Jane & Edward: A Modern Reimagining of Jane Eyre - Softcover

Edwards, Melodie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593440773 ISBN 13: 9780593440773

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

This powerful reimagining of Jane Eyre, set in a modern-day law firm, is full of romance and hope as it follows the echoing heartbeats of the classic story.

A former foster kid, Jane has led a solitary life as a waitress in the suburbs, working hard to get by. Tired of years of barely scraping together a living, Jane takes classes to become a legal assistant and shortly after graduating accepts a job offer at a distinguished law firm in downtown Toronto. Everyone at the firm thinks she is destined for failure because her boss is the notoriously difficult Edward Rosen, the majority stakeholder of Rosen, Haythe & Thornfield LLP. But Jane has known far worse trials and refuses to back down when economic freedom is so close at hand.
 
Edward has never been able to keep an assistant—he’s too loud, too messy, too ill-tempered. There’s something about the quietly competent, delightfully sharp-witted Jane that intrigues him though. As their orbits overlap, their feelings begin to develop—first comes fondness and then something more. But when Edward’s secrets put Jane’s independence in jeopardy, she must face long-ignored ghosts from her past and decide if opening her heart is a risk worth taking.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Melodie Edwards has a BA from the University of Toronto, a master’s degree from McMaster University and Syracuse University (2023), studied comedy writing at the Second City Training Centre, and works in communications. Jane & Edward is her first novel.

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Chapter 1

She hated burgers.

Hated the smell of them, the sight of them, the over-­puffed buns and leaky meaty grease that dripped out of them, hated the sticky condiment bottles that shuffled from table to table to accompany them, and the ever-­present customer complaints of overcooked/undercooked. As if there was some universal color wheel of patty pinks and browns that she should have memorized to the nth degree.

It’s possible she liked burgers as a child, she mused waiting for order-­up by the kitchen, but she really couldn’t remember. She didn’t often think of before or beyond this job, except for today. Even rarer for her to think back on her childhood.

Last day, last day, last day. Order­ up table six, check ready table nine. She pushed past the swinging doors into the dining room, a heavily laden tray in one hand, four burgers and a child-­sized spaghetti bowl, and a sticky leather check folder in the other. She wove among the tables, a rictus smile of polite calm on her face, while her feet moved madly below. I’m that Jetsons character with the wheels for feet. Whee!

“Burger well-­done for you, burger medium-­rare for you, burger just shy of well-­done for you, and spaghetti.” She plopped the last dish down in front of the booster seat.

“You sure this is medium-­rare? I don’t think medium-­rare is this pink.”

“I assure you the cook understood your request for medium-­rare, but if you’re dissatisfied with it I can take it back to the kitchen and bring you another. It’ll take about fifteen minutes.” She put on her best blank expression. A fifteen-­minute wait deterred some customers, but only if they hadn’t figured out that the delay was designed to frustrate their request.

“Well . . . I guess it’s all right.”

Blow me over with your enthusiasm. “I hope you enjoy your meal.” Choke on it. “I’ll be back shortly with a drink refill.”

Left turn, right turn, and a check for the creep at table nine. Last day, last day.

“Here you are, sir. Cash or credit?” She rested a hand on the credit card machine in her apron pocket, but table nine’s eyes strayed higher to fix on her chest. The uniform supply cupboard was always short of size smalls, and the baggy size large helped hide the constant sweat that came with the exertion of the job; between that and her barely developed figure, she wondered what exactly table nine thought he was ogling.

“Sir? Cash or credit?”

“Cash. I always pay for a meal in cash. If I put it on my card I’ve passed it before I’ve paid for it.” He laughed.

Charming. “I’ll be right back with your change.” She reached for the money, but table nine took that opportunity to wrap his fingers around her wrist and tug her hand closer.

“I’ll leave you a big tip.”

Jane smiled queasily, hearing the buzzing white noise of muted panic inside her head, as she did whenever a situation like this occurred. No matter how many times it occurred. She kept her expression carefully blank.

He released her wrist with a final leer, the grease of his fingertips leaving a burger-­scented trail behind on her inner wrist like a swipe of sick perfume. She turned back to the kitchen, forcing her pace to stay the same as usual, surreptitiously rubbing her wrist against her apron’s rough polyester.

It’s my last day.

For six years Jane had religiously refused to contemplate a “last day.” A “last day” would imply a next step, a plan, some other job, and she had none.

The restaurant was neither fancy dining nor greasy spoon but part of a respectable mid-­tier chain that peppered the suburbs outside Toronto’s city reach, suitable for family meals, date night, and rowdier things like sports games in the bar. Pay was low but tips were good, and the baggy polo shirt and apron were supplied free of charge. Dental was included, and the constant turn­over of mostly teenage waiters meant there was always a ready supply of shifts. It was fine. Really. She could do a lot worse.

I could do a lot better.

But that was a thought to be pushed down. I have nothing but a high school education. I have no real skills. I have no help. This is a good job for someone like me. There’s dental.

Her twenty-­first birthday came and went, and her twenty-­second, her twenty-­third, her twenty-­fourth: the mantra of acceptance scraped increasingly thin. The burger smell grew stronger; her feet felt more tired at the end of every shift. I’m young; this is hardly backbreaking labor; suck it up. But young wasn’t permanent. She pictured herself at forty still staring down at those same tabletops, moving the same condiments from place to place, keeping her mind on her hands and her hands on the orders and ignoring the bleakness. That same inner voice that once hardened her to her fate now instead began to berate her, to harden her to the idea that this was not sustainable, and that no rescue would come, no improvement in sight, unless she did it herself.

The answer came from the most unlikely source during closing one night.

Fellow waitress Mandi had just returned home from university after dropping out for the second time. She’d moaned about pressure from professors, pressure from her studies, and now pressure from her parents and their insistence she work unless she returns to school. Any school.

Mandi’s friend “Whatever,” as Jane had mentally named her after hearing her use the word so repeatedly it was like a tic, was proposing a solution to Mandi’s problem.

“Training college. Legal assistant. Legal secretary. Whatever.”

“The hell do I wanna be a receptionist for?” Mandi pouted at her phone, minutely adjusting the tilt of her head for the fluorescent lights to capture the shine of her dexterously applied Sephora highlighter, and snapped a selfie. She examined the result critically while Whatever continued to stack chairs. She had stacked two tables to Jane’s six.

“Legal assistant, it’s like a lawyer’s office person. It’s like a brilliant plan. They’ll back off ’cause you’re in school, and ’sides, they won’t care if you graduate—­they’ll, like, think maybe it’ll make you want to be a lawyer or something, whatever,” Whatever said.

Jane paused in her chair-­stacking clatter, listening.

“But would I have to, like, study?”

“Tina’s reject brother did it when he got back from rehab or whatever; that’s how I know. Whatever, it’s barely a year and mostly online, which means”—­she paused as Mandi looked up, clearly waiting to lay out the ace card on her brilliant plan—­“there’s hardly any classes, and whatever, your parents can’t complain when you’re on your laptop! More time to work on your Insta, so when they think you’re working on your career, you totally are, but, like, your actual career as an influencer.”

Huh.

That night Jane googled the community college she’d heard them name and pored over their website. Whatever was onto something. A part-­time program, mostly online, requiring nothing more than a GED and an application to get started. The tuition . . . would be a stretch, but it was doable. Completely doable.

Her one experience with a lawyer’s office had been just after her father died. Jenson, Jenson and something....

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2023
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593440773
• ISBN 13: 9780593440773
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 352
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland