by Rachel Dove
He turned to the sound of a snigger behind him, and he jabbed his cane out. ‘Oww! Dad!’
‘Serves you right, mocking him.’ Rebecca straightened Frank’s tie, smoothing the hair at the back of his head. Luke had the same fluffy hair. ‘You look great Frank. All set?’ Frank tapped his pockets, picking up the small bunch of flowers he’d hand-picked from his garden up and tucking them under his arm. She dropped a kiss on his cheek, smoothing the lip gloss off. ‘Go and have fun. No pressure.’
‘Top of the mountain,’ he said, winking.
‘Top of the mountain,’ she beamed.
‘Home by twelve, or we lock the doors.’ Luke dodged the cane swipe this time, but Frank got faster with every mock. ‘Missed me.’
The taxi beeped outside, and Frank stood to attention like an army cadet.
‘Come on, Dad, Marilyn’s here.’ Marilyn was sitting in the cab. They were headed out to dinner, their first official date. Luke went to help his dad, but he stopped him with a steady hand.
‘No son, it’s okay. I can do this.’ He stood out onto the path, cane in his hand, flowers in the other and off he went. Luke and Rebecca watched from the door, watching Marilyn’s face as Frank walked towards her down the front path. He got to the taxi, and Marilyn got out.
‘He’s done it! Knew he would.’ He pulled Rebecca into his arms as they watched the two say hello.
‘Of course he did! He’s bloody stubborn, like you. He wanted to go on this date on his own steam. He’s been waiting a long time for this.’
She felt Luke nod behind her. ‘Months, bless him. I never thought he’d ever leave the hospital that first week. Oh, she likes the flowers.’ Marilyn had pulled Frank in for a hug, and the next minute, Frank was kissing her. His stick fell to the floor, forgotten.
‘Something tells me that he’s been waiting a lot longer than months.’ Rebecca closed the door, pulling Luke away from the lovebirds. ‘You Sommersby men are not naturally great with the ladies, are you?’
Luke huffed, bending to lift her into a fireman’s carry. She squealed as he took her into the lounge, twirling her around in front of the tree. They’d had such a laugh, the three of them. Decorating the house, seeing the Yorkshire sights, meeting Luke’s friends … She was a world away from Alpine Bites and dinners for one, but she felt so connected now. To home, and here. They were heading to her parents next week, before heading back home.
‘I think we do alright. I’ll have you know, my girlfriend is the current Alpine Ice Queen, and word is, she’s going to beat her personal best next year.’
‘The word’s out, eh?’ The two of them sat together in front of the fire. ‘Well, must be true then. Hans thinks he can take me on, he’s still wounded he slept through most of last time.’
‘What a baby. The marker pen genitalia rubbed off eventually. You looking forward to going home?’
Rebecca thought of their lodge above the café. Luke’s old room was now his office, and he worked all over the world from right in that spot, whilst she baked downstairs. The skiing baker. Their trophies stood behind the counter on a shelf, along with a photo of them from that day, standing with their friends and families – Luke holding up a phone screen, Frank and Marilyn’s little faces in the frame. She thought of the upcoming season, and the thrill of standing on the top of that mountain again, with the world beneath her feet and people to share it with.
‘Mr Alpine Ice Queen.’ She kissed his neck, making him shiver. ‘Wherever we are, I’m home.’
He took her into his arms, and they sat watching the fire.
‘Bubble,’ they said in unison.
Swept away by Rebecca and Luke’s romance? Don’t miss The Second Chance Hotel, another uplifting love story from Rachel Dove. Available now!
Click here if you’re in the US
Click here if you’re in the UK
Want more?
To be the first to hear about new releases, competitions, 99p eBooks and promotions, sign up to our monthly email newsletter.
Click here to sign up!
Acknowledgements
Every book is special, and the people involved make it special too. Big thanks to Belinda Toor and the HQ team, I love working with you guys. Here’s to many more books. Thanks to Lina Langlee for being my agent on this book, and thanks to the Kate Nash Agency.
A big shout out to the RNA and my writer friends, there are too many to name and I always worry about leaving someone out, but you know who you are. Thanks for being such great mates. You make the words flow and inspire me every day.
Thanks as ever to my wonderful family and friends for their support and love, and the biggest thanks of all go to my readers. Thank you for sticking with me, I love you all. Here’s to many more book boyfriends being taken (dragged) on adventures by kick ass women who are not afraid to show their heart AND their teeth.
Never let anyone tell you romance is just fluff, it’s the gravy of life. We need it in our lives, so thank you for reading my stories and enabling me to write even more. Bookworms rule.
Keep reading for an excerpt from The Second Chance Hotel …
To You
If I was writing this letter under better circumstances, I could have written a much better opening. I’m sitting here on my bunk trying to think of what to say. I don’t even know what to call you. I know we have to be careful. If I could, I would say your name over and over for the rest of my life. How lucky people who see you every day are, for they get to say it willy-nilly.
For you, nothing seems appropriate, or enough, so I decided that You will have to do. My You. My one and only You.
I have the shell you pressed into my hand that night, and I haven’t stopped looking at it. It smells of you, of home, and it makes me feel like my recurring nightmare was just that, and that my real life is still there, at Shady Pines with you.
How long do we have left, till the letters have to stop? I fear the day, yet I know it must come. You must live your life, and I should at least try to start mine. Even with the huge You-shaped hole in my soul. Don’t tell me, not till you have to. While you’re free, let’s pretend, just you and Me.
G
Chapter 1
April Statham sat as close to the steering wheel as she could get, nudging herself and her clapped-out brown Ford Escort along the road, turning slowly into the entrance to the chalet park. Unfortunately, a few seconds earlier, a horse rider had passed, and now his steed was going to the toilet in the middle of the road, leaving a huge steaming pile of horse plop right in the entranceway. April wasn’t really one to believe in signs, but this was kind of hard to miss.
‘Er …’ She wound her window down. ‘Excuse me?’ The horse, and the rider, a thin man whose long features mirrored that of his thoroughbred, dipped their heads to look at her. ‘Could you possibly move your horse? I need to pass.’
The horse snorted loudly. Or was it the rider? Both parties looked equally nonplussed, but the man nodded once and the horse trotted away, leaving his … offerings. April turned the car into the lane, avoiding the pile, and headed for the large wooden hut marked ‘Reception’.
‘Bloody great pile of steaming poo in the entrance, great advert for the place,’ she muttered under her breath, her eyes flicking down to her petrol gauge, which was pointed straight at zero. Past zero, truth be told. She could feel the change in the engine, the car chugging along on petrol fumes. She pulled into the space marked ‘Management’ in between the reception hut and a small chalet. She yanked up the handbrake and turned the key in the ignition to off. She could swear that her car breathed a sigh of relief as the engine cut out. They had made it, her and her little car, all the way from Yorkshire to the tip of the Cornish coast. She sat back in her seat, her limbs and back stiff and wizened, as though she had been tied in a knot somewhere along the A38 and had driven bunched up like a pretzel ever since.
She was just easing the knots out of her neck when a sharp tap on her window made her jump. A woman stood there, he
r face pinched up tight, her dark hair tied into curling rollers on her head. She was wearing a pink dressing gown and dark green wellies, and looked more than a little crazy, even at 8 a.m. on a Monday morning. April wound her window down wearily, plastering a patient smile on her face.
‘Are you lost?’ the woman said pointedly, looking from inside the car to the boxes and suitcases strapped to a roof rack that April had nabbed from a Freecycle site. Her suitcases came from there too, with her not wanting to take the monogrammed luggage set she had been given as a wedding present. His and hers. She’d left it next to Duncan’s in the detached garage. Camped out in her late mother’s house. They’d looked so pathetic sitting there together, never to be used again, as they once were on honeymoon, and on their exotic holidays and horrifying business trips he’d dragged her along on.
‘No,’ said April. Yes, I am a bit. I think I’ve made a big mistake. ‘I’m not lost.’
The woman looked again at the worldly belongings strapped to the roof and sighed, a small unsympathetic sigh that made April feel about an inch tall.
‘Well—’ the woman raised her eyebrows again ‘—you look lost. Can I call someone for you? We’re expecting the hotshot new owner at some point today.’
‘I’m the new owner,’ April tried, her voice a faint whisper. ‘I own this place.’
The woman, having caught the gist now, looked at her with wide eyes.
‘You?’ She leaned into the car window, her head floating there like a balloon. ‘You—’ punctuated by a jab of the finger in her direction ‘—actually bought this place?’
April nodded slowly. The woman began to laugh.
‘Pull the other one, love, it’s got bells on.’ She guffawed, her face looming in April’s window like an animal in a safari park now. A camel sprang to mind. Something that could spit at you from ten paces if it saw fit. Yanking her head back out, the woman tapped twice on the top of April’s car and carried on her way, disappearing as quickly as she had appeared.
April was suddenly alone again, wondering what the hell she had gotten herself into. Hotshot new owner? What had the camel … er … the woman heard? April didn’t want to ruffle any feathers here before she had even unpacked so much as a solitary toilet roll. Why did she think April was a hotshot? Oh God. She’d said ‘we’. ‘We have been waiting for the new owner.’ Who were ‘we’? The woman had obviously found her lacking, and once more, April’s eyes turned to her phone, sitting there innocently in her handbag. It looked so normal, but April felt as though the damn thing was a ticking time bomb waiting to explode on her frazzled brain with an influx of messages. Posts on social media of ‘You okay, hon?’ People commenting on her life, strangers and people who didn’t know her well at all. Not the real her, and nothing like the post-divorce her. Emails from old acquaintances. Purchase reminders for occasions she didn’t need to be reminded of at all. Ever. It would all be in there, lurking.
It had been bad enough already, without her sudden departure from everything and everyone. Divorce was a great vehicle for gossip, her mum had told her. Boy, was she right, as ever. April had turned all her notifications off. If she didn’t need to use the damn thing to navigate, she would probably have pitched it into the nearest and deepest river she could find.
Soon, news of her escape would spread around her hometown, and the gossip would start again. She couldn’t have kids, you know. Tried for years, they did. Broke them apart. Still, his new girlfriend seems lovely. Child-bearing hips, that one. Shame about April, though. She never did quite fit in. They chatted on social media as if they were in the hairdresser’s or in the Post Office queue. What was it that Gran used to tell me? Oh yeah. Loose lips sink ships. No wonder I feel like a crap second-hand dinghy with a Hello Kitty plaster holding in my deflated soul.
They’d be feasting soon, beaks sharply stuck in everyone else’s business. Just like the buzzards to return to a carcass in the hope they’d missed a piece of flesh, a strip of soft underbelly to rip from the bones of her failed life. She had failed as a wife, as a—
April stopped that train of thought by grabbing her phone and jabbing the off button hard, till the screen powered down. She didn’t need her map app now, so why would she leave it on to tick away like a tell-tale heart? She felt instantly better. She was gone, out of their reach. She’d rather thought that being ‘off grid’ would make her feel a tad edgy or a bit hippyish, but instead, she just felt relief. Bone-deep relief. Un-contactable. Freeeeeee! Relief that she wouldn’t have to endure their pitying stares and sympathetic nods, complete with the ‘little rub’. People thought that rubbing your arm or your shoulder was comforting, but it was just a bit too condescending for April. She hated it more than anything. She felt like a simpleton half the time after they had descended on her. What a joy life could be After Duncan. AD. Life after husband.
Zipping up her oversized handbag, she looked once more out of the window at the corner of the world she would now call home. It looked a little like how she felt: neglected, empty, peeling at the corners. Muted against the blue of the sky above. She pulled herself out of the car, her bones popping and cracking as her body unfurled itself. She could feel the shale beneath her feet, her black and white sneakers crunching as she looked around her. The Shady Pines Chalet Park was perched on a beautiful strip of land near Lizard Point, Kynance Cove a short distance away. From the park, April knew from memory that there was a direct walkway to the beach area, for the use of her guests. It had been there for many years and was one of the biggest selling points to her, the thought of waking up and having her toes in the water to start her day right.
Stretching her legs, she walked slowly to the reception hut, brand-new keys in hand. She’d picked them up from a key safe at the estate agent’s that morning, and now here she was, about to start her new life. Taking a gulp of the sharp sea air deep into her lungs, she unlocked the door. The key slotted into the metal housing like a glove. There was a slight resistance, salt in the old locks making the mechanisms stick, but then she felt it turn, and the lock click open. It was times like this, right now, that April felt like she had done something right, for once. She’d done this; she was here. It was all hers, a new life for the taking. If she hadn’t sworn off social media, she would have snapped a photo of the moment for Instagram with a witty hashtag like #divorcerules or #suckonthatduncanyouutterwan—
Maybe not. Not like she threw herself a divorce party, was it? She’d spent half the day crying, the rest feeling completely out of her depth. She obviously wasn’t feeling #blessed quite yet, but she could fake it for now. This was her new life; it was time to get cracking. Pushing open the door, she took a step forward … and hit the deck with a very loud and dusty bang.
‘Ouch! Broken boobs!’ April shouted, or tried to shout. Since her face was smushed into the now broken wooden door, it came out as a muffled humming sound. Prising her lips off the peeling paint, she pushed herself up on her arms and inspected the damage. The whole door had collapsed, the hinges still attached to the door beneath her. Standing, she inspected the wooden frames and saw that the wood was old, brittle to the touch. It crumbled to dust and fell through her fingers.
‘Great,’ she grumbled under her breath. ‘Better find a carpenter pretty sharpish, before the rest of my life turns into the bottom of a rabbit hutch.’ She heaved up the door, resting it on her face at one point to get a better handle on the heavy wood. Placing it to one side of the room with a loud bang, she looked at the dust on her plain black T-shirt and old blue jeans and sighed. She brushed herself down, gingerly around the already bruising chest area.
‘Well,’ she said to the room, looking around. ‘Cheers for the excellent welcome, new home. Be careful, or I will use the last of my money to have a wood chipper party, right here.’ She pointed her finger to the centre of the floor and braced herself, but the ceiling didn’t fall in. Phew.
The reception hut was deceptively large, a square room with a desk off to the left-hand side, compl
ete with a counter in the same faded white-painted wood as the rest of the place. Off to the right, against the wall, were rows of shelving, all empty and filled with dust. The floor was the same white wood, giving the whole room a cube-like effect, and making April feel a bit hemmed in for a second.
There were windows behind the desk on the left, and on the back wall opposite the door was a large set of glass-panelled doors, leading out to a grassed area out of the back. The chalet park ran on the green grass like a horseshoe, twenty blue-and-white trimmed identical chalets, all with their own porches and back patio areas for dining out and sunbathing. Where the ends of the horseshoe met, on the left was the sign indicating the park, with a rack that must have once been used for bicycles alongside it. It was metal and had been painted cream at one point, with pretty shell details around the lettering. Currently, it looked a little worse for wear, the paint peeling and rust-coloured. There was a lone rubber tyre and a dented shopping basket using the facilities, and the sign was tilted to one side, looking as though it was hanging on with the one rusty protruding nail that was still attached. To the right of this was the reception, and on the other side of this, her chalet. It matched the others and looked just as dilapidated. Through the dusty doors, she could see the blue sky and the grass expanse beneath, leading off to the track to the beach. The beach where her mother had taken her, that first night here all that time ago.
It had nearly been dark, the sun setting slowly on their first long day in Cornwall. April had been tired. She remembered how cloudy her head had felt, how she’d moaned when her mother wanted them to see the sunset together.
