by Maggie Finn
A Secret in Clover Cove
A Clover Cove Novel
Maggie Finn
Copyright © 2019 Maggie Finn
Kindle Edition
This edition published by Eleven Press 2019
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or places and organisations is purely coincidental.
ISBN 9781911297147
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Welcome to Clover Cove
A Note from Maggie
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
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
From the Author
Welcome back to Clover Cove! ‘A Secret in Clover Cove’ is the second book in a brand new heart-warming series set in the most romantic village on the west coast of Ireland!
Tessa Drake has a secret. A secret that has kept the beautiful artist locked in her studio right on Clover Cove’s lovely windswept beach. But secrets have a way of getting out and it doesn’t help that she’s fallen head over heels in love with the one man she shouldn’t: investigative journalist Danny Brennan. Danny is her perfect man, he’s clever and handsome, but he’s also getting too close to the story.
And Danny has his own dilemma: should he reveal a long-hidden scandal? It could kick-start his career, but might tear his family apart. Can Tessa find a way to heal her broken heart? Will Danny find the truth? And can love overcome everything, even the deepest secrets?
Book one in the Clover Cove series, ‘Love Comes to Clover Cove’ can be found here.
Book three, ‘The Little Café at Clover Cove’ can be found here.
If you’d like to be kept up to date on all new releases and happenings in Clover Cove, sign up for the Clover Cove newsletter here. You will also get access to the Maggie Finn members area where you’ll find exclusive content and extracts.
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A Note from Maggie
Families are wonderful. They bring you warmth and weddings and babies and my Mom’s rhubarb pie (not everyone loves rhubarb, but believe me it’s good!). But, as much as they give you love and support and great Irish cooking, brothers and sisters and parents can also drive you crazy – especially here in Ireland where families always seem to know everything about each other! And that is why family is often at the heart of the great romance novels and is certainly at the heart of the best romance series. That’s what I loved about the romantic fiction of Sarah Morgan, Debbie Macomber, Bella Andre, Fern Michaels and Barbara Freethy – and on our side of the pond, Veronica Henry and Jenny Colgan – who all draw out deep emotions from the loves and losses of the family unit over a long family series. Yes, there will usually be a pretty girl falling for a handsome boy and stolen kisses on romantic cliff-tops (well there would be if they were set in Clover Cove!), but the heart-warming love story is often over-shadowed by family baggage: rivalry, tragedy, jealousy, scandal and secrets – always, always secrets. And so it is in Clover Cove. Families mean well, they want the best for you, but as Tessa Drake is about to find out, it’s rarely that simple, especially if you fall head over heels for the wrong handsome stranger!
I hope you enjoy reading A Secret in Clover Cove as much as I enjoyed writing it. If you do, why not sign up for my newsletter to keep up to date with all my new books and for access to the Maggie Finn member’s area for exclusive content and extracts.
Thanks for reading!
Maggie
Chapter One
Tessa Drake unlatched the tall windows and pushed them open, squinting at the sunshine flooding the beach. Typical, she smiled. When she had started painting, it had still been raining, but she had been concentrating so hard, she hadn’t noticed the sky turn from grey to blue. Not an unusual situation in Clover Cove, she thought, breathing in the sharp air and closing her eyes as the rays warmed her face. What was that saying? ‘If you don’t like the weather, wait half an hour’? No forecaster had a hope on the Western Irish coast, where the elements were still wild and were apt to change their mind like – well, like the wind.
Shielding her eyes, she looked out over the near-deserted beach. Even now, three years since she had moved here from England, Tessa could barely believe her luck in finding a studio right on the edge of the water, the harbor walls to her right, the rippling wet sands of the beach to her left. ‘A balm for the soul’, that’s what her father had said about the Irish coast when they had first moved here from fashionable Chelsea. It wasn’t soothing, not quite that with the jagged black rocks and the squealing birds wheeling above – in fact, Tessa now found it hard to sleep in the real peace of the countryside: too quiet. But there was certainly something magical, something just right about Clover Cove. Or maybe that was just true of wherever you felt most at home.
Tessa raised her hand to wave: down by the shoreline she could see the tall shape of Father Declan, the parish priest. Handsome and a little mysterious, he was often to be seen out walking his little dog Fiddle at this time of the morning, then climbing up to the old chapel sitting on the top of the cliffs.
‘How are you Father?’ she called, knowing he was too far away; she got a distant bark from Fiddle, nonetheless.
Turning back to the studio, Tess’s blue eyes were drawn to the paintings she had propped against the walls. Dozens of them, an entire collection all ready for the big show at a gallery down in the neighboring town of Port Quinn. She tiled her head, looking at them critically. It was good to step away from the work every now and then, see it as the viewer would see it, rather than concentrate on the brushstrokes or the color blend. The paintings were good, she knew that. They had movement, depth, they drew the eye and held the attention, bold slashes of blues and greens, vividly representing the waves and the green hills that surrounded them like muscular arms.
And they would sell too, no question. In weeks to come, every one of the paintings in the collection would be hanging in some high-ceilinged hallway, over an imported mantelpiece, perhaps even in the lobby of an exclusive Manhattan bank, just like so many of their brothers and sisters before them.
So why did they make Tessa feel so sick? Why did her stomach clench when she looked at those swirls of paint? Sure, good art was supposed to elicit strong emotions: love or hate, excitement or fear or confusion, perhaps even a deep longing for the places that had inspired those brushstrokes. But this was something else. Something only Tessa would feel and it was a feeling that had kept her here in Clover Cove, a spreading bruise that she couldn’t soothe. Those beautiful paintings had trapped her here, in this prison with golden bars, hiding from the world.
Or maybe she was just nervous; time was running out. The paintings had to be sent over to the gallery in Por
t Quinn by Thursday at the latest, where Ted Gervis the gallerist would catalog them and hang them and drum up a buzz ahead of the show. The show which was – her heart sank – in less than a week.
‘Let it go,’ she whispered to herself. That’s what her father had always said: at some point, you had to just let the paintings go. He’d repeat the anecdote that Francis Bacon had once gone into a gallery where his art was hanging and calmly began painting on the canvas, explaining that he didn’t think it was finished. Tessa wasn’t sure if the story was true, but the principle certainly was: an artwork never felt finished and without a deadline like hers, she’d happily keep tinkering with them forever. And anyway, her father was ‘the Great Simon Drake’, renowned artist, wit and bon viveur. It was easy to make big sweeping statements about life and art when you had his reputation.
On her painting table, smudged and smeared among the jumble of half-squeezed paint tubes and brushes was a hardback book boldly titled Simon Drake: For The Love Of Colour. The man on the cover was her father, famous artist, her inspiration and her anchor. Tessa kept the book here for reference of course – who knew color better? – but mainly because on the back cover of the book was a candid snapshot of the great artist at work in his Chelsea studio. It was Tessa’s favorite photograph. In the picture, father and daughter were sitting side by side painting together, Tessa a super-cute blonde five-year-old, Simon handsome and dashing in trademark cravat.
‘Love, eh?’ she whispered. ‘The things it makes you do.’
‘Yowl,’ said a small voice in answer. Ghost, her Siamese cat jumped up on the table, rubbing his blue grey haunch against Tessa’s hip.
Tessa laughed. ‘Don’t you start too,’ she said.
Then, almost in slow motion, Tessa saw Ghost turn, his long tail catching the old vase she used to hold her brushes, tipping it over.
‘No!’ she cried, diving for the vase, but it was too late: the vase fell full length, the brushes scattering and the turpentine and paint inside splashing across her father’s book.
Tessa snatched it up but the damage was done: the pages were soaked, their shiny surfaces gummed together. And there was a long smear of blue paint across the father and daughter snapshot on the back cover, like a jagged slash cutting the picture in two.
‘Yowl?’ said Ghost.
‘It’s okay,’ she whispered. ‘No harm done. Not really.’
And she turned, dropping the book into the waste paper bin.
Chapter Two
The alarm rang and Danny Brennan groped for the clock. Clicking it off, he stuffed it under his pillow and tried to stay in the dream. He’d been much younger, a love-sick teenager in fact, sitting in the meadow above the cliffs, reading poetry to a girl. Only it wasn’t a girl, it was a woman, a beautiful woman with butter-blonde hair and flashing blue eyes that danced and glittered as he read his words.
‘Oh Danny,’ said the girl. ‘You’re so…’
She frowned, looking at him. Because Danny had stopped reading. The page in his hand was blank and he couldn’t remember a single word of his brilliant verse. Panicking now, Danny looked towards his one true love, but he couldn’t see her face any more, and actually, there was a big lump under his left ear. And it was ticking.
Groaning, he rolled over and swung his feet out of the bed.
‘Up and at ’em, tiger,’ Danny mumbled, running his hand through his shaggy hair.
Danny wasn’t in the mood. These days he was never in the mood for work. Which was strange, given that by any standards, Danny Brennan’s career was finally taking off. Grabbing headlines, getting his photo on the front page, getting hearty slaps on the shoulder from his editor. Clover Cove, for once, was big news and Danny was the man reporting on it. Back in college, harboring dreams of Watergate and WikiLeaks and Pulitzer-winning notoriety, this was all Danny had wanted, picturing himself as Kiln County’s answer to Robert Redford, dashing about in a corduroy jacket, his torch of truth exposing injustice and punishing the bad guys. But now he had his scoop, or at least a much of a scoop as you could hope to find on the windy west coast of Ireland, Danny felt strangely deflated. It seemed ungrateful to get what you wanted, then decide that you actually wanted something else. Spoilt, even, like some child who always wanted the hot new toy he’d seen advertised between the cartoons. Not that Danny had been allowed toys – not unless they came from the church jumble sale – or had very often seen cartoons. Television was just one of a long, long list of things his mother didn’t approve of.
‘Up, up,’ he sighed, pushing off his quilt. Staying in bed was another of those things that brought a frown and a sharp word from Diana Brennan.
‘You know the rules. No one likes a slugabed.’
He smiled to himself. That was what his ma had always shouted in the mornings to get Danny and his sister Freya up for school.
Typical Ma: bossy, unbending, but always with a literary twist. It hadn’t been until Dan had been forced into reading Romeo and Juliet at St. Maud’s that he’d realized Ma had been quoting Shakespeare all that time.
The rules had been that he and Freya had to be washed, dressed and full of kippers – Ma always insisted on a ‘proper Irish breakfast’ – by the time she left for work, otherwise they’d be left behind. And as the alternative was waiting in the rain for the school bus – or worse, helping their mother out in the florists. No, actually, there was a fate worse than that; helping Ma in the church under the disapproving gaze of parish priest Bishop Ray – they invariably did as their mother commanded.
No kippers today, thought Danny, peering into the near-empty fridge. Living alone had its advantages, but keeping a well-stocked larder was well-nigh impossible, especially the hours he kept as a jet-setting international journalist.
He smirked at his own bad joke. Staff writer for the Kilmara Examiner was hardly the Washington Post, was it? He was more likely to be reporting on the ‘controversial’ placement of a new bus shelter than he was uncovering a high-level government conspiracy. Anyway, Danny wasn’t sure the local council was up to conspiracy, given they had an average age of seventy-eight and most of their public meetings featured at least three councilors nodding off.
Ah, the glamour of the small-town reporter.
Danny crossed to the window and threw back the curtains, bringing, as it always did, a smile to his face. Clover Cove, spread out before him, the sea still dark but twinkling like God had cast a handful of glitter across the water.
‘Now sure and that’s the glamour, right there,’ he said.
Danny had grown up in a little terrace of cottages hidden away behind the church, but the moment he’d had enough money, he’d rented this bungalow down a cracked tarmac drive away from the prying eyes of the square. And away from Ma.
Danny had always had a thing for the sea; curiously rare among coastal folk, especially in an old fishing port like Clover Cove where the men saw the water as a workplace and a hard one at that, and the women viewed it with suspicion, a fickle and angry rival who could snatch away their husbands and sons in the blink of an eye.
For those reasons and the more practical consideration of the harsh weather rolling in from the sea, the residents of the Cove had tended to huddle inland around the church and the pub on the square. That was fine, but Danny loved the sight of the sea. He supposed it was symbolic of something else; the harbor whence ships sailed. He gazed out towards the horizon. Somewhere out there was America and one day, one day, Danny knew he was going to get there.
‘But first, the bus shelters,’ he said. Danny closed the curtains and quickly dressed; his one suit and a striped tie, then grabbed his old leather briefcase into which he slipped his laptop, banana and, in a habit so old he couldn’t remember when it had started, he picked a book at random, one of a box he’d picked up from the endless teetering stacks in the book shop in the Cove’s square, but the gold lettering of the title put a smile on Danny’s face.
True Grit by Charles Portis. He’d read it before, but he
was looking forward to immersing himself in the dusty prairies of the wild west on the train ride in. Thinking of the train, he grabbed his keys and ran outside, jumping in to his little yellow Mini, checking his watch again as he turned the ignition. He’d have to motor if he was going to make the 7.40. Turning out of his drive, he slammed on the brakes. A woman was standing in the road.
‘Ah…’ he sighed, yanking on the handbrake and winding down the window. ‘How are you, Ma?’
Danny’s mother was a tall, thin woman with dark eyes that always seemed to telegraph her disapproval.
‘Daniel Tadhg Brennan, is that any way to speak to your mother?’
‘I’m sorry Ma, it’s just I’m late for work. If I don’t get the train…’
‘And I suppose the train is more important than bidding your mother a good morning, is it?’
Danny sighed.
‘No ma.’
Years of experience had taught Danny that resistance was futile. He simply had to let it run its course.
‘And what’s so pressing at that little paper of yours? More about this horrible oil company taking over the village?’
‘I couldn’t say until I get into work. And talking of which, I need to get going…’
‘Your sister always has time for her mother.’
Oh here we go, thought Danny, making a concerted effort not to roll his eyes. Danny’s elder sister Freya had a good job at a law firm in Dublin and their mother liked to remind him of it as often as possible. Danny nodded at the basket over his mother’s arm. ‘Say, where are you off to?’
‘The church. Flowers for the service.’
Diana Brennan ran a guest house in the village, but she had a second role: Clover Cove’s florist. She no longer had a shop – like many of the retail outlets in Clover Cove, she had been forced to shutter it a few years ago due to lack of trade – but if anyone needed flowers in the village, they still called Mrs. Brennan.
