Page 6 of Reckless Kiss

“Here is the key. You should find everything you need inside. Maggie will bring over your laundry later,” Bailey said, giving him a key with an enormous metal disc as a keyring.

“No danger of losing this heavy thing,” Archer commented.

“No, sir, or putting it in your pocket either. Ridiculous things. The guests hate them.”

Without waiting for a reply, Bailey turned and left Archer in front of the closed door and strode down the path towards Turner Hall.

A shiver ran down Archer’s spine. It was like time had stood still on Copper Island. Could he handle living back at Turner Hall? He had to, for the sake of his siblings.

Archer looked at the windows on either side of the front door and noticed the curtains were closed. Stepping further back, the three upstairs windows also had closed curtains. He unlocked the door and stepped inside, getting used to the darkness in the ground-floor rooms. Each of the cottages was named after his female ancestors. The house he stood in was Emma Lodge, after his great-grandmother. The entranceway still had the same flagstone flooring and whitewashed walls. In the room to the left was the living room, vastly updated since he was last home with modern furnishings. He pulled open the curtains where dust particles flooded the room, highlighted by the sunlight. It made himsneeze multiple times. He mused that there had been no residents for some time if the dust levels were anything to go by. As he checked the sitting room across the hall, every room was immaculately appointed. The country-style kitchen and dining room were the same. He opened the curtains in all the ground-floor rooms before jogging up the stairs and into the four bedrooms upstairs. There were five when he was a teenager. Empty back then, but now they had colour-coordinated furnishing with an ensuite for the primary bedroom at the end of the hallway. Opening the windows to let fresh air in, he glanced at the small back garden with wooden furniture under coverings. There wasn’t much room before the vast lawns reached the pathway down the cliff to the private beach.

“Something is definitely not right here,” he said aloud.

Archer needed a shower and a change of clothes. He could smell salt water from his adventures in the sea rescuing the poor dog.

Pressing the switch for the shower, there was a loud bang, and the lights went out.

“Great, just what I need,” he said.

Chapter 5

Erica

“Why won’t you give him a divorce?” the young woman asked Erica.

The two women were standing in the bathroom at the Oscars. If Erica was drunk, she’d think this was a movie set. But nope. A heavily pregnant woman stood before her and wanted to know why she wouldn’t divorce her husband.

The man who she divorced a month ago.

Without saying a word, stunned by the question, Erica unbuckled her clutch bag and lifted out her phone. Then she dialled her ex-husband in without taking her eyes off the woman.

“Hey, babe,” he said cheerily.

As far as Erica was concerned, they’d had an amicable divorce and had remained friendly. Erica didn’t answer for a moment, dropping her hand with the phone to her side.

“What’s your name, sweetie?” she said, barely holding back the anger she felt.

“It’s Monica,” the woman replied.

Lifting the phone back up to her ear, she kept narrowed eyes at her ex-husband’s mistress.

“Babe, babe, are you there? I’m watching the Oscars on TV. Your category is on next.”

“How long have you been fucking Monica?” Erica asked.

Smooth as silk, Erica was calm as a millpond on the outside, but a raging inferno was inside her rib cage.

Yanny, her manager, had told her that her husband was cheating a year ago, and she said that was preposterous. They divorced because he said he was lonely and barely saw her between movie shooting, promo, and everything else she did as a top Hollywood actress. It seemed she was the idiot.

“Hurry up and answer. I’ve got an Oscar to collect,” Erica said.

“You don’t know you’ve won,” her husband replied, all joy gone from his voice.

“Well, at least you’ve admitted infidelity. It should make divorce proceedings easy.”

Erica kept her side of the conversation as if they were still married. She wanted to make Gregg, her ex-husband, squirm, but she wouldn’t do his dirty work for him. She didn’t know or care why he hadn’t told the mother of his child he wasn’t married anymore.

“We’re divorced,” he said. “What the hell is going on?”

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