“You’re good at this,” I said, surprised. I’d had years of ducking from cameras, but she hadn’t. Not like this.
Skye smiled, my compliment warming her face.
We sat a long minute with the awful news glow lighting my palm.
She leaned back against the sofa and closed her eyes. “For what it’s worth,” she murmured. “I never wanted to be right about him.”
“I know you didn’t. I should have known that. Back then,” I said, and put my hand, palm up, on the floor between us like you hold out a treat to a stray, scared dog. After a heartbeat, she set her fingers in mine. Light. Not a promise. But, enough. For now.
“Up,” she said, after our palms had warmed against each other. “Pack. Then sleep if you can. Tomorrow you’ll need your voice to say the right things or nothing at all.”
“What if I don’t know the right things to say?”
“Then say nothing,” she said. “And let the people who love you be loud.”
My heart hiccupped at the wordlove, but I couldn’tbring myself to comment on it. The olive branch between us was too new, too frail, to test its weight on something heavier.
Instead, I did something I’d been wanting to for years. I hugged her, briefly, but when she leaned into me and looped her arms around my waist, it felt like, for a moment, that nothing else in the world mattered but us.And that I could face the coming storm…because I wasn’t alone.
Seven
SKYE
There’s a uniquely Scottish silence that isn’t silence at all—just the wind holding its breath and the sea deciding whether to kick up a fuss or not. We didn’t have that this morning.
We had vans.
We had cameras.
We had men in black parkas practicing their “I’m just doing my job” faces.
The paparazzi had arrived.
By the time I made it downstairs, the lane outside the inn looked like the king was about to visit. Five cars nose-to-tail, a tripod in my herb bed, a man in a yellow hi-vis vest that definitely did not come from anywhere official. And between them and my front gate stood Esther and the BookBitches, wearing knitwear and righteous purpose like armor.
I cracked the side door and peered out, biting back a grin as Esther stomped forward, the poor paps ready to fight a battle none of them realized they’d already lost.
“Parking is residents-only, lads,” Esther announced, hands on hips, clipboard at the ready. She had added a high-visibility sash over her coat, which I suspected she’d made out of pure audacity.
One of the photographers held up his press pass. “We’re working press.”
“Aye, and I’m the Queen of Sheba,” Esther said. “Thirty pounds for parking, cash only, immediate payment. All proceeds to the Winter Warmer Fund.”
“Thirty pounds? We’re on a public road,” the pap complained.
“Public road, private land, public nuisance,” Meredith chimed in sweetly, pointing at the tin can she’d duct-taped to our garden wall withPAY & DISPLAYscrawled in gold marker. “No pay, no stay.”
Shannon swept in, cheerfully lethal. “Tickets for the Christmas Cèilidh are also available,” she trilled, holding a book of hand-made tickets like a Vegas dealer. “Usually they’re thirty quid each, but for you lads, we’ll do twenty. Comes with a free candy cane and a stern lecture about trespassing.”
I smirked. The Christmas Cèilidh was two quid a ticket.
“Ladies,” a man from the third car said, trying a smile he probably saved for door staff, “we don’t want trouble.”
“Perfect,” Esther said. “Neitherdo we. That’ll be thirty quid for parking, four tickets to the ball, and a fiver for the sausage rolls you’ve been eyeing since you got out of your car.”
Cherise spread out her hands to indicate the basket of rolls from the bakery she had at her side.
“I don’t want a sausage roll.”
