Page 66 of Lipstick Kiss

Luke couldn’t be happier, but he couldn’t forget the baggage that came with him. She was happy, relaxed and open to marrying him and raising a family like they’d planned it for years. It seemed too easy.

Leaning back to bring her entire face into focus, he looked deep into her eyes.

“Don’t fuck with me, Freya. Are you serious right now?”

“Luke, if you don’t want a future with me, then I would seriously consider leaving the island, as I couldn’t bear to watch you fall in love and marry another woman. I’m not that strong.”

“Maybe you know how I felt when I saw that ring, and you said you had a fiancé.”

“No, not even slightly. I’d be devastated. I wouldn’t be able to tolerate being in the same room as you. You stayed friends with me. You gotta know I couldn’t do that. I’d have to walk away.”

Luke gave her a grin. Over the fucking moon, she was into him as much as he was and that the friends line they’d crossed wasn’t a mistake.

“It’s a moot point, Peaches. What kind of ring do you want?”

“The one at the bottom of the ocean. If you can’t get that, then something gorgeous and over the top.”

“I’ll see what I can rustle up. Now get under the covers because I can feel you shaking, and I don’t think it’s me this time.”

She nodded and stood up next to the bed. She pulled back the covers and slipped under, getting comfortable on his side. She took the tin from the other side and placed it on the bedside table. Luke wasn’t sure if she was okay with what happened, but he didn’t want to be away from her for too long. It was the middle of the afternoon, but he still went downstairs, locked up, and brought up a basket of food they could nibble on. He put it just inside the bedroom door and saw that Freya was asleep. Luke went back downstairs and grabbed his phone and laptop. Carefully slipping in on the other side of the bed, he propped himself up and opened up his laptop. The screen was already set to the ancestry site, and he was floored to see so many green leaves for a family that didn’t have descendants that lived long passed the firstborn.

He clicked through to another web page and searched for the type of tin found in the warehouse, and then when he found the name of it, he searched how to unpick it. He’d wait for Freya to wake up to open it together. Going back to the ancestry leaves, he clicked through the leaves, and his heart stalled when he saw the potential family link.

“That bitch,” he hissed quietly, not wanting to wake Freya.

Instead, he messaged his siblings.

Did you know Aunt Cynthia had children?

Chapter Twenty-One

Luke

The emergency meeting was set in Edward Hall’s kitchens. Everyone agreed that they needed to process what Luke had learned over food. Jason made them baked omelettes with their favourite fillings. They assembled around the metal table at the far end of the kitchen. Luke brought up the screen for the ancestry site and showed them Cynthia Turner’s name and two possible matches to descendants. It also showed a match to the father’s name but no indication she had married him.

“She kept that quiet,” Archer said.

“I wonder why?” Jason said.

Luke was still so angry he could barely speak, continuing to punch keys. Erica and Heidi didn’t have to haul their arses to Edward Hall at six in the morning, so Archer and Jason had left them sleeping. Luke had a mumbled conversation with Freya, who said she wasn’t feeling well enough to go to school, so he offered to personally go and see thehead teacher to explain why she wasn’t coming to work. He had an hour to talk through his game plan with his brothers and then get to school, then he needed to seek out Cynthia and basically ask her what the fuck was happening and then get to his dreaded day job. All in all, Luke thought he had a shitty day ahead of him.

“Has it dawned on either of you what this means?” Luke said.

“She’s capable of love after all?” Archer ventured.

“Cynthia Turner, the eldest Turner in her line on the family tree, produced an heir,” Luke gritted out. “What we’ve been doing here is a waste of fucking time.”

Jason’s eyes widened. “What?”

“He’s right,” Archer said. “If she had a child and he or she is older than me, then they will be heir to the Turner fortune and Copper Island.”

“And that fucking sucks. I don’t have a job I trained for, and now I don’t have a legacy to work for. I don’t even know if I have a future with Freya. For all I know, nearly fucking dying was the only reason she slept with me,” Luke grumbled.

“How is Freya doing?” Jason asked.

“She’s been chirpier. She doesn’t want to go to work, so I’m heading to the school after this.”

“What is the name of the father?”

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