Another Summer Read Online Free PDF Page B

Evie wasn’t being useful for providing cover, she’d mostly been ignored by all of his mates.
    Joe Marsh seemed nothing like them.  She wondered what he was doing there but didn’t quite have the nerve to ask him.  The way he was looking at her was making her nervous enough.
    “Poor you.  Stuck here on your own with nobody to play with.”
    Flustered again by his teasing, she didn’t know what she was meant to say.  It seemed easier to drape the towel round her shoulders and start to walk away.  She hadn’t expected him to jump up and fall into step beside her.
    “In a hurry to get somewhere?” he laughed as the dog started romping round their ankles.  “Watch the daft mutt doesn’t trip you up.”
    She patted the dog as they walked.  “I have to get back.  My gran’s cooking breakfast.”
    “Sounds good to me.”
    She started to worry that he’d follow her all the way back up to the cottage and expect to be invited in.  Granny Barbara would have a heart attack.  But then she remembered he’d obviously been looking for Vanessa.  He wouldn’t want to waste his time with her.
    Joe stopped suddenly at the bottom of the cliff steps and she almost walked into him, only just stopping herself from putting her hands on his chest.  She saw the university crest on his grey top, the curve of muscle beneath.  Standing so close she had to look up to properly see him and the sheltered cove seemed suddenly too small for both of them.
    “You’re much too pretty to be wasted on this place.  Maybe I’ll see you around?”
    Before she could think of anything to say, he was bounding up the concrete steps to the Drydens’ smart house at the top of the cliff.  Had he really said she was pretty?  Nobody ever said that.  How was she meant to tell if he was winding her up?
    Her stomach in knots, she picked her way up the railway sleepers that had served for years as steps from her grandmother’s cottage to the beach, wondering how she’d get through the ritual of breakfast, when all she wanted to do was go over every word Joe Marsh had said.
    But Barbara Lee, dressed in her customary washed-out cords and a fisherman’s jersey with more darning than the original bottle green wool, was at the stove brandishing a metal spatula that looked as old as the cottage.  The frying pan of sizzling calories made Evie shudder.
    “Could I just have toast?”
    “Stuff and nonsense.  Run upstairs and get dressed.  It’s almost done.”
    As usual, Evie did what she was told.  Feeling all at sixes and sevens, she pushed the coppery tangles out of her eyes as she frowned at her boobs in the mirror.  Was it a good thing that Joe Marsh had looked at them as if he could see right through the wet fabric of her swimsuit?
    She tugged on a pair of jeans and an old checked shirt, unusually bothered by a missing button as she struggled to do it up.  Bloody embarrassing boobs!  And why had she never noticed she had such a paltry wardrobe? 
    Granny Barbara was already at the table, favourite brown tea pot poised to pour.  Evie sat down and buttered a piece of toast.  Some instinct told her not to mention Joe but she couldn’t think about anything else.  I’ll see you around, he’d said.  But how was that likely to happen?
    “Gran, how do you manage without a phone?  What if somebody wanted to get in touch with you?”
    “Hate the things.  Why put up with constant interruptions, just on the off chance?  Anyway, I see people all the time when I’m on my bicycle in the village.  And I get lovely invitations in the post.  I was just about to tell you.”
    Evie listened politely as her plate was piled high with bacon, tomatoes and mushrooms.  She tried not to groan.  She’d be bursting out of all her clothes at this rate.
    “The Drydens have invited us to a party on Saturday night.  Their oldest boy Malcolm’s getting married in a couple of weeks so they’re having open house for the village.”
    “Us?  You mean