Sugarcoated Read Online Free

breath. I was humming too. Songs from The Lion King . Through my nose. I like humming. Always calms me down. Don’t understand why it winds other people up so much. I mean, humming absently through your nose is hardly as heinous as the way people absently pick theirs. Then eat their excavations.
    Anyway, apart from the highest bits of Circle ofLife , I wasn’t humming that out of tune. Well, I didn’t think so.
    Still, it wound Dad up something else.
    ‘Cloddy, for the love of God,’ he interrupted just as I was drawing a deep breath to do justice to the chorus of Can You Feel the Love Tonight? ‘Take your wages out the till. I’ll see you back home. It’s been a rough enough day without your mouth music. Sounds like you’re gargling with acid.’
    I could have taken the hump with Dad, but hey: Out early from work and paid too! Hakuna Metata, I hummed. Into myself this time. Didn’t want old Pops changing his mind. Not before I hopped the chalked ghost of the man whose misfortune had improved my Saturday no end.
    Wonder if he’s dead, concern suddenly hit me. Flickered. Momentarily. Infinitesimally. Till I recalled what Marjory had said about the hammer victim: Big-time crack dealer. Scum.
    I shivered then, like something nasty I couldn’t see had brushed up against me.
    Brrr. Definitely time for some choccy therapy, I decided.
    But be good. Only a Mars Bar and a celeb mag. Not piles of chocolate I cautioned myself.
    At the newsagent’s counter I’d a Mars Bar and a Snickers in one hand, and was swithering over Maltesers or Minstrels or both, and I’d have bought them all if an arm hadn’t reached across me.
    ‘Some days you gotta have a sugar fix, yeah?’ this voice – male – whispered to me. A soft, tan sleeve just and no more brushed against the front of my jacket. I caught a waft of suede mixed with fabulous aftershave. It was a heady combination.
    Brrr.
    For the second time in five minutes I shivered. Deliciously. Had to lunge for the sweet counter to stay upright. As I moved forward, my outstretched hand accidentally shunted the fingers on the end of the soft suede sleeve. This was just as they were closing on the packet of Minstrels I fancied.
    Was I mortified! Two blast furnaces fired up in my cheeks like they always do when I’m embarrassed, their instant heat throbbing my face scarlet. And thiswas before the person attached to the fingers and the soft suede sleeve held the Minstrels out to me.
    ‘Sorry. Last packet. You’re before me. These your favourites too? Hey, we could share?’
    I was surprised the skin wasn’t melting off this sweet-talking guy’s face. Because now I was radiating enough thermal energy to liquidise every bar of chocolate on the counter. And sweet-talking guy was so close. Close enough for me to notice he was about two inches taller than I am, which made him six feet plus, and that his pale grey eyes were flecked with streaks of blue, and his lashes were black and longer and thicker than mine, and his cheekbones were high, and his skin was clear and slightly tanned, and his smile was so broad, and his teeth so straight and white and perfect that I wished I’d checked the overlaps and crannies in my own for Brazil nut debris. Oh, and popped a stick of super-mint chuggy before I left Dad’s shop.
    Because this guy …
    This guy pushing back his dense, goldy-fair hair while he grinned at me was so cute …
    Honestly. Why are you grinning at me, exactly? Talking about sharing Minstrels, I was thinking while he chuckled, ‘I try not to bite through the hard shell, but it’s too tempting.’
    And I was trying to place the ever-so-faint accent that made him pronounce his t’s and roll his r’s in a way that looped frizzles up and down the back of my neck, and made me want to beg him to keep on talking to me even though a voice in my head was niggling: This is bonkers, Clod. Handsome dudes never sidle up beside big ginga gals out of the blue and confess, ‘I can’t