An Autumn Crush Read Online Free

lives with Mum and Dad.’
    ‘Well, he lives in the granny flat adjoining our house,’ added Grainne. ‘I’m not sure he’d like to be classed as still living with his parents.’
    Juliet turned in her seat and fiddled in the drawer of the dresser behind her. ‘Look, this is him,’ and she handed over a photograph of herself standing in between two huge men
dressed in wrestling gear – one with flowing white-blond hair, and with a fur waistcoat on, the other with jet-black floppy curls and Perry’s grey eyes, fringed with thick, dark lashes.
Floz gulped. Square-jawed, tall, muscular Guy Miller was an absolute hunk. She felt her heartbeat quicken inside her.
    ‘That’s Steve Feast, Guy’s best friend.’ Juliet pointed to the blond man. She said his name in such a way that Floz guessed he wasn’t one of her bosom buddies.
‘And that is my brother. Where is Guy by the way, Mum? He’s not been around yet for me to introduce him to Floz.’
    ‘He’s been working flat out at the restaurant,’ replied Grainne. ‘Poor boy is exhausted. That Kenny is a bloody slave-driver! I don’t know why Guy doesn’t
tell him to stick his job.’ Grainne’s blood began to boil when she thought about the many liberties Kenny Moulding took with her son, making him work such long shifts.
    ‘Oh now, Gron, the man has been good to Guy in his own way. He’s always paid him very well for his services,’ countered Perry, taking his pipe out of his pocket and clenching
it between his teeth. He didn’t light it in anyone else’s house, he just liked the comfort of it on his lip.
    Grainne huffed. ‘Money is not everything, Perry. It doesn’t buy you happiness.’
    ‘Yes, I totally agree with you on that, my dear Gron. Still, it’s nice to have. Oils the wheels of living.’ Perry disarmed his wife with a smile. Floz thought it might be
impossible to have an argument with such a calm and diplomatic man. He should have been serving in international peace-keeping missions. ‘So how many card firms do you actually work for
then?’ Perry continued quizzing Floz.
    ‘Seven,’ Floz answered. ‘Though I get a weekly brief from a firm called “Status Kwo” and they’re the main suppliers of my bread and butter.’
    ‘What do you do then? Do they send you some pictures and you have to write around them?’
    ‘Sometimes,’ said Floz. She picked up a file and opened it to show Perry pages full of thumbnail black and white images. ‘They send me these pictures on a disk and I write copy
for them, depending on what occasion they’ve asked me for. For instance, this picture of a woman swigging back a glass of wine – well, I could marry that to some copy for Mother’s
Day about a mum going for it and over-celebrating, or it could be a best friend card, about only drinking on days with an “a” in them, or it could be a Get Well card about eating grapes
to get better but only when fermented and bottled. That sort of thing. Sometimes . . .’ She rifled through the file for another brief ‘. . . all I get is an instruction to write rhymes
for Father’s Day or Valentine’s Day. Then I’ll send them in and their illustrators work around what I’ve written.’
    ‘What a nice job. Is it well paid?’
    ‘Perry Miller! You are obsessed with money today.’ Grainne was disgusted her husband would be so cheeky as to ask that.
    ‘It pays the bills,’ replied Floz, grinning at Grainne’s comical display of embarrassment. But she also knew they must all be thinking that it couldn’t pay that much if
she was in her mid-thirties and having to share a rented flat. She didn’t enlighten them with details about her circumstances, but moved quickly on to show Perry an example of her weekly
briefs from Lee Status – loony maverick owner of Status Kwo.
    Juliet was on her third thickly buttered scone by now.
    ‘Who made these, you or Guy?’ she asked her mother through a mouthful of crumbs.
    ‘You’ve answered your own