An Autumn Crush Read Online Free PDF Page A

Instead, in strode a man, a huge man,
with black wavy hair and the same grey eyes as Juliet and her father and the same full mouth as Grainne Miller. Her first thought was, Wow – it’s Juliet’s brother. Her second was,
Yikes, I’ve got no make-up on, wet hair wrapped up in a towel, and am in my Dalmatian spotty dressing-gown. Not only that, but she had got shampoo in her eyes and had been rubbing them so
much she just knew they’d be puffy and red.
    Guy had but one thought when he saw Floz for the first time. Lacey Robinson . He gulped at the initial resemblance between the small woman in front of him and his old crush, and it threw
him totally off-balance.
    ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I forgot you were here. Floz, isn’t it?’
    ‘Er, yes,’ said Floz, pulling her robe further around her. ‘You must be . . .’
    But Guy was already retreating to the door with the speed of a greyhound on amphetamines. And in his haste to get away from the scene, he fell backwards over a footstool, careered into a
coffee-table and sent everything on it flying onto the carpet. Then, like a one-man Carry On film, he righted himself so quickly that he banged his head on the lampshade above him.
    ‘Gotta go, sorry again,’ he said, leaving Floz with the distinct impression that she must look like Linda Blair in The Exorcist as he slammed the door.
    Floz stood open-mouthed. Jeez, am I that hideous? The sudden stab of hurt she felt exploded into a burst of anger. How bloody rude! She didn’t care how much of a hunk he was
physically; personality-wise he wasn’t much of a gentleman. Then again, hadn’t she learned by now that whenever she emerged from her shell, lured by a scent of love in the air, all she
found was that some fist was waiting to smack her in the face and send her even further back inside it again?
    Romantic thoughts of Guy Miller would no longer be allowed entry.

 
Chapter 5
    Steve dialled on his phone and waited to see if she would pick up. She did and he breathed a sigh of relief that she hadn’t fallen downstairs or turned on the oven and
forgotten about it and burned the house down.
    ‘Hello, who is it?’ said a gruff, slurred voice.
    ‘Hiya, Mum, it’s me. How are you?’
    ‘ Who is it?’
    ‘It’s me, Steve. Mum, how are you?’
    ‘I’m all right,’ said the voice. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ She was drunk. It was ten o’clock in the morning and she was plastered. After so many years it
shouldn’t have surprised him, but it still did.
    ‘I’ll be there in an hour. Do you need any shopping?’
    ‘Just the usual.’
    ‘Mum, I can’t. You know I can’t.’ Steve’s heart sank.
    ‘Then don’t bother coming,’ and the phone line went dead.
    Steve arrived at his mother’s house an hour later hating himself for including the quarter bottle of vodka with the shopping. It was the smallest size he could find, and
he knew she wouldn’t acknowledge his existence otherwise.
    The semi adjoining his mum’s couldn’t have been more different. Sarah Burrows’s house had spotless windows, pretty curtains and a neat and tidy garden, with no trace of the
usual sofas/car parts that posed as garden ornaments for many houses on this roughest end of the Ketherwood estate. And on the scrubbed step sat a small ten-year-old boy with a Barnsley football
shirt on.
    ‘Wotcher Denny,’ smiled Steve. ‘Nearly didn’t recognize you there. Where’s your specs, kiddo?’
    ‘They got broke,’ replied young Denny. The closer Steve got to him, the more Steve could see he had faint bruising on his eye too.
    ‘You been scrapping?’ asked Steve, a little concerned, because Denny Burrows wasn’t a fighting lad. The Burrows didn’t belong on this estate. Sarah Burrows was a
hard-working cleaner, a decent lass, and Denny was a quiet lad, always with a book in his hand.
    Denny didn’t answer him, just dropped his head. Steve strode over the fence and sat down next to the young boy on the step.
    ‘You all