Free Mango Kisses by Elisabeth Rose Page B

embarrassed. What else could she say to him?
    ‘I’ve never met you before,’ he said.
    ‘I know,’ Tiffany replied, startled by the trepidation in his voice as much as the non sequitur. ‘I wanted to talk to Boris but it doesn’t matter. Thanks for the directions. Goodbye.’
    She hurried down the footpath, ears and cheeks burning. Boris must be there part-time, job sharing with that peculiar man. What a way to run a business. Miles Frobisher should get his act together and sort out his staff if he wanted to make any money out of that place. Sack that derelict for starters.
    What had Boris been up to that made his mate so cagey about where he was and who talked to him? Boris was not the sort of man she should be allowing to hijack her mind.

    Miles calculated he’d slept for one hour and twelve minutes and he could pretty much say which minutes they were because the longest consecutive stretch was from 3:13 until 3:56, finishing with a last burst of 14 minutes from which he’d just woken, feeling like a wrung out sock, at 7:10.
    He lay on his back staring at the cracks in the paint on the ceiling. Marianne had slain him. She’d chopped him into pieces, minced him and spread him all over the floor. Now she’d gone and the chances of ever seeing her again were nada , zip, zilch, zero. He knew from that first sight of her running on the beach she was not his sort of girl. Too slick, too hip, too classy.
    Fancy running after her in the rain! Straight out of a daytime soap; what a pathetic, hick he must have looked!. And then, when he caught her up all he could say was, ‘Goodbye’. Miles closed his eyes at the mortifying shame of it all. Thank God she was leaving, because there was no way he could face her again after that.
    She’d stood there frozen to the spot and no bloody wonder. She must have thought he was mad. And that kiss! After a whole day of lessons and an afternoon of practising, that was the best he could do? And it was his second kissing course!
    Miles thumped both fists hard into the bed, again and again. He screwed up his face and growled, ‘Bugger, bugger, bugger!’ then threw the covers back and went to the bathroom. When he looked at himself in the mirror a groan echoed about the tiles at the unshaven, dark-ringed, puffy-eyed, sleep-deprived face. One renegade clump of hair stuck out sideways while the rest hung limply over his eyes. He staggered back down the hallway and fell onto his bed. Oblivion.
    Someone was leaning on the doorbell. Miles grunted awake. The red numbers on the bedside clock swam into view. 9:29 a.m. He still felt like dog’s vomit. If he ignored the doorbell they’d go away. He stuck his head under the pillow.
    They were knocking now. Bloody hell. He waited. The knocking stopped. Miles relaxed and breathed deeply. A couple more hours’ sleep and he’d be almost strong enough to face Boris in the shop.
    He heard footsteps tapping along the side verandah heading towards the back door. Persistent bastard. He sat up, groped around on the floor for a t-shirt and dragged it over his head. He sniffed. Needed a wash. Too bad. Couldn’t be bothered finding jeans, jocks would have to do.
    Knuckles banged on the glass of the rear door. The curtains were closed against the morning sun. The whole wall facing the sea was glass, floor to ceiling windows giving a spectacular view of the ocean in all its changing glory.
    ‘Yeah, yeah,’ he yelled. He shuffled through the sunroom and yanked the cord to part the curtains enough to slide the door open. He peered out, blinking in the harsh onslaught of light. A woman was leaning over the verandah railing shading her eyes and staring out through the trees towards the beach. She turned at the sound of the opening door. The sun hit him in the face, dazzling him with its ferocity. He squinted and rubbed the heel of one hand across sandpapered eyes.
    ‘Mr Frobisher?’ A voice he recognised instantly and a face that sent a shiver of alarm