Tracy Corbett

Secret Things and Highland Flings


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      Secret Things and Highland Flings

      TRACY CORBETT

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      Published by AVON

      A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

      Copyright © Tracy Corbett 2019

      Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

      Cover illustrations © Shutterstock

      Tracy Corbett asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Ebook Edition © May 2019 ISBN: 9780008299491

      Version: 2019-03-22

      For Simon, thank you for helping me find my smile again. x

      Table of Contents

       Cover

       Title page

       Copyright

       Dedication

       Chapter Six

       Chapter Seven

       Chapter Eight

       Chapter Nine

       Chapter Ten

       Chapter Eleven

       Chapter Twelve

       Chapter Thirteen

       Chapter Fourteen

       Chapter Fifteen

       Chapter Sixteen

       Chapter Seventeen

       Chapter Eighteen

       Chapter Nineteen

       Chapter Twenty

       Chapter Twenty-One

       Chapter Twenty-Two

       Chapter Twenty-Three

       Chapter Twenty-Four

       Chapter Twenty-Five

       Author’s Note

       Acknowledgements

       Keep Reading …

       About the Author

       By the Same Author

       About the Publisher

       Chapter One

      Tuesday 29th May

      Lexi Ryan wasn’t having the best of mornings. She’d managed to slice open her finger while chopping apricots for the muffins she’d baked first thing, and then she’d torn a contact lens and spent the next thirty minutes trying to locate the broken pieces in her eye. By the time she’d recovered and rushed down from the flat to open up her art gallery below, her finger was throbbing and her eye was bloodshot. Not exactly the composed and professional look she was aiming for.

      She’d hoped wearing her favourite emerald-green fifties wrap-around dress might cheer her flagging spirits, but not even her love of vintage clothing was working today.

      It was now lunchtime and things hadn’t improved. She had a pile of bills that needed paying and insufficient funds in her account to cover them. She’d phoned a few long-standing clients, hoping to encourage them into settling their accounts, but it had proved a fruitless exercise. Exceeding her overdraft limit this month was looking highly likely.

      Concealing her agitation, she returned her attentions to her waiting clients. After all, she had a business to run. Stressing over her finances wouldn’t save her precious gallery from foreclosure, or prevent her from inflicting GBH on the annoying businessmen who couldn’t make up their mind between Livemont’s Scent of a Rose and Munch’s The Scream. Professionalism was called for.

      ‘Original?’ the older of the