Page 27 of Lipstick Kiss

A few minutes later, they were on the move, Lukedriving even though it was her buggy. Luke was not to be driven. Anywhere. It had always been that way. Freya didn’t care. She liked to be driven.

He parked up at the alley next to Heidi’s old home, which was one door down from hers, and they kept walking past her front door and onto The Anchor.

Luke was quiet.

“Are you okay?” Freya asked.

“Sure. You?”

“Yeah,” she said.

She was, and she believed his answer too. They hadn’t spent a lot of time together over the last nine years, and she was still getting used to his bossy ways.

Chapter Eight

Luke

“Morning Maggie, how are ya?” Luke said as he entered her domain in the bowels of Turner Hall.

“Hello, Luke. Jason’s kitchen closed?”

Maggie chortled at her joke and shimmied from side the side as she scrubbed a pan in the sink.

“He doesn’t crisp the bacon to my liking,” Luke muttered and sat on the kitchen table bench.

“Coffee in the pot, help yourself. I need to win the battle with the dishes.”

“You want some help?” Luke asked, flexing his muscles, twisting from side to side.

Maggie was gazing over her shoulder and laughed. “I missed you, son. It’s good to have you back.”

His heart clenched at the reference. Luke moved to the coffee machine and the personal stack of mugs Erica had put aside just for them.

He loved the kitchen as a kid. It was his haven when he didn’t want to be near his grandfather or aunt. The elders, as he called them, would never lower themselves to come into the bowels of the house and enter the service areas. Nothing ever happened when his father was home from the rigs. As soon as his dad was on the boat across to the mainland, his grandfather, Archibald Turner, liked to use his walking stick as a method of communication. His aunt wasn’t any better, singling him out for her sniping and swiping. Luke would run to the kitchens when they were on the warpath and cling to Maggie’s legs. When he grew older, he wrapped his arms around her waist and hid his face against her chest. She never, not once, turned him away. She always hugged him back and let him stay in her kitchens for as long as he needed to. When he calmed enough, Bailey would escort him to his bedroom to ensure he got there safely from the physical and verbal tirade his grandfather and aunt piled on him.

He hated Cynthia and Archibald. Hated that they thought it was okay to bully him. He never saw them do it to Archer or Jason. Luke begged Daisy to tell him if she ever suffered at their hands, but she always denied any harm.

Whenever they could, they stuck close, but the age gap prevented this with school years when his older brothers were in secondary school, and he was still in junior school.

Getting off the island was his priority, like it was for his siblings, but he never wanted to come back. Thankfully he only had to tolerate his aunt, and she was in hiding.

“All right, Luke, in what form do you want your bacon?” Maggie asked when she’d finished scrubbing.

“In a bap with brown sauce. If you have any hash browns, I’ll love you forever,” he said.

“I have all of those things. Take it easy, and I’ll startcooking. Do you want me to bring down the boxes for you to look through?”

“Um, no, not yet. Can you hang onto them for a while longer?”

“This is a big house, Luke, but my rooms are small. So I keep tripping over them. If I break my leg, how will you get your bacon?”

“Such a gloom merchant, Maggie. I’ve seen your rooms, they’re palatial. I promise to take them soon. I haven’t unpacked yet from the stuff arriving from the other house.”

“Is it sold?”

“Yeah, we completed a week ago. Feels odd, knowing this is our only home.”

He had imaginary straps snap onto his wrists. Again, the feeling of entrapment coursed through him. Luke shivered, mentally shaking off the shackles.

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