Talia Hibbert's Brown Sisters Book Set

Book 0: Brown Sisters

by Talia Hibbert

Genres: Contemporary Romance; Multicultural & Interracial Romance; Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

“A brilliant writer.” — New York Times Book Review

The bestselling and beloved Brown Sisters series, from New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Talia Hibbert, now in a single volume!

This bundle includes the following novels:

GET A LIFE, CHLOE BROWN: Tired of being boring, chronically ill computer geek Chloe Brown asks her mysterious, sexy neighbor to help her experience new things. As they check items off her “Get a Life” list, Chloe starts to wonder what really lies beneath Red Morgan’s rough, tattooed exterior… 

TAKE A HINT, DANI BROWN: After a video of Dani Brown and her grumpy coworker Zafir Ansari goes viral, she agrees to fake date him in public and stay friends-with-benefits behind the scenes. Only, Zaf is secretly a hopeless romantic, and he’s determined to show relationship-averse Dani everything she’s missing. 

ACT YOUR AGE, EVE BROWN: In order to prove she’s not just the hot mess of her family, Eve Brown takes a job as a chef at Jacob Wayne’s quaint B&B. But her sunny, chaotic energy turns his carefully controlled life upside down and has him falling hard—literally.

Release date: August 1, 2023

Publisher: HarperCollins

Print pages: 894

Sample

Prologue

Once upon a time, Chloe Brown died.

Nearly.

It happened on a Tuesday afternoon, of course. Disturbing things always seemed to happen on Tuesdays. Chloe suspected that day of the week was cursed, but thus far, she’d only shared her suspicions via certain internet forums—and with Dani, the weirdest of her two very weird little sisters. Dani had told Chloe that she was cracked, and that she should try positive affirmations to rid herself of her negative weekday energy.

So when Chloe heard shouts and the screech of tires, and looked to her right, and found a shiny, white Range Rover heading straight for her, her first ridiculous thought was: I’ll die on a Tuesday, and Dani will have to admit that I was right all along.

But in the end, Chloe didn’t actually die. She wasn’t even horribly injured—which was a relief, because she spent enough time in hospitals as it was. Instead, the Range Rover flew past her and slammed into the side of a coffee shop. The drunk driver’s head-on collision with a brick wall missed being a head-on collision with a flesh-and-blood Chloe by approximately three feet. Metal crunched like paper. The middle-aged lady in the driver’s seat slumped against an airbag, her crisp, blond bob swinging. Bystanders swarmed and there were shouts to call an ambulance.

Chloe stared, and stared, and stared.

People buzzed by her, and time ticked on, but she barely noticed. Her mind flooded with irrelevant data, as if her head were a trash folder. She wondered how much the repairs to the coffee shop would cost. She wondered if insurance would cover it, or if the driver would have to. She wondered who had cut the lady’s hair, because it was a beautiful job. It remained relatively sleek and stylish, even when she was hauled out of her car and onto a gurney.

Eventually, a man touched Chloe’s shoulder and asked, “Are you okay, my darling?”

She turned and saw a paramedic with a kind, lined face and a black turban. “I believe I’m in shock,” she said. “Could I have some chocolate? Green and Black’s. Sea salt is my favorite, but the eighty-five percent dark probably has greater medicinal properties.”

The paramedic chuckled, put a blanket around her shoulders, and said, “Would a cuppa do, Your Maj?”

“Oh, yes please.” Chloe followed him to the back of his ambulance. Somewhere along the way, she realized she was shaking so hard that it was a struggle to walk. With a skill borne of years of living in her highly temperamental body, she gritted her teeth and forced one foot in front of the other.

When they finally reached the ambulance, she sat down carefully because it wouldn’t do to collapse. If she did, the paramedic would start asking questions. Then he might want to check her over. Then she’d have to tell him about all her little irregularities, and why they were nothing to worry about, and they’d both be here all day. Adopting her firmest I-am-very-healthy-and-in-control tone, she asked briskly, “Will the lady be all right?”

“The driver? She’ll be fine, love. Don’t you worry about that.”

Muscles she hadn’t realized were tense suddenly relaxed.

In the end, after two cups of tea and some questions from the police, Chloe was permitted to finish her Tuesday-afternoon walk. No further near-death experiences occurred, which was excellent, because if they had, she’d probably have done something embarrassing, like cry.

She entered her family

 home via the north wing and skulked to the kitchen in search of fortifying snacks. Instead, she found her grandmother Gigi clearly waiting for her. Gigi whirled around with a swish of her floor-length, violet robe—the one Chloe had given her a few months ago on Gigi’s fourth (or was it fifth?) seventieth birthday.

“Darling,” she gasped, her sparkling, kitten-heeled mules clacking against the tiles. “You look so . . . peaky.” From Gigi, who was both a concerned grandparent and a painfully beautiful ragtime legend, this was a grave statement indeed. “Where were you? You’ve been ages, and you wouldn’t answer your phone. I was quite worried.”

“Oh, God, I’m so sorry.” Chloe had left hours ago for the latest of her irregularly scheduled walks—scheduled because her physiotherapist insisted she take them, irregular because her chronically ill body often vetoed things. She was usually back within thirty minutes, so it was no wonder Gigi had panicked. “You didn’t call my parents, did you?”

“Of course not. I presumed, if you’d had a wobble, that you’d collect yourself shortly and command a passing stranger to find you a taxi home.”

A wobble was the delicate phrase Gigi used for the times when Chloe’s body simply gave up on life. “I didn’t have a wobble. I’m feeling quite well, actually.” Now, anyway. “But there was . . . a car accident.”

Gigi managed to stiffen and gracefully take a seat at the marble kitchen island simultaneously. “You weren’t hurt?”

“No. A lady crashed her car right in front of me. It was all very dramatic. I’ve been drinking tea from Styrofoam cups.”

Gigi peered at Chloe with the feline eyes that lesser mortals tended to fall into. “Would you like some Xanax, darling?”

“Oh, I couldn’t. I don’t know how it would react with my medication.”

“Of course, of course. Ah! I know. I’ll call Jeremy and tell him it’s an emergency.” Jeremy was Gigi’s therapist. Gigi didn’t strictly need therapy, but she was fond of Jeremy and believed in preventive measures.

Chloe blinked. “I don’t think that’s necessary.”

“I quite disagree,” Gigi said. “Therapy is always necessary.” She pulled out her phone and made the call, sashaying to the other side of the kitchen. Her mules clicked against the tiles again as she purred, “Jeremy, darling! How are you? How is Cassandra?”

These were all perfectly ordinary noises. And yet, without warning, they triggered something catastrophic in Chloe’s head.

Gigi’s click, click, click merged with the tick, tick, tick of the vast clock on the kitchen wall. The sounds grew impossibly loud, oddly chaotic, until it seemed like a tumble of boulders had fallen inside Chloe’s head. She squeezed her eyes shut—wait, what did her eyes have to do with her hearing?—and, in the darkness she’d created, a memory arose: that crisp, blond bob swinging. The way it remained so smooth and glossy against the black leather of the gurney.

Drunk, the nice paramedic had said, sotto voce. That’s what they suspected. The lady had been drunk in the middle of the afternoon, had mounted a pavement and plowed into a building, and Chloe . . .

Chloe had been standing right there. Because she walked at the same time of day, so

as not to interrupt her work routine. Because she always took the same route, for efficiency’s sake. Chloe had been standing right there.

She was too hot, sweating. Dizzy. Had to sit down, right now, so she wouldn’t fall and crack her head like an egg against the marble tiles. From out of nowhere she remembered her mother saying, We should change the floors. These fainting spells are getting out of hand. She’ll hurt herself.

But Chloe had insisted there was no need. She’d promised to be careful, and by God, she’d kept her promise. Slowly, slowly, she sank to the ground. Put her clammy palms against the cool tiles. Breathed in. Breathed out. Breathed in.

Breathed out, her whisper like cracking glass, “If I had died today, what would my eulogy say?”

This mind-blowing bore had zero friends, hadn’t traveled in a decade despite plenty of opportunity, liked to code on the weekends, and never did anything that wasn’t scheduled in her planner. Don’t cry for her; she’s in a better place now. Even Heaven can’t be that dull.

That’s what the eulogy would say. Perhaps someone especially cutting and awful, like Piers Morgan, would read it out on the radio.

“Chloe?” Gigi called. “Where have you—? Oh, there you are. Is everything all right?”

Lying bodily on the floor and gulping air like a dying fish, Chloe said brightly, “Fine, thank you.”

“Hmm,” Gigi murmured, slightly dubious, but not overly concerned. “Perhaps I’ll have Jeremy call us back. Jeremy, my dear, could you possibly . . . ?” Her voice faded as she wandered away.

Chloe rested her hot cheek against the cold tiles and tried not to add more insults to her own imaginary eulogy. If she were in a twee sort of musical—the kind her youngest sister, Eve, adored—this would be her rock-bottom moment. She’d be a few scenes away from an epiphany and an uplifting song about determination and self-belief. Perhaps she should take a leaf from those musicals’ collective book.

“Excuse me, universe,” she whispered to the kitchen floor. “When you almost murdered me today—which was rather brutal, by the way, but I can respect that—were you trying to tell me something?”

The universe, very enigmatically, did not respond.

Someone else, unfortunately, did.

“Chloe!” her mother all but shrieked from the doorway. “What are you doing on the floor?! Are you ill? Garnet, get off the phone and get over here! Your granddaughter is unwell!”

Oh dear. Her moment of communion with the universe rudely interrupted, Chloe hauled herself into a sitting position. Strangely, she was now feeling much better. Perhaps because she had recognized and accepted the universe’s message.

It was time, clearly, to

get a life.

“No, no, my darling, don’t move.” Joy Matalon-Brown’s fine-boned face was tight with panic as she issued the nervous order, her tawny skin pale. It was a familiar sight. Chloe’s mother ran a successful law firm with her twin sister, Mary, lived her life with almost as much logic and care as Chloe, and had spent years learning her daughter’s symptoms and coping mechanisms. Yet she was still thrust into full-blown panic by the slightest hint of sickness or discomfort. It was, quite frankly, exhausting.

“Don’t fuss over her, Joy, you know she can’t stand it.”

“So I should ignore the fact that she was lying on the floor like a corpse?!”

Ouch.

As her mother and grandmother bickered over her head, Chloe decided the first universe-mandated change in her life would be her living quarters.

The mammoth family home was suddenly feeling rather snug.

Chapter One

Two Months Later

“Oh, you are a gem, Red.”

Redford Morgan attempted a cheerful grin, which wasn’t easy when he was elbow deep in an octogenarian’s toilet bowl. “Just doing my job, Mrs. Conrad.”

“You’re the best superintendent we’ve ever had,” she cooed from the bathroom doorway, clasping one wrinkled hand to her bony chest. Her shock of white hair fairly quivered with emotion. Bit of a drama queen, she was, bless her.

“Thanks, Mrs. C,” he said easily. “You’re a doll.” Now, if you’d just stop shoving bollocks down your loo, we’d be best mates. This was the third time in a month he’d been called to flat 3E for plumbing issues, and frankly, he was getting tired of Mrs. Conrad’s shit. Or rather, of her grandsons’.

Red’s rubber-gloved hand finally emerged from the toilet’s depths, clutching a soaking-wet clump of paper towel. He unwrapped the little parcel to reveal . . . “This your vegetable casserole, Mrs. C?”

She blinked owlishly at him, then squinted. “Well, I’m sure I’ve no idea. Where are my spectacles?” She turned as if to hunt them down.

“No, don’t bother,” he sighed. He knew full well it was vegetable casserole, just like it had been last time, and the time before that. As he disposed of the clump and peeled off his gloves, he said gently, “You need to have a word with those lads of yours. They’re flushing their dinner.”

“What?” she gasped, clearly affronted. “Noooo. No, no, no. Not my Felix and Joseph. They never would! They aren’t wasteful boys, and they love my dinners.”

“I bet they do,” he said slowly, “but . . . well, Mrs. C, every time I come over here, I find a little parcel of broccoli and mushrooms clogging your pipes.”

There was a beat of silence as Mrs. Conrad grappled with that information. “Oh,” she whispered. He’d never heard so much dejection in a single word. She blinked rapidly, her thin lips pursing, and Red’s heart lurched as he realized she was trying not to cry. Holy fucking hell. He couldn’t deal with crying women. If she dropped a single tear, he’d be here all night, eating bowls of vegetable casserole with enthusiasm and sparkling compliments.

Please don’t cry. I get off in ten minutes and I really fucking hate broccoli. Please don’t cry. Please don’t—

She turned away just as the first sob wracked her thin shoulders.

Sigh.

“Come on, Mrs. C, don’t be upset.” Awkwardly, he peeled off his gloves and went to the sink to wash his hands. “They’re just kids. Everyone knows kids have as much sense as the average goat.”

Mrs. Conrad let out a little burble of laughter and turned to face him again, dabbing at her eyes with a hankie. Old people always had hankies. They hid them on their bodies like ninjas with throwing stars. “You’re right, of course. It’s just . . . Well, I thought that casserole was their favorite.” She sniffled and shook her head. “But it doesn’t matter.”

Judging by the wobble in her voice, it really did.

“I bet it’s a damned good casserole,” he said, because he had the biggest fucking mouth on planet earth.

“Do you think so?”

“I know so. You have the look of a woman who knows her way around the kitchen.” He had no idea what that meant, but it sounded good.

And clearly, Mrs. Conrad liked it, because her cheeks flushed and she made a high, tinkling sound that might have been a giggle. “Oh, Red. Do you know, I happen to have some on the go right now.”

Of course she did. “Is

 that right?”

“Yes! Would you like to try some? After all your hard work, the least I can do is feed you.”

Say no. Say you have Friday-night plans. Say you ate five beefsteaks for lunch. “I’d love to,” he said, and smiled. “Just let me go home and get cleaned up.”

It took him thirty minutes to shower and change in his own flat, down on the ground floor. Came with the job. Since he led a life of daring excitement these days, he swapped his charcoal overalls for—drumroll, please—his navy blue overalls, fresh out the washer. Truth be told, he had no idea what he was supposed to wear for dinner with an old lady, but his usual shit-kicker boots and old leathers didn’t seem quite right.

It was only as he locked his front door that it occurred to Red—this whole situation might not be quite right. Was he supposed to have dinner with tenants? Was that allowed? He didn’t see the harm in it, but he was fairly new to this superintendent lark, and he wasn’t exactly qualified. Just to be sure, he pulled out his phone and fired off a text to Vik, the landlord—and the mate who’d given him this job.

Can I have dinner with the nice old lady in 3E?

Vik’s reply came fast as ever.

Whatever gets you going, mate. I don’t judge.

Red huffed out a laugh, rolling his eyes as he put his phone away. And then, out of nowhere, he heard it.

Or rather, her.

Chloe Brown.

“. . . see you for brunch, if I can,” she was saying. Her voice was sharp and expensive, like someone had taught a diamond how to speak. The sound scrambled his mind, her crisp accent reminding him of people and places he’d rather forget. Of a different time and a different woman, one who’d clutched her silver spoon in one manicured hand and squeezed his heart tight in the other.

Chloe’s husky timbre and the memories it triggered were the only warnings he received before rounding a corner and coming face-to-face with the woman herself. Or rather, face-to-throat. As in, she was right fucking there, and they collided, and, somehow, her face slammed into his throat.

Which hurt. A lot.

The impact also did something terrible to his airflow. He sucked in a breath, choked on it, and reached for her at the same time. That last part was an automatic reflex: he’d bumped into someone, so now it was his job to hold that someone steady. Except, of course, this wasn’t just anyone. It was Chloe whose waist was soft under his hands. Chloe who smelled like a garden after a spring shower. Chloe who was now shoving him away like he had a communicable disease and spluttering, “Oh, my—what—? Get off!”

Cute as a button, but her tone cut like a knife. He released her before she had an embolism, wincing when his callused hands caught on the pastel wool of her cardigan. She stumbled back as if he might attack at any moment, watching him with flinty suspicion. She always looked at him like that—as if he was thirty seconds away from murdering her and wearing her skin. She’d treated him like some kind of wild animal ever since the day they’d met, when he’d shown her around the flat he never believed she’d lease.

She’d moved in a week later and had been disturbing his peace with her ice-queen routine ever since.

“I—I have no idea how that happened,” she said, as if he’d secretly orchestrated the whole thing just for a chance to grab her.

Gritting his teeth, he tried to assure her that this wasn’t a mugging or a botched kidnapping attempt—that, despite his tats and his accent and all the other things that made classy women like her judge guys like him, he wasn’t actually a dangerous criminal. But all that came out of his mouth was a useless wheezing noise, so he gave up and focused on breathing instead. The pain in his throat faded from a poisonous yellow to a faint, lemon twinge.

He didn’t even notice her sisters until they started talking.

“Oh, Chloe,” said the shortest sister, Eve. “Look what you’ve done! The poor man’s coughing up his garters.”

The other sister—Dani, they called her—rolled her eyes and said, “Do you mean guts, darling?”

“No. Should we do something? Go on, Dani, do something.”

“And what should I do? Do I look like a nurse to you?”

“Well, we can’t let him choke to death,” Eve said reasonably. “What a waste of a gorgeous—”

Chloe’s voice carved through the bickering like a blade. “Oh, be quiet, both of you. Weren’t you just leaving?”

“We can’t leave now. Our favorite superintendent is in crisis.”

See, while Chloe had hated Red from the moment they’d met, her sisters, Dani and Eve, seemed to love him. They shared her cut-glass accent, but not her apparent classism. He thought of Dani as the elegant one, with her shaved head and her floaty, black outfits. She had a smile so pretty it should be illegal, and she flashed it like a lightbulb whenever their paths crossed. Eve, meanwhile, was the fun one, the baby sister with long, pastel-colored braids and an air of frantic energy that crackled around her like lightning. She liked to flirt. She also liked to wear polka-dot outfits and clashing shoes that offended his artistic sensibilities.

If either of them had taken flat 1D five weeks ago, that would’ve been just fine. But no—it had to be Chloe. Had to be the sister who made him feel like a rough, scary monster. Had to be the uptight princess who’d decided he was dangerous simply because of where he came from. Why she even lived here, in a cheerfully middle-class block of flats, was a fucking mystery; she was obviously loaded. After Pippa, he could spot the gloss of a wealthy woman from miles away.

But he wouldn’t think about Pippa. Nothing good ever came of it.

“I’m fine,” he choked out, blinking his watery eyes.

“See?” Chloe said quickly. “He’s fine. Let’s be off.”

God, she irritated him. The woman had just cut off his fucking oxygen and she still couldn’t show him common courtesy. Absolutely unbelievable. “Nice to see you’re still sweetness and light,” he muttered. “Teach those manners at finishing school, do they?”

He regretted the words as soon as they came out of his mouth. She was a tenant. He was the superintendent, by the grace of God and his best mate. He was supposed to be polite to her no matter what. But he’d figured out weeks ago that his good nature, his filters, and his common sense all disappeared around Chloe Brown. Honestly, he was shocked she hadn’t reported him already.

That was the weirdest thing about her, actually. She snapped at him, she sneered down her nose at him, but she never, ever reported him. He wasn’t quite sure what that meant.

Right now, her heavy-lidded eyes flashed midnight fire, narrowing behind her bright blue glasses. He enjoyed the sight on an aesthetic level and hated himself for it, just a little bit. High up on the list of annoying things about Chloe Brown was her beautiful bloody face. She had the kind of brilliant, decadent, Rococo beauty that made his fingers itch to grab a pencil or a paintbrush. It was ridiculously over the top: gleaming brown skin, winged eyebrows with a slightly sarcastic tilt, a mouth you could sink into like a feather bed. She had no business looking like that. None at all.

But he knew he’d mix a million earth shades to paint her and add a splash of ultramarine for the square frames of her glasses. The thick, chestnut hair piled on top of her head? He’d take that down. Sometimes, he stared at nothing and thought about the way it would frame her face. Most times, he thought about how he shouldn’t be thinking about her. Ever. At all.

Each word deliberate as a gunshot, she told him, “I’m so awfully sorry, Redford.” She sounded about as sorry as a wasp did for stinging. As always, her lips and tongue said one thing, but her eyes said murder. He was generally considered an easygoing guy, but Red knew his eyes were saying murder right back.

“No worries,” he lied. “My fault.”

She gave a one-shouldered shrug that he knew from experience was rich-people speak for Whatever. Then she left without another word, because their verbal battles were never actually that verbal, beyond the first few passive-aggressive jabs.

He watched her spin away, her poofy skirt swishing around her calves. He saw her sisters follow, and waved a hand when they sent him concerned, backward glances. He heard their footsteps fade, and he pulled himself together, and he went to Mrs. Conrad’s flat and ate her awful casserole.

But he didn’t think about Chloe Brown again. Not once. Not at all. 

***

Some people might say that writing a list of items to change one’s life after a brush with death was ludicrous—but those people, Chloe had decided, simply lacked the necessary imagination and commitment to planning. She gave a sigh of pure contentment as she settled deeper into her mountain of sofa cushions.

It was Saturday night, and she was glad to be alone. Her back pain was as excruciating today as it had been yesterday, her legs were numb and aching, but even those issues couldn’t ruin this peace. When she’d put pen to paper in her quest to get a life, finding her own home had been the first entry she’d written. She’d met that goal, and—unnerving superintendents aside—she had nothing but good to show for it.

Through the slight gap in her living room window’s curtains, she caught a glimpse of the September sun’s evening rays. That warm, orange glow rose above the hulking shadow of her apartment building’s west side, making the courtyard nestled at the center of the building all shadowy and peaceful, its blooming autumnal shades rich as earth and blood. Her flat was similarly soothing to the nerves: cool and silent, but for the gentle whirr of her laptop and the steady tap of her fingers against the keyboard.

Happiness, independence, true solitude. Sweeter than oxygen. She breathed it in. This was, in a word, bliss.

It was also the moment her phone blared to life, shattering her calm like glass.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Chloe allowed herself precisely three seconds to wallow in exasperation before grabbing her phone and checking the display. Eve. Her little sister. Which meant that she couldn’t simply switch off the ringer and shove her mobile into a drawer.

Drat.

She hit Accept. “I’m working.”

“Well, that simply won’t do,” Eve said cheerfully. “Thank goodness I called.”

Chloe enjoyed being irritated—grumpiness was high on her list of hobbies—but she also enjoyed everything about her silly youngest sister. Fighting the curve of her own lips, she asked, “What do you want, Evie-Bean?”

“Oh, I’m so glad you asked.”

Fudge. Chloe knew that tone, and it never boded well for her. “You know, every time I answer your calls, I quickly find myself regretting it.” She hit Speaker and put her phone on the sofa arm, her hands returning to the laptop balanced on her knees.

“What rubbish. You adore me. I am catatonically adorable.”

“Do you mean categorically, darling?”

“No,” Eve said. “Now, listen closely. I am about to give you a series of instructions. Don’t think, don’t argue, just obey.”

This ought to be good.

“Karaoke night begins in one hour down at the Hockley bar—no, Chloe, stop groaning. Don’t think, don’t argue, just obey, remember? I want you to get up, put on some lipstick—”

“Too late,” Chloe interrupted dryly. “My pajamas are on. I’m finished for the night.”

“At half-past eight?” Eve’s enthusiasm faltered, replaced by hesitant concern

. “You’re not having a spell, are you?”

Chloe softened at the question. “No, love.”

Most people had trouble accepting the fact that Chloe was ill. Fibromyalgia and chronic pain were invisible afflictions, so they were easy to dismiss. Eve was healthy, so she would never feel Chloe’s bone-deep exhaustion, her agonizing headaches or the shooting pains in her joints, the fevers and confusion, the countless side effects that came from countless medications. But Eve didn’t need to feel all of that to have empathy. She didn’t need to see Chloe’s tears or pain to believe her sister struggled sometimes. Neither, for that matter, did Dani. They understood.

“You’re sure?” Eve asked, suspicion in her tone. “Because you were awfully rude to Red yesterday, and that usually means—”

“It was nothing,” Chloe cut in sharply, her cheeks burning. Redford Morgan: Mr. Congeniality, beloved superintendent, the man who liked everyone but didn’t like her. Then again, people usually didn’t. She shoved all thoughts of him neatly back into their cage. “I’m fine. I promise.” It wasn’t a lie, not today. But she would have lied if necessary. Sometimes familial concern was its own mind-numbing symptom.

“Good. In that case, you can definitely join me for karaoke. The theme is duets, and I have been stood up by my so-called best friend. I require a big sisterly substitute as a matter of urgency.”

“Unfortunately, my schedule is full.” With a few flicks of her fingertips, Chloe minimized one window, maximized another, and scanned her client questionnaire for the section on testimonial slide shows. She couldn’t quite remember if—

“Schedule?” Eve grumbled. “I thought you were abandoning schedules. I thought you had a new lease on life!”

“I do,” Chloe said mildly. “I also have a job.” Aha. She found the info she needed and tucked it away in her mind, hoping brain fog wouldn’t turn the data to mist within the next thirty seconds. She hadn’t taken much medication today, so her short-term memory should be reasonably reliable.

Should be.

“It’s Saturday night,” Eve was tutting. “You work for yourself. From home.”

“Which is precisely why I have to be disciplined. Call Dani.”

“Dani sings like a howler monkey.”

“But she has stage presence,” Chloe said reasonably.

“Stage presence can’t hide everything. She’s not Madonna, for Christ’s sake. I don’t think you are grasping the gravity of this situation, Chlo; this isn’t just a karaoke night. There is a competition.”

“Oh, joy.”

“Guess what the prize is?”

“I couldn’t possibly,” Chloe murmured.

“Go on. Guess!”

“Just tell me. I am bursting with excitement.”

“The prize,” Eve said dramatically, “is . . . tickets to Mariah Carey’s Christmas tour!”

“Tickets to—?” Oh, for goodness sake. “You don’t need to win those, Eve. Have Gigi arrange

 it.”

“That’s really not the point. This is for fun! You remember, fun—that thing you never have?”

“This may come as a shock to you, darling, but most people don’t consider karaoke exciting.”

“All right,” Eve relented, sounding rather glum. But, as always, she brightened quickly. “Speaking of fun . . . how is that list of yours developing?”

Chloe sighed and let her head fall back against the cushions. Heaven protect her from little sisters. She should never have told either of them about her list, the one she’d written after her near-death experience and subsequent resolution. They always made fun of her itemized plans.

Well, more fool them, because planning was the key to success. It was thanks to the list, after all, that Chloe’s imaginary eulogy was now looking much more positive. Today, she could proudly claim that if she died, the papers would say something like this:

At the grand old age of thirty-one, Chloe moved out of her family home and rented a poky little flat, just like an ordinary person. She also wrote an impressive seven-point list detailing her plans to get a life. While she failed to fully complete said list before her death, its existence proves that she was in a better, less boring, place. We salute you, Chloe Brown. Clearly, you listened to the universe.

Satisfactory, if not ideal. She had not yet transformed her life, but she was in the process of doing so. She was a caterpillar tucked into a universe-endorsed chrysalis. Someday soon, she would emerge as a beautiful butterfly who did cool and fabulous things all the time, regardless of whether or not said things had been previously scheduled. All she had to do was follow the list.

Unfortunately, Eve didn’t share her patience or her positive outlook. “Well?” she nudged, when Chloe didn’t respond. “Have you crossed anything off yet?”

“I moved out.”

“Yes, I had noticed that,” Eve snorted. “Do you know, I’m the last Brown sister living at home now?”

“Really? I had no idea. I thought there were several more of us roaming the halls.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Perhaps you should move out soon, too.”

“Not yet. I’m still saving my monthly stipend,” Eve said vaguely. God only knew what for. Chloe was afraid to ask, in case the answer was something like A diamond-encrusted violin, of course. “But you moved out weeks ago, Chlo. There’s all sorts of things on that list of yours. What else have you done?”

When in doubt, remain silent—that was Chloe’s motto.

“I knew it,” Eve sniffed eventually. “You are letting me down.”

“Letting you down?”

“Yes. Dani bet me fifty pounds that you’d abandon your list by the end of the year, but I—”

“She bet you what?

“I supported you like a good and loyal sister—”

“What on earth is the matter with the pair of you?”

“And this is how you repay me! With apathy! And to top it all, you won’t help me win Mariah Carey tickets.”

“Will you shut up about the karaoke?” Chloe snapped. She ran a hand over her face, suddenly exhausted. “Darling, I can’t talk anymore. I really am working.”

“Fine,” Eve sighed. “But this isn’t the last you’ve heard of me, Chloe Sophia.”

“Stop that.”

“I won’t rest until you’re no longer such a boring—”

Chloe put the phone down.

A second later, a notification flashed up on her screen.

EVE: :)

Chloe shook her head in fond irritation and got back to work. The SEO of local restaurants, hair salons, and the other small businesses on her roster wouldn’t maintain itself. She sank into the familiar mental rhythm of research and updates . . . or rather, she tried to. But her focus was shattered. After five minutes, she paused to mutter indignantly at the empty room, “Dani bet fifty pounds that I would abandon the list? Ridiculous.”

After ten, she drummed her fingers against the sofa and said, “She simply doesn’t understand the fine art of list-based goal setting.” The fact that Dani was a Ph.D. student was neither here nor there. She was too rebellious to grasp the importance of a good, solid plan.

Although . . . Chloe supposed it had been a while since she’d taken stock. Maybe she was due a check-in. Before she knew it, her laptop was closed and abandoned in the living room while she strode off to find the blue sparkly notebook hidden in her bedside drawer.

Chloe had many notebooks, because Chloe wrote many lists. Her brain, typically fogged by pain or painkillers (or, on truly exciting days, both), was a cloudy, lackadaisical thing that could not be trusted, so she relied on neatly organized reminders.

Daily to-do lists, weekly to-do lists, monthly to-do lists, medication lists, shopping lists, Enemies I Will Destroy lists (that one was rather old and more of a morale boost than anything else), client lists, birthday lists, and, her personal favorite, wish lists. If a thing could be organized, categorized, scheduled, and written neatly into a color-coded section of a notebook, the chances were, Chloe had already done so. If she didn’t, you see, she would soon find herself in what Mum called “a wretched kerfuffle.” Chloe did not have the time for kerfuffles.

But the single list contained in the notebook she now held was not like all the others. She opened the book to the very first page and ran her finger over the stark block lettering within. There were no cheerful doodles or colorful squiggles here, because, when she’d designed this particular page, Chloe had meant business. She still meant business.

This was her Get a 

Life list. She took it rather seriously.

Which begged the question—why were its check boxes so woefully unticked?

Her questing finger moved to trace the very first task. This one, at least, she had accomplished: 1. Move out. She’d been living independently—really independently, budgeting and food shopping and all sorts—for five weeks now, and she had yet to spontaneously combust. Her parents were astonished, her sisters were delighted, Gigi was yodeling “I told you so!” to all and sundry, et cetera. It was very satisfying.

Less satisfying were the five unachieved tasks written beneath it.

• 2. Enjoy a drunken night out.
• 3. Ride a motorbike.
• 4. Go camping.
• 5. Have meaningless but thoroughly enjoyable sex.
• 6. Travel the world with nothing but hand luggage.

And then there was the very last task, one she’d checked off with alarming swiftness.

• 7. Do something bad.

Oh, she’d done something bad, all right. Not that she could ever tell her sisters about that. Just the thought made her cheeks heat. But when she took her notebook back into the living room, guilty memories dragged her gaze, kicking and screaming, toward the window. The forbidden portal to her something bad. The curtains were still closed, the way she’d left them ever since her last transgression—but there was that little gap of light trickling through.

Perhaps she should go and pull the curtains tighter, cut off that gap completely, just to make sure. Yes. Definitely. She crept over to the wide living room window, raising a hand to do just that . . . but some sort of malfunction occurred, and before she knew it, she was twitching the curtain to the side, widening the gap instead of closing it. A faint shard of light stretched toward her across the courtyard’s patio, merging with the last gasps of the dying sun, and she thought to herself, Don’t. Don’t. This is horribly invasive and more than a little creepy and you’re just making everything worse—

But her eyes kept on looking anyway, staring across the narrow courtyard, through a not-so-distant window to the figure limned within.

Redford Morgan was hard at work.

Call me Red, he’d told her, months ago. She hadn’t. Couldn’t. The word, like everything else about him, was too much for her to handle. Chloe didn’t do well around people like him; confident people, beautiful people, those who smiled easily and were liked by everyone and felt comfortable in their own skin. They reminded her of all the things she wasn’t and all the loved ones who’d left her behind.

 They made her feel prickly and silly and frosty and foolish, twisting her insides into knots, until all she could do was snap or stammer.

She usually chose to snap.

The problem with Redford was, he always seemed to catch her at her worst. Take the time when some yummy mummy had cornered Chloe in the courtyard to ask, “Is that a wig?”

Chloe, perplexed, had patted her usual plain, brown bun, wondering if she’d slapped on one of Dani’s platinum blond lace fronts that morning by mistake. “. . . No?”

The yummy mummy hadn’t been impressed with Chloe’s lack of conviction and had therefore taken matters into her own hands. Which, in this case, had involved grabbing Chloe’s hair as if it were a creature at a petting zoo.

But had Redford witnessed that disaster? Of course not. Nor had he heard the woman’s chocolate-smeared child call Chloe a “mean, ugly lady” for defending herself. Nooo; he’d swept onto the scene like a knight in tattooed armor just in time to hear Chloe call the woman a “vapid disgrace to humanity,” and the child a “nasty little snot ball,” both of which were clearly true statements.

Redford had glared at her as if she were Cruella de Vil and let the yummy mummy cry on his shoulder.

And then there’d been that unfortunate incident in the post room. Was it Chloe’s fault that some bonkers old lady named Charlotte Brown lived directly above her in 2D? Or that said bonkers old lady, sans spectacles, had mistakenly broken into Chloe’s post box and opened the letters within? No. No, it was not. It also wasn’t Chloe’s fault that she, incensed by the literal crime committed against her, had reacted in the heat of the moment by finding the old lady’s post box and pouring her morning thermos of tea through the slot. How was she to know that Charlotte Brown had been awaiting seventieth birthday cards from her grandchildren in the United States? She wasn’t to know, of course. She wasn’t psychic, for heaven’s sake.

She’d attempted to explain all of that to Redford, but he’d been glowering so very hard, and then he’d said something awfully cutting—he was good at that, the wretch—and Chloe had given up. Superior silence was much easier to pull off, especially around him. He turned her into a complete disaster, and so, by day, she avoided his company like the bubonic plague.

But at night, sometimes, she watched him paint.

He was standing in front of his window, shirtless, which she supposed made her a pervert as well as a spy. But this wasn’t a sexual exercise. He was barely even attractive in her eyes. She didn’t see him as an object, or anything like that. From a distance, in the dark, with that sharp tongue of his tucked away, she saw him as poetry. He had this visceral quality, even when he was glaring at her, but especially when he painted. There was an honesty, a vulnerability about him that captivated her.

Chloe knew she was flesh and blood and bone, just like him. But she wasn’t alive like he was. Not even close.

He was in profile, focused on the canvas in front of him. Sometimes he painted haltingly, almost cautiously; other times, he would stare at the canvas

more than he touched it. But tonight, he was a living storm, dabbing and daubing with quick, fluid movements. She couldn’t see what he was working on, and she didn’t want to. What mattered was the subtle rise and fall of his ribs as his breathing sped up, and the rapid, minute movements of his head, birdlike and fascinating. What mattered was him.

His long hair hung over his face, a copper-caramel curtain with shreds of firelight throughout. That hair, she knew, hid a strong brow, probably furrowed in concentration; a harsh, jutting nose; a fine mouth that lived on the edge of smiling, surrounded by sandy stubble. She liked to see the fierce concentration on his face when he painted, but she knew it was for the best when his wild hair covered all. If she couldn’t see him, he wouldn’t see her. And anyway, she didn’t need to see his face to drown in his vitality. The spill of copper strands over those broad shoulders; the ink trapped beneath his pale skin; that was enough.

If someone asked her what his tattoos looked like, she wouldn’t be able to describe the images they displayed or the words they spelled out. She’d speak about the dense blackness, and the pops of color. The faded ones that seemed ever so slightly raised, and the ones that flooded him like ink spilled into water. She’d speak about how strange it was to choose to bleed for something, simply because you wanted to. She’d speak about how it made her feel and how she wanted to want something that much, and on a regular enough basis, to build her own equivalent of his countless tattoos.

But no one would ever ask her, because she wasn’t supposed to know.

The first time she’d stumbled across this view, she’d turned away instantly, squeezing her eyes shut while her heart tried to break free of its cage. And she’d shut her curtains. Hard. But the image had stayed with her, and curiosity had built. She’d spent days wondering—Was he naked? Naked in front of his window? And what had been in his hand? What was he doing in there?

She’d lasted three weeks before looking again.

The second time, she’d been hesitant, shocked by her own audacity, creeping toward the window in the dark and hiding behind almost-closed curtains. She’d peeked just long enough to answer her own questions: he was wearing jeans and not much else; he was holding a paintbrush; he was, of course, painting. Then she’d stared even longer, hypnotized by the sight. Afterward, she’d crossed Do something bad off her list and tried to feel good instead of guilty. It hadn’t worked.

And this time? The third time? The last time, she told herself firmly. What was her excuse now?

There was none. Clearly, she was a reprehensible human being.

He stopped, straightened, stepped back. She watched as he put down his paintbrush, stretched out his fingers in a way that meant he’d been working for hours. She was jealous of how far he could push himself, how long he could stand in one place without his body complaining, or suffering. Or punishing him. She twitched the curtain wider, her envious hands moving of their own accord, a little more light spilling into her shadowed guilt.

Red turned suddenly. He looked out of his window.

Right at her.

But she wasn’t there anymore; she had dropped the curtain back into place, spun away, slammed herself against the living room wall. Her pulse pounded so hard and so fast that it was almost painful at her throat. Her breaths were ragged gasps, as if she’d run a mile.

He hadn’t seen her. He hadn’t. He hadn’t.

Yet she couldn’t help but wonder—what might he do, if he had?