Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 92668 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92668 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
“Neither of whom are involved in the investigation. More to point, I can have dinner with the Grim Reaper if I so choose.” I held up my card as Tracy returned with the drinks, and she turned to the register to ring up the order.
“Now there’s a dinner I’d crash,” he replied. He opened his mouth to say something when he jerked his head around, and I leant backwards to see who he was looking at.
Kayla was smiling as she walked towards us, but that smile quickly dropped when she saw me.
“Great,” I muttered, turning back to the bar and catching Tracy’s eye.
Tracy cleared her throat, fighting a smile, and offered me the card machine.
“I thought you were having dinner with your sister,” Noah said, bending down when she reached up to kiss him.
Call me daft, but I’d swear he tilted his head just the tiniest amount so she missed his mouth.
I tapped my card against the machine and waited for it to show approved.
It didn’t.
“It wants your PIN, hun,” Tracy said, still fighting back her smile.
Of course, it did.
And of course, she was smiling.
It wasn’t like everyone knew of our epic teenage summer romances, was it? Noooo.
“I am,” Kayla said. “We thought we’d stop in for a drink first. I didn’t know you were going to be here. I thought you were with Jamie and Brandon.”
“They’re in the beer garden,” he answered. “Where else would we be?”
“I don’t know, but you didn’t tell me you’d be with her.”
I met Tracy’s gaze with a grimace and slid my card out of the machine.
At least it worked that time.
“I’m not,” Noah said, his tone more than a little tired. “We both just happen to be here.”
“Your food will be out in few. I know how Gwen gets,” Tracy said, tearing the receipt. “Especially after a martini.”
“If it’s anything like Ash after two glasses of wine, we’ll need the food,” I said, putting my card away and tucking my purse under my arm so I could pick up the tray. “Thanks, Trace.”
“Gwen?” Kayla asked, staring at me when I turned around. She quickly turned back to Noah. “She’s having dinner with your grandmother? Why doesn’t she ever invite me?”
“It’s probably because of the cottage pie,” I quipped, grinning.
Kayla hit me with a murderous glare.
Before she could say anything, I looked at Noah and said, “I’ll tell Jamie and Brandon you’re waiting for them in here.”
I flashed him a sweet smile and turned away, carrying the tray back through the bar to the beer garden.
Brandon and Jamie both looked at me when I returned alone.
“What did you do to him?” Jamie asked.
“Nothing,” I replied, putting the tray down. “He’s the one who followed me and got himself in trouble with his girlfriend.”
Gwen picked up her cocktail. “I swear she follows him.”
“You’re not the only one,” Brandon muttered. “Come on. Let’s go and save him.”
They disappeared, and I sat down, pulling the double vodka and cranberry juice closer to me.
“By the way, Gwen,” I said, sipping it through the straw. “She’s a bit put out that you never invite her for dinner.”
Ash snorted.
“That’s because she insulted my cottage pie.” Gwen stirred her drink.
“That’s exactly what I told her,” I replied.
“I bet that went down well,” Ash said.
I smiled, clasping the straw between my teeth. “Not with her, but I thought it was funny.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I had my car back.
That was all I cared about. Walking everywhere was getting tiresome, and I really hated my mum’s car.
Evidently, they’d found nothing in it, and I hoped that was the beginning of the end of my ordeal as a murder suspect.
We’d certainly discovered information that gave other people far more motive than I would have in any universe. I just wanted Declan Tierney to leave me alone—there were others out there with far higher stakes than me.
Financial, emotional stakes.
Real ones.
Not just a mild annoyance.
Heck, if I wanted to kill every man who didn’t understand that ‘no means no,’ I’d have been a serial killer by my twentieth birthday.
Thanks to Ash, who’d asked Tracy on one trip to the bar, I also now knew that Guy Quinn had been at Grandpa’s wake. That meant he likely heard my disagreement with him.
I was pretty sure everyone had.
But all I really cared about right now was getting a cup of coffee.
I pushed open the door to F*ckoffee, the coffee shop owned by Heather and Kate Cooper. They’d promised me a free cup at the wake, and honestly, even if they didn’t honour it given that I was now a murder suspect, I was still happy to support a small business.
That was one thing I loved about this town. The high street was full of small, independent shops, some of which had been owned by generations of families. Somehow, Fox Point had been untouched by the high street deaths that had taken over a lot of the UK, and I’d never been more grateful for the bubble this place seemed to exist in.