Death on the Aisle

Book 0: A Molly Higgins mystery

by Kate Johnson

Genres: Amateur Sleuth

Synopsis

First comes love, then comes murder... Molly Higgins is getting married-but of course nothing is going to plan! Marrying a celebrity brings with it a huge number of headaches no matter how down to earth Conor is. The best way to have their cake and eat it too, is to take part in a celebrity wedding show: they'll pay for everything...even if the cost is Molly's sanity. Everything seems to be looking up, until Molly meets their assigned wedding planner, Kiranda who is possibly the most annoying person on the planet. Throw in a surprise visit from Molly's wayward sister Tansy and suddenly the big day can't come soon enough. But when Kiranda turns up dead, Molly has to solve the murder of their wedding planner before their big day. But who among her guests, friends and family could be the killer? And will the wedding go off without a hitch? The third book in the gripping new Molly Higgins Cozy Mystery series: Book 1 - Death Comes to Cornwall Book 2 - Murder Most Cornish Book 3 - Death on the Aisle

Release date: February 22, 2021

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 288

Sample

Tansy had never been much of a fan of churches. They were nice enough to look at, but they always seemed to be judging her.

Of course, this was probably because she was a Higgins, and literally everyone judged her. Everyone said the reason the chapel in Port Trevan was locked when not in use was thanks to one of her forebears, who had nicked the collection plate money. Tansy didn’t know if it was true. It almost didn’t matter. People enjoyed the disapproval too much to care.

The church she was currently standing outside right now, however, was not the plain and humble Port Trevan chapel, but the much prettier church of St Peter the Apostle outside the village.

‘That’s strange. Ms Kell said she’d meet us here,’ said the vicar, as they stood at the lychgate and looked around the deserted car park.

‘Trust me,’ said Tansy, before anyone suggested it, ‘Kiranda did not walk here. I don’t know where she’s staying, but we’re miles from anywhere and that woman goes nowhere without a massive heel.’

‘True,’ said the vicar. ‘Still, perhaps she got a lift. I lent her a key so she could come and make some plans. She’s very…exuberant, isn’t she?’

Tansy refrained from rolling her eyes as she followed him between the leaning, lichen-covered gravestones to the church porch. ‘That’s one way of putting it.’

After her came Louise, the TV producer, and the camera and sound people. Tansy had been instructed to pretend they weren’t there, which was fine by Tansy since she really wished they weren’t.

Why the hell had Molly asked her to come today? Her sister had barely even sent her an invitation, but now she was here, she was being sent off to meet the stupid wedding planner whilst her sister minched off to run her dinky little café—

‘Aha,’ said the vicar, as they reached the door. ‘You see, she’s already here. The door is unlocked.’

He turned the huge metal doorknob and gestured for Tansy to go ahead of him.

She half expected to burst into flames as she set foot inside, but nothing at all happened. The church smelled like all churches, and as far as she was concerned it looked like all churches. Nice enough, but not what her sister really wanted for her wedding. Which was probably the point.

‘What is that buzzing noise?’ said Louise. ‘Can you check for feedback?’

Tansy wandered forward along the back of the pews, pretending for a moment that she was the bride. Big white dress, long veil – not that Molly would ever go for something so extravagant. Molly would probably get married in a dress she’d worn before, to save money.

‘Tansy? Are you angry that your sister didn’t ask you to be her bridesmaid?’ said Louise, following her like a shark. Which meant that the camera was right over Tansy’s shoulder as she reached the end of the pew, glanced down towards the altar, and saw the cloud of flies buzzing around the body.

Waxy skin, staring eyes, and blood. So very much blood.

Tansy screamed.

Two days earlier

‘And then the peacock will precede you down the aisle—’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Molly. ‘The what?’

‘Peacock,’ said Kiranda, as if Molly was hard of hearing. ‘You know, darling, big blue bird, huge tail, very pretty? We’re bringing him in from this agency in London.’

Molly had got quite good at hiding her expression in front of the cameras, but she dearly wished Conor was here so she could see his. ‘And why is there a peacock at my wedding?’ she said.

Kiranda looked at her like she was very stupid. It was how she always looked at Molly, and indeed anyone else who wasn’t a celebrity.

Kiranda knew lots of celebrities. Molly knew this because she constantly name-dropped them. She professed to be no older than thirty-five, although some of her anecdotes involved people who hadn’t been famous since the eighties. She had immaculate blonde highlights, suspiciously plump lips, and upper arms that appeared to be made of pure steel. She liked to wear very fitted dresses and heels to show off her impressively toned body, and if you hadn’t noticed it, she mentioned doing triathlons every now and then. She professed to hate the sun, but was always a warm shade of brown, and every now and then a hint of Essex escaped her Chelsea diction.

Currently, she was inspecting the altar cloth of St Peter’s Church, with an expression that said it would have to be replaced by something that matched her colour scheme.

‘Because of the football,’ she said.

‘Football?’

‘Yes. Don’t tell me you don’t know your own fiancé’s team,’ Kiranda said.

Molly shrugged. Conor had never shown a lot of interest in football. ‘Um, England?’ she said.

‘No, silly, Leeds! He’s from Leeds,’ Kiranda said.

‘Yes,’ said Molly doubtfully, because Conor had been born there but spent more of his life in London, ‘but I don’t think—’

‘And the Leeds City nickname is…?’

Molly sighed. ‘Well, first of all I think they’re Leeds United,’ she said, ‘and second of all, I’m going to guess they’re the Peacocks?’

‘Exactly!’ said Kiranda, and Molly half expected to be offered a sweetie for being such a clever girl. ‘When I planned the Norwich City captain’s wedding we had canaries. A great yellow cloud of them, flying over the congregation.’ Her gaze went distant for a moment, and Molly fought to keep her face straight. ‘Plus, who wouldn’t want a peacock at their wedding?’

Molly resisted the urge to say, Well, me, and then she caught the eye of Mike the cameraman. He raised his eyebrows at her.

But Molly had learned that telling Kiranda she didn’t like something was a sure-fire way of ending up with it being an integral part of her wedding.

The church was quite pretty, and it was large enough to hold all the people Kiranda wanted to invite to Molly’s wedding. Molly didn’t know most of them, and she was reasonably sure Conor only knew a few. Sure, he’d acted alongside some big names, but that wasn’t really the same as being a big chum. But Kiranda wanted lots of big names at the wedding.

Kiranda wanted a church wedding, whereas Molly was kind of ambivalent. But she didn’t dare tell Kiranda that the reason was her family had never been made welcome at the Port Trevan chapel, because the Higginses had a bad reputation. If Kiranda heard that – or more to the point, if Louise the producer heard it, and she would – then the whole show would be about Molly’s family and all the petty, ancient grudges the village held against them, which Molly had tried so hard to reverse.

‘I had owls at a wedding once,’ mused Kiranda, clearly not paying attention. ‘To deliver the rings. Well, you know, when you’re famous for being in Harry Potter, of course you’re going to have owls.’

‘Of course,’ murmured Molly, and Kiranda waited a beat for her to ask whose wedding that had been.

When she didn’t, the wedding planner went on anyway. ‘It’s a shame no one told me the maid of honour was terrified of birds.’

‘So am I,’ Molly said quickly. ‘Totally terrified. I have a phobia. Birdo…aviophobia,’ she invented. Yes, that sounded convincing enough.

‘Really?’ said Kiranda.

‘Yes. Terrified. Horrible childhood incident,’ Molly fabricated wildly.

‘Really? I’m sure the other week you told Mike not to be scared of a seagull.’

‘Oh, well, seagulls,’ said Molly. ‘You know. Practically ducks. Anyway. If you think I’m bad you should see my sister. Little Grace? She’ll just run screaming if she sees a peacock. I mean, the minute it appears. The whole wedding will just be her screaming. For hours. Actual hours.’ Was that overdoing it? Kiranda surely couldn’t argue with a frightened child. ‘No peacocks. No wild animals of any kind.’

Kiranda opened her mouth.

‘No domestic animals either,’ Molly said quickly. ‘No animals at all.’

‘Apart from the ponies,’ said Kiranda.

Molly pinched the bridge of her nose. ‘Ponies,’ she said.

‘Yes. Pulling the carriage.’

‘Carriage,’ sighed Molly.

‘Right up to the church door. I’ve checked with the verger person.’

‘Great,’ murmured Molly. She was going to arrive at her own wedding smelling fragrantly of horse. The odds were completely on that they would leave a little deposit right outside the church door for someone to step in. Probably Molly herself.

‘Now, are you completely sure about the peacock? Because I’ve paid the deposit.’

‘Completely,’ Molly said flatly. ‘No peacock.’

Kiranda sighed so dramatically Molly thought her eyeballs would roll out of her head, and got out her phone. ‘All right,’ she said, as if cancelling a live peacock was the most unreasonable thing a bride could do two weeks before her wedding.

As Mike filmed Kiranda shouting down the line, apparently under the impression that long distances meant louder voices, Molly glanced at Louise, the producer.

‘Did you know about the peacock?’ she asked.

‘Not as such,’ said Louise evasively, and Molly remembered something Mike had said to her back when Kiranda threw her first tantrum. If something goes wrong, it’s way better for the show.

‘You guys do remember this is my actual wedding?’ she said.

‘And you do remember that we’re actually paying for it?’ said Louise coolly, and Molly inwardly seethed.

Yes, Total Productions were paying for the whole wedding, right down to the livestock, but the only reason Molly and Conor had said yes to such an absurd idea was that trying to plan a wedding where every other guest was a celebrity of some kind was almost impossible without a huge budget, mostly for security. Molly’s modest dreams of a pretty dress and a nice registry office had gone out of the window when her fiancé was announced as the star of a big-budget teen werewolf movie, a role that that mostly involved him striding around half naked and scowling at people.

Conor was very good at scowling, despite being an absolute sweetheart on the inside. He also looked very nice half naked, or indeed fully naked, although his agent usually tried to rule that out of his contracts. Once the first publicity stills of him had leaked online, the crazy letters and emails and pervy tweets started flooding in, and the security costs for the wedding had shot up.

They’d considered selling the wedding photos for a huge sum to one of the glossy magazines, but Conor simply wasn’t famous enough for that, and Molly – as one editor had crushingly put it – was a total nobody.

‘It’s a fair state of affairs, Cupcake,’ Conor had said as they sat staring at the mounting costs and considering eloping, ‘to be famous enough to need security, but not famous enough to pay for it.’

Then Total Productions had contacted Conor’s agent, saying they wanted to do a celebrity special of their wedding show, Something Borrowed, and the budget on offer had been staggering.

Of course, Kiranda was a nightmare and Louise the producer just egged her on. Molly was giving serious thought to presenting Conor with a suitcase and a ladder and reneging on the contract.

Louise glanced around. ‘Isn’t your fiancé here yet?’

Molly looked around the church of St Peter the Apostle, which contained herself and Louise, Kiranda – currently shouting swear words down the phone – Mike, and Greg the sound guy. The poor vicar had excused himself on some urgent pastoral work long ago.

‘I don’t see him, no,’ she said thoughtfully, but her sarcasm hit like water off a peacock’s back. Or whatever it was peacocks deflected. ‘He’s filming. They must have run long.’

‘He did say he’d be here,’ said Louise.

‘What can I say? He’s an actor,’ said Molly. ‘Sometimes unexpected things happen.’

Every time Tansy came home the tweeness of it surprised her.

The other passengers on the bus had given her strange looks when she tipped her head upside down to spray dry shampoo into her hair, but she’d been on the go for a day and a half and the last thing she wanted was to look bedraggled as she arrived in Port Trevan.

She wiped off her make-up to apply a fresh face, too. It was a bit like seeing your ex at a wedding. You wanted to look like you’d been having the time of your life without him.

Not that she wanted to see that ex at this wedding. Her nails dug into her palm at the thought. No. It had been years. He must have moved on. He’d always boasted of his big plans.

Surely she’d be safe. All she had to do was keep a low profile and then she could escape again. There was that job in Corsica someone had mentioned. She could go to Corsica. She’d need to find out where it was and what language they spoke there, but she could probably do it. She hadn’t known anything about Cyprus before she went there.

‘Next stop Port Trevan, home of Miss Lawrence Investigates,’ called the bus driver. He could just shout down the aisle, because it was a small bus. It had to be, to get around these tiny lanes. These tiny, cute, quaint little lanes that belonged on a nostalgic Sunday night TV drama, not in real life.

The bus stopped on the Top Road, because that was the only bit of Port Trevan a bus could get to, no matter how small it was, and Tansy followed a few eager day trippers out into the fresh air. She checked over her shoulder as she did. Old habits died hard in the place you’d grown up in.

But there was no one she knew here. There was no one she didn’t want to see, apart from the usual loser locals. She was safe from all but a few derisive glances, here in Port Trevan.

She was safe.

They were opposite the Co-Op, and the holiday lettings office, and outside a collection of pebble-dash bungalows. She watched the tourists’ faces fall.

‘It doesn’t look like it does on telly,’ said one of them.

‘I heard they film it all on a soundstage in Truro,’ said Tansy, which was true inasmuch as that was where the Miss Lawrence interiors were shot.

‘No! They can’t. Can they?’ said one woman, turning to her husband. They were always older married couples, the Miss Lawrence fans. Set in their ways. Unexciting. The sort of people Tansy had run away from all her life.

‘She’s having you on, love. Look, here, it says this way to the Miss Lawrence tours,’ said the husband, and they gave Tansy a bit of a glare before trooping off to the café around the corner.

Tansy shrugged and lugged her huge suitcase across the road. She’d had to flirt her way out of a massive excess baggage charge on it, which had taken some careful timing in the check-in queue.

Still, it weighed a lot, three years of your life.

Bluebell Terrace was a street of sensible, modern pebble-dash semis, built after the war when most of the old fishermen’s cottages were deemed unfit to live in. Tansy’s grandfather had sold his for a song and bought a lovely brand-new house with indoor plumbing and electricity and even parking for a car, should he ever be able to afford one, and now his old cottage was worth a mint on the holiday lettings market whilst no one wanted a boring modern semi without a fireplace or a view.

Which more or less summed up Tansy’s whole family. The Higginses: always out for a fast buck, never ever getting it.

She paused at the end of the road, staring at the house she’d grown up in. It looked the same, which always surprised her. It ought to look smaller, or older, or shabbier, but it had hardly changed since she’d left.

Tansy took a deep breath, flicked back her hair, and approached the house as if she hadn’t a care in the world. She swung her suitcase up the empty drive, slipped on sunglasses the weather didn’t require, and rang the doorbell.

Nothing. Her nerves mounting, she rang again.

When that elicited no reply, she rolled her eyes, reached into her big shoulder bag, and got out the key she’d never thrown away.

Molly might think Tansy never planned on coming home, but if that was true, why had she kept the key all this time?

The door opened easily, without the jiggling she used to have to do. Probably Molly, who was a dab hand at DIY as well as everything else, had fixed it. Tansy was rubbish at DIY, mostly because she had absolutely no interest in it whatsoever.

‘Hello?’ No response. Grace clearly wasn’t home from school yet, and Molly was probably at one of her many jobs, but where was Mum? Passed out after her third bottle of wine? Taking an afternoon nap to sleep off the morning’s drinking? Out at the shop buying more booze?

Molly had said Mum had stopped drinking, but Tansy would believe that when she saw it.

Nonetheless, the house was empty. Mum’s bedroom was neat and tidy and empty of Mum. Molly’s was as plain and boring as it ever had been, except all her stuff seemed to have been moved out. She probably lived with her fiancé now. Even Piran, the cat who was usually on hand to say hello, was absent today.

The third bedroom, the largest, had been the one Tansy shared with Grace. It had held two single beds, but now there was just one, with a plain striped duvet, and a desk set up for homework. Grace was twelve now. Almost a teenager. Soon it’d be all boy bands and tantrums and nail polish.

Or maybe it already was. Tansy hadn’t seen her in… Well, she’d stopped counting how long it had been.

Mr Snuggles the teddy bear still sat in pride of place on the pillow though. Tansy knew there would come a day when even he was relegated, and she wasn’t sure what she’d do then.

She stood looking at Grace’s room for a long while, and then she turned and went back downstairs. Her suitcase was still there, sitting in the hall, because her place in this house was so undecided.

Tansy glared at it, went into the kitchen and opened the fridge. Soft drinks and milk. No wine. She poured herself a Coke and peered into the living room. That hadn’t changed much either.

She toyed with the idea of lugging her case upstairs and flaking out on Molly’s bed like Goldilocks, but the lure of catching her goody-two-shoes sister unawares was too strong. Molly had said something about a café on Fore Street, hadn’t she? That shouldn’t be too hard to find. Fore Street simply wasn’t that big and Tansy could remember perfectly well what had been there last time she’d been home. A year ago, maybe two.

Tansy faltered when she realised it had been closer to three. Three years since she’d been home.

She slipped her house key back into her shoulder bag and left the house.

Early summer in Port Trevan was like being inside a picture postcard. The whitewashed buildings clustered on the steep hill gleamed in the sunshine, the sea shone a bright deep turquoise that always surprised him, and even the seagulls sounded cheerful today.

Conor stood gazing happily out over the harbour, and shook his head. You’re getting sentimental, Blackstone.

And why shouldn’t he be sentimental? His career was going well, he lived in a beautiful place, and in a few weeks he’d be marrying the love of his life. Sentiment was probably called for.

He pushed a hand through his hair and replaced his baseball cap. Most of the locals knew him well enough now that a hat and sunglasses wouldn’t disguise him, but it fended off some of the tourists.

He’d finished his work for the day, which had consisted of rehearsing and blocking, and having his costume fitted. He’d sat for several hours discussing, very seriously, the precise length of beard he’d managed to grow since being cast, and whether it should be shaved off so he could have a longer fake beard added in its place.

Kiranda had declared his current level of facial hair acceptable for the wedding, and Molly had whispered that he should shave it all off, and get the Make-up team from the set to affix a handlebar moustache instead, just to annoy her.

He smiled as he thought of Molly, and glanced up the hill towards her café. A splash of colour caught his eye as he did, and from the reaction of the people around him, his wasn’t the only eye caught.

The woman wasn’t dressed particularly provocatively, but you just didn’t get that many attractive young women in short shorts and huge sunglasses sashaying around Port Trevan, at least not when the Miss Lawrence crew wasn’t in town. It was much more the home of fishermen in yellow wellies, and tourists in waterproof jackets and sensible walking boots.

She had glossy blonde hair and the sort of suntan you just didn’t get in England, and she was certainly causing a stir among the locals. Heads kept turning in her direction, but the reaction wasn’t what the TV people usually got. The villagers might gently mock the glamour of the Londoners who descended on them with their cameras and fancy coffees, but they didn’t disdain them.

This woman…this woman did not seem to be meeting with anyone’s approval.

She was peering at the shops and galleries that overlooked the harbour. No, Conor realised—not the shops and galleries. The cafés and restaurants. She paused outside Carson’s Tearooms, peered in, and frowned a bit.

And Conor caught his breath, because in that moment she looked just like Molly.

Well – not really like Molly, who was freckled and red-haired and would never wear shorts that short, but her expression was the defensive, resigned, and resentful one Molly wore when someone brought up her troublesome family. Molly had applied for a job at Carson’s Tearooms several summers running, and never got one, because everyone in Port Trevan knew the Higginses were no good.

And Conor knew he was looking at another Higgins.

Molly had texted her sister Tansy about the wedding, and she’d replied that she’d been thinking of coming home anyway, but she hadn’t given any details of when. A weekday afternoon, when Molly was working and Grace was at school and their mum was out at one of her AA meetings – that figured.

Molly had told him plenty about Tansy, and not much of it was flattering. Still, she was going to be his sister-in-law, so he supposed he ought to make some effort. He pushed away from the low wall overlooking the harbour and made his way towards her.

Conor knew when she saw him. It was a reaction he was used to getting from women, especially since those bloody werewolf posters had gone up. It amused Molly when other women fancied him. It didn’t usually bother Conor.

But it was weird when he knew the woman giving him such an appreciative once-over was Molly’s sister.

‘Hello,’ she purred, as he smiled politely at her.

‘Hi. I’m Conor,’ he said, and her smile went wider.

‘Hi, Conor,’ she said, and then her expression froze. ‘Wait, Conor Blackstone?’

Usually, upon hearing confirmation of his identity, the reaction went the other way. Tansy’s face fell, and she stepped back.

‘Conor Blackstone,’ he said. ‘I’m going to take a guess you’re Molly’s sister, Tansy?’

‘Yes,’ she said, and stood staring at him for a moment. ‘Wait, how did you know?’

‘You remind me of her,’ he said, and Tansy looked appalled for a moment, before she covered it.

‘God, really?’ She touched her hair unconsciously. Tansy’s hair was glossy and wavy, nothing like the curls Molly and Grace had, and Conor had spent enough time in the make-up chair to know highlights when he saw them. Tansy had a groomed look about her, as if she’d just stepped fresh out of the door and not arrived back from another country. Even if she’d been back in England for a few days, Port Trevan was a long way from everywhere. Conor just knew she’d stopped to freshen herself up along the way.

Takes one to know one, he thought, beginning to enjoy himself.

‘Just a certain look you have,’ he said noncommittally. ‘Have you been back in town long?’

‘Oh, I literally just stepped off the – out of a cab,’ Tansy said, which Conor doubted. She tossed her hair, apparently forgetting she was also wearing a broad-brimmed sunhat. ‘I’ve been living in Cyprus,’ she added. Her accent had faded, probably deliberately.

‘So I hear. Ayia Napa?’ She’d never really said what she was doing out there. Holiday rep, was the last Molly had heard, but that had been nearly three years ago. Tansy hadn’t been great at updating her family.

‘Yeah. It’s, like, so cold here now,’ Tansy said, with a theatrical little shiver. It was late May, and unseasonably warm.

‘Well, it’s probably nice and warm inside the café,’ said Conor.

‘Café?’

He indicated Molly’s café, only a few yards away. Painted in bright, cheerful pastels, fitted out with retro touches, fun and welcoming, just like Molly. He realised he was smiling as he looked over the place.

‘Oh. Molly’s café.’ Tansy looked a bit uncertain, her gaze straying towards the bow windows. ‘She said she was working in one.’

‘Actually she owns it,’ Conor said.

Tansy blinked at him, looked over the café, and then back at him again. ‘Giss on!’ she said, and right then she sounded just like Molly. ‘What – did you buy it for her?’ she said, trotting over to the café and peering in the windows.

‘No,’ Conor said evenly, following her. Molly had been quite insistent that she could handle the finances herself, and not have to depend on her rich fiancé. Conor had just been mildly amused she considered him rich.

‘Then how the hell did a Higgins afford this? Rob a bank? Win on the horses?’

‘Business loan,’ said Conor, and Tansy gave him a frankly disbelieving look.

‘Who’d ever give a Higgins a business loan? Do you know about our family? Has she told you?’ Tansy said, as if she was about to drop some juicy gossip on him.

But Conor just shrugged. He knew all about the Higginses, a family tree peppered with disgrace and scandal. Even despite Molly’s spotless record, there were plenty of people in town who still looked down their nose at her, just because she was a Higgins.

‘Thankfully, it’s not the town gossips who consider business loans,’ he said. ‘She made a business plan and applied online, like a normal person. The business is doing well,’ he added.

‘Wonders will never cease,’ said Tansy. ‘Are you sure it’s the same Molly Higgins?’

‘See for yourself,’ said Conor, because as far as he knew Molly was behind the counter in her café.

Tansy peered in through the window, almost as if she expected to see a totally different person in there, but he could tell when she spotted her sister. She went still, and then she drew back a little.

‘Is that your sister?’ he said.

‘Well – yes.’ Tansy’s eyes narrowed in thought.

‘What?’ Molly hadn’t changed much physically since Conor had met her, which had been just after Tansy left the last time. ‘She looks different?’

‘No. Well, yes. She looks…’ Tansy frowned, as if trying to put her finger on it, and peered inside again. ‘She looks beautiful,’ she said, in surprise.

‘She is beautiful,’ said Conor. He looked in through the window too, and there was Molly laughing with a customer as she cleared a table. Red hair all messy, smile wide, eyes sparkling. Molly wasn’t glossy and groomed. She was full of life and energy, and even the thought of her made him smile.

‘Wow,’ said Tansy softly, and he tore his gaze away to look at her. ‘Oh wow, you really love her.’

‘Well, of course I do,’ said Conor, slightly self-conscious because he’d been beaming like a moon-calf in the middle of the street. ‘That’s why I’m marrying her.’

Tansy looked him over again, but differently this time, as if she was trying to figure him out.

‘Yeah,’ she said.

She chewed her lip, then glanced back inside.

‘Shall we go in?’ said Conor. ‘She’ll be closing up soon.’

‘Uh,’ said Tansy.

Three years, and a whole continent, and now she was about to bottle it. Conor opened the door of the café and said, ‘After you.’

The Blue Dolphin was the only proper pub near the historic harbour in Port Trevan, which meant there was rarely a time of day when there weren’t customers. Weekday afternoons were the closest it got to quiet, which was why Sam let his staff deal with the bar while he got some admin done in his office on the top floor.

He was halfway through tallying up the monthly invoices when a knock came on the door.

‘Don’t open it,’ Sam called automatically.

‘Why? Aren’t you decent?’ came a voice from the other side, and his heart sank as he recognised it.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Not at all. And I’m very shy,’ he added for good measure as he checked around him before rolling back his chair. The mottled grey cat who’d made a bed out of one of his sweaters raised her head, gave him a contemptuous look, and turned her attention back to the kittens nursing at her belly.

Sam counted them. Five. Good. All accounted for.

He opened the door a crack, and bright red assailed him. ‘Kiranda,’ he said. ‘What a pleasant surprise.’

She eyed him, up and down, in a manner that made Sam feel like he actually was as indecently dressed as she’d inferred. Although to a woman who thought a bright red pencil dress and stilettos was appropriate seaside wear, he probably was horrifically underdressed in just jeans and T-shirt. Even if it was a really cool Game of Thrones/Firefly mash-up one.

‘Sam,’ she said. ‘Can I come in?’

‘Actually, no.’ He slid through the gap in the door and stood on the dim, narrow landing to talk to her. If she came into his office she’d take a seat and make herself comfortable, and then she’d spot the kittens and he’d never get rid of her. And he had to be