Bring On The Love

By Nathalie M.L. Römer

They claim you've to be lucky to meet the right guy on that blind date.

But I didn't know - yet - that the man walking beside me had his heart broken a few too many times…

So… the girl he decides to chat up, is the one who has to show him what true love is really all about.

Challenge accepted…!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Emerentsia QuickReads
• Release date: Sep 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9789198690781

Nathalie M.L. Römer

Nathalie M.L. Römer is an author based in Gusselby, Sweden. She lives here with her partner Anders. Before this, she lived for over two decades in Britain. She was born and initially raised in the Netherlands, and later also lived in Curaçao. Nathalie considers herself a multi-genre author, publishing them under her imprint Emerentsia Publications she co-owns with her partner. Nathalie writes science fiction, epic fantasy, mystery, horror and romance, and she's working on books in other genres.

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Copyright © 2021 Nathalie M.L. Römer

ISBN-13: 9789198690781

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Chapter One

"H ey, Linnie, what ya doing this coming Saturday evening? Oh, and Mum says to call her sometime as she hasn’t heard from you in ages. Like in over three months apparently..."

Her statement, more than the annoyingly ‘you must go to the pub with me,’ is what causes me to grunt loudly.

My sister, who’s always the first person to get into action to organise the parties, or a museum visit, or the pub invasions, or many things to get the singletons in our large group of friends ‘hooked up’ with the guy SHE thinks is most suited to our dire situation of spending the rest of our lives alone. She already was this way before she got married last summer, but ever since then she has gone into fifth gear with this behaviour...

The only reason she’s even capable of doing this stuff is because of two factors; number one is that, as she put it, isn’t yet burdened by the bump; second, her hubby, dear Mr ‘Sweep-Her-Off-Her-Feet’ as most of us refer to him because of how spectacularly he’d got her heart won over. Two years ago, she was as single as you can get them. She’d tell you she would never, ever get involved with a guy again. Then she met HIM at Christmas. Before the snow had even melted the following January they were dating. By the summer she married John. Now, she’s organising the next three of her baby showers before number one has even arrived.

So, while she waits for the first signs of her pregnancy taking a full swing at her body, as she puts it, she’s engaged in telling us without a guy in tow where and when we’ll meet such a guy. She’d decided on the new pub, recently re-opened after two years of renovations, to be MY perfect place to find a guy.

Linnie, hurry, will ya...?

Okay, okay, don’t bite my head off, I call out at my cell phone I had to place down to adjust my choice of clothing for this outing. Nikki, are you absolutely certain about this...?

Okay, I’m Linnie to everyone except my mother who still calls me Caroline, which Nikki always thought of as a boring name. When she exerted her stubborn will on our family, and mind you, she did this when I was just four years old and this other name stuck, and her older sister - ME - became Linnie, and then she thought that her own name Nicola was also boring, or did she say was it stupid, but it doesn’t matter as she decided to BE Nikki instead...

Yes, you stupid bitch, how else are you going to land yourself a good-looking Irish guy... Nikki snaps back at me.

"Irish...? What the fuck do I want an Irish guy for?"

It’s rather simple... Nikki says.

Yeah, that’s how she’ll tell every of us singletons about meeting a guy. It’s always easy... according to her. Linnie thinks. Some famous last words when no one wants to hang out with her any more for being such a pushy bitch...

Don’t call me a bitch, you bint, I shout into the phone, that I hold away from my ear while I put on a lilac t-shirt.

"It’s, either, an Irish guy, a Spaniard on holiday, an Italian, either of the three brown guys, a creepy Asian or this teen who looks too young to be in a pub in the first place," Nikki says.

"Don’t tell me you’re there," I call out towards my phone while trying to put on a jacket over my t-shirt.

I must assess the potential candidates... Nikki’s distant voice comes from the phone lying on the bed behind me.

Candidates? I shriek loudly at my phone. "It’s not some damned competition, although with you everything always is. I remember you always trying to win at favours with Mum and Dad—and then you’d get me in trouble for your stupid pranks..."

Well then, if I cannot choose someone for you, then I insist you come here as soon as possible to find a suitable guy... Nikki says gleefully.

Before I can respond to her latest comment Nikki has hung up on me. I’m left staring at the photo decorates my cell phone. I frown when I realise it’s the photo of the failed blind date, I’d tried to organise for myself a month ago.

Was it that long ago I went out for a date? I think. What happened to me in the intervening time? Did I spend it all at home watching Netflix and all that shit...?

As I sit in front of my mirror, and stare at myself for five minutes silently, sighing a few times about what I got myself into when I promised Nikki to find a guy just like her, so we could have our kids grow up, side by side...

Do I really want all that shit...? I contemplate. I’m happy enough to stay by myself all my life. Every article in every magazine always claims that the only way to be happy is to be with a guy and later to have a few kids in tow. Maybe a guy would be okay, but I don’t think I’d want any kids...

Suddenly I feel old, even though I’m only just thirty years old. When your younger sister can make you feel even older by insisting you go on every blind date possible for the next year until she finds you the right guy...

"Yeah, that ain’t going to happen, Nikki, I blurt out loudly just to have something to say. I’d have to be a lucky to meet the right guy on any