LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter One

      Amanda Gray slipped into the busy New York street, her hand quite unwilling to relinquish its death-grip on a medicinal macchiato. Breathing in its sweet, reassuring aroma she pondered her next move. So much for her New Year’s resolution—she was seriously out of practice at this whole taking-control-of-your-own-destiny caper.

      The plan had been to ace the job interview, not babble excessively or give the impression that she couldn’t organise her way out of a paper bag. But big-time nerves, combined with rusty interview skills, had shaken her, rendering her embarrassingly ineffectual, so that now some perfectly qualified and properly experienced personal assistant would get the position at the gallery instead of her.

      Jostled from behind, she managed to save both her coffee and her natty new interview suit from an unfortunate coming together. Picking up her pace she fought valiantly against a case of serious pedestrian envy—everyone appeared to know exactly where they were going. She knew where she needed to get to … a job that paid enough for her to move out of the house she shared with her brother Mikey. It was the least that he deserved after he’d worked so hard to win back his independence after the accident. Seeing his progress and his capacity to fearlessly embrace life again had forced Amanda to take a look at her own.

      So here she was. Absolutely, totally, one hundred per cent ready to kick-start her life again.

      The fire-blanket of butterflies that settled in her stomach was amazingly effective at dousing any melancholy she felt over her interview. Her breath hitched. She was nearly used to the butterflies trumping any feelings of confidence in her ability to make changes in her life. But since coming up with “The Plan” she reminded herself life was now all about feeling the fear and doing it anyway.

      Of course, she could always take the easy option and accept Jared’s job offer. Except she was fairly sure the question she needed to be asking herself was “why” her brother’s best friend had offered her a job. Things between them were—she quaffed back a healthy dose of macchiato to eliminate the lick of heat she felt rush to her cheeks—weird enough as it was. Or not, she hastily corrected. There wasn’t any one thing about her and Jared King that needed to be complicated.

      Stepping from the stream of traffic, she rooted around in her bag for her phone. Dragging it to the surface, she clicked on the memo function to bring up ‘The Plan’. She’d written it six weeks ago at brand-spanking-ly-New-Year’s-Day o’clock, boosted by several large cocktails in celebration of her brother’s new job with a firm of lawyers. That Mikey had challenged the hand he’d been dealt, and secured himself a fulfilling future had filled her with pride. But celebrating Mikey’s success as they welcomed in the New Year with all of their friends, it had suddenly dawned on her that if she didn’t make some changes to her own life, she was going to be left behind. While everyone had started counting down the seconds, she’d started thinking.

      Mikey had already spent his late teenage years practically raising her. On the cusp of starting his new life, there was no way she wanted to be responsible for holding him back. With alcohol making her brave she’d whipped out her phone and set about typing a three-point plan.

      1) Get a better, more challenging, job that could turn into a career.

      2) Move out into own place.

      3) Do something with your photography.

      The next day, faced with a familiar fear of change, she’d gone to delete her fledgling plan, only to thankfully remember that Mikey didn’t deserve to start worrying that his sister was in danger of turning into a bit of a flake.

      So, okay, she was a novice at changing the course of her life. And maybe the plan read a bit like a list. But for Amanda it was more of a resolution anyway. A New Year’s resolution to participate in her own life story. Scary as that felt. Unsafe as that felt. Tempting fate as that felt. She had to try.

      Now,

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