The Nook for Brooks (Mulligan's Mill Book 6) by Robin Knight

Author:Robin Knight [Knight, Robin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Squid INQ Press
Published: 2025-09-22T00:00:00+00:00

To my utter amazement, dinner was edible. More than edible. It was positively delicious.

Instead of the charred hotdogs or ash-flavored beans I’d been bracing for, Cody unwrapped a foil package to reveal a golden, buttery chicken and leek pie—procured, of course, from Pascal’s. He’d even thought to tuck a little tub of spiced relish into his pack, and we warmed the pie over the fire until the pastry flaked beneath our forks.

“This,” Cody declared, lifting a bite as steam curled upward. “Is camping done right.”

“This,” I corrected. “Is not camping. This is smuggling haute cuisine into the wilderness like a culinary outlaw.”

“Outlaw, huh?” He winked. “I can live with that.”

When the last buttery crumbs had been brushed from our laps, Cody folded the foil wrapping into a neat square, slipped it into a zip-lock bag, and tied it tight before hanging it from a tree branch well away from camp.

“I heard you had black bears,” he said by way of explanation.

“We do?” I panicked.

“You really don’t get out much, do you? Relax, we’ll be fine.”

Cody clearly wasn’t concerned. He leaned back against a log with a satisfied sigh. He patted the ground beside him, gesturing for me to join him.

I did, partly because he looked so damn handsome in the glow of the fire. Also because if a bear was going to jump out of the bushes, I needed someone to hide behind.

He wrapped one of his big arms tightly around me, pulling me close.

The forest hummed with unseen things—crickets thrumming, the distant falls crashing and splashing, leaves shifting high above. The flames crackled, throwing sparks into the dark. The shadows beyond the circle of light shifted and stirred, and I had the uneasy sense that at any moment something big and scary would come lurching out of the trees.

I needed a distraction. Any distraction.

“So,” I said, clearing my throat. “A travel writer… What makes a person want to be a travel writer?”

Cody smiled. “That’s a short question with a big answer. Do you want the long version or the abridged edition?”

“I’d prefer the longest possible version, actually. Something that lasts until sunrise.”

He chuckled, poking at the fire with a stick. “Fair enough. Honestly, I guess it started when I was a kid. I grew up on Magnetic Island with my parents. My dad was constantly coming and going, working in the mines, while Mum worked two jobs, one at a café in the morning, the other at the local pub at night. We didn’t have much. But sometimes, if she got home early from a shift, she’d read me the travel sections from old magazines she picked up at the café. I’d sit there staring at those pictures of mountains in Peru or markets in Morocco and think, I’ve got to see this for myself one day.”

He paused, eyes reflecting the fire, and shrugged. “So, when I got older, I saved up for a one-way ticket to Istanbul. I promised myself I could find my way across Europe with nothing but a few bucks and a whole lot of determination.

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