Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 56970 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 285(@200wpm)___ 228(@250wpm)___ 190(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56970 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 285(@200wpm)___ 228(@250wpm)___ 190(@300wpm)
Three people now that I’m holding up.
I smile sheepishly at them while crying inside. As soon as they’re within reasonable speaking distance I’ll explain.
The sound of sliding cardboard and oofing. The huffing queue behind me is ten times louder.
Finally, out comes Headphone Boy and Parker with a trolley of ten boxes of eight bottles of milk.
They push it to the counter and my cashier is grinning. “Looks like quite the party.”
I’m fairly sure it’s about here I’m supposed to say that I don’t want eighty milks. But he’s gone to this huge effort and all the people behind me have waited so long. And all I want to do is get out of the store and shrink into a bed.
Assert yourself, Leon! Come on. Do it.
I haul in a breath.
“Great you’re buying this lot,” he says, ringing me up. “They expire soon.”
If asserting myself is hard enough, letting someone else down is my kryptonite. I pull out my wallet and swipe my card. Three years ago, I bought the winning lottery ticket here. I have a funky suspicion I won’t be winning much else. Ever.
Chapter Two
It’s a blessed relief to reach the bach.
I leave the eighty milks in the car, grab the key from the lockbox, and let myself inside.
I’m greeted by a whiff of damp air, and hits of the eighties, nineties, and noughties.
I haul my suitcases from the car. My sewing kit, my mannequins, my favourite fabrics. I set them down in the living room, and I’m done. Exhausted. Not an ounce of energy left. Especially not an ounce of energy to move a boot full of lactose. Besides, where would I put them all? The car is cool enough in the carport. They’ll be chilled overnight, while I regain the energy—and quite likely the creativity—to deal with them.
I run my fingers over a wall of books in the living area.
“Hello, old friends.” None of them greet me back.
I halt my gazing into childhood memories. On the shelf where the old TV used to be there’s a big glass bowl, and in that bowl a lone fish swims through aquatic plants.
I crouch and stare at it. “Hello.”
It wriggles its tail and swims away. A fish here means someone’s been coming regularly, to change the water and feed it. “Who’s looking after you, hmm?” My cousin Troy lives nearby, he’d be the type to buy a goldfish for his kid without asking his wife first. I can imagine him schlepping it here and regretting his stupidity every time he came by to keep it alive.
It’s stupid, but I’m ridiculously glad I’m not completely alone. Karl and I might not have had sex in six months, but he’d always shared my bed. I was used to someone being in the same room, in the same space, closest to the door. There was something comforting in it. Like, if we got murdered, they’d have to go through him first.
Wind howls around the bach, rattling the windows and whistling down the chimney. There’s the creak of a door on its hinges, and bloody hell. The bach never seemed this freaky in summer . . .
I raid my suitcase and yank on the kiddiest pyjamas I own, my fluffy ducky ones. Maybe if I look innocent enough, a murderer might think twice before offing me, giving me crucial time to—yep, that hearth shovel was coming to bed with me. And . . . and the fish. I couldn’t leave it all alone out here. The killer might . . .
Carefully, I lift the bowl, tuck it to my chest and take refuge in my room.
I wake up to a shadow looming over me.
I scream and throw blankets into the darkened face. The shovel! Where is it? I plunge an arm down the side of my bed, between the mattress and the wall, and grope for the weapon. Nothing. And meanwhile I’m left in a frighteningly exposed, arse-up position. I forget the shovel and throw myself onto my back, hands balled at the ready.
Before me the figure is muttering something that gets lost under a thick layer of feather-down. A large hand with a vein running down the middle reaches around the duvet and with a whoosh, my cover is yanked off.
Instead of hauling arse out the window with Fishy, I’m asking the intruder to please at once remove himself from my bedchamber. Apparently, I turn into Darcy in panic—“Damon?”
Laughter. As heavy as the ocean, as warm as the dawn spilling into my room. “Well hello, Leon.”
I absorb a cheeky grin topping a glorious body stuffed into a wetsuit that clings onto all his tapered edges and generous bulges. His hair is damp and sand speckles his legs and large feet. He’s here after a swim. The swim part, I get. The here part, I’m still struggling with.