Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 80651 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80651 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
And it might all be down to Sutton.
Twenty-Two
Sutton
I was dressed for thievery. If anyone from the hospital saw me, hopefully the dark glasses and my Wham! hoodie would mean they wouldn’t recognize me.
I pressed the single buzzer on the gate and waited, my hands in my pockets, my face pointed away from the road. I was moments away from being arrested.
The speaker crackled and then the gate opened. I stepped inside and tipped my head back to take in the huge four-story house. These were flats, right? But then there’d only been one buzzer. Was this his parents’ place?
The imposing black front door was up four steps and it swung open before I’d started to climb the stairs.
“What is it you think we’re doing tonight?” he asked, grinning at me like he just won the lottery. “Kicking off a burglary spree?”
I ignored him, dipping under his arm and into his hallway.
I pulled down my hood. “This is just one house? Where am I?” I asked, turning three hundred sixty degrees. The place was huge, even bigger than it looked from the outside. “Is this your parents’ place?”
“What?” he snapped. “Why would you think that?”
I’d clearly said something to wipe the gorgeous grin from his face. I caught his t-shirt as he moved past me and pulled him toward me. “What?”
“You come to my house and assume I’m at my parents’ place?”
“Jacob.” I smoothed my hands up his chest, hoping to coax his gaze down from where it was fixed over my head. “I know how much you earn. This place is in Hampstead and it’s beautiful. In short, you can’t afford it. Are we actually robbing banks tonight? Have I unwittingly dressed perfectly for your plans?”
He looked at me finally and smiled. “Sorry, I guess you’re right. I told you I got lucky with an idea I had when I was at uni.”
“Oh yes, the untapped business potential.”
He bent, cupped the back of my head, and kissed me right out of my shoes, making my legs too shaky to stand on and my brain too frazzled to think. It was like a switch was flipped every time I was around him. When he was out of sight, I convinced myself that what I felt when I was around him was nothing special. That I was exaggerating the biochemical and physiological change in me when he was around. Then each time I saw him, I was right back in the same place—giddy, breathless, lightheaded and desperate for more. I couldn’t get enough of him.
He grabbed my hand and pulled me into the kitchen slash living room. “Yup. I got really lucky.”
The kitchen was huge, spanning the entire back of the house, with window lights in the roof and a huge comfy couch at one end, a dining table in an alcove at the back. Everything was white and bright but cosy and warm.
“What kind of lucky?”
“You want a glass of wine?” he asked.
“Sure. Do you have red with a side of finally confessing details of your mind-reading invention?”
He placed a kiss on the top of my head and went about opening cupboards, pulling out a corkscrew and glasses.
“I just had an idea for a . . . medical device at university that . . . It turned into something unexpected and it snowballed.”
“Sounds vague. What medical device?”
He shrugged. “A useful kind of medical device. I don’t want to talk about it. I sold my shares in the company in the end. I’ve done okay.”
I wasn’t sure if I was impressed with his apparent humility or slightly upset he wouldn’t share more detail with me.
He handed me a glass of wine and then guided me to the dining room table, which was already laid with two spaces opposite each other. “I’ve made my favorite.”
“I’m learning so much about you tonight already. I can’t wait to see what you cooked. Can I help with anything?”
“Cooked might be an exaggeration,” he replied. “Voila!” He returned carrying two bowls and set them down, then turned back to retrieve a big wood chopping board with a loaf of bread on it. “Heinz tomato soup and sourdough.”
I laughed, a little thankful it wasn’t something more sophisticated. The house was intimidating enough. Then learning a little idea he had at university had paid for it? Not only had nothing like that ever happened to me, nothing like that had ever happened to anyone I knew. This was a different world I was living in now.
“Nothing beats Heinz tomato soup,” I said.
He cut up the loaf and I took a chunk, still warm from the oven. “You didn’t make the bread, did you?”
He shook his head. “No, but I put it in the oven to impress you.”
Should a confession like that make me want to jump a guy? “Consider me impressed.” I wasn’t even being sarcastic. I genuinely couldn’t think of a nicer meal than this one right in front of me.