Free StillWaters:Book4oftheSophieGreenMysteries by Still Waters Page A

fierce and any conversation was blown away, fast. For which I was grateful. My head was full of drownings and caves and rocks and people stalking me and Luke.
    And Luke.
    Dammit. Just when I thought I maybe might be able to perhaps start thinking about…suggesting we stopped…dancing around each other and actually, possibly, for instance started…talking about… maybe getting back together…he had to go and say something like “You still smell like seaweed.”
    Bastard.
    “Who’s St. Juliot?” Luke asked, cutting through my inner monologue.
    “What?”
    He gestured to the ruins in front of us. “St. Juliot. The chapel was dedicated to him. Her. Who do you think—?”
    But then he broke off, listening, looking around. I looked around too—from the Island you could see everywhere, in all directions, but all I could see was sea on most sides and craggy land on the other. Nothing new. Nothing of interest. There weren’t even any other tourists up here today.
    “What?” I asked (again), but Luke held up a hand for silence. I listened carefully. “Luke, it’s just a plane.”
    “Yeah, but I’m trying to tell what kind.”
    Pilots.
    “You’re such an anorak,” I told him, and turned to walk off down the path to the next ruin, but Luke caught me and snapped me to him.
    “I’m an anorak?”
    He was awfully close.
    “Yeah,” I said, trying not to gulp. I’d almost forgotten how strong he was. A girl could worry about his intentions if she didn’t trust him.
    Do I trust him?
    “Would an anorak do this?” Luke said, and kissed me beautifully, framed by the cliff top and the sea and the hard, fierce salt air, kissed me until I was clinging to him, weaker and dizzier than I’d been since they pulled me out of the sea. God, listen to me, I’m like a gothic heroine, all weak and girlie and succumbing.
    But you know, it’s not easy to feel weak and girlie when you’re five foot ten. Luke appeared to be good for me.
    “That’s cheating,” I told him when I could breathe again. This felt like quite a long time later. He was still holding me very close.
    “Why is it cheating?”
    “You said I smelled like seaweed.”
    “Wishful thinking,” Luke said, and I frowned, but before I could ask what he meant he was kissing me again, and I decided I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything at all, so long as he was kissing me. Or touching me. Or—well, doing whatever he wanted to me. I’m sure you don’t need a picture.
    At first, I thought it was blood pounding in my ears, and then I started to panic that it was my heart, so unused to anything this exciting that it was hammering fast enough to hum.
    And then I realised it was the plane, or whatever Luke had been listening to. He broke the kiss, letting the cold wind blow between us, chilling my lips, and looked off towards the land side of the island.
    “Sweet fuck,” he murmured, and I replied dreamily, “If you like.”
    “No,” he laughed a little, turning me in his arms. “Look.”
    A helicopter was coming towards us, really low against the land, one of those huge ugly military ’copters with two sets of blades. The noise was deafening. We stood and watched it come closer, swaying above the cliff top, then it gingerly came to a rest on land.
    I stared. Luke stared. And then the door opened and I nearly fell over in shock. Luke had to tighten his arms around me to keep me on my feet.
    Mmm.
    “Maria?” Luke said in confusion, watching her hop out of the ’copter.
    “Did she even come home last night?” I asked.
    “She called after you went to bed. Said she was staying out. She didn’t say where…”
    “I thought there was no phone signal in the village?”
    “There’s a land line, sweetheart. Maria.” He raised his voice as she ran under the blades to us. “What the hell—?”
    She grinned, shoving back the dancing strands of hair that framed her face. “Pulled in a favour.”
    “That ’copter says RNAS Culdrose. What kind of