StillWaters:Book4oftheSophieGreenMysteries Read Online Free PDF Page B

him by the time we go home—and I mean back to the cottage today—I’ll do it for you,” she threatened.
    “Call yourself my friend?”
    “In this, consider me a colleague.”
    I scowled.
    “Sophie…”
    “All right, I’ll tell him!”
    She grinned and straightened up. “Good, because he’ll be here in five minutes,” she said, looking out at the beach where a familiar, sexy walk was making its way towards me.
    I looked around in panic. Apart from the toilets and the upstairs bistro, there was nowhere I could go to hide. And he’d find me upstairs or, more than likely, hammer on the toilet door until I came out.
    Damn it. I suppose I have to tell him.
    He came to fetch his bag, greeting me with a plain “Hi”, and disappeared in the direction of the gents to get changed. When he came out, five minutes later, dressed in faded jeans and a charcoal sweater that made him look plain lush, I watched him go to the bar, order a pint and then come back over to sit opposite me. By this time, I’d shredded two whole paper napkins, and my heart was thumping so hard I was amazed it wasn’t sticking out of my chest like on a cartoon.
    “Are you done for the day?” I asked politely.
    “Yeah. I’d forgotten how knackering surfing is. Plus, it’s bloody freezing out there.”
    “Maria seems to be enjoying it.”
    “Maria,” Luke said drily, “is not out there for the waves.”
    I frowned.
    “Didn’t you see her with her Aussie buddy?”
    “Matt? Oh. Yeah, he was cute,” I said, just to see how Luke would react.
    He took a drink of his beer and said nothing. I was slightly disappointed.
    “So what d’you reckon about that girl, then?” I asked.
    “What girl?”
    “The hanged girl. This morning.”
    He shrugged. “Christmas suicide. God knows I feel like it sometimes.”
    Oh, that’s cheerful.
    “You don’t like Christmas?”
    He shrugged. “It’s tacky, boring, expensive and I usually get bullied into spending it with some aged relative who makes no attempt to hide the fact that they, like the rest of my family, despise me.”
    I’d have argued with this had I not already met Luke’s great aunt Tilda, who was a rich old cow who stuck her nose up at me and was barely civil to Luke. His parents died when he was quite young, and he was shuffled from relative to relative, unwanted and unloved, a textbook case of an unhappy childhood leading to a man who makes everyone want him, then ignores them when they do.
    You see?
    He looked at the collection of mugs and straws and glasses and general non-alcoholic debris on the table.
    “You taken the pledge or something?”
    I shrugged. “I have to drive back.”
    “You can have a drink and drive.”
    “You know I hate doing that.”
    “Then I can drive. Or Maria, if she ever tears herself away from her new boyfriend.”
    I gazed out of the window, where someone I thought was Maria was flying along a wave, looking so happy and free I smiled for her.
    “No,” I said, “I’m okay. You hate driving Ted anyway.”
    Luke settled back in his chair and looked at me, and I started to get hot under my pretty little sweater.
    “What?”
    “What aren’t you telling me?”
    I made a face. “This may come as a surprise to you, Luke, but I don’t have to tell you everything. We’ve been broken up for four months now and that’s as long we were together. I don’t have to tell you anything.”
    Still that level blue gaze. Luke said nothing, but his face said bullshit .
    I swallowed nervously.
    “Well, okay, apart from this.”

Chapter Three
    Luke didn’t look nervous or excited, but there was a certain tightness to his face that I knew meant he was impatient.
    “Remember in September, when I got stuck with that needle?”
    “Vividly.”
    Hah! I got you there. You were pretty sure I was going to tell Luke I’m pregnant.
    I think he did, too.
    “And how you told me I needed to go get it checked out or it could get infected?”
    A muscle ticked in his jaw.