Page 95 of Light of Day

As a gesture of comfort, she lifted their joined hands and rubbed his knuckles against her cheek. Her hands were so scraped up that every movement hurt a little, although any contact with him made her forget about it.

Luke bent to give her a lingering kiss on the lips. “I’d better go. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Counting on it.”

His kiss made her dizzy and happy and giddy and fizzy and all kinds of good things like that. Face flushed, she glanced across the conservatory to locate Gabby.

Corner table, next to an indoor orange tree in a square planter. Someone was at the table with her. Was that Barnaby Carmichael?

“Uh-oh,” she murmured to Luke. “Do you know where Barnaby stands in all this?”

“I hope nowhere. No one has mentioned him so far.”

They both eyed the wild-haired man propping his elbows on the table across from Gabby. He looked bigger than when Heather had last seen him. Wider shoulders. Were he and Gabby arguing? They were speaking quite intensely to each other.

“I’d better go find out what’s going on,” Heather said. “Since I’m all about being a better podcast partner now.”

They kissed a few more times, then he reluctantly released her. She watched him step through the front entrance and into the sunshine. Her heart flooded with warmth and hope and promise. Wherever this thing with Luke was going, it felt real and deep. With him, she didn’t have to run from her old self, or hold back her future self.

It’ll all be better in the light of day.

She didn’t know who that little girl in her dream was. Her mind could have invented her from her great-grandfather’s stories. But real or not, that girl held a truth in her hands.

She’d passed it to Heather, and Heather intended to take that responsibility to heart. No one could change the past, but in her own Heather-style, she could look it in the eye, call it out for being a dirty rotten bastard, and try to do better. The lost residents of Sea Smoke Island would get what they’d never had. Their stories, the truth of what they’d gone through, would see the light of day; she and Gabby would make sure of it.

Thankyou so much for reading! Turn the page for an author’s note about the events in this novel.

The next book in the Sea Smoke Island series, TRICK OF LIGHT, will be coming this winter. If you’d like to read more small-town romantic suspense, check out the completed Firelight Ridge series, set in the mountains of Alaska.

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