Best of Fiona Harper

Another voice—a new one—echoed down the corridor. ‘Talking to the jams and pickles again, Robert? I’ve told you before about the dangers of nipping at the cooking sherry.’ The snorting laughter that followed identified its owner as Marcus.

Adam lifted his finger to his lips. I nodded and tried to silently smooth my hair back into a bun that was now only half there.

Sunshine filled the pantry once more. This time, however, Adam and I were ready. We were standing as far apart as we could in the confined space. My hands were clasped firmly in front of me, and Adam’s were in his pockets. Didn’t do us much good, though. I reckon Marcus rumbled us from the guilty expressions on our faces. Something had to have given us away.

If being caught alone together in a darkened panty wasn’t enough, of course.

‘Well, well, well…’ Marcus said, taking every last detail in. I tried not to squirm, but to hold my head high and mimic that supercilious thing Robert did with his eyebrows. ‘I thought you two were supposed to be brother and sister? How delightfully naughty.’

Adam grabbed my hand and pushed past Marcus into the passage. ‘No,’ he replied, giving the other man a stern look. ‘Not brother and sister. Not in a million years.’

And then we escaped down the passageway into the unyielding brightness of the football pitch-slash-conservatory, where it seemed the sunny Sunday morning had been trapped and held to ransom.

The ancient woods on the fringes of the Chatterton-Joneses’ estate were full of twisting oaks, fresh green glades, dappled sunshine and the kind of quiet that normally got on my nerves. The earth was springy underfoot, carpeted with a layer of old dried leaves and fallen pine cones. Adam and I walked slowly through it, side by side.

These were the same woods Izzi had marched us through only yesterday, but I’d been so focussed on Nicholas up ahead of me that I hadn’t noticed how beautiful it all was, how perfect the stillness and quiet could be. I was starting to realise this wasn’t the only thing I’d failed to see as I bulldozed my way through life.

Izzi’s iron-clad timetable said we should all have some time to wander off on our own and meditate on the identity of Lord Southerby’s killer before we met back in the drawing room for the big finale. Adam and I hadn’t done much of that. We hadn’t done much talking, full stop.

Breathless kissing? Hand-wandering? Yep. There’d been plenty of that going on.

It was so easy to be with him. To be like this with him. And that astounded me. I couldn’t quite get my head around how our relationship seemed to have morphed seamlessly from one thing into another, and I had a horrible feeling it was all a shimmering mirage.

I couldn’t take my eyes off Adam. While everything about him was comfortable and familiar, at the same time everything was new too. I’d never noticed the grace in his easy stride before, had never found myself staring at his sexy little dimples and marvelling at their perfection. That twinkle in his eye I’d always loved? Now I realised it was only for me. When it glittered at me I felt conspicuously giddy.

Why had I never seen any of this before? Why hadn’t I let myself see any of this before? Each time this question wriggled through my thoughts and snuck its way to the front of the queue I sent it packing to the back of the line again. I didn’t think I’d like any answer I could come up with.

I must have been frowning, because Adam stopped walking and turned to face me. ‘What’s up?’ he said, his voice soft and low.

‘I’m a little…freaked out by all of this.’ I pressed my lips together and shook my head gently. ‘I don’t know. It’s all so…’

His expression became serious and he reached for my hand and squeezed it. ‘I know you, Coreen Fraser.’ The warmth in his eyes made my nose do that stinging thing again. ‘I know just how much heartache you’ve had in your life—down to the very last ounce.’

I looked away, unable to look at the truth of what he’d said in his face. He waited while I sucked in air through my nostrils and attempted to quell the stinging. I didn’t cry in front of people. Ever. Not the real kind of gluey, soggy tears that puffed my face up and ruined my eyeliner. I’m not proud to admit it, but I have squeezed a few perfect beads of moisture from the corner of my eye when the occasion demanded it, when it would help me get my own way. But I measured out my tears. I decided how many fell and when. I stayed in control always.

He carried on talking as I fixed my gaze on a holly bush and didn’t turn back. ‘I understand why relationships are something you’ve either deliberately avoided or sabotaged when they threatened to get too serious.’

Did he? I wished he’d tell me.

And I wished Adam couldn’t see past the polka dots and lipstick. I wished he couldn’t look inside me as if I was made of glass and tell me what the writing on my heart was when I couldn’t even decipher it myself. I couldn’t be mysterious and unpredictable with Adam. Those two things were my best weapons for keeping a man on his toes, for keeping him off balance while my stiletto heels were firmly anchored to the floor. And there wasn’t even a fair trade-off with Adam. He knew everything about me, and I had missed even the most obvious things about him.

I turned my head back, but focused on one of the buttons on his shirt instead of looking him in the face. ‘Do you think we’re doing the right thing?’ I asked. ‘Whatever is going on between us could spell the end of our friendship.’

He held my chin softly between thumb and forefinger and tipped my face up. ‘We’ve run from this for long enough, Coreen. I’ve loved being your friend, but I’ve finally admitted to myself that I want more, and I can’t keep pretending that I don’t. Don’t ask me to go back.’

The force of his honesty sent me searching for that nice, safe button to fix my gaze on again. My instinct was to gloss over this difficult topic by doing any one of the hundred things I usually did in similar situations—like blowing a kiss and sashaying mysteriously away without answering—but I found myself disarmed. In the literal sense. The only thing I had left in my arsenal was candour.

I took a deep breath. ‘I don’t know if I’m ready for this.’

He stepped forward and closed his arms around me. Even in his dull grey vicar’s suit he smelled amazing. I pressed my cheek against him. The shirt button was so close now I went cross-eyed trying to keep it sharp and in focus.

‘You won’t know unless you try, and I think you’re ready for more than you give yourself credit for.’

My eyes started to ache and the button became blurry.

‘How do you know? And how come you know when I don’t know it myself?’ I knew I sounded a bit sulky, but I couldn’t help myself.

He leaned forward and kissed me. His lips were warm and soft and teasing. I made a noise that was suspiciously like a purr.

‘Not fair,’ I said, but I smiled at the same time.

I arched the top of my back so I could look at him. He wasn’t smiling, but looking grave. ‘When you started mooning over old Nicholas, I knew it wasn’t just another fleeting crush. I knew this time it was different for you.’

I raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh? Did you?’

‘Yes, I did. And I decided it was time to explore whatever has been simmering under the surface between us for years. That thing we’ve always pretended wasn’t there. I realised I didn’t want you to want Nicholas. I wanted you to want me.’ One corner of his mouth twisted a little. ‘That’s why I agreed to come on this weekend with you. I had to do something to make that happen.’

I gave him a disbelieving look. ‘So you’re telling me you had a plan while I had none?’

‘Sort of.’ And then he grinned at me. That caught-you-out-this-time grin I knew so well.

Even though my upper arms were pinned under his more muscular ones, I wiggled a hand free and thumped him on the chest. ‘Insufferable big-head!’

‘Minx!’ he whispered, then shut me up with another heart-stopping kiss. When he drew away he was chuckling under his breath. ‘I think the plan worked out rather well, don’t you?’

I laughed too at first, but then I started to feel uncomfortable. As much as I was beginning to enjoy the added sizzle to our old banter, I didn’t like the idea of being a pawn moved around in someone else’s game. I pushed my way out his arms and walked away.

‘Don’t play games with me,’ I said over my shoulder.

Adam fell into step beside me, but I kept looking straight ahead. ‘I’m not playing games with you. What I feel for you is real—and I don’t think you’re in any position to lecture me on game-playing, anyway.’

I spun around to face him. ‘That was different! I didn’t… They never meant…’ I couldn’t finish that sentence. Couldn’t tell him this was on a completely different level to my little bag of tricks. What I did was harmless fun. The games Adam was playing could really get someone hurt.

‘This isn’t going to work! We’re already fighting.’

He gave me a sharp look. ‘Don’t do this, Coreen. It can work…’

I shook my head and started backing away. ‘This is all too much. Twenty-four hours ago we were just good friends—best friends!—and now you’re asking me to decide my whole future. You’re asking too much!’

Adam shook his head. ‘I’m not asking for eternity! Just a chance.’

I could feel the tears collecting behind my eyes and I squashed my face up to deny them exit. ‘It’s already poisoning our friendship! And I need that from you. You’re the one person in my life I can—’

Trust.

Go on, Coreen. Say the word. It’s only a tiny one. It can’t be that hard.

I gulped. The tears were trying to find an alternative escape route—up my throat and down the back of my nose. I shook my head again, more vigorously this time.

‘I’m not sure this is what I want,’ was all I managed to mumble.

He tried to reach for me, but I stumbled further backwards, watching his jaw harden as I did so.

‘And I can’t keep pretending friendship is enough for me any more. I’ve lied to myself, and to you, for too long.’ His stare was fierce, then he puffed out a breath and ran a hand through his hair before looking at me again.

‘Maybe this has been too hot and fast and heavy. Maybe we do need to slow down.’ He shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘You want space? You’ve got it.’ As he spoke his voice softened and the irritation melted away. That was harder to deal with, to be honest. He looked into my eyes. ‘You know where I stand. Take some time to think about this—not just react to it—and when you know what you want, come and find me.’

He turned and walked off, his shoulders bunched, head low.

Me? I did what any self-respecting drama queen would do in my shoes. I ran in the opposite direction and didn’t stop until I was out in the sunshine again and the unhealthy silence of the woods was far behind me.

We gathered at three in the drawing room. I didn’t sit with Adam.

He didn’t sulk, as I would have done. He talked with the other murder-mystery guests, and engaged in the proceedings, but every now and then he’d look at me and I’d feel heavy inside. There was no condemnation or accusation in his eyes, no sense of pressure. It only made me feel worse, because I really felt like throwing a wobbly to shake the awful lethargy that had settled on me, and I had nothing whatsoever to use as a justifiable trigger.

The shabby detective was back, and he laid the case out for us, summarising his interviews and our own interrogations of each other. Each clue had been clearly tagged and laid on the long cherrywood coffee table in the centre of the room.

I listened with one ear, but inside my head I was involved in a similar process. Sorting. Labelling. Remembering. My memory seemed determined to dredge up all sorts of strange little details. I didn’t even recall storing them away, but there they were, all neatly labelled and catalogued, just like the detective’s evidence…

The way Adam had always watched out for me and stood up for me, even when I’d still been in primary school. The way he was faithful and loyal now we were all grown up, despite my shenanigans. That playful glint in his eye when we argued, as if he enjoyed even that just because it was me he was sparring with. The way that playfulness had hardened into danger last night on the terrace.

After the general memories came the specifics. Thick and fast.

The bleakness in his eyes as he’d stood on his doorstep and listened to my apology after that fateful party. The squaring of his shoulders the first time he’d met Nicholas. The way he always inhaled deeply when he hugged me, as if he couldn’t help himself breathing in my scent.

They were fragments, really. Nothing more than that. But when I pieced them together there was only one conclusion I could come to.

Adam loved me. Had done so for a long time. And I’m not sure either of us had really known.

I sat there on the sofa, staring at the plastic gun on the coffee table and trying to work out what that meant, how I felt about it. But I was numb. Overloaded. Terrified.

The others were asking questions of each other, bandying theories around and knocking each other’s clever arguments to the floor with new insights, but I didn’t hear any of it. My memory had cranked into gear again, and this time the images being flung in my direction, the sounds and words, all related to me.

My face lighting up every time I saw him, no matter how glum I’d been before he walked in the door. The way he made me feel as if I could do anything, be anything. His hand my only anchor at my mum’s funeral, as we’d watched four strangers in black carry her into the chapel. I’d squeezed it so hard it had creaked for days afterwards.

I’d needed him then, more than I could express or even comprehend. But I’d never had to articulate those feelings. In fact I’d never had to ask him for anything that I’d really needed. Oh, I might have begged and wheedled and sulked to get him to agree to something I wanted, but that wasn’t the same thing. He’d always been there, ready with what I needed—like the takeaways. I’d just been too blind to see that what I really wanted, what I really needed, was him.

My gaze flew to his face. He was laughing with Izzi about some ridiculous theory she’d just put forward, his grin wide and his dimples creasing deep in his cheeks, and suddenly I felt as if I were falling. Not a gentle floating, but being dragged by gravity so fast it sucked the breath from my lungs, the words from my mouth. I felt clammy and twitchy, shivery and cold.

And then I hit the bottom of whatever I’d been falling down. But instead of it ending with a nasty, messy splat there was an explosion of warmth and light. It rushed outwards from my ribcage until pins and needles stabbed my fingers and toes, until the roots of my hair tingled to attention.

Finally the polka-dots fell from my eyes.

I stood up shakily, my mouth working, my eyes wide. A couple of people stopped talking and stared at me.

‘It’s you,’ I said to Adam across the room. ‘It was you all along.’

He broke off mid-sentence and our gazes snagged and held.

There was a reedy voice to my left. The detective. ‘Are you making a formal accusation?’ he asked.

I nodded dumbly. How could I deny it?

He was the one. The cupcake of my dreams.

I was in love with my best friend.

I was in love with Adam Conrad.

CHAPTER TEN

Fever

Coreen’s Confessions

No. 10—You might not believe it, but sometimes I take things too far.

THE next twenty minutes were mayhem. Everyone talked over each other, unravelling the remaining tangles in the mystery we’d all been trying to solve. More than once I was clapped on the back and congratulated for working it out, but I hardly registered it.

I’d finally worked it out. But I wasn’t clever. I was very, very stupid. The clues had been laid out for me, and all I’d had to do was take the focus off myself long enough to see them winking at me along the way. I never had. What did that say about me as a person?

I could see with such clarity now why I’d been so territorial about Adam with my friends, why I put up with his endless teasing. Why he felt like a part of me. And it had only taken me the best part of twenty years to work it all out.

Very, very stupid.

Stupid not to have seen it. Stupid to have allowed it to happen in the first place. By not opening my eyes to it, thinking that was the safer option, I’d actually left myself even more vulnerable.

Jos and Louisa were making a fuss of Adam, asking him how he’d managed to fool them all weekend. Even Nicholas gave him a handshake. Then they wanted to know what his motive had been. It turned out my supposed brother—brother? Hah!—had discovered his beloved younger sister was the product of his uncle’s affair with their mother. The late Lord Southerby had been getting sentimental in recent months, had regretted denying paternity and had talked about changing his will. Harry had been scared for Constance, had sought to protect a young woman who selflessly wanted to spend her life helping others from a scandal that would prevent her from doing just that. What missionary society would have sent the illegitimate daughter of a well-known cad overseas as an example of good Christian morals? Harry had acted out of love and rage and retribution.

I woke from my daze briefly. ‘When did you know it was you?’ I asked Adam.

‘I knew right from the start…almost.’ He gave a careless shrug, but his gaze was probing. ‘It was right there in my second envelope—the one we got straight after the murder.’

Marcus gave the pair of us a disdainful look. ‘I don’t know…’ he said, in a slightly petulant tone. ‘I think this young lady might have had a slight advantage over us when it came to solving the case.’

I knew he was thinking about the larder incident, and just letting my consciousness touch the edge of that memory was enough to make me tremble deep down in my core.

But Marcus was wrong. In the situation I found myself in now, I had no kind of advantage. No kind of advantage at all.

I slipped away while the others were still debriefing themselves, using the excuse that I had to go and pack up the clothes that were no longer needed.

Izzi had been generous enough to offer the clothes she’d bought to their owners, and most of the guests had elected to keep their outfits. I collected the evening wear that wasn’t in use and made sure it was hung up or packed properly for their journey home. Once that was done I still had the ‘spares’ to deal with. The extra clothes would return with me to Coreen’s Closet, where they’d go back on the rails.

I was hanging up the wonderful red velvet dress when I heard a soft knock at my bedroom door.

People in love are supposed to thrill at the thought of their sweethearts, aren’t they? So why did the adrenaline surge that hit me incite the fight-or-flight reflex? I looked across to the window. Unless I wanted to shimmy down a two-hundred-year-old drainpipe I only had one choice.

Rather than shouting an invitation to come in, I walked across the room and opened the door a crack, keeping most of myself behind its protective bulk. My eyes widened. It wasn’t Adam standing there, but Nicholas.

‘Can I come in?’ he asked, looking very serious indeed.

I stepped back, way back, and opened the door wide. He walked through and, after a second of hesitation, closed it behind him.

‘Is something wrong?’ I asked.

Nicholas stopped looking grim and his face broke into possibly the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen on a man. The sort of smile that undoubtedly turned the knees of countless society darlings to custard. All the more devastating because it was one hundred percent genuine. My knees, however, remained decidedly un-custard-like.

‘I wanted to thank you,’ he said, and when he spotted my raised eyebrows added, ‘for all you’ve done this weekend.’

I frowned. ‘I didn’t do much, and besides Izzi’s paying me. It’s work, really.’

‘No, not just that,’ he said earnestly. ‘For being so great to Izzi.’ He paused and glanced towards the closed door, and lowered his voice. ‘I know she gives the impression she’s indestructible…’

One side of my mouth lifted. It was obvious, despite her loopiness, that he clearly loved his sister.

‘Izzi has a lot of “friends”—I think parasites might be a more appropriate word—who hang around for what they can get out of her.’ He looked down at his shoes. ‘I’m ashamed to say that when I first met you I thought you were one of those people who’d take advantage of my sister’s gregariousness and generosity. I was wrong.’

Now it was my turn to look at my shoes. I had been guilty of that, or at least it had been that way in the beginning. I looked up again, to find him regarding me carefully.

‘You proved me wrong, went the extra mile.’

I’m not usually in the habit of stopping someone layering on the compliments, but this girl he was talking about? I’m ashamed to say she was nothing like me. I shook my head. I was the girl who thought of herself first and others second.

‘No,’ I mumbled. ‘I don’t think you understand.’

Nicholas was smiling again now. ‘I think I understand well enough.’

I turned back to the bed, where I’d flung the red dress, and picked it up. It was something to do to hide the heat creeping up my cheeks.

‘That’s a beautiful dress,’ he said.

‘Yes.’

I fetched a garment bag and began putting it inside.

‘Perhaps you’d consider wearing it out one evening…if you’d like to have dinner with me, that is?’

I literally had no words. Nicholas Chatterton-Jones was asking me out? Really?

‘Why me?’ I blurted out. ‘I’ve seen the world you live in, the people you mix with. I wouldn’t fit in.’

He considered that for a moment. ‘I know…but perhaps that’s the key. I always seem to go for the same type of girl…’

Didn’t I know it? I listed it out for him. ‘Beautiful, rich, thin—’

‘You’re beautiful,’ he said plainly.

Before, I would have lapped that comment up, demanded more, but I took his compliment with the same simplicity it had been given. ‘Thank you.’

He walked over to the bed, so we were standing either side of it. ‘You shouldn’t put yourself down.’

I laughed out loud as I walked over to the hanging rail and deposited the red dress in its protective cover there. He really didn’t know me at all, did he?

‘Oh, I don’t think you have to worry about that!’ I said, still giggling as I walked back to the bed. ‘But if it makes you feel any better I will add one more thing to the list. One thing I’m definitely not.’

He pressed his lips together in an amused grin and raised an eyebrow.

‘Duck-faced,’ I said, and then wondered if I’d taken things too far again.

Nicholas chewed this over. ‘You know,’ he said finally, a look of surprise lifting his features, ‘I hadn’t realised it, but I think you’re right!’

We both laughed then. He really was even more good-looking when he laughed. What a pity that his cheeks were missing a pair of roguish dimples, that his eyes weren’t chestnut brown, and that the sparkle that should’ve been there in them just wasn’t.

‘I’ve decided everything on that list is decidedly dull, anyway,’ he added. ‘I’ve certainly seen the attraction of a woman who has a little more to her.’

If he was talking pounds and inches he’d better duck, because a right hook was coming his way.