Page 46 of Lipstick Kiss

“I think they were buried in the main church cemetery. We might need to visit there too.”

“Okay, let’s do this first.”

They spent a few hours walking around the overgrown graveyard. Every time Freya looked across at Luke crouched by a gravestone, he was already looking at her. It made her warm all over. She had to put thoughts of Luke out of her head, he had set her in the friends-only box, and she had to live with that. She wouldn’t accept it, but she would live withit. It just made it really difficult to concentrate when he was staring at her.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Anything.”

“Why isn’t there any furniture in your cottage?”

“I’m not there for long. Either I’m at Edward Hall or my brothers’ homes. I haven’t been back long.”

“Don’t you have any personal stuff?”

“A lot of my personal stuff is at the other house. Well, it’s in storage, ready to come down here when I can arrange it. I’m going to use the furniture from there. Everything that was in the cottage has been shifted to Edward Hall. I didn’t want any of it in the cottage. I know the bed is brand new, so I kept that.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

“Is it hard for you to come back?”

“Yeah, really fucking hard. But you’re here, and my brothers and sister are here, well Daisy will be here. We all grew up around misery, so it’s easier to cope. Misery likes company, I guess.”

“Do I make it easier for you?”

Luke stood from his crouched position and came striding over to her. He was so fast that she dropped the paper and pen when he hugged her. He squeezed her so tight the wind got knocked out of her. Freya managed to stretch out her fingers that were squashed between them and flatten them on his chest. He wasn’t letting go, not that she wanted him to. Resting her cheek on her hands, she let out a long sigh.

“I don’t know what I would do if you weren’t here. I’m not convinced I’d stay in the crappy job Archer has given me if you weren’t here.”

“Luke,” she whispered. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Then neither am I.”

Luke held onto her so tightly when he stepped away, she swayed. To steady her, Luke lifted his hand to her cheek and stared down at her.

“I feel like I took you for granted all those years I was travelling. I’m not sure I deserve you as a friend, let alone anything else.”

Freya froze at the look on Luke’s face. What did he mean, let alone anything else? She cleared her throat and crouched, losing his touch and picked up the paper and pen.

“So, do we have everyone plotted?” Luke asked, clearly wanting to change the subject.

Freya wanted to question him further but knew from old that if Luke didn’t want to talk about it, no coaxing would work.

“It seems so. All the boxes have names except the two blank gravestones.”

“We’ll have to check out the leaves on the website and see what connections they’ve come up with. What if my grandfather had other children we don’t know about? Their parties here were raucous by all accounts.”

“But he’s been dead a while. Why would those graves appear in the last year or so?”

“No idea, but I want to get to the bottom of it. Someone must know.”

“I bet Cynthia does.”

“I am not going to ask her anything. She won’t tell me the truth if her life depended on it.”

“I wonder why she’s so hateful. Someone must have done her some damage when she was younger.”

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