Fiona Harper - Best of Fiona Harper

I raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh? Did you?’

‘Yes, I did. And I decided it was time to explore whatever has been simmering under the surface between us for years. That thing we’ve always pretended wasn’t there. I realised I didn’t want you to want Nicholas. I wanted you to want me.’ One corner of his mouth twisted a little. ‘That’s why I agreed to come on this weekend with you. I had to do something to make that happen.’

I gave him a disbelieving look. ‘So you’re telling me you had a plan while I had none?’

‘Sort of.’ And then he grinned at me. That caught-you-out-this-time grin I knew so well.

Even though my upper arms were pinned under his more muscular ones, I wiggled a hand free and thumped him on the chest. ‘Insufferable big-head!’

‘Minx!’ he whispered, then shut me up with another heart-stopping kiss. When he drew away he was chuckling under his breath. ‘I think the plan worked out rather well, don’t you?’

I laughed too at first, but then I started to feel uncomfortable. As much as I was beginning to enjoy the added sizzle to our old banter, I didn’t like the idea of being a pawn moved around in someone else’s game. I pushed my way out his arms and walked away.

‘Don’t play games with me,’ I said over my shoulder.

Adam fell into step beside me, but I kept looking straight ahead. ‘I’m not playing games with you. What I feel for you is real—and I don’t think you’re in any position to lecture me on game-playing, anyway.’

I spun around to face him. ‘That was different! I didn’t… They never meant…’ I couldn’t finish that sentence. Couldn’t tell him this was on a completely different level to my little bag of tricks. What I did was harmless fun. The games Adam was playing could really get someone hurt.

‘This isn’t going to work! We’re already fighting.’

He gave me a sharp look. ‘Don’t do this, Coreen. It can work…’

I shook my head and started backing away. ‘This is all too much. Twenty-four hours ago we were just good friends—best friends!—and now you’re asking me to decide my whole future. You’re asking too much!’

Adam shook his head. ‘I’m not asking for eternity! Just a chance.’

I could feel the tears collecting behind my eyes and I squashed my face up to deny them exit. ‘It’s already poisoning our friendship! And I need that from you. You’re the one person in my life I can—’

Trust.

Go on, Coreen. Say the word. It’s only a tiny one. It can’t be that hard.

I gulped. The tears were trying to find an alternative escape route—up my throat and down the back of my nose. I shook my head again, more vigorously this time.

‘I’m not sure this is what I want,’ was all I managed to mumble.

He tried to reach for me, but I stumbled further backwards, watching his jaw harden as I did so.

‘And I can’t keep pretending friendship is enough for me any more. I’ve lied to myself, and to you, for too long.’ His stare was fierce, then he puffed out a breath and ran a hand through his hair before looking at me again.

‘Maybe this has been too hot and fast and heavy. Maybe we do need to slow down.’ He shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘You want space? You’ve got it.’ As he spoke his voice softened and the irritation melted away. That was harder to deal with, to be honest. He looked into my eyes. ‘You know where I stand. Take some time to think about this—not just react to it—and when you know what you want, come and find me.’

He turned and walked off, his shoulders bunched, head low.

Me? I did what any self-respecting drama queen would do in my shoes. I ran in the opposite direction and didn’t stop until I was out in the sunshine again and the unhealthy silence of the woods was far behind me.

We gathered at three in the drawing room. I didn’t sit with Adam.

He didn’t sulk, as I would have done. He talked with the other murder-mystery guests, and engaged in the proceedings, but every now and then he’d look at me and I’d feel heavy inside. There was no condemnation or accusation in his eyes, no sense of pressure. It only made me feel worse, because I really felt like throwing a wobbly to shake the awful lethargy that had settled on me, and I had nothing whatsoever to use as a justifiable trigger.

The shabby detective was back, and he laid the case out for us, summarising his interviews and our own interrogations of each other. Each clue had been clearly tagged and laid on the long cherrywood coffee table in the centre of the room.

I listened with one ear, but inside my head I was involved in a similar process. Sorting. Labelling. Remembering. My memory seemed determined to dredge up all sorts of strange little details. I didn’t even recall storing them away, but there they were, all neatly labelled and catalogued, just like the detective’s evidence…

The way Adam had always watched out for me and stood up for me, even when I’d still been in primary school. The way he was faithful and loyal now we were all grown up, despite my shenanigans. That playful glint in his eye when we argued, as if he enjoyed even that just because it was me he was sparring with. The way that playfulness had hardened into danger last night on the terrace.

After the general memories came the specifics. Thick and fast.

The bleakness in his eyes as he’d stood on his doorstep and listened to my apology after that fateful party. The squaring of his shoulders the first time he’d met Nicholas. The way he always inhaled deeply when he hugged me, as if he couldn’t help himself breathing in my scent.

They were fragments, really. Nothing more than that. But when I pieced them together there was only one conclusion I could come to.

Adam loved me. Had done so for a long time. And I’m not sure either of us had really known.

I sat there on the sofa, staring at the plastic gun on the coffee table and trying to work out what that meant, how I felt about it. But I was numb. Overloaded. Terrified.

The others were asking questions of each other, bandying theories around and knocking each other’s clever arguments to the floor with new insights, but I didn’t hear any of it. My memory had cranked into gear again, and this time the images being flung in my direction, the sounds and words, all related to me.

My face lighting up every time I saw him, no matter how glum I’d been before he walked in the door. The way he made me feel as if I could do anything, be anything. His hand my only anchor at my mum’s funeral, as we’d watched four strangers in black carry her into the chapel. I’d squeezed it so hard it had creaked for days afterwards.

I’d needed him then, more than I could express or even comprehend. But I’d never had to articulate those feelings. In fact I’d never had to ask him for anything that I’d really needed. Oh, I might have begged and wheedled and sulked to get him to agree to something I wanted, but that wasn’t the same thing. He’d always been there, ready with what I needed—like the takeaways. I’d just been too blind to see that what I really wanted, what I really needed, was him.

My gaze flew to his face. He was laughing with Izzi about some ridiculous theory she’d just put forward, his grin wide and his dimples creasing deep in his cheeks, and suddenly I felt as if I were falling. Not a gentle floating, but being dragged by gravity so fast it sucked the breath from my lungs, the words from my mouth. I felt clammy and twitchy, shivery and cold.

And then I hit the bottom of whatever I’d been falling down. But instead of it ending with a nasty, messy splat there was an explosion of warmth and light. It rushed outwards from my ribcage until pins and needles stabbed my fingers and toes, until the roots of my hair tingled to attention.

Finally the polka-dots fell from my eyes.

I stood up shakily, my mouth working, my eyes wide. A couple of people stopped talking and stared at me.

‘It’s you,’ I said to Adam across the room. ‘It was you all along.’

He broke off mid-sentence and our gazes snagged and held.

There was a reedy voice to my left. The detective. ‘Are you making a formal accusation?’ he asked.

I nodded dumbly. How could I deny it?

He was the one. The cupcake of my dreams.

I was in love with my best friend.

I was in love with Adam Conrad.

Fever

Coreen’s Confessions

No. 10—You might not believe it, but sometimes I take things too far.

THE next twenty minutes were mayhem. Everyone talked over each other, unravelling the remaining tangles in the mystery we’d all been trying to solve. More than once I was clapped on the back and congratulated for working it out, but I hardly registered it.

I’d finally worked it out. But I wasn’t clever. I was very, very stupid. The clues had been laid out for me, and all I’d had to do was take the focus off myself long enough to see them winking at me along the way. I never had. What did that say about me as a person?

I could see with such clarity now why I’d been so territorial about Adam with my friends, why I put up with his endless teasing. Why he felt like a part of me. And it had only taken me the best part of twenty years to work it all out.

Very, very stupid.

Stupid not to have seen it. Stupid to have allowed it to happen in the first place. By not opening my eyes to it, thinking that was the safer option, I’d actually left myself even more vulnerable.

Jos and Louisa were making a fuss of Adam, asking him how he’d managed to fool them all weekend. Even Nicholas gave him a handshake. Then they wanted to know what his motive had been. It turned out my supposed brother—brother? Hah!—had discovered his beloved younger sister was the product of his uncle’s affair with their mother. The late Lord Southerby had been getting sentimental in recent months, had regretted denying paternity and had talked about changing his will. Harry had been scared for Constance, had sought to protect a young woman who selflessly wanted to spend her life helping others from a scandal that would prevent her from doing just that. What missionary society would have sent the illegitimate daughter of a well-known cad overseas as an example of good Christian morals? Harry had acted out of love and rage and retribution.

I woke from my daze briefly. ‘When did you know it was you?’ I asked Adam.

‘I knew right from the start…almost.’ He gave a careless shrug, but his gaze was probing. ‘It was right there in my second envelope—the one we got straight after the murder.’

Marcus gave the pair of us a disdainful look. ‘I don’t know…’ he said, in a slightly petulant tone. ‘I think this young lady might have had a slight advantage over us when it came to solving the case.’

I knew he was thinking about the larder incident, and just letting my consciousness touch the edge of that memory was enough to make me tremble deep down in my core.

But Marcus was wrong. In the situation I found myself in now, I had no kind of advantage. No kind of advantage at all.

I slipped away while the others were still debriefing themselves, using the excuse that I had to go and pack up the clothes that were no longer needed.

Izzi had been generous enough to offer the clothes she’d bought to their owners, and most of the guests had elected to keep their outfits. I collected the evening wear that wasn’t in use and made sure it was hung up or packed properly for their journey home. Once that was done I still had the ‘spares’ to deal with. The extra clothes would return with me to Coreen’s Closet, where they’d go back on the rails.