The Morning After the Night Before: Love & Lust in the city that never sleeps! by Nikki Logan

Author:Nikki Logan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781460380581
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2015-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

EIGHT

Harry’s forkful of rice paused halfway to his mouth. ‘I want to make a joke, but I’m worried you’re serious.’

‘I am,’ Izzy said, polishing off the last of her spring rolls. ‘My only aspirations as a kid were to get to adulthood.’

He blinked at her. ‘What the hell happened to you?’

‘You’ve never grown up in a housing estate, obviously,’ she joked. ‘They’re pretty rough. At least ours was. But that’s not what I meant. When I was a kid I didn’t want to be a doctor or a scientist or a vet. I just wanted to be of age so that I could make my own money and my own decisions. Get a steady job, go to a busy office, buy clothes from a regular shop. Have a fridge full of food on the safe side of its use-by date.’

She’d started on her goal as soon as the law said she could get a job. Cleaning the kitchen at a greasy fast-food outlet. Her parents thought she’d been taken over by aliens with her burning desire to work. They’d grown so used to going without.

Yet she saw, every day, that without didn’t apply to some families. And she wanted to be in those families. The ones who bought the burgers she scraped the hotplates for.

A deep frown marred Harry’s pretty face.

Yeah. Poverty wasn’t the most delicate aprèsdinner topic.

‘Were there no good moments at all?’

‘Of course. Heaps of them. I turned out okay, I think.’

His frown deepened.

‘What?’

‘I’m trying to work out what that angry edge is in your voice. You seem pretty accepting of your childhood.’

It wasn’t anger. And it wasn’t about her childhood. It was much, much more recent.

‘It was what it was, Harry. I can’t change it.’

Wow. Didn’t that sound thoroughly Zen? He didn’t know it had taken her years to get to that happy place. Assuming this was happy. And if it was, shouldn’t she feel…happier?

‘Would you want to change it? If you could?’

‘Our childhoods are what make us, don’t you think? If I’d had everything handed to me on a platter I might have grown up lacking initiative.’

The frown wasn’t shifting tonight, obviously. ‘Is that what you think wealth automatically makes a person?’

‘Well…not automatically, perhaps. But if you’ve never had to reach for something why would you bother stretching for anything? That has to change how a person forms. On the inside…’ Her words faltered as she finally understood his expression. ‘You disagree?’

‘People with money still have plenty to reach for.’

‘Like what?’

And with those two little words she got the distinct impression she’d disappointed him. But he masked it well.

‘Happiness. Fulfilment. Love.’

‘Important things,’ she admitted. ‘But luxuries compared to ensuring food on the table and heat in your house.’

‘I’d consider love to be as basic a human need as food and warmth.’

The sincerity in his gaze pinned her against the wall behind her. ‘Maybe. But you can live without love.’

Unlike food. Unlike shelter.

And she knew that to be fact.

His eyes didn’t waver. ‘Spoken like someone who had an abundance of love in her life.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.