Best of Fiona Harper

The expression in Nicholas’s eyes was everything I had fantasised about seeing there, and I meant to hold his gaze and lock it down, but somehow I slid right past him and kept going, until I felt as if I’d run full pelt into a brick wall. Or was that just a pair of warm brown eyes?

My breathing went to pot and I missed a note. But then I had another one of those weird out-of-body experiences. Singing Coreen recovered nicely and kept going, her voice rich and smooth, but the other part of me was hardly aware of her, caught in a strange bubble where only two things weren’t fuzzy and out of focus—

Adam.

And me.

I sang about smiling, and he smiled at me. I sang about magic, and he wove it around me just by holding my gaze. I sang about finding love, and something inside me warmed and melted. I couldn’t tear my eyes away until the last note had been sung and the piano had fallen silent.

The song was over. The feeling had gone. I was back inside myself, standing with my back pressing against the piano, the applause of my fellow house guests ringing in my ears.

Izzi stood up from her armchair. ‘I don’t think we can top that,’ she said. ‘So why don’t we stick some vinyl on the old gramophone and trip the light fantastic instead?’ She nodded to Robert, who made it so.

Julian prised himself from the piano stool and, very bravely for him, kissed me on the cheek. When he stepped away I saw Nicholas walking towards me. He came right up to me and offered his hand. ‘Would you do me the honour…?’

I nodded mutely and slid my hand into his. He led me to the space the men had cleared for dancing and drew me gently into his arms. Finally I was up-close-and-personal with Nicholas Chatterton-Jones. Exactly where I wanted to be.

I did.

Didn’t I?

Everything about dancing with Nicholas was perfect. His hand was warm and sure on my back as he guided me round the impromptu dance floor. He talked easily to me, all the while looking effortlessly drool-worthy and smiling into my eyes.

It was perfect. It was.

Only…

I was reminded of those cakes in the coffee-shop display case that I always yearned for but which never seemed to fit the bill. Finally I’d found one that matched what my tastebuds craved. It had all the right ingredients, looked divine, but now I’d taken a bite I’d discovered that it tasted all…wrong.

Dancing with Nicholas wasn’t a dream come true, it was an effort. What surprised me most was that I wasn’t bitterly disappointed. Instead I had that horrible, warm scratchy feeling you get when you know there’s somewhere else you need to be, something else you need to be doing. I was almost grateful to Louisa when the track on the gramophone changed and she nabbed the opportunity to cut in.

When I stepped out of Nicholas’s hold I knew Adam was standing behind me, waiting for me to turn around and glide into his arms. And I couldn’t stop myself.

‘I didn’t know you could sing like that,’ he whispered into my ear, and a whole series of teeny-tiny fireworks detonated up the back of my neck.

I controlled the resulting quiver well enough to answer him. ‘You’re not the only one to have secrets, Conrad.’

But I couldn’t keep the banter up. The air around us seemed too heavy for our usual frivolity.

Adam didn’t smile at me as we danced. He didn’t even talk. If he had, I might not have heard him. All I was aware of was his strong, capable fingers holding mine, of his broad palm at the small of my back. I couldn’t hold his gaze. It was too intense, too full of things I was scared to label, so when the needle on the gramophone scratched its way onto a slower song I rested my temple against his cheek and closed my eyes.

I have no idea how long we swayed and turned like that. Eventually, though, I noticed the air on my bare arms had become cooler, that the light behind my closed eyelids had dimmed to almost nothing. I flickered my lashes apart and opened my eyes.

We were on the terrace. In the moonlight. The warm yellow glow of the drawing room was only feet away, but it felt as if we were in a different world. The sheer curtains over the doors fluttered and curled in the light breeze, beckoning us back. Silently, by mutual agreement and the meeting of eyes, we ignored their call.

Had we stopped dancing? I wasn’t sure.

The way Adam looked at me…it brought tears to the backs of my eyes. Such gentleness. Such openness. Such acceptance. I couldn’t breathe with the intensity of it. Something deep down inside me turned over. It felt like a door being opened.

Adam brought his hand up to the side of my face and his fingertips traced the line of my cheekbone, then threaded up past my temple into the soft waves of my hair. I knew what was coming, and yet I didn’t know. Couldn’t quite get myself to believe it was true, that it was Adam and me standing here in the moonlight like this. I stayed completely still.

He dipped his head forward and our lips touched, just for a moment, and then he pulled back slightly, so he was only millimetres away. I closed my eyes and let the weight of my head rest in his hand, and then I waited, a well of longing rising up within me. I didn’t tease or taunt or dare. I surrendered. Maybe for the first time in my life.

And, as a reward, I got what I’d truly been longing for, because Adam really knew how to kiss. His lips brushed over mine slowly, teasing me, and then he deepened the kiss so swiftly I hardly knew what to do with myself. I felt as if I was falling and being caught all at the same time.

I lost myself. Along with all sense of time and gravity and reason.

And that’s why I had to put an end to it.

That’s why I had to push him away gently, my palms flattened on his chest.

Even so, it was my lips that clung as he drew away, my hands that bunched his shirt up into wrinkles before the cotton slipped through my fingers.

I blinked and looked at him. ‘What was that for?’

Eyes of warm espresso with caramel running through them. I didn’t have to look at his mouth to know he was smiling ever so faintly.

‘You know why.’

My heart hiccupped. Did I? Did I know why? Certainly not in my conscious brain. That part was freaking out. But somewhere else, somewhere instinctual and primal, I knew that I knew. I also knew I had to make sure those two parts of my brain never touched. Because if they did…well, I sensed there’d be trouble. And a whole heap of hurt.

Adam was watching me. I’ve been told that my emotions are easily readable in my face. From the way he was looking at me, I’d guess I was putting on a pretty good show.

‘Okay,’ he said quietly. ‘Have it your way for now.’ He didn’t say more, but the words later and soon hung in the air around us.

My gaze floated off in the direction of the beckoning curtains. I could see Nicholas in the middle of the drawing room, no longer dancing with Louisa. He kept glancing into the darkness as he talked to Julian, but I had no idea if he could see us. ‘You thought he was watching?’

The voice in my ear wasn’t Adam’s. Or at least it was a harder, steelier version of his. I snapped my head back round to face him. No caramel in those eyes now. Just gunsmoke.

‘I…I…’

I didn’t deny Adam’s accusation. Partly because my tongue wasn’t functioning well, still reeling from the best kiss I’d had in years, and partly because on some gut level I knew it might be safer to have an exit route. An exit route from what, and to where, I wasn’t sure, but the events of the last ten minutes had been so bamboozling I was operating purely on survival instinct.

He stepped towards me. Adam had never made me feel even the slightest bit nervous before, but this time I took half a step back even as my heart began to thump in anticipation.

‘I thought you were past playing games, Coreen, but if that’s the way you want it…’ His eyes glittered and my heart-rate accelerated, race-car-style. ‘Let’s make sure he gets a real eyeful.’

There was no tender touching of my face this time, no gentle breath on my cheek. While the last kiss had been soft and soul-churning this one was angry and potent and—oh, my goodness—hot!

I didn’t even have time to react as Adam yanked me back into his arms. For a few seconds my arms hung limp by my sides, my brain too overloaded with the information coming from my lips to bother to send signals to something as mundane as my arms and hands. But when the initial onslaught of sensation was over I decided those hands and arms could come in pretty useful. I grabbed Adam either side of his neck, let one hand slide up into his hair, pressed myself against him and gave as good as I was getting.

He made a ragged groaning sound and it tipped me over the edge. I had no idea who was in control, and normally that would have bothered me, but if I’d been at a disadvantage at the beginning of this kiss, I now had a hunch we were both as lost as each other.

Eventually, though, the mist cleared. Right about the time I sensed a change in Adam. Right about the time he stiffened and wrenched himself out of my grasp.

I’d never seen him like this before. Where was my smiling, twinkling, comfortable and safe Adam? I didn’t know if I wanted to swap him for one who could set my toes on fire with his kisses and yet look at me with such disgust. This one didn’t seem safe at all.

He ran a hand through his slicked-down hair, returning it to its more familiar messiness, and shook his head. ‘I’m such an idiot! Even after all these years…’ He took a few steps backwards, his expression hardening further. ‘That was quite a performance, Miss Fraser. You must really be desperate for this guy.’ And then he pivoted round and strode away from me, along the terrace and round the corner of the house.

I ran after him. ‘Adam? Adam!’

He stopped as I almost caught up with him and stood with his back to me, just breathing. No discreet floodlights here. Just Adam and me in the dark. I could only just see his outline against the blackness of the country night.

Slowly, he turned and faced me. ‘What?’ he asked, his voice low and weary.

My heart was thumping hard as I stepped towards him. I didn’t have a plan, and I always had a plan when it came to men. It’s impossible to train or manipulate or manage them without one. I was going on instinct again—something I wasn’t entirely comfortable with when it came to the opposite sex—but my instincts seemed to be primed and ready, as I didn’t even have to think before I lifted my hand to his face, mirroring his earlier gesture.

This was all new and I needed to explore him, to discover him.

I couldn’t see his face, but I think he closed his eyes, and he made a noise as if he might be in pain. A few moments later his hand shot up and stilled my roving fingers. ‘Coreen? Please…don’t.’

I shushed him and turned his face fully towards mine, using my hand against his cheek as leverage. Then I pinned him up against the rough brick wall and kissed him back. There was no one else to impress. There never had been.

I lay in the dark in my peach silk pyjamas trimmed with lace. Yes, they weren’t very Constance, but I’d reasoned if I couldn’t be my glamorous self during the day I might as well make up for it in the privacy of my room at night.

I was alone, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to be. Now, that was a scary thought.

Adam and me? Taking our relationship to that level? The thought made me shiver—in a good way and in a bad way.

He was my best friend. My Best Bud. Could that translate into something else? And what if it couldn’t? Would we lose everything we’d built up over the years? If Adam’s reaction when he thought I’d kissed him for Nicholas’s benefit was anything to go by, I’d guess we just might. I wasn’t sure I was prepared to take that risk.

But after this evening I also wasn’t sure I could bear not to.

If I’d known Adam could kiss like that I might have done something about it years ago.

I rolled over and punched my pillow—more because my thoughts weren’t letting me keep still rather than because the bed was uncomfortable. Far from it.

But you did know….

A memory hit me hard. Sharon Everidge’s eighteenth birthday party. Her parents had hired a hall. I’d set my sights on Tom Morrison, the coolest boy in school, but he’d pretended not to notice me. I’d made him pay for that later, of course. But at the time I’d grabbed the one prop I had to hand—Adam. I’d kissed him. Kissed him the way I’d been wanting to kiss Tom, hoping it would show the other boy just what he was missing out on. But before long I’d forgotten all about Tom, and Sharon, and every other hormone-laced teenager at the party, because I’d been too busy kissing Adam.

It had worked. Tom had sidled up and asked me to dance with him not long after Adam had stormed out. I blushed with shame as I remembered that I’d gone, telling myself Adam would understand, that he was my friend and would want me to be happy. And, after all…it was only a kiss.

I’d been such a coward.

I had known.

I had known that Adam could make my ears tingle just by looking at me, that our friendship had the potential to blossom into much, much more. But I’d ignored that fact. Put my little polka-dot blinkers on and pretended nothing had changed, that nothing ever would or could change. And I’d been so convincing I’d even believed it myself. How stupid could a girl get?

That moment when I’d sashayed away with spotty old Tom Morrison had been a defining point in my relationship with Adam. I could see that now. Whatever might have been…or should have been…I’d put the brakes on it—too cowardly to admit what had been right under my nose all along.

In some subconscious area of my brain I’d thought walking that path would be far too dangerous, so I’d clouded all of those warm feelings with friendship, insulated them, kept them safely at bay, and then I’d walked away from that idea. Heaven help me, I’d walked away.

And Adam had let me.

CHAPTER NINE

Body and Soul

Coreen’s Confessions

No. 9—Nan says there’s none so blind as them that don’t want to see. Why she keeps harping on about it to me, I’ll never know.

QUESTIONS were still churning in my mind when I woke, bleary-eyed and grumpy, the next morning. I reached over and bashed my travel alarm clock so hard it bounced off the bedside table and landed on the floor. The battery popped out of the back and rolled under the bed.

Back then, had Adam realised what a mistake it would be for us to get involved with each other? Had he walked away from the idea too? And if that had been his decision then would he make the same one again today? Was history about to repeat itself, with the shoe on the other foot? His foot instead of mine?

The breakfast gong sounded and I realised I didn’t have time to stress about that now. I needed to get dressed, to make myself presentable. I launched myself out of bed and dived for the shapeless beige floral dress and baggy cardigan that were Constance’s ‘back-up’ attire. I didn’t even mourn the lack of four-inch heels, or—heaven help me—any kind of dart or tuck in the dress’s bodice. I just forgot. And I didn’t even remember to put on lipgloss before I headed downstairs to see what the fresh summer morning—and fate—had brought me.

I’ve never been good with delayed gratification, so breakfast almost killed me. I’d shot myself in the foot by delivering that lecture the evening before on embracing the fun of the weekend and staying in character. Adam was supposed to be my brother, and the minute I laid eyes on him I had decidedly unsisterly feelings for him.

From the look in his eyes I could see he was struggling too, but, Adam being Adam, he managed to talk and smile and eat his way through it. Me? I just pouted and crossed my arms. When Marcus leaned over and told me my attitude that morning was somewhat unchristian, I was tempted to ram a sausage up his nose.

Bizarrely enough, my glowing mood only seemed to make Adam smile harder—the mongrel. I swear he was actually enjoying my discomfort.

The next hour or so was torture. Izzi decreed we were to scout Inglewood Manor for any remaining clues, as a few still hadn’t been uncovered. In the process, we managed to rule poor Ruby and the gold-digging fiancée out as suspects, but had added an over-protective mother who might have killed her philandering husband before he changed his will, leaving her two boys with nothing, and a college graduate who was in love with his best friend’s fiancée and might just have stabbed the wrong back when the lights went out.

I hardly got to see Adam at all, with Izzi marching around giving us all orders and sending us to different parts of the house. Whenever I was within thirty feet of him he drew my gaze like a magnet, and without fail he was already looking at me by the time I locked on to him. When we did get the chance to converse we had to do so as Constance and Harry, which meant keeping on topic, but hands off each other—which was all very trying.

‘Come on!’ shouted Izzi, rather like a general marshalling her troops. ‘The will we found was a fake and the real one is hidden in the house somewhere. I suggest we look in the conservatory.’

Jos, who was standing beside me, sighed. ‘Yes, because that’s the obvious place to keep important paperwork,’ she muttered, and trailed off after a striding Izzi.

I straightened my shoulders and followed her. After all, the quicker we solved this case, the quicker I’d have a chance to talk to Adam, or even have a few seconds to think about whether talking it over with Adam was a good idea.

The whole group trailed along behind its hostess as she led us through the entrance hall, through the library, and down a passageway past the kitchen that led to the football-field-sized conservatory. I would have followed her all the way, but a strong hand closed around my wrist, tugged me backwards, and suddenly everything went dark.

No, I hadn’t fainted. Really, do I come across as the fainting kind?

There were a series of little storerooms along the passageway and I was inside one of them, a narrow shelf digging into my behind and my foot held captive by what I thought might be a string bag. No lights. Hardly any space. Pressed up against someone who was warm and breathing.

‘Adam?’ I whispered. ‘Is that you?’

Dear Lord, I hoped it was Adam.

Mercifully, the pair of lips that found their way to my neck and worked their way upwards to my chin were heartstoppingly familiar. I grabbed hold of his lapels, threw myself at him, and unleashed the whole force of the fantasies that had been running round my head since we’d parted the night before.

It was quite some time before I recovered enough to think as well as kiss. The first wave of desire retreated, readying itself for a second surge, and I took advantage of the moment of lucidity to pull apart from him, breathing unevenly, and rest my forehead on his shoulder.

I kept on whispering, even though the rest of our party was long gone. ‘What are we doing, Adam?’ I needed to know. Were we risking our friendship just to mess around and have a fling?

He laughed softly into my ear and I went hot and cold all over.

‘I was under the impression you knew exactly what you were doing, but if you want me to walk you through it step by step…’ He pressed his lips to the hollow between my collarbones and I gasped. ‘I believe it started…like…this…’ he muttered in between kisses, and I had to delve my hands into his hair, grab on and pull his head back to stop him. By the vibrations of his ribcage I could tell he was laughing silently, playing with me. I didn’t know if I loved it or hated it.

‘No, I mean…’

Another thing I discovered about Adam: he liked to play dirty. Obviously I hadn’t been holding his head firmly enough, because he escaped and nipped gently at my left earlobe.

Oh, what the heck?

I let my head fall back, leaving him room to do what he wanted, and indulged myself at the same time, skimming my hands across his back and shoulders, exploring the delicious dips where one muscle met the next with my fingertips. Adam’s mouth found mine and I forgot to think about where my hands were or what my fingertips were up to.

‘Constance? Harry?’

We both froze. That was Izzi’s voice, and those were Izzi’s hard-soled black boots on the flagstone passage. She walked right past us, calling our characters’ names again, and then on towards the entrance hall.

I giggled against Adam’s lips and felt him smile back. We’d been in this cupboard or pantry or whatever it was long enough now for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. A silver rectangle of light round the edges of the door gave just enough illumination for me to make out his features.

He pulled me to him, bunching my dress up near my hips as he made fists, and kissed me again. Slowly this time, with the earlier frantic pace giving way to something more languorous and sensual. I don’t think I’ve ever been kissed with so much…feeling. It rocked me from the bottom of my stockinged feet to the tips of my unadorned eyelashes. I couldn’t even speak when Adam had finished with me. One last, feather-soft teasing touch of his lips and then he rested his forehead against mine. I could feel his chest heaving beneath my fingers, hear him dragging in the still, dark air.

‘You want to know what this is?’ he said quietly. ‘Where this is going?’

I nodded, keeping our foreheads in contact with each other.

‘You were right,’ he said, in his rumpled Sunday morning voice. ‘I have a secret. One I’ve run from for years. And I’ve never told anyone. I’ve even hidden it from myself at times… But now it’s time to open Pandora’s Box and see what comes flying out.’

Oh, my. Adam wasn’t secretly married, was he? Or suffering from a serious illness? I couldn’t stand it if—

‘Wh—what secret?’ I stammered.

He kissed me again. I lost my balance and kicked a bag of what might have been potatoes.

‘You.’

I wrinkled my brow. ‘Huh?’

He stopped smiling then. I could feel it in the way his shoulders tensed, in the way his lips felt against my cheek as he whispered, ‘You’re my secret, Coreen.’

My mouth opened but no words came out. To my utter horror, Adam’s confession had filled me with more cold dread than if he’d said we were just fooling around, and I wasn’t sure why. I didn’t know what to say, how to respond, but luckily I didn’t have to.

All of a sudden light pounded behind my eyes. I blinked and sheltered them with my hand. When I managed to make sense of what my forgotten retinas were telling me I saw Robert standing in the doorway, a jar of chutney in his hand, his mobile eyebrows hitched as high as I’d ever seen them at finding Adam and me wound around each other in what was clearly the pantry.

‘Excuse me, miss,’ Robert said in a level tone, and reached behind me to return the chutney to its home. He stepped back, but stopped with one hand on the door. ‘I would close the door and tell myself I’d gone momentarily blind, miss, but I think I’d better warn you that Miss Isabella has been looking for you, and the likelihood of you remaining undiscovered is slim.’

I nodded and tried to straighten my wrinkled dress, still within the confines of Adam’s arms. ‘Thank you, Robert,’ I said, in the most dignified voice I could muster.

‘No problem, miss,’ he said. ‘I’ll just push the door and give you a chance to…um…refresh your appearance.’ He swung the door half closed, leaving a few inches of light for us, but I swear as he walked away I saw a naughty little smile on his face.