Everything Happens For A Reason (Part 1: Sex, Lies and Retribution)

By Amanda Amory

Mourning the death of her husband, Jane Dexter thought she'd never love again. But a chance meeting in a club with a handsome stranger, and a delicious one-night stand opens a can of worms that looks set to break her family apart. But will she be willing to sacrifice the love of her children for the sake of true love?

Jane's eldest daughter Cait is a showbiz journalist who has to contend with her boyfriend Martin's jealousy over her interviewing scores of attractive and in some instances, single male celebrities. Hired to interview up and coming soap actor Chris Gerrie causes Martin's green eyed monster to rear its ugly head again. There's an attraction between them, but will Cait allow this to ruin her relationship with Martin?

Middle daughter Paige is dating the charismatic David, unaware that best male friend Nicky is hopelessly in love with her. He knows that he's missed his chance to tell her, but finds himself in a quandary when he discovers that David is cheating on Paige, with someone very close to home. Does he tell her, or keep quiet?

Youngest daughter Libby is hopelessly in love with boyfriend Bill Samuels and wants to spend the rest of her life with him. But Bill has a shady past that looks set to come back and haunt him when old adversary Robbie Brett walks back into his life. Robbie wants him back in the fold, but Bill refuses to get sucked back in. Can he forget his past and live happily ever after with Libby, or will Robbie get what he wants yet again?

With the family adage "everything happens for a reason," ringing in their ears, the Dexter girls realise how true the saying really is as sex, lies and retribution tears their family life apart. A two-parter book (with part two coming soon), the Dexter girls' will take you on a whirlwind of love, life, laughter and emotion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amanda Amory
• Release date: Aug 5, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476411309

Amanda Amory

I am an aspiring writer looking to break out of the retail industry where I've been working in for 14 years and make my writing dream come true.

Book preview

EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON

(PART 1: SEX, LIES AND RETRIBUTION)

By

Amanda Amory

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY

Amanda Amory on Smashwords

Everything Happens For A Reason

(Part 1: Sex, Lies and Retribution)

Copyright © 2017 by Amanda Amory

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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCING BILL AND LIBBY

Everything happens for a reason. You may not realise it at the time, my girls, but you’ll soon come to appreciate why it happened, and more importantly, be thankful that it did...

This old adage was something often quoted by Minnie Stevens, the Matriarch of the family to her daughters Sarah and Jane, and Jane's three adult daughters Caitlin, Paige and Libby. It was religiously said to them in times of trouble, despair, failed relationships, career quandaries... and botched haircuts...

Libby Dexter wasn’t sure if what her Grandmother said was always true, because sometimes, things just happen, because it was Sods Law. But there have been other times that her canny Granny was right on the money. She was certainly on the money when Jane met the man of her dreams.

It was a story Libby and her sisters had heard many times but never got tired of hearing, for the pure romance. Jane was an 18 year old, on her way to a work, but racing to catch her bus, she caught the heel of her shoe in a pavement grate and got stuck fast.

To her rescue came a handsome passer by who tenderly removed her shoe and helped her to the nearest bench as she tried to get over her embarrassment. Her Sir Galahad coming to her aid and showing concern for her helped lift her gloom. His name was Malcolm Dexter, and with his dark chocolate skin, cheeky grin and deep soulful eyes she liked what she saw.

Her gloom disappeared altogether as he sat down with her as she waited for the next bus and cheered her up no end with his infectious banter that as her bus arrived and they said their goodbyes, he impulsively asked her for her phone number and a date for the following Saturday night, which she immediately (and happily) agreed to.

Malcolm and Jane fell in love as quickly as they met. It was so instantaneous they loved it as much as they loved each other. Five months later they were married and early the following year their first child Caitlin (more commonly known as Cait) was born, Paige and Libby then followed in quick succession.

They say that life begins at 40, but as far as Jane was concerned, a large chunk of her died that milestone birthday when Malcolm suffered a fatal heart attack at the frightening early age of 47. She missed him every day but was forever thankful for the time they had together and the children they shared - and she owed it all to her ill-made shoe catching in the grate.

That was a prime example of things happening for a reason, however, the reason for Malcolm dying so young, the Dexter women had yet to fathom. But what about other instances? Does Minnie’s maxim work then?

Take affairs of the heart, for instance. What about trying to comprehend those infuriating, head-scratching, undecipherable species not even the revered zoologist Desmond Morris can fathom out (probably because he is one). What about men? What if your boyfriend doesn’t tell you everything about his past; the whole kit and caboodle?

Does it mean he’s hiding something? Has he got a secret wife and a shed load of kids stashed somewhere? Or, God Forbid, is his silence his way of covering up a murky past? Or is it simply a case of men not opening up as easily to others as us females?

This is the burning question Libby wants answered of her latest beau, one Bill Samuels. A man so drop-dead sexy and gorgeous, her stomach dangerously flips over everytime she sees him, she feels like she‘s on a ride at Alton Towers.

A man with a great sense of humour she finds so attractive. A man with such a caring, sensitive, generous nature as well as being so tender, sensitive and wonderful in bed, her sex-drive’s gone on overdrive.  Lucky bitch. What the hell has she got to complain about?!

One itsy-bitsy niggling thing, actually. One teeny-tiny thing that she’s dying to ask him outright, but is too scared to, for fear of what the answer will be. She wants to know why he won’t tell her about his life BE: Before Elizabeth (to give her full Christian name).

She’s desperate for him to open up and tell her more than he has done, which, unfortunately, isn’t much. But she doesn’t know how. More importantly, she doesn’t know if she has anything to worry about just because he hasn’t opened up.

He’s willing to listen to her talk about herself; what’s it like being the youngest of three girls, how the family has coped after Malcolm’s death and how Jane is handling the running of the West-Indian Café the family owns. What she likes and hates about her job as a clerical worker in an office and what her hopes, dreams, aspirations and ambitions are.

But when she asks the same questions of him, he just smiles an enigmatic smile and retells the basics of his life: how his father left when he was quite young, that he’s estranged from his older brother John, but very close to his mother and Aunt Helen. How he wasn’t a model student at school but loves to draw and has quite a talent for it, thus making a modest name for himself as a freelance artist.

That’s all she can get out of him, for he’s also a possessor of another great talent: changing the subject off him and onto something else. Men can be tricky, confusing bastards, can’t they?

Mind you, they’ve only been dating for a couple of months since they met when he gallantly held the train door open for her as she hurriedly ran down the steps before they closed and a shy, thankful smile from her was enough encouragement from him to sit next to her in the near-empty carriage.

They struck up a conversation that lasted the whole of her eight stops to her destination. Later on, he admitted that he was supposed to have gotten off three stops before hers but decided to stay in the hope she’d give him her phone number.

She did, and couldn‘t stop smiling as she relayed the story to rival her mother's to her sisters, adding that it was the most romantic thing anyone‘s ever done for her, more romantic than a proposal of marriage that she had received from Gavin, her last boyfriend. A relationship that fortunately didn’t last, not that she could see that at the time. Canny Granny’s theory strikes again.

But surely, during the first few months, you’re supposed to know all there is to know about your latest boyfriend? And vice versa, he about you. To guarantee that no nasty little secrets were set to tumble out of the cupboard like tipsy, sexy revellers at a family wedding.

Well, it seems like Bill Samuels had missed that particular seminar in Relationship Dos and Don’t's 101 as he had clammed up since the day they met, and that mollusc was not coming out of its shell anytime soon.

And it was pissing Libby off no end. More so than the fact that maybe she was expecting too much, because men are different.

That was why, to get an unbiased opinion on this, one balmy Summer's evening Libby and Bill sat in a booth of the Star Of Bengal Indian restaurant with Libby’s best friend Laura and her boyfriend Steve.

It was one of their weekly nights out, but instead of being the third wheel, or even more embarrassingly, being set up with one of Steve’s undesirable friends (one who had gotten drunk very quickly and at one point during the evening tried to flick a succession of peanuts into her cleavage - Libby didn‘t let them forget that in a hurry), Libby was showing off Bill for the first time.

She had known Laura nearly all of her life; she was her confidante, her advisor and her barometer to what was the good, the bad or the ugly in her life. Libby valued her opinion and sought her approval sometimes more than her family.

Which is why she decided that if on meeting Bill for the first time Laura approved, she could also, hopefully set her mind at ease about Bill‘s inability to open up. Then, Libby would be brave enough to introduce Bill to her family, for the collective family thumbs up.

She got her chance to find out when the men got up to go outside for a post-dinner smoke outside the no-smoking establishment. Bill stroked Libby's arm and gave her an intimate smile before departing, not noticing another diner - a face from his past - and his party sat a few tables away from them.

The face from the past slowly smiled as he recognised him, watching him intently as Bill walked outside. If Bill had seen