Page 12 of A Scottish Country Escape

He frowned down at her hand first and then into her face, before snatching his arm away, as though he had just received a third-degree burn.

The poor woman was still shaken. I knew I was. I also knew I would be sporting a lovely rainbow of bruises tomorrow morning.

Dexter Grayling’s eyes grew larger. He stared down at Mrs Carlucci and at her hand gripping at his bare arm. He tugged it away and took a few awkward steps backwards. ‘Right,’ he coughed, blinking after a few moments of charged silence. ‘I guess it’s a journey into town then.’

Cate and I gawped at him in disbelief. He stopped to open the driver’s side door, glancing over his shoulder at Mrs Carlucci with an odd expression. That was it? No enquiries about how we were?

We watched him take off in a fizz of exhaust.

‘Can you believe the audacity of that man?’ I gasped. ‘He didn’t even have the decency to apologise.’

Cate shook her corkscrew curls. ‘Talk about up your own arse.’

I offered to make Mrs Carlucci a cup of tea with sugar – I was sure her odd behaviour was due to shock at almost becoming road kill – but she refused.

‘Don’t you think you ought to see a doctor, Mrs Carlucci?’ I suggested gently. ‘You still seem rather shaken.’

She was watching the space on the cobbles where, only minutes before, the sleek sports car had been careering along. ‘No,’ she managed, after a considered pause. ‘No thank you. I’m fine, dear.’

I re-entered the shop, with Cate following behind. ‘Do you think Mrs Carlucci is OK?’ she whispered. ‘She was behaving really oddly just now.’

‘Well, can you blame her? We were almost totalled by that idiot.’ I pulled a furious face. ‘Someone like him needs to be taught the meaning of humility.’

I shot her a look, but Cate was pensive.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘She was clutching her pendant around her neck as she was staring up at him.’

I shrugged. ‘She was most likely worried it had come off when we fell on the cobbles.’

Cate didn’t look convinced. She was on the verge of saying something else when Mrs Carlucci appeared in the doorway as though on castors, making us jump. She blinked at both of us, and there was a certain haunted inflection in her handsome, older features.

I asked her again if she was all right and insisted I would make her a cup of tea with a good couple of spoonful’s of sugar. Mrs Carlucci thanked me and Cate guided her to one of two old foldaway chairs I’d brought in to the shop that morning.

My attention fell on the large silver pendant dangling around her neck. ‘At least you didn’t lose your necklace.’

Mrs Carlucci’s freckled hand shot up to it. ‘Pardon?’

‘Your pendant,’ clarified Cate. ‘I saw you clutch at it when you were talking to that cretin just now.’

All at once, Mrs Carlucci sprung up out of her chair and gathered herself together. She flashed us both nervous glances. ‘Thank you for the offer of tea, Elle, but I must be going.’

And with that, she scurried out of the shop and vanished along the street, leaving Cate and me with our heads in a spin.

* * *

That evening, I pulled up Dexter Grayling’s name on the internet.

Curiosity was gnawing at me and my bottom was letting out intermittent stabs of painful protest. What on earth was a successful author like him doing almost knocking people over in Fir Haven?

I tried to block out the screams and gasps from Mrs Carlucci as I bundled her into my arms and we landed in a heap together on the cobbles. It had been an unwelcome reminder of what had happened to Mum and Dad. Blazing anger lit up in my throat. What the hell did he think he was doing?

I jabbed at my laptop trackpad, grim-faced. Various headlines leapt out of the screen. The first one – ‘DELECTABLE DEXTER’S LOVE CRIMES’ – was one of the headlines in a recent gossip column and gave, in delicious detail, a string of names of well-known women who had, apparently, been wined and dined by him before being relegated to the status of a ‘dear friend’.

A couple of photographs appeared underneath two women with impossibly white teeth who declared that they were still close to Dexter Grayling. ‘He stays friends with all his ex-girlfriends,’ cooed the first, whose name was Ginger Miller. ‘He remembers all our birthdays and we always receive presents at Christmas.’

Good God! Really?!