Irene heard Oliver and Luther arrive just as she finished running a brush through her hair. She put on some lipstick and checked her image in the mirror. She was feeling oddly cheerful and she thought she looked unusually bright and vivacious for a woman who had just engaged in hot, sweaty sex in a storage locker.
In hindsight, maybe she shouldn’t have been so cautious after the disaster with Bradley Thorpe, she thought. Life was short. Sex—at least the kind she had just enjoyed—was exhilarating. A woman had a right to grab the good things when they came around. Perhaps she should have taken advantage of the opportunities that had come her way during her year in Helen Spencer’s fairy-tale world.
But even as the thought occurred, she was quite certain that she would have wound up regretting a liaison with any of the charming, polished gentlemen she had met during the course of that year. For one thing, most of them had been jaded, bored, and utterly lacking in principles. They drank too much. They partied too hard. They were often thoughtless or downright cruel to those they considered beneath them. They lived for superficial entertainments, and they would have considered the seduction of Helen Spencer’s private secretary a form of entertainment.
But everything was different with Oliver.
She gripped the edges of the pedestal sink with both hands and studied her reflection in the mirror, searching for an explanation. Perhaps the episode in the storage locker had been so intense and so freighted with meaning because she and Oliver had endured danger together. The experience had probably created some sort of bond between them.
If that was the case, she had to accept the fact that the bond was, in all likelihood, temporary. But it was real, which was a hell of a lot more than she could say about the connection she had felt with Bradley Thorpe. Then again, Bradley had been a lying, cheating bastard.
She turned away from the mirror, let herself out into the hall, and went down the stairs. Oliver and Luther were on the patio, sitting in the shade. Both men got to their feet when they saw her.
Luther smiled at her. The smile looked genuine but there was something odd about the way he was looking at her, she thought. It was almost as if he approved of what he saw. But that made no sense. He barely knew her.
“Miss Glasson,” he said. “A pleasure to see you again.”
She smiled and sat down. “I thought we agreed that you would call me Irene.”
“We did, indeed.” Luther took his seat. His dark gaze sharpened. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“Things have gotten complicated,” Oliver said. “We need some assistance.”
“How complicated?” Luther asked.
“We think that a killer may have followed Irene here to Burning Cove.”
Luther’s brows rose. “The one who murdered Gloria Maitland and Daisy Jennings?”
“Another one,” Oliver said. “And if we’re right, he is far more dangerous.”
“What makes him more dangerous?”
“If I’m reading the guy right, he’s a pro who enjoys his work.”