Seashell Holiday Cottages had been set up thirty years ago by Miranda’s father-in-law-to-be, Nigel, and had been helping families, couples, singletons and friends holiday on the island ever since. Miranda had worked for them since she was fourteen, helping clean properties in the holidays at first, then taking over reception duties once she turned sixteen. Now, she practically ran the place – although she still let Nigel believe he was in charge. He was going to be her father-in-law, after all. As soon as she and Paul finally tied the knot. She supplemented her income with some virtual assistant work for companies as far away as London, New York and even Sydney, which helped make ends meet during the slower, colder seasons when the office didn’t need to be open full time. But Seashell Holiday Cottages was where her heart was.
It could have grown old, working for the same place all these years, but somehow it never did. When she pushed open the office door and heard the seashells hanging in the window clatter against the glass, she knew she was home. And there was always something interesting to deal with – a new property to photograph and list, a family needing advice on the perfect place to stay, even a nervous boyfriend with a ring wanting tips on the perfect spot on the island to propose.
But, if she was honest, Miranda knew that what kept her going the most was the knowledge that one day, soon, this would all be hers.
She and Nigel had a deal, a plan. Once she and Paul were married, he’d retire, and she’d take over the family business. Just as soon as she was actually family.
Until then, she just ran the place unofficially.
By 10 a.m., she’d dealt with a TV that couldn’t get CBeebies in one cottage, found a romantic dinner reservation for a nervous fiancé-to-be, arranged for her favourite photographer to take photos of a gorgeous new cottage she’d just got on the books down by Gull Bay, and helped rescue a runaway llama. Miranda was pretty sure she’d earned a coffee break herself, when the phone rang again.
‘Seashell Holiday Cottages,’ she said brightly, while stretching the office phone cord towards the kitchen and vowing, not for the first time, that when she was in charge, they’d go cordless.
‘Hey. Are we still on for lunch?’
The sound of her fiancé’s voice should make her smile, Miranda knew. Today, the harried tone in his voice – and the yelling she could hear in the background – told her that work was not going well, and that lunch would probably be a chance for him to tell her all about it.
All the same, she forced a smile. She and Paul had been together for nineteen years – since they were sixteen – and she was used to his moods, the same way he was used to hers. And when they finally got married, she’d promise good times and bad, which included a lousy day at work at the very least, she was sure.
She didn’t let herself dwell on how many bad days at work there’d be. Or whether the good days would ever make up for it. Paul and his whole family were a Seashell Island institution, like she’d striven to be. They made sense together, from a purely logical point of view.
However boring Christabel thought he was.
‘Absolutely! I’m looking forward to it,’ she lied, wishing she could just take a sandwich down to the seafront and enjoy the peace instead. Checking through the front window of the office to make sure no tourists were about to wander in, she lowered her voice and said the words that were guaranteed to brighten his mood, no matter how bad his day.
‘The last of the B&B’s guests left this morning. So I can stay at home tonight.’
Her parents’ trip of a lifetime to Australia had been a bone of contention between her and Paul from the start. Well, not the trip itself – they had both agreed that, since they hadn’t had a proper holiday in over three decades, Josie and Iestyn Waters deserved a decent break away. But while Miranda thought the logical extension of that was that she’d move into the Lighthouse B&B while they were gone and manage the early summer bookings, Paul seemed to believe that they should have just closed down for the duration and cancelled any existing reservations.
Miranda had held firm, but she had to admit it had caused some tension. Still, the B&B was unoccupied between now and her parents’ return on Sunday, so they could put that behind them and she could move home. Maybe they could even start discussing wedding dates again. They’d been engaged for years, now. It was only sensible to move on with the plans, so Nigel could retire and she could take over the business properly.
‘Right,’ Paul said, in a distracted monotone. ‘So I’ll meet you at the office at twelve thirty. OK?’
‘That’s fine.’ She’d tell him again over lunch, when he was listening properly. That would cheer him up. ‘Love you.’
‘Yeah, bye.’ Paul hung up.
Miranda frowned. She might have been with the same guy her whole adult life, but even she didn’t need Christabel to tell her that that was not a good phone call with a man who was supposed to love her. Who she was supposed to love.
Outside, a cloud passed in front of the sun, casting shadows through the front window. And suddenly, Seashell Island didn’t feel quite as perfect as it normally did.
LEO
‘OK, so you’re absolutely sure you know what you’re doing?’ Leo’s gaze darted away from the road ahead of him to check the confidence of his assistant’s expression.
Tom, sitting in the passenger seat, rolled his eyes. Leo decided that counted as certainty.
Good. At least one of them should know what they were doing this summer.
‘I’m accompanying you guys to the ferry terminal then, once you’re on board, driving approximately three metres to the secure parking garage I booked—’
‘It’s more than three metres,’ Leo interrupted. He’d checked on a map, once Tom had showed him the place he’d booked. After all, he needed to be certain his baby would be safe.
‘Fine. Thirty metres to the parking garage, then.’ Tom’s eyes were basically permanently rolling now. Leo ignored it. ‘I’ll park your precious car very carefully without dinging it at all, lock it up securely, then catch the train back to London.’
‘I wish we could have taken the train,’ Mia moaned from the backseat. ‘Abby doesn’t get travel-sick on trains.’
‘Abby hasn’t been sick in the convertible either, have you, sweetheart. Smoothest ride ever.’ Leo glanced up at the rear-view mirror to double check that the upholstery of his car was still unstained. All safe. Although he had to admit that six-year-old Abby was looking a little green around the edges. ‘Nearly there now, anyway.’
He’d only wanted to drive his pride and joy convertible along the M4 for one last jaunt before he had to say goodbye to it for the summer, with the top down as they reached the coast. Was that so bad? What was bad was the ridiculous rules Seashell Island had about cars. No vehicles unless strictly necessary for island work, and even then, they needed special permits agreed months ahead of time.
He blamed his elder sister, Miranda, for that one. The islanders had reviewed the car policy just a couple of years ago, and she’d fought for keeping their arcane and restrictive rules. She’d even started a new bike-borrowing system to make it easier for tourists.
Bikes. Seriously.
This was what happened when a person like Miranda never left Seashell Island. They became institutionalised. That was just one of the reasons he’d been so determined to make his life on the mainland, instead.
‘I’m perfectly fine with all the arrangements for the car,’ Tom said, continuing the conversation seamlessly. ‘The part I don’t understand is how you expect to work full time from Seashell Island while also looking after both your kids. I mean, I thought this was supposed to be a holiday.’
‘So did we,’ Mia muttered. Leo decided to pretend he hadn’t heard that.
The girls were just children. They didn’t understand the pressures of work. Nobody who ran their own business actually took holidays, right? They
were for wage slaves and slackers.
His business was a success because he put everything he had into it. He couldn’t stop that now.
‘It’ll be fine,’ Leo said. ‘My parents are always saying they want to spend more time with the girls, so they’ll take them out and entertain them while I work – and then we can have lots of family time together the rest of the time.’ He raised his voice for the last part, hoping it might mollify Mia.
He checked the mirror. She did not look mollified.
When had his little princess grown so difficult? Emily, her mother, would probably tell him she was still processing the divorce. But since even his ex-wife had managed to move on enough to marry someone else in the three years since the decree absolute came through, it seemed unlikely that Mia was still being difficult about that.
Maybe she was acting out because of her mum’s new marriage. A marriage that, incidentally, had resulted in him being stuck in sole charge of the girls all summer while Emily and Mark headed off on their honeymoon.
Which meant, basically, it was all his ex-wife’s fault. Which made for a nice change.
Leo was well aware that he was the one who couldn’t make a marriage work, couldn’t compromise his ambition, his wants, to make everyone happy. He focused on what mattered most, and that, practically, had to be keeping a roof over all their heads and food on the table for the girls. Yes, Emily had worked too, and yes, perhaps they could have managed with less if they had to. But why should they have had to?
Besides, he loved his job. He was good at his job.
It was love and parenting he sucked at.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t make it work this summer. He’d missed the girls, even knowing that he probably spent more time with them now he only saw them every couple of weekends than he had when he lived in the same house. Still, when he got home from the office at night, not being able to sneak upstairs and look at their sleeping faces still caught him in the chest, sometimes.
Of course, times like this – when Mia was looking like a mardy teenager a good four years before she had any right to – he was glad that Emily still took care of the bulk of the parenting. He got to do fun stuff, like bowling and pizza and movies, and she got to deal with school work and mood swings and fallings out with friends. Fun stuff he could manage. So long as it didn’t interfere with work.
Emily had emailed him a lengthy list of rules and regulations for the summer – including limits on how many ice creams Abby was allowed – but Leo hadn’t paid it too much attention. What was the point of summer holidays if the girls couldn’t stay up too late and eat too much ice cream? Besides, he knew he’d need to provide some treats to make up for all the work he had to do.
Everything would be fine. His parents would deal with the day to day, just like Emily usually did, and he’d be able to do the fun stuff with them like normal.
He definitely had the better part of the parenting deal with Emily, even if he did hand over a serious chunk of cash every month for the privilege. He didn’t mind that part. It reassured him that he was taking care of his family. After all, that was why he worked so hard, right?
He frowned, remembering that Emily wanted to talk to him about that when she got back. Now that she was remarried, she’d hinted that Mark would be taking over some of the financial obligation. Which made logical sense, and Leo knew his lawyer and accountant would both be thrilled.
Except . . . Leo wasn’t sure he wanted Mark taking care of his family, nice as the guy was.
He hadn’t wanted to like his ex-wife’s new partner, but Mark was one of those guys who was just likeable. Laid-back, impossible to offend, and he made Emily happy. He also looked after the girls, including them in stuff he did with his own son from his first marriage.
It had taken a little while for Leo to see all that, of course. But now whenever he felt the irritation rising, he reminded himself of what was really important: he got to do the work he loved, and his family were happy. That wasn’t nothing.
It hadn’t always been an easy road to where they were now, but one of the things Leo was proudest of in his recent life was that he and Emily had found a way to make separated life as easy as possible on the girls.
That and his thriving business, of course. The business he hoped would continue thriving in his absence over the summer.
‘If there are any problems, you will call me immediately, OK?’ he told Tom. ‘My parents will be there with the girls; I can be back in London in four hours if I’m needed. Maybe five,’ he corrected, as the car slid to a halt in the mass of traffic around the tiny ferry terminal that had the only boats that docked at Seashell Island. He’d forgotten how crazy the place could be at high summer. In his memories, the summer days were often overshadowed by the long, empty winters when no one visited at all, and the population of the island shrank down to just the locals, battening down the hatches against the weather and the isolation. He and his baby sister Juliet would hide in the attic at the Lighthouse, planning for the day they’d escape the island and live in the real world for a change.
He’d escaped; they both had. And even now, just the thought of returning for a whole summer was making him edgy. Seashell Island sucked people in, he’d seen it plenty of times before. Visitors who came for a weekend and ended up buying a house there as the island got its grips into them.
His parents had been two of them.
It wasn’t that Seashell Island wasn’t a lovely place to visit. But after growing up there, Leo was far too aware of its flaws to view it through the rose-tinted glasses that Miranda and his parents wore.
Mia grumbled again in the back seat – about the traffic or the trip to the island where he’d grown up, Leo wasn’t sure. He ignored her.
This was how life was. He had a job he loved, and he was going to do it. That didn’t make him a bad father.
The thought popped into his head that there were probably plenty of other things that did that. Leo ignored it, too.
Focus, that was the key. That was what was going to get him through the summer. He’d do his job, spend time with the girls, and be back in London before September. It would all be fine.
Quicker than he’d expected, they pulled into the ferry terminal, and Leo parked in the waiting bay, Tom already jumping out to grab the bags from the boot. Leo took a moment to stroke the steering wheel as he said a personal farewell to his beloved silver convertible.
With a last handshake goodbye for Tom, Leo reluctantly handed over the car keys, loaded the girls up with their rucksacks, grabbed the suitcase handles, and headed into the ferry terminal.
As he glanced back one last time, Abby asked, ‘Are you going to miss Tom, Daddy?’
Leo sighed. ‘I’m going to miss my car.’
But mostly, he knew, he’d miss the freedom it represented. In London, he could go anywhere, anytime – traffic permitting.
On Seashell Island, there was nowhere to go. And he’d just committed himself to five whole weeks there, with his parents telling him he was working too much and Miranda berating him for not visiting often enough, even though she never even left the place to visit him.
Steeling himself, Leo led the girls forward to the ferry.
It was five weeks. He’d managed most of his childhood there, he could manage one summer.
Then he’d get back to his real life again.
JULIET
Just tell him.
Sitting in the client chair opposite her boss’s desk, Juliet waited for Callum to finish his phone call. In some ways, she was grateful for the interruption – it gave her longer to gather her thoughts. In others, she was seriously narked. She’d told him she needed to talk to him about something important, something urgent, and he’d taken the call anyway, before she’d even had a chance to start.
That told her more than she liked about her place in his mental hierarc
hy.
If he’d been only her boss, she’d probably be OK with that. As it was . . .
Leaning back against the chair as another wave of nervous nausea passed through her, Juliet looked around the office to distract herself. On the phone, Callum was talking about quarterly reports and latest sales figures, while she was remembering how he’d laid her out on that desk and touched every inch of her with his hands and mouth. Or how he’d pressed her up against that glass window, fifty floors above the London streets below, the night skies twinkling above them, and slipped his fingers inside her skirt and—
‘Right.’ Callum hung up the phone. ‘Juliet.’ He steepled his hands in front of him, giving her his full attention at last. Juliet frowned, as she took in his expression. Where was the wicked smirk at the corner of his lips he usually saved for her? Or the heat in his eyes that let her know that, as professional as they always were during business hours, later it would be a different story.
Did he already know what she was there to talk to him about?
‘I know you said you wanted to discuss something,’ Callum went on without giving her a chance to talk. ‘But actually, there’s something I need to tell you too.’
Her intuition – the one that always told her when a guy was about to be particularly dickish – was pinging wildly. And I haven’t even told him about the— she broke off the thought, swallowing hard. If she said it, hell, if she even thought it, that made it real.
Far more real than one slim piece of white plastic and a plus sign.
For years, Juliet had made it a personal principle to enjoy life, to wring every drop of excitement and opportunity from it – mostly to make up for the eighteen years spent stifled on an island with no opportunities and nowhere to go. Moving to London, living in tiny flats with housemates of varying degrees of compatibility, getting by on temp wages and spending every penny on Friday nights . . . that had all been part of the fun.
Even getting the job here at Delectable PR, a company specialising in promotion and marketing for food and beverage retailers, had been an adventure to start with. More money, and plenty of evenings spent out in restaurants or exploring food trucks and pop-up eateries. Often with Callum – which was what had led to her current predicament, she supposed.
Summer on Seashell Island: Escape to an island this summer for the perfect heartwarming romance in 2020 (Riley Wolfe 1) Page 2
