Page 28 of Reckless Kiss

Deciding he was willing to gamble, he said, “I’ll inherit this one day.” Archer looked up at the cottage.

As he looked at the house she had been renting, Erica followed his gaze.

“You’re going to inherit the house?” she asked.

“Copper Island,” he said and snapped his gaze back to Erica.

She jolted back on the sofa and took a deep breath, holding her palm to her chest.

“You’re not the maintenance guy?” she asked with her eyebrows raised. There was still humour in her eyes while she waited for the answer.

“At the moment, who knows?”

“Copper Island belongs to your father, and you’ll inherit all this beauty one day?” Erica guessed.

“It’s more complicated than that. My father passed away seven years ago.”

“I’m sorry, Archer, truly.”

“Thanks,” he said and paused. “I adored my father, my mother too. They should still be here, running Turner Hall.”

“You must be lonely.”

Erica said it as a statement. Archer didn’t consider himself lonely, not with three siblings he thought the world of and would do anything for them.

“Copper Island has been in my family since the early 1700s when copper was mined here. There is some antiquated rule that only one Turner can own the island at any time. When my father passed away, my grandfather was still alive. My father never got to own or run an inch of this piece of Earth. Everything went to my aunt. I’d hoped to learn from my father how to run everything when I was a kid. But he didn’t have any interest in the old ways. He wasn’t the eldest Turner either. My aunt is. Something happened that no one talks about back when my dad and aunt were younger. But fate had its way, and she is the matriarch.”

“And you didn’t get anything?”

“We won’t get anything until she passes away. It’s how the will was written.”

“We?”

“I have two brothers and a sister. So when I inherit as the eldest, I will split it four ways between us immediately.”

“What about your mother?”

“I haven’t seen her in a very long time. Close to thirty years. She could be dead for all I know.”

“Archer,” she said.

He couldn’t work out if she told him off or pitied him. Erica slumped back on the sofa and stretched out to look up. Most of the back of the cottage was under coverings. The couches were at the edge of a low wall overlooking the lawns.

They fell into silence, not looking at each other. Instead, Archer fixed his gaze on the stars.

“I don’t understand the connection between inheriting this island and kissing me? Do you think I’ll run off with your inheritance?”

Smiling, Archer looked her way, resting his forearms on his thighs.

“No. Nothing like that. Until recently, my brothers, sister, and I worked on the same oil rig. They closed down the operation, and now we need to find a new workplace. We can split up and work at different oil rigs around the world, but none of us wants to work solo. We’ve been together all our lives. Well, apart from education. It was either this island or the oil rig.”

“Wow. I can’t imagine liking my family well enough to spend that amount of time together.”

“We’re tight, inseparable, you might say.”

“Are you going to get to the kissing part?” she asked, licking her bottom lip.

Did she do that on purpose? Archer thought.

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