One Penny Surprise (Saved By Desire 1)

“He is a big man for anyone to move far,” she reasoned.

Luke sighed and pierced her with a glare.

“What? I am just saying,” she countered with sniff before he could say something as condescending as the look he was giving her.

“I know, but he is an adult; a fully grown male who can go where he pleases, when he pleases, and doesn’t have to account to anybody. There is nothing to say that he hasn’t walked himself here and been in an altercation of some kind.” His thoughts immediately turned to the much older and consid

erably more ruthless gang who roamed the area. Was this a mugging gone wrong?

“How do you go about finding out who he is then?”

“I don’t,” Luke countered. “This is something the magistrate can deal with.” The last thing Luke wanted was to get involved with solving a murder mystery. Unfortunately, from the keen interest in Poppy’s eyes, she was too curious for her own good and likely to get herself involved in something she ought to leave well alone. He had to find a way to warn her off somehow. With that in mind he rounded on her.

“We could do with those pick-pockets coming back,” she muttered glancing around at the empty pathways, oblivious to his somewhat threatening stance.

“Really? Why? Do you want to give them your bag this time?” He lifted a querulous brow and wondered if she was having a dig at him.

She glanced around them. “Did you catch any of them?”

Luke shook his head and threw her a rueful look. “You started to scream again before I could. I decided to come back to see what else had happened to you given the racket you were making.”

Poppy’s lips twitched as she fought a smile. She nodded sagely but didn’t bait him. He was clearly put out that she had dared to question his masculine fitness. When he looked at her suspiciously she merely stared back, her expression as bland as she could make it. She could do nothing to hide the mirth in her eyes however and seeing it seemed to make him grumpy. Desperate to change the subject before she laughed and incurred his wrath even more, she looked in the direction the pick-pockets had vanished.

“I could go and find someone to go for the magistrate,” she offered hopefully.

Luke snorted and shook his head. He wondered if she thought he was as daft as he looked. “I think it is safest if we stay together. After all, there might be a murderer watching us right now.” He didn’t think so but if he had to frighten her into wanting to stay close to him then he would. Even while they had been talking she had started to stare far too longingly at the paths around them and, although he was positive he could catch her before she got too far, she screamed – loudly. The last thing he wanted this morning was add to his problems by being caught wrestling with a hysterical female in a secluded park with a dead man by the river. His colleagues in the Star Elite would never let him live it down.

“Where are you from, Poppy?”

“Pardon?” Poppy’s stomach dropped to her toes. Her mind went blank. She didn’t want to lie to him but then she didn’t want to tell him the truth either. She wracked her brain to come up with something plausible, but didn’t know London well enough to come up with any place names nearby she could give him as an alternative to the truth.

“Which part of London do you hail from?”

“Oh, well, I recently moved to Camden,” she replied evasively, and hoped her lie didn’t show on her face. “I hail from down south and don’t really know anyone around these parts.”

He was watching her as she spoke and suspected from the furtive way her eyes kept darting about that she hadn’t told him the truth. Listening to her speak, there was a faint brogue to her voice that had nothing to do with the south. Unless his ears were deceiving him she was from up north somewhere. Disappointment blended with anger as he realised that she might not be as trustworthy as she appeared after all. He felt a flicker of self-disgust that he had been foolish enough to be attracted, even for a short while, to someone who was not only trouble but also a liar.

Poppy fought the urge to squirm beneath that steady regard. For a moment she felt like a naughty child and wanted to blurt her guilt out just to get him to look at something else. There was something about this Luke Brindley that made her feel gauche and tongue tied. She rather suspected that he knew she had just lied to him and he wasn’t all that impressed by it. When she did try to brazen her deceit out and glare at him challengingly she felt the guilty flush of telltale warmth sweep over her cheeks and gave up. Instead, she turned her gaze away from the accusation in those wonderful eyes of his before she caved in and confessed everything.

“Whereabouts in Camden?” Luke demanded.

“I can’t remember,” she said blankly before she could think of a better answer. It was the truth. She couldn’t remember. She did know which route she had to take to get back to the hovel, but she couldn’t remember which street it was on. If she was honest, she didn’t really care because she wasn’t going to be there for too much longer. It certainly wasn’t home. To her, it was unimportant where in Camden the house was located, as long as she could put it behind her once and for all.

When he looked at her sceptically, she explained. “I can remember how to get there, and which door leads to the place I am staying, but I cannot remember what the address is. I only arrived in London last week.”

Luke sighed and shook his head at the curiosity of females. Who in the hell leaves home without knowing what the address is? Did she really think he was that gullible? He knew for definite now that she was lying and the investigator in him was itching to pummel her with questions to get to the truth, but he knew that now was neither the time nor the place.

“God save me,” he mused, eyeing the way she was biting into the soft pink flesh of her bottom lip as though deeply worried about something, or forcing herself to withhold further information. The sight of those pearly white teeth lying in stark contrast to the moist, pink flesh immediately made his body surge to life, and he had to force himself to look away before he really did something they both might regret.

“So?”

It took him a moment to realise she had spoken. “What?”

“So, do you want me to go and find someone to fetch a magistrate? I don’t mind admitting that I don’t want to stay here with the body any longer than I absolutely have to.”

Determined that she wouldn’t escape until he knew more about her, Luke looked her square in the eye. “No, I don’t want you to go for a magistrate. Someone will be along shortly. This is a park after all. As soon as someone appears we can send them.”

“Oh, but –” She took a wary step backward when he stepped toward her.