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Spring on the Little Cornish Isles: The Flower Farm
Fans of Jill Mansell and Carole Matthews will love this gorgeous new book from the author of the bestselling Cornish Café series.

Jess has lived at the idyllic flower farm on the Isles of Scilly her whole life, but when her boyfriend Adam leaves without explanation, Jess discovers that even her little slice of Cornish heaven can be lonely.��For the first time in Will’s life, he’s met someone he can’t stop thinking about. But nothing is simple when the woman of your dreams is working for you.��Gaby is running away from painful memories, and where could be more perfect than a remote island off the Cornish coast? But to put the past behind her, she must keep moving … however much she might want to stay.��Nothing is simple, even on paradise. Will love bloom for the residents of the little Cornish Isles?

Extract

Gaby was glad the four new pickers couldn’t see her churning stomach as they gathered outside the packing shed. They’d only arrived the previous day and most bore the same expression that she must have had on her first day: a rabbit in the headlights. They shuffled around, dressed in a jumble sale mix of hats, jumpers and gloves.
There was a slight look of the chain gang about them, Gaby thought, stifling a giggle. By now, they would have realised that, until tomorrow at least, there was no way off the island even if they’d wanted to leg it. Pickers were often native Scillonians but today there was only one local who was new to picking. The other two were from the mainland UK and one was Polish. Natalia was about Gaby’s age and from a small town outside Krakow. She’d worked in various market gardens in East Anglia over the past couple of years and looked slightly less terrified than the others. She also knew Cambridge a little, which had broken the ice between them when they had been briefly introduced the previous evening.
Gaby straightened herself up to her full five feet one and a half and threw them all a confident smile.
‘OK. You’ve already had your induction and health and safety with Len yesterday, so we’re going to get straight to work,’ she said. ‘We need to pick the Daymark and Yellow Cheer today. This is a Daymark. You can tell it by the bright orange cups.’ She held up the distinctive flower in one hand and a paler yellow one in the other. ‘And this is a Yellow Cheer, but of course, we don’t want to pick any that are already in bloom like this one. We look for tight buds that will be ready to open when they reach the customers. Don’t we?’
Natalia nodded but the others seemed nonplussed.
‘Come on! You can do better than that,’ she said,  feeling like an aerobics instructor faced by a Monday morning class.
‘Yes, Gaby,’ a faint chorus and a few smirks. She suspected they knew she wasn’t used to being in charge and were obviously looking for signs of weakness.
She soldiered on. ‘You don’t have to worry anyway, because I’ll show you the exact varieties we’re going to be working on. You’ll soon be able to tell which is which by their scent alone. I’ll be around to help if anyone has any questions or problems.’
Although, by now, she could have picked and packed with her eyes shut, it was another thing instructing a group of newbies who were staring at her as if she was the fount of all knowledge.
She grinned. ‘Come on then. Let’s get on with it before this lot is already in bloom.’
The local pointed to the nearest field. ‘That’s the field we’re doing?’ he asked incredulously.
‘What? All of it?’ a skinny guy with a Scottish accent asked. He was called Robbie, appropriately enough, thought Gaby, resisting the urge to quote Burns. That really would freak everyone out.
‘Yes. It’s perfectly doable before the end of the day. Even for beginners,’ Gaby added with a touch of sarcasm. Len would have been proud. Will must have carefully calculated exactly what the novice team could pick in the time allotted. So, she was damn well going to get it done, no matter how much they moaned.