Not OK Cupid: A sparkling rom-com you won't want to put down! Read online

  Copyright © 2020 Anna Kaling

  Cover images © Karen Kaspar (heart),

  Elena Medvedeva (ribbon), NadzeyaShanchuk (woman),

  House@Brasil Art Studio (easel), Snap2Art (man), Chistiakov Sergey (dog)

  all Shutterstock

  Cover design: www.lucybennett.design

  Author photo © Anna Kaling

  The right of Anna Kaling to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in this Ebook edition in 2020

  by HEADLINE ETERNAL

  An imprint of HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  eISBN 978 1 4722 6636 1

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette UK Company

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.headlineeternal.com

  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About the Author

  About the Book

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Epilogue

  Find out more about Headline Eternal

  About the Author

  Anna Kaling writes mostly British contemporary romances featuring lots of tea, rain, and passive-aggressive queuing. By day she writes about concrete erections for a construction firm, and by night she. . .well, never mind. She’s working towards being an old cat lady and is a big fan of sharks, bad horror movies, and the Loch Ness Monster.

  To find out more visit annakaling.com, or find her on Facebook /annakalingauthor or Twitter @AnnaKaling.

  About the Book

  NOT OK, CUPID

  Love doesn’t always follow the rules. . .

  Ally Rivers has three jobs, a disastrous dating record, and her gran won’t stop talking about sex with eighty-year-old Melvin. Now her best friend Sam confesses his whole family think they’re engaged. The longest relationship she’s ever been in is fabricated, and her intended is gay.

  Playing Sam’s besotted lover at a family party, Ally discovers the hot gardener she’s been flirting with is Sam’s dad, Marcus. She even sucks at fake relationships. But Marcus is on to them and embroils Ally in another scheme – encouraging Sam to come out.

  Scheming is not Ally’s forte and, worse, she and Marcus are falling for each other. After years in an unhappy marriage, he’s not letting Ally go without a fight, but she’s torn between the best friend she’ll ever have and the only man she’s ever been in love with. Either choice will leave two broken hearts, and Gran will still have a more successful love life than her. . .

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Not OK, Cupid will always have a place in my heart for being my first published novel, but I wasn’t expecting it to fill so many other places in my heart. Writing has made me so many new friends, and some old friends have been by my side the whole time, too.

  Thank you to Amanda Jain, superagent, for saying, ‘Yes,’ to an unknown author. Thank you to Kate Byrne, editor extraordinaire at Headline Eternal, for saying, ‘Yes,’ to an unknown author’s manuscript. Working with you has been a dream!

  It took many people at Headline Eternal to bring this book to the shelves. By name I can thank Lucy Bennett for the beautiful cover, and Liz Hatherall for saving me from public embarrassment with her superhuman copy-editing skills. I know there are so many others who made this book possible but whose names I never saw – thank you.

  Thanks to wonderful readers and wonderful friends AJ Watt, Cate Cameron, Jacqueline Rohrbach, Jill Corley, Jon Brierley, Kim Watt, Mandy Arnott, Martha Wilson, Natacha Billiet, Regina Partap, Sarah Stanton, Simon Reardon, Tani Hanes, and Thomas Roggenbuck.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Ally Rivers narrowed her eyes at the woman’s moustache. One remaining black hair moved up and down as she talked, waving like an antenna.

  Ally readjusted the lamp to get it in focus. ‘If you just keep still for a moment, Mrs McDonald, then we’ll be done.’

  Just as she wrapped the thread around the hair, it moved. Mrs McDonald cocked her head to peer up from the massage chair. ‘You look tired. Are they working you too hard here?’

  ‘Oh, no, Mandy’s doing me a favour with the extra hours. I’m saving up for a holiday so I want as many shifts as I can get. If I just remove this last hair . . .’

  As Mrs McDonald nodded, the hair glinted in the light. With her tongue poking out the corner of her mouth, Ally leaned in for the kill.

  Mrs McDonald frowned and cocked her head the other way. ‘It was Ibiza you went to last year, wasn’t it? Where this year?’

  Ally sat up, trying not to look at the clock. Mrs McDonald had described the office she worked in, where she was the only woman and all the men sat in silence. It sounded nothing like the salon, with its constant buzz of chat and people coming and going. Making small talk with her was the least Ally could do while she ripped her facial hair out at the roots.

  ‘If I win the lottery, the Caribbean,’ Ally replied. ‘But probably Ibiza again on a late deal. I’m not very good at saving.’

  ‘I bet you’re not.’ Mrs McDonald grinned and the hair disappeared into a wrinkle. ‘I was like you once, always out partying, always . . .’

  Ally’s mind drifted as she flexed her aching feet on the tiled floor. After fourteen days of extra shifts at the salon, the café and the bar, she’d seriously considered wearing her fluffy cow slippers to work.

  This afternoon she was finishing early. Once the moustache was vanquished she could clean her station, collect her tips and top up her tan in the park for the rest of the day. That’d be kind of like a holiday – sun, sea (there was a lake), sand (in the children’s play area), and . . . well, no sex, but there was an ice cream van. She could get one of those cider lollies that tasted like Barcelona. And maybe on her way to Mum’s she’d buy some prawns so they could cook a paella together. With a glass of white wine and dinner on Mum’s patio, it’d be like an evening in Spain. Sort of.

  She blinked back into focus when she noticed Mrs McDonald’s moustache
had stopped moving.

  ‘Sorry, what did you say?’ she asked.

  ‘I asked if we could speed it up a bit. I have a meeting at two thirty.’

  Ally flexed her feet and showed her teeth. ‘Sure. Just keep still for me and I’ll finish up.’

  ‘Ooh!’ said Mrs McDonald, as Ally leaned over her. ‘That’s a lovely necklace. Where did you get it?’

  Half an hour later, Ally stepped out of the salon into beautiful July sunshine. Her sore feet rejoiced in flip-flops – the cow slippers might’ve been a bit hot – and she could feel the vitamin D buzzing in her bare limbs. All she needed was a beach, but west London wasn’t famed for its beaches.

  At the end of the street she turned into the park and spotted the perfect patch of grass. It was soaked in sunshine, close enough to the stream to hear running water, but far enough away that she wouldn’t get eaten by a swan. If only she had a set of watercolours with her to capture the scene. She needed to build a new portfolio of paintings to go with her new ad. Not that anybody would commission her to paint landscapes, but people liked looking at that sort of thing.

  With a happy sigh she stretched out on her back, kicked off her shoes and spread her arms like a snow angel. Glorious. Who needed to be rich when you had grass and sunshine?

  Her phone rang just as she got comfortable, and she pressed it to her ear without opening her eyes. ‘Ally Rivers.’

  ‘Hi, Ally Rivers. It’s Samuel Kinsell.’

  ‘Sam! Sorry, thought you might be a client. I put that ad up on a bunch of websites. How’d you like my professional phone voice?’

  ‘Lovely. Beautiful, like you.’

  Ally opened her eyes a crack.’ You want something.’ Sam might have been the only man in her life she hadn’t lost interest in within a few months – they’d been best friends for seventeen years – but he was also gay and never showed the slightest interest in her looks. In fact, he hadn’t even noticed that time a bad dye job had turned her hair carrot-orange.

  Best not to think about the orange hair incident.

  ‘Of course I don’t want anything,’ Sam said. ‘Hey, you remember when we were fifteen and I retyped your history coursework after you dropped it in the pond?’

  ‘I couldn’t help it. A swan looked at me.’ She shot a look at the lake to see if they were listening.

  ‘Yeah. But I still typed it up and you said I was the best friend in the world and you’d repay the favour one day.’

  ‘You’ve been saving up that favour for thirteen years?’

  ‘Yup. Will you come to a party with me?’

  She kicked off her shoes. ‘A party? Sure. You didn’t need to guilt trip me into a party. Well, unless it’s filled with my exes. When is it?’

  ‘Um. Seven o’clock.’

  ‘Today?’ She dug her bare toes into the grass and felt them protest. ‘Oh, Sam, I can’t. I need a night off.’

  ‘Ally, I need you,’ Sam said in a wheedling voice. ‘It’s Gavin’s engagement party. It’s the first time Mum and Dad will be in the same room for ages, and I want them to remember how good things were so Dad can get over this mid-life crisis or whatever it is and move back in. But Gavin’s bound to try to embarrass me in front of his friends and I’m already dying of heat exhaustion and I might end up battering someone with a champagne bottle. Look, there’ll be cocktail sausages and Prosecco. And maybe I can find some rich aunts who’ll hire you for portraits of my dick-head cousins.’

  Ally closed her eyes and suppressed a sigh. Gavin. Sam had never been able to stand up to his bullying prick of an older brother, and things were awkward enough with their parents’ divorce in progress.

  ‘Well, if there’s Prosecco, sure,’ she said brightly.

  ‘Thank you, best friend ever.’ Sam’s relief was evident. ‘You didn’t have plans, did you?’

  Mum wouldn’t mind cancelling dinner, and Ally could relax on her morning off next week. Well, it wasn’t exactly a morning off, but her first shift wasn’t until eleven so she could have a lie-in.

  ‘Nah,’ she said. ‘When do you want to meet?’

  ‘Three?’

  That meant four, but he really wanted her to be on time.

  ‘Three. I’ll be there.’

  After saying goodbye, she slipped her flip-flops back on and headed for the Tube station.

  By three forty, Ally was ready in an azure cocktail dress with champagne nail polish. Twenty minutes to kill, and the sun was blazing through her living room window. She peered down at the front garden, fifteen feet below. It was in shadow thanks to the lime tree; nowhere to sunbathe.

  Hitching the dress up her thighs, she hopped on to the window sill and swung her legs outside. Her anklet caught on the latch and almost unbalanced her, but she wriggled into a comfortable position without further mishap.

  The sun spread over her skin like she’d stepped into a warm bath. She crossed her ankles against the brickwork and curled her toes in pleasure.

  She leaned forward when she caught a glimpse of bare skin. On the opposite side of the road, a few doors down, a shirtless man dug in his flowerbeds with a spade. Ally positioned herself so he was in view, but he finished gardening and went inside. Spoilsport.

  She retrieved her phone from her clutch and the OkCupid icon notified her of several new messages. She scrolled through the profiles. After discounting the ones who’d sent her unsolicited dick pics, she was left with two married men whose wives ‘didn’t understand them’ and an estate agent. Not OK, Cupid.

  ‘Ally, what the hell are you doing?’ a voice called from the street.

  Ally lowered the phone. Sam was crossing the road with his familiar stocky gait.

  ‘Sam!’ She swung her legs inside, hopped off the window ledge and ran downstairs.

  Sam was waiting on the doorstep in a black suit and a blue tie that matched her dress and made his sandy hair look brighter.

  ‘Hello, sexy.’ She threw her arms around him, not minding that he was sweaty and radiating more heat than an atom bomb.

  He kissed her cheek. ‘What were you doing hanging out of the window?’

  ‘Sunbathing.’

  He pulled back and gave her a look. ‘Out of the window?’

  ‘I can’t sunbathe inside, can I? Anyway, let’s go. Your car has air con, right?’

  Sam looked shifty. ‘Can I come in for a minute? I need to talk to you.’

  ‘Can’t you talk to me where there’s air con?’

  ‘Um. You might not want to go after this.’

  Ally stared. ‘When have I ever not wanted to go to a party?’

  ‘You’ve never been to a party like this. Trust me.’

  Uh-oh. Maybe his parents were swingers, and they’d arrive to a house full of middle-aged people in lingerie and leather. She shook her head to dispel the image. There’s no way Sam would want her in a room with his naked parents, let alone when they were . . . swinging, and Mrs Kinsell really, really didn’t seem the type, unless all the time she spent at ‘church’ was a euphemism.

  ‘I think you’d better come in,’ she said.

  In the living room she dropped on to the sofa next to him, fanned her face with a copy of Vogue, and braced herself. ‘OK. Tell me.’

  Sam cleared his throat. ‘You’re very generous, kind, helpful and, of course, beautiful.’

  ‘What have you done, Sam?’

  ‘Hey, I got you a present.’ He proffered a carrier bag, and Ally drew out an adult colouring book – her latest hobby – filled with pictures of animals.

  ‘Oh, great! Thank you.’

  ‘There are no swans in it. I checked.’

  Ally kissed his cheek again. ‘You’re the best.’

  ‘No, you’re the best. You’re the best friend I could hope for and I know you’d do anything for me.’

  ‘Hmm?’ Ally flicked through the book to see if there were any cows.

  ‘I was saying how generous you are to your best friend.’

  She dragged her attention away
from a drawing of a cute giraffe eating a branch. ‘As much as I enjoy flattery, spit it out, Sam.’

  ‘I have a confession to make.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I told a lie.’

  Ally waited.

  Sam cleared his throat. ‘You know my parents don’t know I’m gay?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘But I’m twenty-eight, so it’d look weird if I’d never had a girlfriend.’

  Ally narrowed her eyes. ‘Uh. Huh.’

  ‘So, I told a little white lie.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Hang on.’ Sam dug deeper into his pocket and pulled out a lollipop. Coca-Cola flavoured. ‘For you. Best friend ever.’

  Ally snatched it. ‘You said I’m your girlfriend?’

  He grimaced and nodded. ‘I mean, if I was going to have a girlfriend, it would have to be you. Since you’re so beautiful, not to mention kind, and would do anything for your friends. Anything.’

  Ally waved a hand to bat the flattery away. ‘How long have I been your girlfriend?’

  ‘Uh . . .’

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘Three years.’

  ‘Three years?! Sam!’ Unbelievable. Sam’s outrageous lie was her longest lasting relationship. By almost three years.

  ‘Don’t be angry. I was forced into a corner.’

  She folded her arms.

  ‘I was!’ he insisted. ‘Look, I’ve been making up girlfriends since I was sixteen and Gavin brought a girl home to meet Mum and Dad. Every time they put pressure on me to introduce a girlfriend, she’d mysteriously break up with me. I tell you, it’s lucky I’m gay because I have the worst luck with women.

  ‘Then one year Gavin got really drunk at Christmas and started telling everybody I was making it all up, hinting that women weren’t my type. Remember how he always called me a faggot when we were at school? So I blurted out that you and me had got together. I showed him a text where you said I was sexy and you loved me. I mean, he doesn’t know that you always say that even though we’d rather wax our pubic hair with sandpaper than have sex with each other. It shut him up right away, because he always fancied you in school and knew he never had a chance.