An Autumn Crush Read Online Free Page A

question by eating them, dear,’ said Perry. ‘Your mother only makes scones for smash and grab robbers who are in short supply of
bricks.’
    ‘Cheeky thing, you are,’ said Grainne, giving him a sharp but good-humoured nudge. ‘Aye, Guy made a batch for you when he came in from work last night.’
    ‘That was kind of him,’ said Floz, wishing he could have delivered them in person.
    ‘He bakes to unwind,’ confided Grainne, her voice tightening as conversation touched upon the restaurant again. ‘And my God does he need to unwind when he comes in from that
place. After tomorrow he’s taking a couple of days off, thank goodness.’
    Floz took another bite of scone and thought that any man who baked like this had to be a catch. It was a long time since she had felt even a single butterfly in her stomach. But if Guy Miller
was anything like as good-looking in the flesh as he was in his photograph, Floz knew she’d be contending with butter-flies the size of eagles flapping around in her gut when they eventually
met.
    She couldn’t have been more wrong if she’d tried.

 
Chapter 4
    Guy Miller wasn’t just tired, he was exhausted. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a day off from working in the kitchens in the Burgerov restaurant.
The owner Kenny Moulding was taking the piss, he knew. He had thrown most of the responsibility for his restaurant onto Guy with the excuse that he was a top-notch co-ordinator, but Guy had stopped
buying into Kenny’s flattery years ago. Guy knew he ran the business because Kenny couldn’t be arsed – and though Kenny did pay him well, it wasn’t nearly enough for the
burden he shouldered. If he lost Guy, he would be totally stuffed. Also, there were three areas where Kenny refused to relinquish control: employing new staff, sacking his incompetent cheap labour,
and the buying of foodstuffs from dodgy traders who arrived at the back door with hoods up and faces down. Kenny loved a bargain, which was what he said to justify being a total cheapskate. In
fact, Kenny Moulding made Ebenezer Scrooge look like the Secret Millionaire.
    Guy had been so run-down lately that Kenny was forced to give him some long-overdue days off. Anyway, Guy needed to seriously recharge his batteries before honouring his promise to help his best
mate Steve out the next night. Steve was a self-employed plasterer by trade but it wasn’t in that capacity that Guy would be assisting him. Steve’s real passion was wrestling and he was
a part-time amateur grappler who dreamed of working with the huge stars of GWE – Global Wrestling Enterprises – in America, where wrestling was still a seriously popular business. When
Steve performed in the ring, he imagined that the billionaire bigshot promoter Will Milburn was out there in the shadows, talent-spotting – and so he gave every show his all.
    Guy looked around at the kitchen staff pretending to clean up the work surfaces. He dreaded to think what would happen over the next couple of days when he was absent. He was tired from
constantly picking them up on their hygiene skills, or lack of them. The only one he never had to nag was Gina. She was long and leggy and pretty and blonde and three years younger than him; in
fact, Gina was everything on paper that would have made his ideal girlfriend. He knew that she stared at him with her big blue eyes when she felt it was safe to do so, because he had caught her
off-guard a few times. And though he thought she was a nice girl, he wasn’t drawn to look at her with any eyes other than those of an employer. Guy wasn’t vain but it couldn’t
have been more obvious that Gina fancied the pants off him, and he often wished he felt something for her. Why couldn’t people just switch on attraction? It would make life so much
easier.
    ‘Varto, why are you cleaning that work surface with the same cloth you’ve just used on the raw-meat board?’ Guy tried to yell but he was too tired to