Page 110 of A Secret Escape

Milly wished she’d brought her grandmother to a different performance.“Please be quiet! He and Joel went to get wine. They’ll be back any moment.”

Right on cue, Brendan appeared carrying glasses of wine for Connie and Nanna Peg. “Joel and Brian are right behind me with more drinks.”

“Thank you.” Nanna Peg beamed up at him. “Can I ask you something, Brendan?”

Milly almost groaned.

Say no, she thought, but Brendan smiled.

“Ask me anything.”

“If you had to murder someone using only what is available in these gardens, what would you do? I was thinking foxglove.”

To give him credit, Brendan didn’t flinch. He glanced around him, his gaze lingering on the flower-filled borders and the stream that wound its way along the end of the garden.

“Foxglove would probably work,” he said and turned back to Nanna Peg, “but if I wanted to use a plant and be absolutely sure of the end result, I’d choose hemlock—Conium maculatum. It’s deadly. The highest alkaloid concentration is in the seeds, but every part of the plant is toxic.”

Nanna Peg listened to him with rapt attention. “Goodness, what an interesting and knowledgeable young man you are. I could talk to you for hours. I don’t suppose you and Milly would like to join an old lady for dinner one night, would you? Now that my roof is fixed, I’m entertaining again.”

“I don’t know.” Brendan’s eyes were bright with laughter. “Will you be cooking, Peg?”

Nanna Peg laughed so hard that Milly started smiling too.

They were still laughing when Richard and Avery reached them, and the wave of good humor seemed to dilute the potentially awkward moment.

Milly greeted them warmly, and Richard was so starstruck to see Brendan Scott again that he could barely stammer out a sentence.

And she had to admit that the whole encounter was so much easier with Brendan and Joel there and also Brian,her mother’s new “friend” (Milly still didn’t totally understand the nature of their friendship, but her mother seemed happy, and that was all that mattered).

They were a large and happy group, and she felt a slight sense of smug satisfaction when Brendan put a protective hand on her back, and Richard’s eyes almost popped out of his head.

Maybe she wasn’t as evolved as she liked to think.

Richard cleared his throat. “Where’s Nicole? I was hoping to have a word.”

“She’s backstage. She has been helping them all week,” Milly said.And also staying out of the way so that she didn’t draw attention to herself.The focus of tonight was the children. “I’m sure she’ll be around afterward if there was something you felt you wanted to say to her.”

She knew he wanted to apologize, and she wasn’t going to stop him. He and Nicole had been friends once, and even if they couldn’t reach that point again, she hoped they could at least find some sort of harmony.

“She’ll be with me,” Joel said calmly, “so we’ll come and find you.”

His message was clear. That Nicole wasn’t going to be on her own for any part of the evening. That there was a whole gang of people who loved her and had her back.

Fortunately, at that moment a bell rang to indicate that they should take their seats, and they all moved to the chairs that had been laid out in front of the stage.

“I never noticed it before,” Nanna Peg said as she settled next to Milly, “but Richard’s eyes are really close together. I don’t trust a man whose eyes are close together. And he certainly doesn’t have Brendan’s sex appeal.”

“Shh.” Milly sent a mortified glance at Brendan, who was seated the other side of her. “Sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” He was laughing so hard he was almost crying. “Your grandmother is priceless. And she’s given me an idea for my next book.”

“Oh please, no, don’t tell her that. She’ll never stop going on about it.” She held her breath as the lights came on and everyone’s attention was directed to the stage.

The set was an enchanted forest, lit by what seemed like thousands of tiny lights.

And suddenly Milly was terrified. There was a huge number of people in the audience, far more than she’d anticipated.

“I hope this doesn’t go horribly wrong. It’s so important to Zoe.” She couldn’t remember ever feeling so nervous, and when Brendan reached for her hand, she didn’t pull away.

---