Page 14 of The Secret of Emerald Cottage

Chapter Eight

“Uh, does he always sleep this late?” Cat whispered as she helped Molly pull weeds from Miss Lilly’s lakefront gardens, glancing up at the guestroom window where Brec was still sleeping with the curtains closed at a quarter past noon.

Molly’s gaze followed Cat’s with a heavy sigh, grateful that her best friends—Cat and her twin sister Shannon and their sister-in-law Lacey—had volunteered to help her clean up the gardens before Brec and she brought Miss Lilly home. “So far, yes, at least since he arrived three days ago, but then he hadn’t slept for over thirty-four hours when we got home from seeing Miss Lilly that first night, so I suppose he’s playing catch-up.”

She tossed the last of the weeds from Miss Lilly’s overgrown vegetable garden into the bucket with a sad smile. “Either that or he’s depressed over Miss Lilly.”

Cat grunted as she brushed dirt from her hands. “He’d be a lot more than depressed if he’d kissed me while I was sleeping, I can tell you that.”

Lacey chuckled as she added her pulled weeds to the mix. “Uh, yeah, he’d be dead, compliments of an ex-Navy-SEAL,” she said, flicking dirt at her sister-in-law. “I mean, who does that? Breaks into a house—”

“Miss Lilly gave him a key,” Molly interjected, almost sorry she’d said anything to her friends to put Brec in a bad light. He’d been so sweet and supportive since her meltdown a few nights ago when she thought someone had been in the house, that she felt bad.

“Even so,” Lacey continued, “who on earth waltzes into a strangewoman’s room in the middle of the night to kiss her while she’s sleeping?”

“Prince Charming?” Shannon said with a shy smile, easily the softer of the two twins who never liked to criticize anyone.

“Hey, Molly is not strange,” Cat piped up, lips squirming in a tease. “Just really, really different.”

“For your information, it was not the middle of the night.” Molly yanked a particularly stubborn weed from the bed before she sat back on her heels. “Come on, girls, give the guy a break. Other than the kiss, he actually seems like a pretty decent sort—worried about Miss Lilly, helping me clean the house for her, and calming me down a few nights ago when I thought someone had broken in.”

“What?” All three ladies stared with mouths agape, weeds dangling from their hands.

“You thought someone broke in? Or they did?” Cat demanded, more dirt on her face and hands than on the stupid weed.

“I thought someone had broken in,” Molly quickly assured, “because sweet Miss Lilly swore an intruder was rifling through her drawers in her bedroom before he tossed her in the lake. But of course I didn’t believe her because she was saying a lot of strange things after the coma with the UTI and all. After all, it’s a proven fact sleepwalkers think their dreams are reality, and we know Miss Lilly sleepwalks. But when I noticed her drawers had been rifled through and then saw a large footprint on the rug in Uncle Hal’s office, well, I guess I started to think otherwise.”

“Oh my goodness—” Shannon whispered while all three girls gawked at Molly.

“But that’s when Brec calmed me down,” Molly hurried on to quell their concern. She peered up at Brec’s window, remembering how wonderful he’d been through that whole awful situation. “He asked me if anyone else had been in the house lately, so when I told him I’d hired a handyman to put in extra locks on the back door after Miss Lilly fell in the lake, he convinced me that could have been the footprint I saw. And he’s right, because I did ask the handyman to check out Uncle Hal’s office since the door sticks, so he could have gone in there.”

“But what if he didn’t?” Cat said, eyes narrowed in suspicion.

Molly sent her a patient smile. “Puh-lease. Give me some credit, Cat, will you? I’m a card-carrying member of Mystery Readers International and the Goodreads Mystery Lovers group, so of course I called the police to dust for fingerprints, and Brec was nice enough to wait up with me while Detective Kennedy handled it.”

“Ohhhh … so you called Detective Kennedy, did you?” Cat wiggled her brows, obviously pleased that Molly had called on hers and Chase’s friend from the Chatham County sheriff’s office, the one they’d been trying to set up with Molly for months. “Looks like it was a good thing I gave you his number, isn’t it?”

Smiling, Molly shook her head. “Yes, and Detective Kennedy was wonderful, just like you said he’d be—”

“And gorgeous?” Cat emphasized with a duck of her head.

“Yes, and ‘gorgeous,’ but like I told both you and Chase after I moved back to Savannah, I am in no hurry to get involved with another guy, Cat, especially another detective type, so you can just wipe that smirk off your face.” She tossed a weed in the bucket. “Sloan was nice enough to dust for prints and promised to rush them through, which he did.”

“And?” Shannon paused with a weed in hand, her pale-blue eyes filled with concern.

“And, there were no prints anywhere other than Miss Lilly’s, her husband’s, mine and the handyman’s, who obviously took a break in Uncle Hal’s chair to use the phone since I heard him talking to someone.”

“Oh, thank goodness!” Shannon sighed with relief.

“All that to say,” Molly said with another glance at Brec’s window, “that despite the tabloids, the rumors, and the kiss, Brec McGill is actually a pretty nice guy.”

Screeeeeeeeeech!

All four of the girls literally jumped, gazes darting to Brec’s room, where the man himself—shirtless, no less—was thrusting up the sash of the previously closed window. “Good morning, ladies,” he said, leaning muscled arms on the windowsill with a broad smile, quickly glancing at his watch before flashing them a deadly grin— “or maybe I should say, good afternoon. I thought I’d let you know that I’m finally out of bed, so I’ll be down to help once I shower and shave.”

“Oh my goodness, we didn’t wake you, did we?” Shannon’s eyes popped wide, the poor thing always worried about bothering someone.

“No, ma’am, I’ve been up for fifteen minutes or so, so no worries Miss …?”