Hauntings in the Garden, Volume Two
Page 16
“I knew I didn’t do it,” he said. “But why didn’t they write off that car?”
“Too beautiful, too expensive.”
“Glad it’s all over.”
But it wasn’t. If only she could tie everything up as neatly as the puzzling poisonings.
Chapter Ten
They sat at her long refectory table. It no longer seemed too lonely nor too big. “The best stories start at the beginning.” Bram strummed his guitar gently, the arpeggios upbeat and chirpy. “Mine starts when I first saw you looking keen and enthusiastic in that boring adult education induction. Knew then you were something special. Where did you hide that car?”
“Behind the pub minibus.” She grinned. “I didn’t really notice you until that night class.” Maggie was not going to admit her first reactions, not going to lay herself open.
“And then I decided all hope was lost. You knew I was a drunk driver, an ex-con—”
“I didn’t—well, not till later. But you were…a travelling man, and I was determined to leave my travelling past behind, plant roots into Island soil, make friends for keeps.”
“And now?”
“The Island is in my heart. I feel I shall always come back no matter how far I roam.”
“Might just be London—and I can commute there from here. Shall we try a new partnership?”
“No strings?”
“Guitars need strings. Lovers need strings. And I need you.”
Her heart stopped, then raced, thundering toward a future where she could move forward on her own terms, where people, not places, provided her security. Where she loved a man who kissed divinely.
A word about the author...
An Honours graduate in English Language and Literature from St Andrews University in Scotland, Anne was a national newspaper news and features writer in the good old days of Fleet Street.
Now a lecturer and freelance editor, she has always hankered to write and is catching up with lost time before it's too late.
She lives on the Isle of Wight with her Dutch husband, a hefty Haflinger horse from the Netherlands, and a small dog who looks like a meerkat.