Read At Last for Free Online Page B

into the kitchen, which carried on the mono theme with dark marble on the counters and cream wood cabinets. I opened his huge fridge to beer and the end slice of a loaf of bread. I figured one of his mates had regularly checked on the place. Or used it to impress girls.
    Ryan came out of his bedroom and flopped down onto his sofa.
    “Umm, all you have is beer.”
    He sighed. “I asked those guys for one thing… Stay here. Don’t go anywhere, okay?”
    “Not even to sleep?”
    Ryan winked at me. “Especially not that.”
    He was gone and back in two minutes. Female neighbours, I thought sourly. He had tea bags, sugar and milk. He made me a cup of tea, then flopped down onto the sofa. He cuddled up to me, and within minutes he had been sucked in by advertising of his own making. I took the throw from the back of the sofa and tucked it over both of us. He turned over and draped his arm over my waist. His arm felt extremely heavy, and I wanted to shift it somewhere else, but I was getting quite turned on by the weight of him. I was scared witless by the phone ringing. I slipped away from Ryan and took the cordless phone into the kitchen to answer it.
    “Hello?”
    “Hello? To whom am I speaking?”
    “Did I call you?” I asked sarcastically.
    “No, but as I am calling my son’s home, it would be nice to know exactly who is answering his phone.”
    Crap! His mother. “Hello, Mrs. Klark. My name’s Courtney.”
    “Oh!” Her voice turned warm with rich laughter. “You’re Courtney. How wonderful. Did you meet Ryan at the airport?”
    “Yes,” I said, wanting to say more, but shyness blocked anything else sensible from emerging from my throat.
    “That is sweet of you. And where is Ryan?”
    “He’s asleep. Shall I get him?”
    “No darling, don’t wake him. Just tell him that we’re glad he’s arrived safely and we’ll be back from Copenhagen in a fortnight, all right?”
    “Yes, thank you.”
    “Good. Well done for looking after my son, Courtney. Bye for now.”
    “Bye bye, Mrs. Klark.”
    Once I turned the phone off, I screamed silently at the set. To stop myself from waking up Ryan, I called my mother.
    “Mmm,” she grunted.
    “Mum, it’s me!”
    “Ah,” came the early morning croak. “Met your handsome young man, did you?”
    “Yes, Mum. He’s on his own for a few weeks, so I thought I’d stay and help him out. I just called to say that I’m fine and he hasn’t dumped me in the Thames. I’ll text you his address.”
    “God, Courtney,” she groaned. “You do think of the most horrible things. Be good, and don’t do anything silly.”
    “Course not!” I was all warranted indignation. Did having sex with Ryan count as silly? No. “Bye, Ma!”
    “Hmm.”
    She wasn’t a morning person at all. But as I still lived at home, I thought I’d be respectful by not making her chase me. I curled back against Ryan, snuggling into his toasty warm body. I didn’t know I’d fallen asleep until I realised that I was sitting on a surfboard, on a beach. Ryan was stroking my hip and kissing me briefly on the mouth. He then offered me food in that deep, sexy voice of his which was when I prised my eyes open to see Ryan waving a plate of ravioli under my nose.
    “Ah! Greedy girl. I knew if a kiss wouldn’t work, food definitely would.”
    “Where did this come from?”
    “I went to Marks and got some grub. Eat up before it gets cold.”
    I saluted and took the plate. A glass of fruit juice was sitting on the coffee table as Ryan brought his own plate and some garlic bread too. I was quite hungry and noticed that it was already one in the afternoon. “Where’ve you been all my life?” I mumbled around the tomato sauce and chorizo-stuffed ravioli.
    “Erm, banging my head on a table, falling out of several trees, setting fire to a biology lab—completely by accident, mind you—playing the randy parts in school plays, getting my first camera and taking pictures of everything that moves,