Dream Guy Read Online Free

Ben was eleven and mad about skateboards and nothing else, Liesel was just three. You were the only one I could have a sensible conversation with that didn’t involve cuddly toys or ball bearings and Tony Hawk. You stuck so many things in that notebook. Of course, there were the monsters and the robots and the stuff that seven-year-olds like—Godzilla, some superhero cartoon off the box. But you also did those really funny drawings of the family. I was wondering if you’d ever thought about doing anything like that again. You could scan them in and email them to me. Even snail mail seems to work—although none of us expected it to—if you don’t want to leave your work on the computer for the others to see.
    The thing is, it looks like with all the delays so far that my contract will last longer than we’d thought. And if you could do a strip for me and send it out, maybe home wouldn’t feel quite so far away.
    What about it? I’ve put this in a separate email from the others because if you did it, you probably wouldn’t want the rest of the family to find out about it. And I wouldn’t really want them to know either. Just a secret for the two of us, because then you’ll be able to draw and write exactly what you want.
    I miss you all so much.
    Love, Dad.
     
    Joe swallowed hard. He could just hear his father’s voice, faintly, like an echo. He’d been away for two and a half months now. His company had offered him a pretty stark choice—the reconstruction contract or redundancy. And the money they’d offered if he’d take the contract had been too good to miss. Mum and Dad were going to be able to pay off the mortgage and fork out for Ben’s university course so he wouldn’t have to take out a loan.
    “Are you ready, Joe?” Susan Knightley didn’t take her eyes off Joe as he closed the email and came to the table.
    “What’s this about Dad’s contract?”
    “They want him for a year. He can come home at Christmas and Easter, but basically, he’s out there until next October.”
    Joe sat, his elbows on the table, his fingers plunged deep into the dense thicket of his hair, massaging his skull. “That sucks.” He could tell by the tone of her voice that she hadn’t been happy with the news either, although financially it was a miraculous break from the continual teetering on a tightrope between solvency and debt. They’d have no money worries at all at the rates Dad was getting paid. They might even have savings.
    Liesel and Ben soon filled the silence with gossip and chatter about school and teachers and the endless negotiations about whom Mum would ferry where and when. Joe could stay at home alone. He didn’t play any instruments or sports that needed lessons or practice or concerts or matches. Maybe that was the reason Liesel and Ben got on so much better with each other than with Joe—hours spent in the car together and pretty much the same obsessions with music and sport. It had always been that way, almost since Liesel was born.
    Joe made good his escape as soon as he’d finished shoveling up the last of his stew.
    “Don’t you want any pudding?”
    “I’m all right, Mum. Honest.”
    The other two smiled uneasily and said good night in chorus before returning to their conversation. Joe went back upstairs.
     

Chapter Three
    Lamborghini Gallardo
     
     
     
    Nirvana on the iPod, a sole halogen light over the drawing board… First the blue pencil for the rough outline then the heavy pencil. Then the color and finally, the ink. And there it was, the dream—voluptuous curves, steel hubcaps, cruel grills, a shade somewhere between gold and cadmium lemon, black leather upholstery with yellow stitching, six-gear transmission and, lurking in the center of the car, the V10 engine that delivered five hundred horsepower at seventy-eight hundred revolutions.
    If only… It wasn’t as if he were greedy. He wasn’t aiming as high as the Murciélago, but even the smallest Lambo was as