Page 12 of A Scottish Highland Hideaway

The door handle jerked up and down once more.

Right! That was it!

Remembering I had a small bottle of hairspray in my bag, I lunged towards the counter to retrieve it. A good squirt of that right between the eyes would disable them for a while.

My knuckles turned white as I gripped the can of hairspray in my right hand, my finger on the button, ready to spray. My heart thumped against my chest. “How many times do I have to tell you? We’re closed.”

There was yet another defiant jerk of the door handle. My heart took off into an even faster gallop.

I rummaged inside my bag again, sending its contents spewing and clattering out on top of the shop counter. “Oh shit!”

I snatched up my mobile. My fingers were tumbling over themselves. “Don’t get any ideas! I’ll ring the police.”

“Please don’t do that,” insisted a male voice through the door, making me jump. “I need to speak to you.”

With my can of hairspray held in mid-air, I hesitated. An echo of recognition rang around my head. What was it about his voice? I was sure I’d heard it before.

There was a tap of feet from the other side of the door. His silhouette was black and broad against the pinpricks of streetlights. “I think it might have been you I spoke to on the phone. About the Rankins?”

I focused again on his voice. It took a few seconds for my frightened brain to catch up and recall the details.

That was it. It was him. It was the arrogant man who’d rung the flat, looking for Archibald and Hazel Rankin.

I hovered behind the safety of the closed shop door, my container of hairspray still gripped in one hand and my mobile glowing in the other. My worry increased. “What do you want? Who are you?”

“I’m Zach Stern. I’m a journalist.”

Dread clutched the insides of my stomach. A journalist? What did he want? Was it to do with me? Had he found out I’d moved to Heather Moore and that was why he rang the Rankins? Had Declan discovered I’d moved here and been shouting his mouth off from whatever stone he’d crawled under, wanting to twist the knife? But how would he have discovered me here? I’d been so careful. Or had someone local recognised me and tipped off the press? How likely was that?

My rambling thoughts whirled around my head like a carousel.

I knew I had to try and calm down.

I couldn’t legislate for other people’s behaviour, but then another thought bounded into my head. It was one I found myself starting to scramble for. I clung onto it, like a lifebuoy in stormy seas. Maybe someone had told this journalist about Ezra? Maybe he wasn’t here about me at all.

Then a pang of guilt hit me in the chest. Thinking that way didn’t make me feel any better. In fact, I felt worse. I didn’t want Ezra to be hounded by reporters. He’d just moved here and was starting to get settled.

I edged a little closer to my shop door, my ankle boots clicking on the wooden floor. Now what should I do? If I didn’t let him in, I could make matters so much worse and the chances were that he’d return again anyway. If he was like most of the journalists I’d come across in the past, he would persevere until he got whatever story he was after. They didn’t tend to give up, if they believed they had a lead.

And if he was here to snoop around about Ezra, there was no way I was prepared to give him any information. Even though we’d only just met, Ezra trusted me and I wasn’t prepared to betray that trust. He was giving me the floristry commission for his home, for pity’s sake!

“Hello? Are you still there?”

His voice cut across my thoughts from the other side of the locked shop door.

“Please can I come in? It’s bloody Baltic out here.”

The stiff winter evening – this part of the Highlands was famous for its bone-rattlingly cold weather, especially in the weeks before Christmas – was clearly having an effect on his manners as, other than the swearing, he was more polite than he had been when talking to me over the phone.

I chewed my bottom lip. I’d no intention of allowing this man in until I knew for certain what he wanted – or who. My brain searched for stalling tactics. “How do I know you are who you say you are?”

There was the sound of fumbling, before a business card hissed its way under the door.

I set my phone and hairspray down on top of the counter, before moving back towards the shop door and the rectangular white card now lying face-down in front of me. I snatched it up and turned it around. Sure enough, the name Zach Stern leapt out in bold, black lettering. Underneath his name was printed Journalist – Stargazer Magazine, followed by his contact details.

My breath stuck in my throat.

Stargazer Magazine. A glossy weekly publication that featured gossip and revelations about celebrities. Oh, no.