Cameron’s eyes shone, the flecks of gold seeming brighter than usual, but he didn’t say a thing.

  Anxious, eyes downcast, I rambled, “I just mean, well, you said you loved me before and I wanted you to know that the feeling is mutual.” I swear it wasn’t possible for my cheeks to get any redder.

  “I love you, too,” he said, voice tender.

  Emotion caught in my throat, forming a heavy lump. Maybe it was the sheer stress of all that had happened today, or maybe I was just being overly emotional, but hearing him say those words had a profound effect on me. No man had ever told me he loved me before, not like this. This was the steal your breath away, make you feel like you’re floating on clouds, insides all aflutter kind of love that I felt from Cameron.

  A tear spilled down my cheek, and he reached forward to wipe it away. Then he captured my mouth in a spine-tingling kiss that I felt right down to my toes. His tongue caressed mine, and I lost myself in his taste, a sense of sheer happiness overcoming me to know he felt the same way for me as I did for him.

  We kissed for a long time before coming up for air. He smiled at me, the sort of rare smile that made you believe you were hearing angels sing. He cupped the back of my neck, a sexy growl in his voice when he said, “We’d better make a move.”

  “Yes,” I nodded, still breathless from the kiss. “Good idea.”

  Cameron pulled away from the house, and I couldn’t have been happier to leave that place behind. The drive was quiet, but my mind raced, reliving everything that had happened. Then my thoughts snagged on a memory.

  I turned to Cameron, twisting in my seat. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Remember when we were playing that silly Never Have I Ever game at the pub with Lilah, Nadia, and Damien?”

  “I do.”

  “You said you’d been in love before.”

  A deep frown marred his forehead, and I couldn’t tell if he was annoyed or confused. “Did I?”

  Nerves fizzled in my throat. “Yes. It was my turn, and I said never have I ever been in love and you took a drink. If you take a drink, that means the opposite is true for you.”

  I watched as he stared dead ahead, not saying anything for a long moment. My stomach tensed as I feared the worst, like maybe there was some old flame from his past that he still had unresolved feelings for. I thought he might not speak at all, but then he answered in a low voice, like he was embarrassed or something.

  “I was talking about you.”

  I blinked. “Me?”

  Cameron’s jaw worked as he reached for the gear stick. “Yes, you.”

  It took a second for my brain to compute. A slow, buoyant smile spread across my face. “You were in love with me then?”

  “It was hardly a million years ago, Maisie.”

  “Yes, but…I just…I don’t know what to think. I need a minute.”

  He arched an eyebrow, glancing between me and the road. “Weren’t you in love with me, too?”

  There was a vulnerability in his voice that made me want to reach out and pull him into my arms, but I couldn’t because he was driving. I thought back over the last few weeks, how he was constantly in my head, how I spent almost every waking minute looking forward to the next time I got to see him.

  Maybe I was in love with him all along and I just didn’t realise it.

  I reached out and put my hand on his arm before pressing a kiss to his cheek. There was no other answer I could give him. “Yes, Cameron, I was in love with you, too.”

  He smiled in a way that showed both relief and satisfaction. I admired his handsome profile, my stomach full of butterflies. I couldn’t believe that this handsome, smart, brave, impossible man was mine.

  And I was his.

  Eighteen

  The Interrogation

  February 9th

  “I’d like to introduce you to DC Alan Whitmore,” said Detective Costas. “He’s come down from Scotland Yard.”

  We stood behind the two-way glass in the interrogation room at the police station, and I felt like I was in some kind of gritty cop drama.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said, shaking the detective constable’s hand before Cameron did the same.

  “The pleasure is all mine. I can’t thank you enough,” Whitmore replied. “The seizure today is one of the biggest I’ve encountered in my career to date.”

  “We’re just glad we could help,” Cameron said.

  “I still can’t believe there’s a market for all this stuff,” I put in. “How much is it even worth?”

  Whitmore rubbed his jaw, eyes going up to the ceiling as he shook his head. “It’s hard to say. We haven’t completed a full evaluation yet, but it’s substantial. Rhino horns are worth more by weight than heroin. A single horn can fetch up to a quarter of a million pounds.”

  My eyebrows shot right up into my forehead. “Seriously? That’s insane.”

  “It certainly explains why they’d go to the trouble of smuggling it in,” Cameron added.

  “We’re about to interview Miss Nevin now,” Costas said. “Her legal representative has informed us that she’s willing to cooperate fully in exchange for immunity for her involvement in the auction.”

  I swallowed at that information, a part of me relieved that Jenny wasn’t going to go to prison. I knew I shouldn’t feel that way. She’d broken the law, but it was hard to look past the fact that she was still just an ordinary woman who I’d worked with for years.

  Cameron and I watched as Costas and Whitmore entered the interrogation room where Jenny and her solicitor were waiting. Jenny appeared visibly shaken as they went through all the preliminary procedures before finally starting the interview.

  I stood close to Cameron as he reached out and took my hand. His warm palm against mine was the support I needed in that moment, because no matter what Jenny might’ve done, it was hard to watch her being interrogated. I wondered if Cameron was finding it difficult, too. After all, we were the reason she was here.

  “To begin, can you tell us how you came to be involved with Mr. Harrington?” Costas asked.

  Jenny, whose eyes looked red from crying, cleared her throat. “I started searching for my birth father early last year. All I knew was he was a man my mother had a brief relationship with in the eighties. She was born and raised here in Torquay, but after she became pregnant, she moved to South Brent to live with her aunt, which was where I grew up.” She paused to sniffle. “It was only about a year ago that I discovered she’d never told my father she was pregnant. I always thought he didn’t want me, but that wasn’t true. Mum simply didn’t want him in our lives. She said he wasn’t a good man, and that I was better off without him. I should’ve listened to her, but at the time I was just so angry that she’d kept me a secret.”

  “So you started your search for him?” Costas probed.

  Jenny nodded. “It took me a couple of months to find him, and I couldn’t believe he was living in the same town as I was. I’d originally moved here because I had relatives on my mother’s side living locally. Then I found work and ended up staying and buying a house.”

  “And when exactly did you finally come into contact with your father?”

  “It was last November,” Jenny replied. “November 2nd. I showed up at his house, but he was at work. His wife answered the door. I told her who I was and she kind of went into shock. She called my dad and he left work right away to come and see me. I don’t think either of them believed me at first, but then when I told them who my mother was, there was no denying I was telling the truth.”

  I looked at Cameron, who appeared to be having the exact same revelation as I was. “That must’ve been the day Harrington closed his store early,” I said and he nodded in agreement.

  “What happened after that?” Whitmore asked.

  Something close to a smile came across Jenny’s face. “After that, things were wonderful. My dad and his current wife, Mary, were never able to have children of their own, so he was pretty much overjoyed to discover he had a daughter. He took me into his life with open arms.”

  “And that’s when you became involved in the smuggling?”

  Jenny shook her head. “Not at first. After a few weeks, Dad found out about my debt. I’d been falling behind on my mortgage for a while and all the missed payments were building up.”

  “Why were you falling behind? You’re employed full-time at the James & Peterson firm here in town, is that correct?”

  “Yes, but I’d bought a house bigger than what my salary could afford. It was a bad decision on my part, and in all honesty, the bank never should’ve granted me the loan. After a while, the repayments became more than I could handle. That’s when I stopped paying altogether. Anyway, I confessed this to my father and he told me he might be able to help. He explained about the smuggling and the auction, and how I could make enough money to pay off my debt in just a couple of weeks.”

  “What was your role exactly?”

  Jenny leaned forward now, elbows on the table. She looked exhausted, both emotionally and physically. “I was mostly involved in putting together invitations for the event, vetting the attendees. My background as an investigator came in handy in that regard.”

  “Is that when you discovered your co-workers, Mr. Grant and Miss Wilkins had applied to attend?” Costas asked.

  Jenny shook her head, looking perplexed. “No. I had no idea they were going to be there. Their names certainly weren’t on the attendee list.”

  Right, because I’d used the fake names from last year’s case. Jenny hadn’t worked on it, which explained why she wouldn’t have recognised them. But wait… so they hadn’t known about us? Now I was confused.

  “If that’s the case, then why was the room they were staying in bugged?” Costas went on.

  “Oh,” Jenny said. “All of the rooms were bugged. Dad and his business partner insisted upon it to ensure no undercover police had slipped through the cracks of our vetting process.”

  “And who exactly is your father’s business partner?” Whitmore probed.

  Jenny’s face stilled, like she hadn’t meant to reveal that part. Her complexion went decidedly pale as she glanced at her solicitor who sat next to her.

  “My client agreed to discuss details regarding her involvement in the auction only,” the solicitor said.

  “True, but that means she must disclose all of the information she knows as a result of her involvement.”

  The solicitor was about to respond with a retort, but then Jenny spoke up. “His partner was a local businessman called Roy Voss. I spoke with him a few times and as far as I know, he was the one smuggling in the goods, while my father dealt with the sale of them.” She looked bereft when she finished speaking, like she knew she was never going to be able to have a real relationship with her dad after all this. Then again, Harrington was more than likely going away for a long time. There was also talk at the start of the interview about Jenny going into witness protection, so it wasn’t like she’d be able to stay in touch anyway.

  “Do you have any idea how the proceeds from the auction were going to be split?” Whitmore questioned. “You said your father promised you’d earn enough to get out of debt, so what was your cut?”

  Jenny swallowed tightly and then met the constable’s gaze. “I was supposed to be paid £100,000, but the majority would go to Dad and Roy. Roy spoke of some building project he was involved in that he was using the money to help fund.”

  Oh my goodness! The gym! The more Jenny revealed, the more everything started to make sense. Cameron and I stood and listened as the detectives continued to question her for the better part of an hour. She looked completely bereft by the end of it, and again, I felt for her. Her entire life had been turned upside down in the space of one day. She’d acted out of desperation and I could certainly empathise with her situation. Then I thought of what I would’ve done had I been in her place. Even if it meant losing my home, I knew I’d never willingly commit a crime. I’d rather lose everything and start over from scratch than risk going to prison.

  By the time Cameron finally drove me home, I just wanted to sleep for whatever was left of the weekend. He came inside with me, helping me upstairs. I lay down on my bed, vaguely aware of water running before he reappeared.

  “I ran you a bath,” Cameron said and I don’t think I ever heard a more appealing sentence in my life. With tender care, we stripped each other of our clothes then climbed into the warm, lavender-scented water. I sat with my back to his chest and closed my eyes, letting the quiet relax me and the water soothe me.

  “Today felt like it went on forever. I might need a vacation just to recover,” I said with humour.

  Cameron rested a hand on my stomach, his lips pressing to my temple. “If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?” he asked, his low voice doing strange things to me. Goose bumps rose on my skin.

  “I can’t decide, there are too many places I want to visit,” I said as I thought on it. “Though I’ve always really wanted to go to Puerto Vallarta.”

  “Where’s that?” he asked, sounding drowsy and relaxed.

  “It’s a city in Mexico where Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor had their whirlwind love affair,” I explained. My mum had always been obsessed with Hollywood stars from the fifties and sixties, so I knew lots of celeb gossip from the old days. “Burton was there to film The Night of the Iguana and he took Taylor on set with him. They ended up staying in this villa that they later bought. Well, I think Burton bought it for Taylor, since they were both married to other people at the time, hence the scandal. Then he bought a house across the street for himself. But get this, he wanted to be able to see her whenever he pleased without having to navigate all the paparazzi outside, so he built a bridge going from his house over to hers. Isn’t that romantic?”

  “I guess,” Cameron said with a chuckle. “If you consider building a sex bridge romantic. You have to admire the man’s tenacity.”

  “Hey!” I said, slapping him lightly on the thigh. “It wasn’t a sex bridge, it was a love bridge.”

  “Didn’t they break up in the end?”

  “Well, yes, but that’s beside the point. They had one of the greatest, most tumultuous love stories the world had ever seen. They couldn’t stay away from each other. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be a fly on the wall.”

  “You little pervert,” Cameron teased, tickling me.

  “Stop that,” I giggled. “I’m being serious. I wonder if anyone’s ever written a novelisation of their affair. Hey, maybe you could convince your sister to do it.”

  “I’m not sure Ellen has the time to write an entire book simply because my girlfriend wants to know what Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor got up to in the sack,” Cameron teased.

  I grew quiet then, mostly because he’d just referred to me as his girlfriend. This was the first time he’d used the official title and it had my heart doing all sorts of swoony things inside my chest.

  “So,” I hedged after a few quiet moments. “I’m your girlfriend?”

  I felt rather than saw his smile as he pressed a kiss to the top of my head. “I should hope so,” he purred. “I’m not in the habit of sharing baths with women who aren’t my girlfriend.”

  I turned around, unable to keep the smile off my face. Leaning forward, I caught his lips with mine, kissing him slow and tentative at first before it deepened to a tangle of tongues and lips and groans.

  I wasn’t sure how long we kissed when Cameron pulled me from the bath, wrapped me in a towel, and carried me to my bed where we spent the better part of the next day.

  And what a blissful day it was.

  Nineteen

  The Unexpected Visitor

  March 26th

  Life was good.

  Cameron and I had been together for seven weeks. Yes, you heard correctly. Seven weeks! We managed to fit into each other’s lives in a way that felt natural. We split our time between my place and his, and so far, we were still in that wondrous stage of our relationship where everything was fascinating and new.

  I was in a real, honest to God grown-up couple and I swear half the time it was impossible to wipe the smile off my face.

  We’d gone through all the official channels at work, and yes, it was quite enjoyable and satisfying to see Rory’s face when word spread that we were seeing each other. He could stick that in his pipe and smoke it, trying to make me think nobody liked me. I couldn’t believe I’d actually listened to him, even worse, wondered if it was true.

  Jenny was in witness protection. Harrington, Voss, and all the others who’d worked with them had been charged, and I was just happy to put the whole sorry mess behind me.

  When questioned, Jamie, the store assistant from Treasures & Trinkets, revealed that during one of his shifts, he’d stumbled upon a room that was normally locked. When he’d gone inside, he’d discovered Harrington was using the room to store some of his smuggled goods. Harrington found out and had Jamie beaten, threatening him not to go to the police. This was why he had a black eye that time I saw him, and also why Harrington rarely left the store unattended during opening hours. He had too many valuable items stored there to risk one of his employees discovering them.

  “Are you coming to lunch?” Lilah asked, appearing at my desk with Damien by her side.

  “Sure,” I replied. “Just give me one second.”

  I finished up the email I’d been composing, hit send, then went to join them over by the lift. Ever since Cameron and I became official, Damien hadn’t flirted with me once and we’d settled into a nice, comfortable friendship. He and Lilah had also become good pals and I couldn’t believe I ever thought he was some kind of imposter.

  I never confessed my incorrect suspicions to him though. Some things were just better left unsaid. Besides, he was an integral part of the firm now. The office simply wouldn’t be the same without him.