Alphabet Weekends: Love on the Road from A to Z by Elizabeth Noble

From the Publisher

Natalie and Tom have been best friends forever, but Tom wants them to be much more. When Natalie's longtime boyfriend walks out on her just when she thinks he's going to propose, Tom offers her a different and wildly romantic proposition. He suggests that they spend twenty-six weekends together, indulging in twenty-six different activities from A to Z, and at the end of that time Tom's convinced they'll be madly in love. Natalie, however, is not so sure.

As Natalie's touring the alphabet with Tom, her mother's going through her own romantic crisis—while Tom's unhappily married sister-in-law, Lucy, struggles with temptation. And over the course of six amazing months, three generations of passionate dreamers are going to discover that, no matter how clever they are, love—and life—is never as easy as A, B, C . . .

Kirkus Reviews

From British author Noble (The Reading Group, 2005), a romance that revolves around an alphabet's worth of dates that climaxes on a trip to Las Vegas. After 35-year-old Natalie is dumped by her snarky longtime boyfriend, her oldest friend, Tom, proverbial boy next door, takes her out for New Year's Eve for some cheering-up. He half-jokingly proposes a game to prove to Natalie that she could fall for him: They will go on 26 dates, taking turns choosing the activity, one for each letter. Don't expect suspense here. Tom is kind, sensitive, cute and easy-going, yet manly. He is obviously crazy about Natalie, and all of Natalie's friends and family recognize he's perfect for her. In fact, he has already started to win her over by B, when the difficult Birth of her sister Bridget's new Baby allows them to escape the Ballet. (Proudly low-brow, Tom and Natalie disdain high-falutin' culture like ballet, opera and Ian McEwan.) In H for Hotel, they drunkenly make out but pull back. In P for Paris, they spend a romantic day and almost kiss, but again are not ready. It takes the magic of V for Vegas to ignite their passion (the alphabet's last four letters are the anticlimactic wind-down to the inevitable proposal of marriage). In counterpoint to Natalie and Tom's blossoming romance, Natalie's parents struggle to find equilibrium as they age and as illness enters their lives, while the marriage of Tom's brother Patrick and his wife Lucy disintegrates after Patrick loses his job and Lucy has an affair with her best friend's husband. Meant to be a warning, Lucy and Patrick steal the show by allowing in an occasional fresh breeze of unhappiness. Slick, skillful, predictable-and bound to be a bestseller.The cover includes a "win a trip to Vegas" offer. Agent: Emma Parry/Fletcher & Parry

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Alphabet Weekends

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Chapter One

Natalie heard Tom's car horn at seven p.m. on the dot. He was never late. But Simon always had been. Not for patients, just for her. She was still on Simon time.

At seven ten he hooted again.

'All right, you bugger,' Natalie shouted, to the empty room behind her, as she slammed the flat door.

At least she had something to pack an overnight bag for, even if it was only Tom. Natalie liked packing overnight bags. She hoarded those little bottles you could buy at Superdrug, and sachets that came in magazines, and kept them in an Anya Hindmarch bag Susannah had been given once when she was upgraded on a British Airways flight. Ever ready. It made her feel glamorous--the thought that she could head off at a moment's notice to Babington House or Gleneagles. Now it was in her holdall (fake Mulberry, M & 5), nestled alongside a travel hairdryer and two sets of matching underwear. Underwear always matched in an overnight bag.

If he'd booked one room he could think again. She wanted six feet of Frette linen all to herself, thank you very much. Thank goodness he had a bit of money. He might want to dress up the cheering-her-up process as this stupid alphabet game, but she knew they were both in it for a laugh. She was looking forward to a bit of pampering. Maybe there'd even be a spa ...

Tom had opened the boot and was leaningagainst the passenger door. 'Come on.'

'Da-dah!' Natalie spread her arms and gave a little twirl. 'I'm ready for A. Or should I say, I'm Available for A, I'm Able to A, I'm Amenable--'

'You're L for late.'

She ignored him. 'Come on, then. Where are we going? Don't keep me in suspense!'

'We're going abseiling.'

'You have got to be kidding me.'

'Nope. Kit's in the car.'

'Kit?'

'Sleeping-bag, boots--you're a size five, if the shoes I read last week were telling the truth, Rescue Remedy, ingredients for packed lunch--'

'But you're kidding really, right?'

'I am totally serious. We're booked into a bunkhouse on Dartmoor tonight, and it's going to take hours to get there, so could you close your big guppy mouth and get into the car? We had a deal.'

'I don't remember any deal where I agreed to something life-threatening.'

Tom smiled. 'You'll be as safe as houses. Trust me.'

'Yes, well, that doesn't sound very likely, does it? Trusting you has ended me up here.'

Tom started the car, and pulled out into the traffic.

Natalie watched him. His brow was furrowed in concentration, one eyebrow--the one with the tiny scar from when he had fallen off a diving-board when he was fourteen--a little higher than the other. 'Abseiling? Really?' she said.

'Really.'

'In January? Really?'

'Really.'

An hour later, on the MS, she still didn't believe him. Maybe Exeter, somewhere like that. Topsham. There must be lots of hotels around there, the ones with linen sheets, posh shampoo and spas. He couldn't be serious.

And if he was, it would prove what she had said all along, ever since that stupid conversation in the pub on New Year's Eve. He so wasn't the right man for her.

She woke herself up with her own snore, head snapping forward, and realised the car had stopped. And that it was almost pitch dark. Driving rain smudged the view of what was clearly the only building for miles around, illuminated by pale lights through tiny windows.

'We're here.' Tom stretched beside her, his forearms flat against the top of the car. 'Thanks for the marvellous company.'

'I was tired.'

'Just as well, actually. I dare say you're going to get all princess-and-the-pea-ish about the bunkhouse.'

'Very probably.'

The smell of wet neoprene hit them as they opened the door. A drying room was immediately to their left, full of dripping wetsuits swinging like carcasses in an abattoir. To their right, the living room was occupied by a couple of mouldy-looking sofas, some Formica tables and chairs, and a family in perfectly co-ordinating fleeces, engrossed in a game of Scrabble. Everywhere signs advised them to 'switch lights out', 'behave with consideration' and 'deal responsibly with litter'.

Tom was watching Natalie.

'Brownie-camp flashback. What the hell have you done, Tom?'

'You'll be fine. Let's go and find our room.'

'Our room?' She trudged after him, up the stairs.

She was about to call him presumptuous, but then she saw the bunks. You'd need to be a contortionist, let alone presumptuous. The mattress was about two feet wide, with no sides, and, it appeared, no ladder to the top. Blimey.

Natalie stood in the corner while Tom busied himself unrolling their sleeping-bags and laying them out. 'D'you want to go on top?' His eyebrows waggled suggestively at her. She was too horrified even to take the bait, and shrugged.

'So, do you fancy the pub, or a microwave meal with Mr and Mrs the Family Who Plays Together Stays Together down there?'

'Pub.'

'Are you planning to speak in whole sentences at all this weekend, or are these monosyllabic utterances the best I can hope for?'

'If you want a whole sentence you'd better feed me, then drive me home.'

He was pushing her down the stairs.

The pub helped a little. An open fire and a big bowl of chilli. Several whisky macs.

'So,' she asked, 'have you ever done this abseiling thing, then?'

'Nah. Bungee-jumped once when I was in Australia. Do you remember?'

Tom's year off. Her finals. He'd rung her at three a.m. once, off his face in some bar in Queensland, to wish her good luck in an exam. She nodded.

'I figure this can't be harder than that.'

'But you're about fifteen years older now,' she said.

'True. But I hardly consider myself to be over the hill. What about you?'

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Excerpted from Alphabet Weekends by Elizabeth Noble Copyright © 2007 by Elizabeth Noble. Excerpted by permission.
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