, she was making them up. A couple of months ago she’d tried to get the word “Funkyliciously” circulating. For some reason, it hadn’t caught on.

“Yayness, I’m so happy for you guys,” Stormy said excitedly. “So, when’s the big day?”

But as the words were out of her mouth, the phone’s speaker delivered a loud, angry hiss. This was an all-too-familiar sound that always forced her to run to the other end of her room while waving her phone in the air. But when the hissy crackle continued to drown out their conversation, she resorted to sticking her head out the window of her tiny third-floor apartment.

Her cell phone reception was dodgy at the best of times, which possibly had something to do with the fact that her phone was a prehistoric relic from the nineties, complete with jam-jar size buttons and an aerial that could easily take out someone’s eye—as everyone was always so fond of pointing out. Not that she gave three continental hoots. Besides, she just didn’t understand everyone’s obsession with having the world at their fingertips 24/7, and on a phone of all things! Phones were for phoning. Not for Googling and FaceSnapping and You-Tweetering—such technological things were simply beyond her comprehension.

“The wedding will be on the twentieth of September,” Lilly was shouting over the ever-increasing crackle. Stormy climbed out of the window and balanced dangerously on the rather rusty fire escape.

“Wait! What’s Damien’s star sign again?” Stormy shouted over the growing hiss, and a street vendor looked up at her curiously. She waved at him happily, careful not to lose her grip on the railing in the process.

“Leo!” Lilly screamed back at the top of her lungs.

“Okay, hold on, I need to check something quickly. Call me back in exactly five, I’m running out of airtime. Peace out.” Stormy hung up, jumped back inside and raced across the room, almost tripping over her pet tortoise Elvis as she went.

Once at her bookshelf, she pulled out her large, well-thumbed astrology book and reached for her reading glasses. They were the only reading glasses she’d ever owned, and well over ten years old—the cracked lens and wonky arm that had been sellotaped back together attested to that. But her philosophy was simple: why throw something away when it could still be used? Besides, she couldn’t afford new ones.

She flipped the book open with a flourish and ran her neon-purple nail down the wordy index column. “Leo, Leo, Leo, where are you . . .? AH-HA, page twenty-two,” she said triumphantly.

Stormy scanned the words on the page, “Uhm-ing” and “Ah-ing” as she went. She pulled out a pink pencil, which had been sharpened to within an inch of its life, and began scribbling some numbers and notes down on the back of an old envelope she’d fished out of her dustbin.

The phone rang again just as she’d happily finished her important calculations.

“Hey, Lil, it’s okay, you can have the wedding on the twentieth, the numbers say it’s a good day,” she reported seriously. Astrology and numerology were no laughing matters.

“Well, that’s a relief, I’ll let Damien know,” Lilly said with a slight smile in her voice.

The hiss and crackle were finally gone, so Stormy flopped down onto her pink beanbag. A few tiny polystyrene bits burst through the torn corner that she’d been meaning to staple closed. “So, where’s it going to be . . . no wait, don’t tell me, let me guess. Some fancy-pancy place like the Winelands, or the Midlands maybe? Or maybe a beach in the Cape? That would be beautiful, but you’d have to watch out for the wild penguins . . . Hey, I wonder if you could train one to bring the ring up the aisle?” she asked thoughtfully.

But Lilly didn’t answer Stormy’s question. Instead, there was a long, loaded pause on the other end of the phone, and Stormy’s psychic senses started buzzing.

“Okay,” Lilly started slowly, “please don’t hate me, but . . .” Her words were tentative and cautious, but their effect was immediate.

“No!” Stormy exclaimed, grabbing her chest as if she was in physical pain. “It’s not . . .? You wouldn’t . . .?”

“I’m so sorry, Stormy. But it is,” Lilly admitted.

Stormy took a long, deep breath, trying to quell her sudden agitation. Out with anxiety, in with love, light and fairy dust, she chanted in her head, but she was failing dismally as her heart involuntarily started beating at double time.

“Where?” she finally asked.

“Prague—it’s really beautiful—and you’ll love it there,” Lilly said.

“But, Lilly, you know I can’t fly,” she wailed, repeating her internal mantra again, Out with anxiety . . . in with, with . . . But it wasn’t helping in the slightest.

“Please, Stormy, I need you there, it wouldn’t be the same without you,” Lilly pleaded. “Besides, who’s going to help with our mother when she gets drunk and falls off a table, or worse—gets up to make one of her famously inappropriate speeches?”

Stormy and Lilly had technically only been stepsiblings for a few months, back when they were teenagers, during a rather short-lived and tumultuous marriage between their dysfunctional, dramatically inclined, drug-addicted parents that had ended in an impromptu bonfire and a near police riot. Still, Stormy thought of Lilly’s mother Ida as her own, since she was the only one she’d ever known. Stormy’s real mother had abandoned her just hours after giving birth to run off with a hippie cult called Children of the Moonbeam. True story!

Stormy snapped back to reality as Lilly issued another loud and rather long plea. “Pleeeaaaassseee?”

“But, but, but . . .” Stormy was in the grip of full-blown panic and twirled her hair around her finger frantically, something she’d done since childhood whenever she felt anxious—which had been very often. She winced a little as the tip of her hair-entwined finger started going slightly blue and tingly.

“It’s been proven that it’s more dangerous to drive than to fly,” Lilly offered in a calm, soothing tone.

Stormy stopped twirling and smacked her hand down on the beanbag, causing another puff of white stuff to fly out of the corner. “And I suppose you read that on Google?” she asked sarcastically, adding a breathy scoff to the end for added emphasis.

“Yes,” Lilly admitted tentatively and with a twinge of expectancy in her voice.

Stormy rolled her eyes dramatically, even though there was no one there to appreciate the theatrical gesture, and let out her famous do-I-really-have-to-explain-this-to-you-again sigh. “Lilly, when are you going to realize that the world government is controlling us with fake information on the World Wide Web? I mean, next you’ll be telling me that you think they really landed on the moon!”

“Didn’t they?”

“Of course not,” Stormy said. She had it on good authority that the photos of the lunar landing had been faked. It was all in the shadows, or lack thereof!

“Please . . .” Lilly was really begging now. “With a hundred cherries on top and stuff like that. And besides, they’ve already all been bought and paid for.”

Stormy swallowed hard. She could almost taste the bitter panic as it rose up from the pit of her stomach and into her mouth. Planes were not safe! If humans were meant to fly, they would have been given wings, not arms. Planes were dangerous things.

“But . . . but . . .” Stormy stuttered, the words getting caught in her tight, panic-strangled throat.

“Stormy, there’s nothing to worry about, I promise. Plus, Damien’s cousin Marcus will be on the same flight, so you wouldn’t be totally alone.”

“Like that’s supposed to be comforting. It’s not like I know the man from a bar of Adam . . .” Without even trying, Stormy also had this uncanny ability to confuse every idiom that had ever been created. But she’d never cared much for rules anyway.

Stormy ran the options through her mind a few times. Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad if there was someone else on the flight with her. At least she would have someone to talk to. “What’s Marcus’s star sign? If you find that out, at least I’ll be more prepared to meet him.”

“So you’re coming?” Lilly squealed excitedly.

“I can’t miss your wedding.”

“And what about a plus one—do we need to get you another ticket, or has that last guy reached the three-week mark?”

“The street magician? No, noooo, he passed the three-week mark two weeks ago.”

Stormy had a very strict relationship policy: she dated men for exactly three weeks and then broke it off. To date, no one had ever made it past the three-week cut-off. But oh, how she loved those three weeks! Those blissful days spent wrapped up in the delicious honeymoon phase, delightfully ignorant of each other’s foibles and flaws. By ending it then, she was ensured of happy relationship memories that never ended in pain, suffering, animosity and—in her father’s case—the odd death threat. She knew all too well that long-term relationships just didn’t work—her four bitter ex-stepmoms could attest to that.

“I’m so excited, Storm! It’s all going to be perfect with you there! I’ve got to go now, I have wedding invitations to attend to.”

“Okay. Kiss kiss, love and light, Lilly.” She hung up the phone and then sat there for a moment. A feeling was starting to niggle deep inside her. A bad feeling about flying. A feeling that sent a shiver down her spine and all the way into her toes.

At least she wouldn’t be flying alone. That was her only consolation.

Three months later

Marcus

The last thing Marcus wanted to do was babysit an anxious woman on a plane—but he’d made a promise to Damien, and he was a man who always kept his promises.

Who the hell was afraid of flying in this day and age anyway? And while he was contemplating the whole who the hell thing, who the hell was named Stormy-Rain? His mind boggled at the possibilities.

He wasn’t looking forward to this flight, at all, and he didn’t even know what she looked like. When he’d asked Damien how he’d recognize her, Damien had gotten a strange tone in his voice and said, “You’ll just know.”

What the hell was that supposed to mean?

Marcus made himself as comfortable as possible on the hard metal benches that snaked around the boarding gate. The flight was due to board in forty-five minutes so he opened the Business Day and flipped to the stock reports. Playing the stock markets was a little hobby of his, one that had made him quite a bit of pocket money over the years. Not that he needed it—his recent promotion to partner at his law firm had come with a few extra zeros on his pay check, along with some other enviable benefits.

Marcus scanned the paper and was just about to pat himself on the back for yet another shrewd investment when his phone buzzed. He pulled it out of his pocket and a wave of discomfort washed over him when he saw the message.

It was from his ex, Emma. She was supposed to have been his date to the wedding but they’d broken up several weeks ago. The break-up had completely blindsided her, or so she’d claimed. But after two months together, Marcus had realized that she just wasn’t right—and by that, he meant that she simply wasn’t wife and mother material. She had not met enough of the requirements of Marcus’s carefully thought-out list. Over the years, Marcus had put together a very thorough Excel spreadsheet that accurately scored all his partners on eligibility. Something his friends and cousin Damien thought was completely odd. Damien was always going on about how you couldn’t apply rules and logic to love. He was always talking about “that feeling” you get when you meet the right person. But when Marcus had asked Damien to explain and qualify this so-called feeling further, he couldn’t.

Well, Marcus wasn’t going to rely on some strange, nebulous feeling. He would rely on facts and his checklist. Because Marcus was looking for someone very specific. Someone stable, dependable and mature. And most importantly, someone he could settle down with. He was thirty now, after all, and successful enough to provide a good home for his future family—a family he wanted more than anything, perhaps more than he would ever admit out loud. Since he’d barely had one growing up.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Right was proving to be rather elusive thus far. And when he’d explained all this to Emma in a very calm, meticulous manner, she’d called him a cold-hearted bastard. He didn’t see it like that, though. He was simply relaying the facts to her, it was nothing personal. Besides, they’d only been together for a month. He briefly glanced at her message.

Please give Damien and Lilly my best on their wedding day. I would do it myself . . . only I’m no longer invited.

He shook his head, put his phone away without responding and turned back to the paper. But just as he’d started a highly informative article about the pros and cons of investing in Bitcoin, his focus was once again shattered, this time by a rather loud ruckus on the other side of the departures area.

“Excuse me.” A high-pitched sing-song voice seemed to cut through the chatter of the room.

“Sorry, zipping through,” it said again.

“Thanky-thanks!”

“Scuse moi!”

Feeling irritated at the disturbance, he looked up—and that’s when he smacked eyes on her.

She was small, thin and rather waiflike, but despite all this, the noise emanating from her was monumental. She was also wearing a hideous dress that looked like it had been purchased at a charity store from an aged hippie. It was a cream-colored creation, splashed with a loud, canary-yellow sunflower print. He ran his eyes down the length of the dress until he found his gaze transfixed by the ugliest pair of shoes he’d seen in a while—old, worn brown sandals that seemed too big for the dainty feet they were strapped onto. And to top the whole atrocious ensemble off: a massive pink scarf that almost hung to the floor with bright-yellow pom-poms dangling from it. He cringed.

“Just squeezing through. Cheers, cheers!” The voice was getting louder and coming closer.

But it wasn’t only the loud jet of words flying out of her mouth that was responsible for the public disturbance—it was also her bangles. Chunky wooden things and purple plastic junk with pink feathers and large shells dangled from her slender arms and clanked together as she minced. Because she didn’t simply walk—oh no—she sort of flapped about as if she had no control over her limbs. Her arms and legs seemed to veer off in random directions, knocking the odd person as she went. His eyes moved up for the first time and his gaze settled on her face.

Her hair!

It looked like a rainbow had exploded on her. Pink, purple, blue and orange radiated from her scalp. The colorful strands were braided together into a plait that hung over her shoulder and was fastened at the end by a giant purple flower. He’d never seen anyone with rainbow-colored hair before; in fact, he’d never seen anyone so utterly bizarre-looking. And then it dawned on him . . .

This must be Stormy-Rain.

Marcus

Marcus heaved a resigned sigh as he got up, straightened the cuffs of his crisp polo shirt, and walked over to her.

“Stormy-Rain?” He couldn’t believe he was actually calling anyone by that name, let alone saying it out loud for the whole damn world to hear.

“Marcus!” she exclaimed brightly, as though she were genuinely happy to see him. They’d never even met. “It’s just Stormy, or Rainy, or Rain, or even Rainbow—that’s what people usually call me. But if you want to call me Stormy-Rain, that’s also okay. Whatever floats your duck.”

“Boat,” Marcus corrected her instinctively without even thinking.

“Where?” Stormy asked, swiveling her head around as though she were really looking for a boat.

What the hell?

Marcus blinked several times as he tried to make sense of what had just happened. In the few short moments since he’d clapped eyes on her, he’d already taken measure of her personality. And she was utterly ridiculous. She obviously had verbal diarrhea. Add that to her overly saccharine disposition, and an obvious tendency towards confusion—she was just way, way too much.

“Um . . . where do you get Rainbow from?” he asked, wanting to change the subject away from boats but already grappling to find some common conversational ground between them.

“They come after the stormy rain!” She swooshed her arms around and swayed from side to side. She was so cheerful it unsettled him.

“Huh?” He felt his brow furrow as he tried to figure out what she was talking about.

“Rainbows. They come out after the rain . . .” She stuck out her wrist to show Marcus a garishly colored rainbow tattoo. “I’ve always loved them.”

Marcus looked her up and down. “Mmm, I can see that,” he muttered.

“And you’re Marcus. Aries.” Without warning, she grabbed his hand and started shaking it violently. Her bangles knocked about again, making a noise that he imagined must be reminiscent of some kind of tribal drumming circle. Perhaps that was the intention.

Marcus pulled his hand away as the overly enthusiastic handshake threatened to turn into a full-blown fist-pumping session. “Not Aries. My surname is Lewis.”

“No, no.” She burst out laughing as if he’d just made the world’s funniest joke. “Your star sign is Aries. I did some research on you, just to check out our compatibility vibey-vibes.”

Vibey-vibes? Saccharine, verbose, confused, overenergized and nonsensical. His mind continued to boggle.

“And what did you discover?” he asked, playing along out of sheer curiosity.

“Well, we’re very, very, very sexually compatible,” she reported seriously. She seemed to emphasize the word “very” rather a lot. He wasn’t sure he liked it. “We’re both fire signs—I’m a Sag. But we wouldn’t be good in a relationship. Too fiery. Too stubborn, too many arguments and differences of opinion. But we could become friends,” she concluded with yet another overly eager smile.

Despite himself, Marcus had to admit that he agreed with some of what she’d said. He could never be in a relationship with her, that was obvious. He was also stubborn, he knew that. Argumentative—yes. Fiery—most definitely. They were qualities that made him a great lawyer.

But there was one thing he vehemently disagreed with: there was no way, no way, no way (he was placing much emphasis on the “no way” here), they were sexually compatible. She wasn’t his type, at all. He usually liked women whose hair didn’t remind him of a toddler’s colorful finger painting. He wouldn’t sleep with her if she was the last woman on the planet, and he suspected the feeling was mutual. He probably wasn’t her type either—he clearly didn’t have dreadlocks, wear tie-dye clothes and play the didgeridoo, or whatever else her ilk was up to these days.

But the flight that day was eighteen hours long. Seven and a half to Doha, with a seven-hour stopover, and then another six to Prague. So despite their glaring differences, he would have to make nice.

“Here, why don’t you sit down?” Marcus asked as he moved his briefcase off the chair next to him. Stormy smiled and tossed her bags down on the floor with a loud thud as she flopped down next to him. He glanced down at her carelessly discarded luggage, and once the literal dust had settled, he tried not to recoil in horror.

Exhibit A was a strange-looking embroidered handbag that had been decorated with pins and badges and looked like it had then been dragged through a swamp, and Exhibit B was none other than an old brown guitar box covered in tattered stickers and black-marker scribbles. He quickly shifted his foot and nudged his pristine leather briefcase a little further away from her bags. Sudden thoughts of sterilizing her belongings popped into his head. But since he couldn’t do that, he pulled his soapless disinfectant out and gave his hands a quick, refreshing wipe. The gesture clearly didn’t go unnoticed by Stormy, who looked at his hands and then gave a strange scowl he wasn’t sure how to interpret. It wasn’t that he was a germaphobe, he just liked things to be clean and neat.

Marcus sat back down in his seat and then turned back to his newspaper . . . Where was he before being so abruptly interrupted? Oh, yes, the benefits of investing in Bitcoin . . .

He was just starting to regain his focus when he felt a sharp blow to his ribs.

“Ouch!” he winced out loud.

“Sorry.” Stormy smiled apologetically as Marcus turned to see her trying to cross her legs on the narrow chairs.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m just going to do some meditation before taking off.” He watched in fascination as she fluttered her eyes closed, made some strange humming sound and then let her hands come to rest in a kind of praying position. She was like an alien creature. She might as well have come from another planet. It was a miracle they even spoke the same language, breathed the same kind of air.

Deciding to ignore her, he turned back to his paper. But her deliberate, wheezy breathing was driving him mad, and his years of training as a lawyer meant he couldn’t keep quiet when he had an objection. “Do you mind?” he finally said.

Stormy turned to look at him. “Mind what?”

“Your breathing is very loud. I’m trying to read the paper.”

Stormy smiled broadly. There was absolutely no sign of fear or offence on her face, which was the type of reaction he was used to eliciting when using that specific tone. “Someone’s a grumpy grump,” she replied in a lively tone, and then, much to his absolute horror, poked his shoulder.

If there was one thing he hated, it was unnecessary touching. Especially from strangers. But it only got worse, as the poke turned into a squeeze, which then turned into a rub. “Mmmm, I see,” she said, nodding her head knowingly while kneading his neck.

Marcus pulled away quickly. “See what?”

“You carry a lot of tension in your shoulders. In fact, some deep-breathing exercises would really help to unblock your throat chakra—I think that’s probably the cause of it.”

“My shoulders and chakras are fine, thanks.” Shifting as far away from her as the narrow seat would allow, he flipped the paper open again and held it close to his face, trying to create a barrier between them.

But clearly Stormy wasn’t taking the hint and she peered over the top of his paper. “Fine, suit yourself, but it’s going to start giving you back pain and headaches. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“I’m sure I can handle it,” he hissed at her as she smiled and disappeared back behind his paper.

Stormy

Even though she’d only just met him five minutes ago, there was no doubt in her mind that Marcus was one of the most blocked people Stormy had ever encountered! And she wasn’t just referring to his throat chakra and severely knotted shoulders. It was the weekend and he was wearing a terribly claustrophobic-looking long-sleeved shirty thing with big buttons and tight cuffs, and what did you even call that color? It wasn’t quite white, it wasn’t brown, it wasn’t grey . . . beige? She cringed. He had a starched-looking black jacket over that, as well as equally stiff-looking pants on. He looked like he was going to a funeral, not a destination wedding. And what was all that disinfecting about anyway?

But right now, she had bigger concerns than his throat chakra and those ridiculously shiny lace-up shoes that were so highly polished you could see your reflection in them. She glanced up at the board above their gate: ten minutes until they started boarding, and she was starting to . . .