Emerald Mistress by Lynne Graham Page B

Luke.
    Una had left her a note on the table, but her writing and spelling skills were so poor that Harriet took several minutes to decipher the news that the livestock were fed, watered and bedded down for thenight. Harriet was astonished that so bright a girl should barely be able to express herself on paper, and wondered vaguely if the teenager could be dyslexic—she remembered the similar struggles of a schoolfriend. Her mobile phone rang and she answered it.
    ‘It’s Boyce,’ her younger brother announced in his usual quick, abrupt manner. ‘Are you OK, kiddo?’
    Her eyes prickled. ‘Who are you calling kiddo? You’re only twenty-one. Do you realise how long it is since I heard from you? You’ve got so big and famous I hardly see you any more.’
    ‘You’re nagging like a girlfriend,’ Boyce complained.
    Harriet grinned. ‘Is the band still touring?’
    ‘Yeah. But I’ll be back in London soon, and I’m thinking of coming over to Ireland to visit you.’
    ‘I’d really love to see you,’ Harriet told him warmly. ‘But I warn you…the cottage is pretty basic.’
    ‘I just want somewhere quiet and private to chill. I’m exhausted,’ Boyce confided.
    It was barely three years since Boyce and three of his friends had formed 4Some, one of the most successful boy bands in the music business. Boyce was the lead singer. Mobbed by hysterical girls wherever they went, 4Some were on a global tour,playing to sell-out audiences and making megabucks, but her brother’s schedule was a punishing one.
    ‘Will you promise not to tell anyone that I’ll be staying with you?’ he pressed her anxiously. ‘You can’t trust people not to blab to the press, and I want total peace.’
    ‘You’ll find it here,’ Harriet soothed.
    ‘You still haven’t said how you are.’ Audible concern shaded Boyce’s comment. ‘If it’s any comfort, I think Luke’s a total freak show and I can’t believe Alice has fallen for him too.’
    ‘Does she really love him?’ Harriet heard herself ask, before she could think better of it.
    ‘She says so, but I’m not making excuses for her,’ Boyce declared uneasily. ‘Don’t ask me to take sides.’
    ‘I won’t. Let’s not talk about it.’
    When Boyce rang off, Harriet’s face was tight with restrained emotion. She went into her bedroom to retrieve the box that she had stowed below the bed on the day she’d first arrived. A box brimming with memorabilia far too precious to have been left behind even temporarily in London, she conceded with self-hatred. She should have dumped it after finding Luke in bed with Alice, not carried it all the way to Ireland with her! Did Alice really love him? Whatdifference did that make? Grabbing her old portable CD-player and the bottle of wine, Harriet carried the box out to the field and emptied it, and then trekked doggedly back to the yard to fetch kindling to make a fire.
    The sugary-sweet vocals of the song that had been a hit the night she first met Luke throbbed out of the CD-player. She knelt down and lit the fire with hands that trembled. She was in an agony of grief. Luke could never have loved her the way he loved Alice: it was obvious that he couldn’t wait to get her sister to the altar. They had actually named the day. Harriet’s heart felt like it was cracking right down the middle. Hot tears slid slowly down her cheeks. She hit ‘replay’ on the CD and helped herself to another swig of homemade wine. Luke was going to be her brother-in-law and she had to learn to live with that! But
how
did she learn to live with such pain?
    ‘This is a strange time of day to start a bonfire,’ a familiar accented drawl remarked, startling her out of her self-preoccupation. ‘I saw the glow from the Court and decided I should check it out in case the stables were at risk.’
    ‘I’m not that stupid.’ With great reluctance, Harriet twisted her head round.
    Rafael Flynn stood poised several feet away.Silhouetted against the