Free Summer at Shell Cottage by Lucy Diamond Page B

for blushing. He was
hot,
though, with those teasing blue eyes and dark hair. Different from the boys she’d fancied before, too. For a crazy moment, she wanted to pull him close to her again, resume the kissing. But
he was checking his watch and the spell was broken.
    ‘Shit. We’re gonna be late,’ he said. ‘Look – let’s just keep this to ourselves for now, yeah?’
    ‘Sure,’ she said, trying to act cool, like it was no big deal to have been snogging gorgeous Ben Jamison with such passion. She’d already decided she wouldn’t blab about
what had just happened anyway not even to Chloe. Gossip went round school so fast, the last thing she wanted was everyone whispering behind her back.
    He smiled at her and the rest of the world seemed to melt away, disapproving old ladies, gossiping friends and all. Then he leaned down and kissed her again, squeezing her breast this time. ‘That’s just for starters,’ he said, low and husky, and the breath caught in the back of her throat in another gasp of desire.
    Somehow or other, Molly managed to smile in reply but the rest of her body seemed beyond control, flooded with a mad racing deluge of endorphins. Oh my God. Ben Jamison, the most gorgeous person
in the entire school had kissed her and told her she was beautiful. His fingers had been on her actual body. He’d said, ‘That’s just for starters,’ as if he wanted more.
    Whoa. Head rush. This was like being in the best sex dream ever, only it was real.
    Heart fluttering, skin tingling, Molly tucked her blouse back into her skirt and followed him as they went to meet the others for the backstage theatre tour. Her head was in such a whirl, she
could hardly see where she was going. How on earth was she going to concentrate on Shakespeare and acting and stuff after
that
?

Chapter Ten
    It had been a whole month now since Freya had answered the phone to hear her husband say those terrible words, ‘Hi, love, it’s me. Listen, don’t worry, but
I’m in hospital. I’ve been stabbed,’ but she still found herself reliving the absolute horror all over again whenever the memory flashed into her mind.
    Stabbed.
Her adrenalin had spun into hyperdrive with that one single syllable, her mind freezing in panic, bile rising in her throat. Back when she’d been a junior doctor, working
in the busy A&E department of the Homerton Hospital, she’d seen countless stabbings, umpteen raw red slashes and punctures, where flesh had met a blade due to revenge or passion or sheer
random violence. They had stitched up and mended each one, mopped up the blood and sent them home again, knowing that there would be plenty more to come, a never-ending stream of young men in the
wrong place at the wrong time, often having tangled with the wrong people.
    And now Victor had been added to that unfortunate club. Stabbed, in the line of duty. Stabbed, saving the life of his colleague Tony. Freya had burst into the accident and emergency unit that
day with pure dread running through her veins. It had only been a fortnight since her father’s funeral, and she still hadn’t surfaced from the plunging depths of grief. Now she found
herself flooded with a new and terrible fear that she was about to lose her husband too. ‘No,’ she begged under her breath, just in case a benevolent god might be in the vicinity. ‘Not both of them. Please.’
    Victor had made light of the situation on the phone, of course – ‘just some nutter with a knife,’ he’d said. But he was tough, Vic, a real man’s man. He was one of
those blokes who’d say, ‘I’m fine! Barely a scratch,’ if he’d fallen headfirst down a mineshaft. Until she saw the damage for herself, she was officially in panic
mode, fearing the worst.
    Thank goodness, then, that it wasn’t until she
had
seen him and knew he was going to be okay that she discovered it hadn’t been ‘some nutter with a knife’ at
all; it had been a psychopath wielding a samurai sword