Damaged Goods: A Small Town Romance (Ravenswood)

by Talia Hibbert

  They fell in love fifteen years ago and never quite fell out again…

  Laura Burne arrives in Beesley-on-Sea searching for peace, happiness, and safety—not for the teenage sweetheart she left behind. And yet, one moonlit night on the beach, she finds him anyway.

  Samir may be a man now, but he's still sexy as sin, still sweet as pie, and still determined to take care of her. The problem is, while he's remained the same, Laura’s life is forever changed—and not just by the unborn child she carries.

  She’s on the run from her own personal monster. Her baby’s father. Her husband. There isn't a man alive who'd take on those complications. So Laura has to remember that just because Samir protects her, and makes her smile, and watches her with something close to hunger in his eyes, it doesn't mean he wants her...

  Which is a shame. Because against all reason and all goddamn common sense, she just might want him.

  Damaged Goods

  A Ravenswood Novella: Book 1.5

  Talia Hibbert

  DAMAGED GOODS: Talia Hibbert

  Copyright (c) 2018 by Nixon House

  Credits: Cover by Natasha Snow Designs; natashasnowdesigns.com

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or within the public domain. Any resemblance to actual events or actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  No portion of this book may be reprinted, including by any electronic or mechanical means, or in information storage and retrieval systems, without express written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a review.

  Created with Vellum

  For Truly Scrumptious, my blessing.

  Contents

  Content Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Epilogue

  Thank You

  Become a V.I.P.

  Author’s Note

  Giveaway

  A Girl Like Her

  Sneak Peek

  About the Author

  Also by Talia Hibbert

  Content Note

  Please be aware: this book contains descriptions of domestic abuse, intimate partner violence, and child abuse that may trigger some readers. Specific warnings below.

  Chapter 5: detailed discussion of child abuse.

  Chapter 9: depiction of domestic abuse and intimate partner violence.

  Chapter 12: gaslighting and internalised misogyny.

  Chapter 16: confrontation with abuser and gaslighting.

  Chapter 18: depiction of childbirth.

  Chapter One

  The stranger arrived on a Saturday night.

  Her great, sleek Range Rover rumbled into the seaside village, gleaming like whale skin under the full moon. A young lad walking his dog watched it pass in awe, his jaw slack. Not even during the season, when the middle-classes descended on Beesley-On-Sea for their summer holidays, had he seen such extravagant rims on a car. And he’d certainly never come across a private plate like that.

  BURN3, it read.

  The car drove by the astonished youth without pause. Its driver barely saw the boy, just as she’d barely seen the Welcome to Beesley-on-Sea! sign she’d passed five minutes ago. It didn’t matter, though; she knew exactly where she was. Even after all these years, the briny tang of seawater on the breeze made her muscles loosen and her heart rise. By the time she reached her destination, the old beach house, she was grinning like a ninny.

  The driver’s name was Laura, and she left her rings in the glovebox.

  They were irritating, anyway, you see. The teardrop diamond of her engagement ring always dug into her other fingers. The wedding band was alright—if one forgot the part where it symbolised her legal attachment to the biggest piece of shit on earth.

  But, she reminded herself, that attachment would soon be dissolved. Thank fuck.

  The beach house of Laura’s memory was a grand old thing, but fifteen years later it was simply… well, an old thing. Her father-in-law’s monstrous Range Rover looked ridiculous on the driveway, gleaming smugly beside the house’s battered wood panelling and chipped, white window frames. And yet, in an instant, she loved the beach house quite unreasonably. The car she loved far less, even if it had allowed her madcap escape.

  The house keys had been left in the battered old post-box by the door, because the estate agent overseeing this rent was an older, small-town man. The older, small-town man, Laura knew, was a curious specimen. They tended to lack the proper survival instincts, so they did ridiculous things like… well, like leaving the keys to a house in said house’s post-box and trusting that no-one would steal them.

  Thankfully, no-one had. Laura glanced over her shoulder as she fished them out, squinting into the moonlit darkness, searching out potential home invaders. All she saw was leafy isolation across the street and scattered stars lighting up the night. All she heard were the familiar sounds of night creatures hooting and rustling and whispering on the breeze. She could almost pretend she was back home in Ravenswood.

  But not quite. There were three key differences, so far, between Ravenswood and Beesley. The first: Ravenswood didn’t have a beach, and thus its breeze lacked the raw, wild, salty scent of Beesley’s. The second: in Ravenswood, she would’ve been secure in the knowledge that her friends—or at the very least, her father-in-law—were within walking distance. The third: she would also have been terrified by the knowledge that her husband was within walking distance.

  That last point alone made Beesley far preferable to Ravenswood right now. She hurried into the house.

  Its interior was as charmingly faded as its exterior had been, filled with mismatched furniture and outdated appliances. Laura hadn’t brought much with her, so it didn’t take long to unpack. Everything had its place: designer clothes stuffed into the bleached-wood wardrobe, La Mer arranged on the eighties-style tiles of the en-suite’s counter, phone charger plugged in by the dusty-rose divan. She wandered downstairs, stomach growling, and found the kitchen fully stocked.

  The sight of fat, round grapes by the sink, a floury bloomer in the pantry, and a slab of white cheese in the fridge made Laura nauseous. This was the food she’d requested. This was the food that, five minutes ago, she’d been desperate to shovel down her throat. Now the mere idea made her stomach roil.

  The midwife’s pamphlets had totally lied, and Laura was still bitter about it. Morning—or evening, or afternoon, or midnight—sickness did not fade after the first trimester.

  “Alright then,” she murmured, looking down at the swell of her stomach. “What do you fancy?”

  The bump remained silent. Typical.

  She wandered over to the kitchen sink and ran her sweaty palms over its cool steel. Still fighting the queasy lurch in her gut, Laura glanced out of the window at the stars, then studied the narrow scrap of beach outside, untouched by the high tide.

  That was the ocean she saw, winking at her like an old flirt, just beyond the sand. Oh, how she loved the ocean.

  “A walk on the beach, perhaps?” she suggested to her own abdomen.

  The foetus within held its tongue. Did they have tongues, at thi
s stage? She’d have to consult her pamphlets again.

  Oh, whatever. The baby may not have an opinion, but Laura knew exactly what she wanted.

  And for the first time in a while, she was free to go for it.

  Samir didn’t think he was being spied on.

  On the one hand, people were often spied on here in Beesley—especially during the off-season. Folks had too much damned time on their hands. The elderly in particular became vampires in their old age, always thirsty for someone else’s drama.

  But on the other hand, whoever had just joined him on the beach was far too noisy to be a spy. Surely, if they were trying to be sneaky, they wouldn’t blunder over the stony shoreline like the world’s loudest bulldozer. And they certainly wouldn’t be tossing pebbles into the silky ink of the ocean with a successive plop, plop, plop that yanked him right out of his evening’s angst-fest.

  Nah. Definitely not.

  So they weren’t going to pinch his cheek and call him a lovely boy, and they weren’t going to tell the whole town that Samir Bianchi had been staring out to sea, grim-faced and resentful, like some wannabe Batman. Those were good things. Very good things.

  But Samir still wasn’t feeling charitable towards the person who’d intruded on his solitude—and never mind the fact that this was a public beach. It was the middle of the night, for goodness’s sake. A man should be able to brood without interruption on a beach in the middle of the night. An hour or two of self-indulgence wasn’t asking for much.

  But clearly, the bulldozer disagreed. They came ever closer, ever louder, ever clumsier, until it became suddenly and painfully clear that Samir was going to have to announce his presence. It was dark enough that, if he didn’t, this bulldozer of a human being might just bulldoze him.

  “Hey,” he said, his voice breaking the gentle, wave-tinged silence.

  “Argh!” The bulldozer said, and fell on top of him.

  What followed was an alarming series of shrieks, grunts, and mumbled apologies that Samir really could’ve done without.

  “Bloody hell,” he blurted as the bulldozer collapsed over him like a sack of bricks.

  “Oh!” The bulldozer cried. “I’m so sorry!” She—it did seem to be a she—accompanied those words with what felt like a shoulder to his throat.

  “Bloody hell!” He spluttered, this time with even greater feeling.

  A small storm of sand was kicked up as the two of them shuffled apart like crabs on speed. He felt the grit against his skin, scratching his dry eyes, and even sneaking into his open, panting mouth. Delightful.

  Eventually, despite all the scuffling and swearing and shrieking—this bulldozer operated at a rather high pitch—they managed to put a decent amount of space between them. Samir could see the outline of a person in the moonlight, just a few feet away. The gentle whoosh of the wind over the waves should’ve made the silence between them peaceful. Instead, it felt painfully awkward. He should say something, really.

  The only problem was, he thought his voice box might be broken. The woman’s bones must be made of bloody brick.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, the words sudden and disarmingly earnest. She sounded absolutely mortified. In fact, it was more than that; she sounded ready to throw herself down a well. The abject discomfort in her voice was so intense, it was making him uncomfortable. And there was something else, too—something in her tone, or maybe her accent, that tugged at a thread in the back of his mind. It was a weird sensation.

  He decided to ignore it.

  “It’s okay,” he managed, his voice far too cracked and hoarse to be convincing. “Don’t worry about it.”

  She snorted. It was a soft, horselike sound, and something about it tugged on that thread again. “It most certainly is not okay,” she said. “I must’ve squashed you.”

  This was the part where he lied gallantly. “I wouldn’t say squashed—”

  “I would.”

  “It wasn’t that bad.”

  “I might believe you,” she said wryly, “if you weren’t still wheezing like a donkey.”

  Samir managed to choke out a laugh in between wheezes.

  Maybe his eyes were adjusting, or maybe some of the cloud cover had passed; whatever the reason, he suddenly caught a glimpse of his strange companion. The gleam of moonlight on long, dark hair as she tipped her head back. The outline of a sharp, rather no-nonsense nose. The curve of the impressively substantial shoulder that had found its way to his throat. No wonder he was still a bit winded.

  “Please,” she said, sounding oddly, subtly urgent. “Let me be sorry. I’m very, very sorry.”

  He recognised something in her voice—something self-flagellating and hopeful all at once. Something he’d heard in his own voice, once upon a time.

  Or rather, he thought he did. He was probably imagining things.

  “If it matters so much,” he said lightly, “you can be as sorry as you like.”

  “Oh, thank you,” she murmured, a slight smile in her voice. “I appreciate it.”

  And wasn’t the human mind such a strange thing? Because, out of everything she’d said over the past five minutes, it was that single phrase—those three little words—that pulled loose the insistent, tugging thread in his mind.

  “I appreciate it,” she’d said fifteen years ago, after he’d given her a stolen Cornetto. She’d been all prim and proper while she unwrapped his ill-gotten goods, and for some reason, it had made his teenaged heart sing. He’d wanted to steal a thousand more Cornettos, just for her.

  Over the course of the summer, he probably had.

  Samir sank his fingers into the gritty sand, grounding himself even as strange hope ran wild. Surely not. Surely not. This woman, whoever she was, dredged up old memories for some other reason. She just happened to have the same accent, and that same arch tone. It was a coincidence. Because the chances of meeting her again, here, after all this time…

  It wasn’t possible. That sort of thing didn’t happen.

  But Samir found himself squinting at her in the darkness, anyway, as if he could will himself to develop night vision.

  “Are you okay?” She asked, and she might as well have whacked him over the head. Now he was sure. He was positive. He could’ve predicted every inflection in that sentence, from the way she glided over the you to the wobbling lilt on okay, as if she really gave a shit. Because she did.

  “Laura?” He said slowly. And, though he’d been certain a second ago, just saying her name made it seem so impossible. Made him think that he must be mistaken.

  Until she stilled, her shadowy outline stiffening. Her voice was hard as glass and twice as fragile when she demanded, “Who are you?”

  Because of course she’d be freaked out by a strange man knowing her name. Who wouldn’t? Through the flood of disbelief rushing over him, he managed to say, “It’s Samir. Samir Bianchi. Do you remember me?”

  For a single, stuttering heartbeat, he thought the answer might be no. But then she spoke, sounding as astonished as he felt. “Samir? Seriously?

  It was her.

  Chapter Two

  “Holy shit,” Samir said.

  Samir. Samir. Her mind couldn’t quite take that part in.

  His incredulous laughter was as bright as the few stars beaming through the clouds. “Laura Albright. I’m sitting on a beach with Laura Albright. Again. What the fuck?”

  Laura almost jumped out of her skin when he said her maiden name. Albright.

  It sounded good. Perfect, in fact. Like summer nights and freedom and before, and herself.

  “I can’t believe this,” she murmured, sounding like some high school reunion cliché. But this was way beyond school reunion shit, because Samir had never belonged to the mundane world of home and studying and sensible behaviour. Samir had been her six-week rebellion. Samir had been everything.

  “What are you doing here?” He asked. The force of his attention cut through the dark, just like she remembered. She felt it—but not like the
weight of her husband’s insatiable eyes. Not even like the spotlight she lived under back home, where folks brightened the stage so they could spot any false moves. Any mistakes. Any weakness.

  No; this was pure, honest interest, the kind that made you feel interesting. And she wasn’t used to it at all.

  “I… well,” she said, stumbling over her words. “I’m having a baby.”

  She didn’t have to see him to know that he’d faltered, or hear him to realise that he was shocked. There was a slight pause before he said, “Wow. That’s amazing. Wow. Congratulations!”

  “Thanks,” she said, even though she didn’t feel like being congratulated. She hadn’t really achieved anything. In fact, she’d failed her kid already, falling pregnant by a man like Daniel.

  But that was a negative thought, and she had decided to avoid those. Positivity was better for the baby.

  “Are you staying at the house?” Samir asked. “Like you used to? Is your family here?”

  “Yes, and no. I mean, I’m at the beach house, but no-one’s here. Oh, Dad died, actually. Ages ago. I don’t know how much you remember him.” They’d only been here six weeks, after all. A single summer holiday, during which her parents spent their time getting wasted, as always, and Laura had watched her little sister, as always.