He didn’t have long to wait, as Abbey bent her head lower and began the task of licking the dust off his shoes.For Abbey, this was an easy task, as ...the shoes were made of leather, so her tongue slid smoothly over the dusty surface. However, when the man sat down and presented the soles of his shoes to her for cleaning, she realised what the smell she had noticed was. The man had obviously stepped in some dog shit on the pavement on his way to Joe’s apartment, and although he had scraped most of. My concern was allayed the next morning, a Saturday, after Mum and Dad had gone to work. I got up to find a letter addressed to me on the doormat. It was from Maria. Hi IanYou haven’t called to see me and I have missed your company. I cannot understand why. But then I thought it might be about the man I was with last week. That couldn’t be the reason could it Ian? Let me tell you that man is my older brother. He has been very much a father figure to me over the years – he helped me when my own. She froze. Did he know? "I thought you would have left hours ago." "What, with these on my wrists?" "Everybody's got keys to these. These are those cheapies that they made those belts out of a few years ago." "Well I don't, so I'd appreciate it if you'd get your key and get these off of me." "I've got it in my room." Surprisingly, this wasn't fol- lowed by some sort of sly wink, which caught her off guard be- cause she was expecting one. "On second thought, I'd better not let you out of my. ***** Archie was too restless to get back to sleep, too worked up about the night ahead. About 37 shopping trips, at least a billion web searches (‘perfect gift ideas for new daters’ was spectacularly unhelpful, seriously, who gives a crotch-less teddy as a first Christmas gift?) later, and he was still no closer to finding the perfect gift. The one that would show her how he felt, that this first Christmas together would, if he had his way, be the first of many. His apartment was spotlessly.