He crossed the space between them in two slow steps. The air between them thickened. His fingers brushed the edge of the sweatshirt’s hem where it hung just past her rear end, tracing lightly.
“Looks better on you,” he murmured.
“Now who’s the flatterer?” she chuckled, though her voice came out softer than she meant.
He leaned in, his mouth beside her ear. “Aye. Ye caught me.”
Holy shit.
The kettle clicked off, startling them both. She laughed quietly, the sound trembling somewhere between relief and want.
Flynn reached around her to pour the water, his chest brushing her back. His heat and scent wrapped around her, making it hard to remember why she’d gotten up in the first place.
She took her cup and stepped aside before she did something she couldn’t take back—like pull him closer just to see if he’d kiss her before breakfast.
“Tea first,” she managed. “Then you can charm me into trouble.”
He grinned, lifting his own cup. “Lass, I was born for trouble.”
Heather set the kettle on and opened Fiona’s diary while the cottage was still all hush and ticking. The leather had drunk in the night air and smelled faintly of smoke and something medicinal: old ink, perhaps, or old time. She turned to the back half, where she’d stopped the night before, and traced the neat, tight script that had become almost a tangible voice in her head.
The thistle endures…
Her eyes kept snagging on a page whose lower corner had gone a shade darker, as if some thumb had lingered there a hundred times. The ink looked faded to the point of vanishing in places—not scraped away, but thinned with precision.
Steam started to mutter as she slid the diary closer to the kettle and held the page to the warmth, careful, as if coaxing a shy thing into the open.
Letters breathed up out of the paper.
Not new words—old ones lifting through. In the outer margin, where she’d thought the page was blank, a paler hand had left a ghost of a note. Heather fished a soft pencil from Flynn’s drawer and, with the lightest touch, skimmed the graphite sideways over the margin. The raised strokes caught and filled.
…beneath the hearts that guard our flame.
Her own pulse jumped. “Oh,” she whispered to the quiet room. “Fiona, you brilliant woman.”
“Should I be jealous of that wee book, or the kettle?”
“Both,” Heather said, grinning despite herself. She turned the page for him to see. “Look—there’s a note I missed last night. The steam lifted it. ‘Beneath the hearts that guard our flame.’ The hearts,plural.”
Flynn leaned, shoulder brushing her back, and squinted. “Aye, that’s the same hand as the rest. And you’ll note that there’s no mention of the word hearth. Subtle as sin.”
“She’s protecting it even in the clue.” Heather’s chest felt hot and empty at once. “We were right, Flynn. It’s not just anywhere in the kitchen. It’s beneath those entwined hearts.”
He kissed her hair, a quick, grounding press. “We can have a proper look today. Slow-like. No sense in invitin’ a curse by goin’ at it hungry.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Since when are you superstitious?”
“Since you moved in and started talkin’ to ghosts.” He tugged her gently away from the counter. “Sit, lass. Tea first.”
They ate buttered toast and jam standing up, with Byrdie weaving officiously between their ankles to audit crumbs. By the second cup, the cottage had warmed; Heather’s bruise was a shadow under concealer rather than a proclamation.
Still, when a car eased past on the lane and the kettle chattered against its ring at the same time, her spine went taut.
Flynn noticed. “Just old Mr. Fraser’s Land Rover,” he said quietly. “Goes past every morning at half-eight, rain or shine.”
She nodded, cheeks heating. “I know. I just… keep listening for bad things.”
“That’s alright, lass.” He brushed her knuckles with his thumb. “I wouldn’t bring you back here if I didn’t think it was a safe place to be.”
