A Is for Apple by Kate Johnson Read Free Book Online

. I was sceptical. It did look familiar, but then so did a hundred others.
    “So where do you live?” I asked.
    “Oh, it’s sort of Tribeca, SoHo, East Village-ish,” he said vaguely.
    “In a Brownstone?”
    “Yeah.”
    Yeah, and I lived in Buck House.
    We got on the subway back to the Philadelphia Hotel and stopped for junk food on the way.
    “I am going to be so fat,” I wailed, looking at the bags of seriously addictive Lay’s potato chips that Xander was piling into the shopping basket. He, of course, was all nicely defined muscle. No fat at all.
    Bastard.
    “Hey, you wanna see fat, you’re in the right place,” Xander said. “You think you’re the only one who eats too many potato chips?”
    He had a point. In the hotel lobby had been a guy oozing over the sides of his wheelchair. I’d never seen a person that fat before in real life. He’d been complaining the doors were too narrow. I’d wondered if he was fat because he couldn’t walk, or if he couldn’t walk because he was so fat.
    Either way, I felt wonderfully skinny.
    We took the bag of junk back into the hotel and made our way over to the lifts. I still wasn’t sure why I was letting him come with me. I guess it was the little lost puppy thing. Xander was cute and helpless, and besides, he knew a lot about junk food.
    Who am I kidding, little and helpless! He was about six inches taller than me, and I’m actually the average height for a bloke.
    Speaking of tall…
    There was usually a security guy at a desk by the bank of lifts, and I was rummaging in my bag for my key card to show him when Xander suddenly grabbed me and said in a low voice, “Okay, don’t panic, but that’s one of Shapiro’s goons over there and he looks pissed.”
    “He’s drunk?”
    “No, pissed off . I think he’s—shit, Sophie, reverse, reverse!”
    He started walking very quickly back towards the entrance, spotted someone else and tugged me back over to the lifts again. The goon—a big guy in a shiny suit, marching towards us and looking mad—was closing in, and then suddenly Xander took hold of me, swung me round and kissed me.
    Now, I don’t have a huge frame of reference here. I’ve really only been kissed properly by four guys, and one of them was my cheating college boyfriend Pete the Philanderer. He was a crap kisser, and I used to spend my kissing time with him wondering what the hell all the fuss was about. The second is a shady guy called Docherty who’s worked with SO17 once or twice. He scared the hell out of me. I kissed Harvey once or twice, but they were sort of polite, passionless kisses.
    And then there’s Luke, and when he kisses me the entire world ceases to be.
    Xander’s kiss was definitely in the first category.
    I could figure out why he was doing it, and as a distraction it worked pretty well, because through half-closed eyes, over Xander’s shoulder, I could see the goon looking puzzled, saying something into a mouthpiece and retreating. But it wasn’t a very interesting kiss. I was quite bored until— Until, oh shit, oh crap, the lift doors opened, and a familiar blond head turned to face me, a familiar pair of blue eyes looked right at me, and a familiar scowl shot right through me.
    “Oh shit,” I said against Xander’s mouth.
    “What? Did it work?”
    “Yeah, it worked,” I said, heart sinking. “It worked a little too well.”
    “What do you—” Xander began, pulling back and looking around in fear.
    “What the fuck ,” came a very familiar voice, “are you doing with my girlfriend?”
    Luke strode across the lobby and grabbed Xander by the shoulder and punched him in the face.
    The security guy rushed over, as did a lot of spectators.
    “What the hell is going on here?” yelled the security guy, suddenly looking very big and threatening, and there was a bulge under his jacket I thought might be a gun. Great, now he turned up.
    Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks.
    Xander and Luke were staring at each