Love or Money Read Online Free

little boy react to a mother who acted ‘strangely’ when, eventually, she came home?
    Hamish decided to grab a quick shower, and dash to the Golden Dragon. Starvation made any other option impossible. As he towelled himself dry, he recalled again the woman client who’d turned his last hour upside down. He pictured the face, mouthed the name: Erin Spenser. Any guy would call her beautiful. The first sight of that slender, shapely body would fire a bomb into a man’s hormone bank — and lead to the too-obvious physical response he’d felt as she walked in and looked up into his face. For those electrifying first moments, she’d reduced him to mumbling monosyllables as she took the chair opposite, powder-blue eyes probing his. She had some of her grandmother’s features: those wide-set eyes, the cute upturned nose. But her youthful beauty was all her own; the sweep of golden hair washing over her shoulders, and those lips — small, bow-shaped, seductive. Any straight man under ninety would want to kiss them the second he got the opportunity.
    But the woman’s plastic, citified values had surfaced. She’d as good as said she’d sell Edna Spenser’s beautiful property the minute she could. What was it about city people? They put money above everything — healthy living, taking care of the planet, honouring an old woman’s dream to restore her property to its original pristine loveliness. Forget Erin Spenser, he ordered himself. You have a partner and a son. He brushed his towel over his face one last time, flicked it so that it cracked like a horsewhip, and hung it on the rail. He’d best get on down to the Golden Dragon. Hunger made a man aggressive.
    Erin allowed herself the luxury of a slow dawdle from the cottage to the Golden Dragon. It would be good to stroll past the old shops, the heritage town hall with its lichened classic sandstone portal, the war memorial with the names of dead Luna Bay soldiers. She needed a distraction from the pain of the inevitable. She must sell the cottage, and soon. Her mother’s cardiologist had hinted that given his patient’s worsening health, she might have only months to live unless she had expensive major surgery.
    All through Erin’s childhood, Helen Spenser had struggled with mortgage payments, keeping a roof over their heads, never quite letting go of the hope that one day her straying husband might return. On the last lap of her exhausting marathon, Helen had won the financial tussle to enrol her daughter in a prestigious art school. Not that the school hadn’t been a good investment. Erin had shown talent way back in kindergarten. Now she made an acceptable living doing what she loved — writing and drawing for Possum Publishing.
    Erin arrived at the restaurant, stared up at the doorway draped with the familiar gold-painted carving of a scary dragon. She stepped inside. The Golden Dragon was empty except for proprietor Andy Chan. Erin and Andy had known each other since childhood, back when she spent the summers with her grandmother. The two children had come to know each other through Grandma Spenser’s shameless addiction to Chinese cuisine. The spicy perfume dragged Erin back to those days as she walked in.
    â€˜Hi Erin.’ Andy looked up from his laptop on the counter. ‘Good to see you again. Sorry to hear about your grandmother. Lovely lady. Will we be seeing a bit more of you? Now you’ve inherited Lovers’ Lookout?’
    â€˜Thanks, Andy.’ Erin flinched inside. So the Luna Bay grapevine was still working. ‘That’s a big question,’ she smiled. ‘Too big for right now.’ She cast an eye over the spread of empty tables right down to the big tank of goldfish near the kitchen doorway. As a child, she’d spent hours spellbound by those goldfish during dinners with Grandma Spenser. ‘It’s quiet tonight,’ she said, nudging away from