Page 83 of A Secret Scottish Escape

Danielle afforded my best friend an encouraging nudge. “How can you resist the two of them? Talk about adorable!”

Faith made a noise that was a cross between a giggle and a sob. “I still think you know more about this than you’re letting on, Devlin.”

I made my eyes huge. “Me?”

She shook her head. “That’s the problem. I can’t resist, especially not now.”

She hurried out from behind the counter and threw her arms around Greg’s neck, before they shared a tender kiss, much to Sam’s amusement.

Then Faith lowered herself to the four-year-old boy’s height. She took his hand and shook it, before giving him a hug.

“Right,” said Greg after a few moments, as he scooped up Sam into his muscular arms. “How about you come round to ours tonight and Sam and I will make you dinner?”

Faith’s cheeks popped with colour. “I’d like that very much.”

Once they’d confirmed the time and left, Faith studied me. “Right now I don’t know whether to hug you or bar you from the premises.”

I grinned back at her. “You know you want to hug me.”

She threw her arms around me and playfully flicked the end of my ponytail. “You really are a pain in the arse at times.”

“Thank you.”

Then the real reason why I’d dropped by to see Faith came screeching back into my mind. “Now that all the excitement is over, how about this mystery Australian lady?”

Faith looked at Danielle. “Go on then, Poirot. Tell Layla what you told me.”

Bursting with anticipation, the younger woman could hardly contain her excitement. “OK, so I was tidying up our window display earlier this morning … you should have seen it. I mean, you couldn’t describe Coleen as an office cleaner…”

Faith’s pale blue eyes rolled in her head. “Just get on with it please.”

Danielle coloured. She glared at Faith and squared her shoulders. “All right. All right!”

She flapped her hands about, giving a flash of her French manicure. “Do you know Wendy Goodman? She started her own little bed and breakfast here several weeks back?”

I recalled seeing an article about her in the Loch Harris Informer last month.

Before I had the opportunity to answer, Danielle’s dark eyes shone as she told me Wendy had dropped into the tourist office earlier that morning to pick up a few more leaflets about where to locate the best of the local wildlife.

“I mean,” sniggered Danielle, “you can catch plenty of the local wildlife round here on a Friday night, if you know where to look.”

I waited until she had recovered from laughing at her own joke. “You were saying?”

She cleared her throat and didn’t dare look up at Faith. “Oh yeah. Well, I was having a chat to her about how her B&B was going and she said it was slow, but that she had this new guest staying with her who seemed to be a bit of a strange one.”

“In what way?” I asked, intrigued.

Danielle leaned forwards, delivering a waft of strong citrusy perfume. She revealed that Wendy’s new guest was an Australian woman who seemed to be very preoccupied with Coorie Cottage and, more importantly, who was living there.

“Wendy assured me she didn’t tell her that that reclusive musician guy was living up there,” said Danielle.

“And I believe her,” added Faith.

“But Wendy said this woman keeps coming and going at funny hours and has been asking round some of the local businesses about him,” said Danielle. “Not only that, but she even remarked to my boyfriend’s boss over at the garage that this Mask fellow is dangerous and not to be trusted.”

I looked from Danielle to Faith. “Dangerous? I don’t believe that.”

But why would someone go around saying such things?