Dead Men Don't Order Flake by Sue Williams Read Free Book Online Page A

mud-encrusted and slightly overwhelmed. Where I’d ended up was also unsettling. Of all the kitchens in all the world, I had to run into Leo Stone’s.
    I turned off the water, reluctantly, and got out of the shower. Towelled myself. A tantalising kitchen smell wafted in. Onions, meat, something peanutty. A sudden thought: Serena. Oh shit, that was probably their dinner he was cooking. Maybe she was due back any minute. A cosy dinner for two, followed by an energetic evening. Of course, that’s what the tea lights were about.
    Leo had acted all cool and calm, but he’d be keen to bundle me out of here as soon as common decency allowed. It never helps when a woman arrives home for the cosy-tea-light-sexual-frenzy only to discover the fella’s old flame in the shower.
    Even if the flame is only an ancient-history-flame, busyguttering out. And immune to men, or as near as humanly possible.
    I glanced around the bathroom—it didn’t strike me as advertising the presence of a woman. No bath bombs, no mousse or candles. Maybe she didn’t live here? So it was a wooing romantic early-days type of evening? Of course—what bloke would bother with tea lights once he’d got beyond the groundwork?
    I groaned. Clearly, I’d arrived at precisely the wrong moment, just in time to do the complete gooseberry routine. I took a deep breath. Well, at least I was no longer a mud-encrusted gooseberry.
    I stepped out of the bathroom, wrapped in a couple of acres of towel and headed into the kitchen. Leo was standing by the stove, stirring the tantalising-smelling something in a huge pot.
    ‘That feel better?’ He smiled; picked up some clothes from a chair: a big, blue blokey shirt and way-too-narrow-hipped jeans. He held them out.
    ‘Thanks. Although those jeans are the wrong shape.’
    He looked me up and down with an appraising eye, the smile broadening. The kind of look that’s no help to a person in the process of cultivating her immunity.
    ‘Sorry, but I’m right out of my stock of woman-shaped clothing, Cass.’
    ‘Got a pair of tracky dacks?’
    Ten minutes later, I emerged from the bathroom a second time. The tracky dacks and shirt-tent combo didn’t make the greatest fashion statement, but it was dry and not plastered with rust-coloured mud. I sat down at the kitchen table. It was very dim in that kitchen—just flickeringshadows from the row of tea lights. I’d phone for a taxi in a moment; get the hell out of here and leave them to their romantic dinner.
    Leo handed me a mug of hot chocolate. I wrapped my hands around the big red mug and took a warming sip.
    He moved back to the stove. ‘Hungry?’
    ‘Oh no. Been eating all day.’
    My stomach gave a rumble you could have heard in Muddy Soak. I hadn’t eaten anything since that boiled egg at lunchtime. It felt like hours ago, probably because it was.
    Leo filled up a plate with some of the contents from the pot on the stove and put the plate in front of me.
    ‘Thanks for all your help, Leo. I should really head off now.’
    He poured a glass of white wine and put it in my hand, as if I hadn’t spoken, then poured one for himself. He filled another plate with food and sat down in front of it. ‘Cass, come on, you need to eat something.’
    ‘Err, you sure there’ll be enough for Serena?’
    ‘What’s she got to do with it? Eat.’
    ‘Well, just a mouthful.’ I tasted the food. Tomato, chicken, peanuts, a little chilli. When had Leo become such a good cook? I tried not to shovel it all down too quickly. ‘What is this, anyway?’
    ‘Chicken mwamba. Got the recipe from a mate in the Congo.’
    A silence while I tried not to gobble.
    ‘I’d say your distributor’s shot, Cass.’
    ‘Yep, I’ll phone for a taxi in a minute.’
    ‘No rush. Anyway, you haven’t told me why this Fairlane was following you.’
    ‘Well, I thought I was working on a small, non-dangerous job for a bloke I felt sorry for.’ I explained about Gary, Natalie’s accident, her bag,