Page 43 of Lipstick Kiss

Yep, definitely grumpy about something.

“I’ve spent years lugging my oversized shopping bag with exercise books home, and my shoulders are still intact, no blemishes or lopsided arms.”

“It’s a wonder you haven’t.”

“Come on, big strong man like you, afraid of a hundred exercise books?”

“Seems like it. I’d rather give an oil rigger an over-the-shoulder lift while he’s passed out drunk than these.”

Freya giggled at his grumblings and jogged ahead to her house. She unlocked her front door and held it open for him, then theatrically staggered through the door. He put the bag on the floor, stumbled over to her sofa, and flopped down like he’d run a marathon.

She kicked the door shut with her foot and stood there with her hands on her hips. His hair was the only thing she could see, the arm and the back of the sofa obscuring the rest of him.

“Will you be okay down here while I shower and change quickly?” she called over.

She got a groan as a reply, so she ran up the stairs and got washed and changed. Ten minutes later, she was back down to the living room to find Luke wasn’t there.

“Luke,” she shouted.

“Up here,” he called back.

“What are you doing up there?”

“Reading all your secrets,” he replied.

His voice sounded far away and muffled. Then it dawned on Freya where he was. Running back up the stairs two at a time, she hurried down the corridor, past her open bedroom door, the bathroom, and onto the spare room. Sitting on the floor with his ankles crossed and his arms folded was Luke staring up at the wall. He leaned against an armchair. Freya kept the curtains drawn in that room, so nothing faded.

“What are you doing in here? You’re supposed to be exhausted from carrying exercise books.”

Luke’s eyes scanned the wall, and she cringed.

“I got bored,” He said, like he was distracted.

“I was ten minutes.”

“More like twenty. I got bored after ten minutes and came snooping when there wasn’t anything sweet to eat in the kitchen.”

“You didn’t look hard enough. There was a box of Jason’s chocolate chip cookies behind the coffee mugs.”

“There was?”

“Yeah. Serves you right for doing a bloke look rather than a woman look.”

“Stop side-tracking me with cookies. What the fuck is all of this?”

“Nothing. Come on, let’s go,” Freya said, mortified that he had seen the room.

“I can’t believe you kept everything,” he muttered, not moving an inch.

“Didn’t you keep mine?” she asked.

“Nah, tossed them as soon as I read them.”

That comment shot into her heart like he’d pulled the trigger of a gun.

“What?” she whispered, holding back the tears of his dismissive remark.

“Committed them to memory, of course, but I can’t lug around all your letters when I travel the world, and if I’d left them on the rig, then the other shift would’ve read them. There was no way they were reading about the first time you slept with a man.”

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