Page 25 of Death on the Rocks (Lily Larkin Mysteries #1)

Chapter Twenty-Five

Even if he weren’t on duty, the way Michaela draped herself over Flynn would have made him uncomfortable.

Public displays of affection weren’t really his thing.

Especially not with some woman he’d spent one night with and wasn’t even a hundred percent sure of her name.

He had Michaela in his head, but maybe it was Melissa.

He was sure it began with M and ended in A. Marianna, perhaps.

Since he hadn’t expected to see her again, learning her name hadn’t felt necessary. They hadn’t swapped numbers, and since she was only visiting the islands for a holiday, he’d been confident that their one-night stand would be just that.

But she’d approached him on the street, acting as though they were old friends and whispering in his ear about how much she’d enjoyed their night together.

He could have taken a step back, reminded her he was on duty and fed her some lie about catching up with her later.

But that would require him to care about appearances.

If he cared about that, he wouldn’t be drinking himself into a stupor in the pub every evening. Besides, they’d all judged him already, anyway. He’d heard the whispers about why he was on the island. No doubt his sergeant had blackened his name before he’d even arrived.

Not that it mattered. Another five months and the whole pathetic scandal would have blown over. He’d be back in the Met, doing actual police work. In London, police officers were too busy keeping the peace to worry about what local residents thought of them.

Currently, there was no one around so he wasn’t overly concerned about the fact that Melinda had just run her tongue along his ear lobe.

“What do you think?” she purred. “Shall I come over to your place later? Or you could come to my hotel…”

The easy excuse would be to say that he was working, which was partly true. Since he was the only healthy officer on the island, he was currently on call round the clock. But being on call didn’t mean he couldn’t socialise.

What else was he going to do with his evening? A night away from the Mermaid Inn might not be a bad thing. And he needed to find some pleasure while he killed the next five months on the island. There was no law that said police officers had to live like monks.

“Sounds good,” he muttered, ignoring the twist of his gut and pushing down the part of him that was disgusted with himself. Not to mention the part which reminded him it was exactly this kind of situation which had got him a six-month posting on an island in the Atlantic.

Michaela lightly kissed the underside of his jaw, and the tickle made him turn his head away.

Across the road, a familiar face stared at him with a familiar judgemental glare.

He should be used to people looking at him like that – the barmaid in the pub was particularly good at it – but there was something about the look on Lily’s face that made his gut twist even further and increased the volume of the voice in his head which declared he was pathetic.

Still, he did nothing to move Melissa away from him. Instead, choosing to hold Lily’s gaze and forcing his lips to a smirk. She could judge him all she wanted. He really didn’t care.

Not one jot.

Subtly, he slipped a hand to Marissa’s back and guided her to walk beside him.

“So,” she said. “Your place or mine?”

He did his best to keep his features neutral. “I just remembered, I’m on duty tonight. My sergeant is ill, so I’m on call.”

“So you’ll be all alone at the station?” Her eyes darted to his. “I could come and keep you company…”

“Tempting as it is, I don’t think that’s a great idea.”

She pouted. “It’s fun to break the rules sometimes, isn’t it?”

“Sometimes,” he agreed. “But sometimes it gets you into more trouble than it’s worth.”

That he knew all too well.