Summer on Seashell Island: Escape to an island this summer for the perfect heartwarming romance in 2020 (Riley Wolfe 1)
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DEDICATION
To the Cannon Family Singers, now more than ever.
With much love.
(April 2020)
Summer on Seashell Island
Sophie Pembroke
CONTENTS
DEDICATION
TITLE PAGE
MIRANDA
LEO
JULIET
MESSAGES
MIRANDA
LEO
JULIET
MESSAGES
MIRANDA
LEO
JULIET
MESSAGES
MIRANDA
LEO
JULIET
MESSAGES
MIRANDA
LEO
JULIET
MESSAGES
MIRANDA
LEO
JULIET
MESSAGES
MIRANDA
LEO
JULIET
MESSAGES
MIRANDA
LEO
JULIET
MESSAGES
MIRANDA
LEO
MESSAGES
JULIET
MIRANDA
LEO
MESSAGES
JULIET
MIRANDA
LEO
MESSAGES
JULIET
MIRANDA
LEO
MESSAGES
JULIET
MIRANDA
LEO
MESSAGES
JULIET
MIRANDA
LEO
JULIET
MIRANDA
LEO
JULIET
MESSAGES
ONE YEAR LATER
MIRANDA
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
CREDITS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT
MIRANDA
One Friday morning in late July, Miranda Waters paused in her habitual morning run to press the toes of her trainers into the sand of the Long Beach and take stock of her island.
Waves lapping gently against the sand? Check. Puffy white clouds bobbing overhead? Absolutely. The sounds of gulls calling and Albert Tuna singing down by the harbour and the shops on the promenade opening their shutters for the day? Yes, yes and also yes. The smell of salt and fried breakfasts and sun cream and ice cream and doughnuts? Strong.
She waved at Albert Tuna as he appeared on the stone jetty that surrounded the harbour, and he waved back, another part of her morning ritual. At this time of day, there weren’t usually too many people around, although that would change now the summer holidays were beginning. Soon the island would be alive with families and tourists, piling in to enjoy a quintessentially British holiday at the seaside.
She hoped.
It had been a long winter on Seashell Island, so named because of its shape, fanning out from the point of the harbour to a long curve along its far side. Easter and the May half term hadn’t been as busy on the island as in previous springs, continuing a slow decline that Miranda had tracked over the years she’d worked for Seashell Holiday Cottages.
But things would pick up this summer, she was sure. After all, who wouldn’t want to spend the summer somewhere as perfect as this?
Miranda turned on the spot, strands of her dark hair escaping from her ponytail in the wind and getting tangled in the arm of her glasses, and smiled at the familiar sights around her. Candy-coloured shops and cottages, all along the seafront. The harbour, right at the end of the promenade, with sailboats bobbing with the waves. The Welsh mainland, just in sight over the water, another world as far as Miranda was concerned. Seashell Island was exactly as it should be at the start of the summer holidays.
Apart from the dog racing across the sand from the harbour, towards her.
Miranda frowned. Dogs weren’t allowed on the Long Beach – only on North Beach and the Short Beach. Except, as the animal grew closer, she realised it wasn’t a dog. It was too woolly, and its neck was too long.
Wait. Did they have a rule about llamas on Long Beach?
She couldn’t remember one in the Seashell Island Guide and Rulebook. She’d helped to write the latest version two summers ago, and a rule like that would have stuck in her memory. Perhaps it was time for a rewrite.
Or maybe not. Since the llama did seem to be having a lovely time racing up and down the sand, and it wasn’t like it was hurting anybody. Well, except for the two poor men chasing after the creature.
Recognising her parents’ neighbours Max and Dafydd in pursuit, Miranda raced over to see if she could help.
‘A llama, Max?’ she asked, laughing, as she joined the chase.
‘Seemed like a good idea at the time,’ he panted back.
After another ten minutes of chasing the llama, even Max, twenty years older than Miranda but with more energy than she thought she’d ever had, was starting to look tired. Dafydd, meanwhile, had fashioned some sort of a lasso from seaweed and was chasing after the llama while yee-hawing like John Wayne.
Max and Miranda shared a look, stopped running, and watched.
‘So, I take it this is the latest addition to the smallholding?’ Miranda said.
Ever since Max and Dafydd had moved into the farmhouse next door to the Lighthouse, her parents’ bed and breakfast, they’d been doing it up and adding various animals and a campsite – including a glamping area – where Max ran stargazing courses and Dafydd prepared stone-baked pizzas in an outdoor oven. It was a nice addition to Seashell Island, Miranda thought, and the tourists who wanted to camp weren’t usually the same kind of people who’d book the B&B or one of the holiday cottages she managed as part of Seashell Holiday Cottages, so there wasn’t even any grumbling about competition.
Max nodded. ‘Dafydd thought the kids who visit would like it. So far, it’s spat at me and run away.’
‘So basically just like the kids, then,’ Miranda joked.
Max rolled his eyes at her. ‘I’ll have you know our guests are always polite and well mannered. Mostly. Anyway, we’ll never find out if the kids like the llama if we can’t get the bloody thing up to the farm in the first place.’
Miranda squinted against the morning sun as she peered up the beach trying to spot Dafydd and the llama. ‘I think he’s got him. Or . . . not.’
Even as she spoke, the llama broke away from Dafydd again, this time loping towards the breaking waves, frolicking in the water. Rolling her eyes, Miranda ran towards it. The last thing Seashell Island needed now was a reputation for drowning llamas.
Could llamas swim? She had no idea. Better not to take the chance.
Leaving Max and Dafydd behind, she raced into the water, wincing as the freezing spray hit her bare legs. The sea water would warm up as the season wore on, but right now it was as cold as it had been at Easter, for the charity harbour swim.
‘Come here, you blasted creature.’ She lunged forward to try and wrap an arm around the llama, but the animal danced away, far nimbler on its feet in the water than she was in her waterlogged trainers.
Miranda darted after it again, and once again it sidestepped her attempts, hopping over the
waves.
‘Oh God,’ she groaned. ‘You think this is a game, don’t you?’
She wasn’t an animal person. She liked Misty, her mother’s rescue cat, well enough, but anything bigger wasn’t her sort of thing. But here she was, wrestling a llama in the ocean, because that was the kind of thing that happened here on Seashell Island.
Sometimes, she wondered why she loved it so much.
Miranda chased the llama all the way up the shoreline to the harbour before finally cornering it by the stone jetty. Max and Dafydd had followed them along the beach, shouting unhelpful advice and encouragement as they went. Dashing up onto the jetty, Dafydd tossed his makeshift lasso over the llama’s head from above, and led the animal out of the water and onto the sand again.
Bending at the waist with her hands on her thighs, Miranda tried to catch her breath. She’d lost feeling in her feet, her legs were splattered with wet sand, and there was a piece of seaweed wrapped around her right ankle. If she hadn’t been sweaty enough from her run, she was now. She definitely needed a shower before she made it to the office to open up in – she checked her watch – oh. Fifteen minutes.
Then she heard the applause and cheers from the beach, punctuated by laughter. Straightening up, she saw a crowd had gathered on the harbour wall to watch the antics of the llama – and Miranda. Ideal.
Giving the onlookers – most of whom she recognised as amused locals, people she’d have to deal with during the course of her normal week – a weary wave, she headed up to join Max, Dafydd, and that bloody llama.
As she walked closer, she could see the beaming smile of pride on Dafydd’s face. Closer still, and Miranda spotted the filthy looks the llama was throwing at his captor.
‘Thanks, Miranda,’ Max said. ‘Sorry you got all wet.’ He picked a piece of seaweed out of her hair, showing it to her before tossing it back in the water. ‘I’m sure the silly animal will prefer its stall and field to the sea, once we get it up to the farm.’
‘Have you named him yet?’ Miranda wasn’t at all convinced that this llama would be staying on Seashell Island very long – especially given its escapologist tendencies – but she made it a point of pride to know all the names of the island’s permanent residents. Including llamas.
‘I’m thinking Lucifer,’ Max told her, and she snorted with laughter.
‘You just don’t understand the animals the way I do,’ Dafydd told his husband. ‘Anyway, she’s a girl, aren’t you, cariad.’ He ruffled Lucifer’s wool. Lucifer’s glare grew more withering. ‘So it would have to be Lucy. Lucy the Llama.’
‘Lucy it is,’ Max agreed easily. ‘Short for Lucifer. Now, let’s get this demon beast home, OK?’
They waved their goodbyes as they led Lucy the Llama to the truck waiting beside the harbour, Max swearing as she spat at him again.
Miranda turned back towards the beach, still shaking water from her trainers.
‘You look like you might need this.’ A towel was tossed down from the jetty, and Miranda caught it automatically. Squinting up through the early morning sunshine, she spotted her friend Christabel up above, and smiled.
‘You are an angel.’ Rubbing the towel over her chilly legs, Miranda asked, ‘Don’t suppose you’ve got a hot shower and a change of clothes up there, have you?’
Normally, she ran along the beach then towards the edge of the town, back up to the flat she shared with Paul, always leaving plenty of time to shower, change, and make it in time to open the office for nine o’clock. Today, her morning routine had been swallowed by an escapee llama.
‘Afraid not. But I can go fetch the clothes for you, if you’re OK with the beach shower.’
Miranda shuddered. The beach shower – a jerry-rigged feature of the Long Beach, set up by the steps from the high street – provided icy cold water in sharp, knife-like droplets. It was fine for rinsing the sand from your feet after a walk on the beach, but you wouldn’t want to actually shower in it.
Fortunately, she had another option. ‘It’s OK. I’ve got a change of clothes at the office, and the holiday let above us is empty this week. I’ll nip in and use the shower there.’
Finally, an advantage to not having a fully booked roster of cottages and flats this month.
In the main square, the church clock chimed half past the hour. As Max and Dafydd pulled away with Lucy, the crowd around the harbour began to disperse too, ready to go about their day, just as she needed to. Seashell Island was as it should be again, and it was time for her to get to work.
‘So, it’s Friday. Can I assume you have wild and wonderful plans for the weekend?’ Christabel fell into step with her as she headed towards the office.
‘Of course!’ Miranda lied. ‘I thought I’d go over to the mainland, sing karaoke at a strip bar, gatecrash a stag party then catch a plane to a mystery destination.’
‘Sounds like a few weekends in my twenties,’ Christabel replied. ‘So, same as always then?’
Miranda nodded. ‘Friday lunch with Paul, closing the office early, checking in on the B&B for Mum and Dad, then home to bed. We might go to the farmers’ market at the church on Sunday, though.’
Christabel clutched at her heart. ‘The excitement is too much for me, Miri!’
Miranda rolled her eyes. ‘Well, you might not like it. But it’s fun for me.’
‘Lunch with Paul? Fun?’ Christabel shot her a look of disbelief.
‘He’s a nice guy. And he can be funny, sometimes.’ Hmm, that didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic, did it? Especially not about the man she was planning to marry. ‘And I love him,’ she added, belatedly. Not that it made any difference to Christabel.
Christabel had arrived on the island eighteen months ago, planning on staying for a week but loving it so much she decided to stay. That, Miranda understood no problem – she felt exactly the same way about Seashell Island, after all.
It was also the only thing the two of them seemed to have in common, but that hadn’t stopped them becoming fast friends. On an island this size, Miranda knew full well that you had to make friends with everybody – and women her own age she got on with were few and far between. Most of the girls she’d gone to school with had settled down and married and were busy with their families, their lives. The one or two she’d actually got on well with, however, had moved to the mainland as soon as they were eighteen – like Miranda’s younger sister Juliet had done.
‘What about you?’ Miranda asked. ‘What wild plans have you got this weekend?’
Christabel stretched her arms above her head and reached up towards the sky, her long, lean body strong and at ease with itself in the sunlight. Then she shrugged. ‘Actually, very little. You know me, I like to be spontaneous. But it does feel like it might be time for a little fun with a new companion . . .’
Miranda followed her friend’s gaze, and found it landing on the figure of a man carrying a box into the Flying Fish Deli and Restaurant.
Rory Hillier.
‘Not Rory,’ she said, instinctively.
Christabel raised an eyebrow. ‘Why not?’
‘Because . . .’
Why not? Actually, Christabel’s brand of relationship therapy might be good for him, since he’d been moping around the island now for the last ten years.
‘Because he’s still in love with your sister,’ Christabel finished for her, obviously remembering the drunken conversation they’d shared about Miranda’s family, around Christmastime.
‘Yeah. Poor sod.’ Because Juliet wasn’t coming back to Seashell Island, certainly not for longer than an obligatory visit. And Rory didn’t want to leave.
Just like Miranda.
‘Maybe it’s time for him to move on,’ Christabel said, still eyeing Rory speculatively, as he came back to retrieve another box. Then he saw them watching and waved. Miranda waved back.
Christabel blew h
im a kiss.
‘I know you think you have some magic touch with men,’ Miranda told her. ‘But I think you’d have your work cut out with Rory.’
‘It’s not magic,’ Christabel said, with a shrug. ‘I just like to get to know a guy, have some fun together. And then we get talking and, well, I help them see what they really want from life. Refocus, if you will. Then they’re free to go and chase it, and I get to go on with my own life, too. I think it’s a legacy from my past life working in the City. I know how to get people where they need to go.’
‘Aren’t you ever worried that one of them will decide that what they really want from life is you?’
‘Hasn’t happened yet.’ Was it her imagination, or was Christabel’s smile just a little sad as she shook her head? ‘Anyway, if not Rory, then who? I’m running out of eligible men on this island. Unless you’re trying to get rid of me . . .’
‘Never!’ But she did have a point. Men in the relevant age range, who were also single, straight, and vaguely attractive in appearance or personality, were in short supply on Seashell Island. Which was one of the reasons Miranda was so lucky to have Paul. ‘It’s a shame my brother isn’t here,’ Miranda mused. ‘Leo could definitely use your special brand of refocusing.’ It seemed to her that, since his divorce, the only thing Leo had been able to focus on was work.
‘Ha! No thanks,’ Christabel replied, as they reached the offices of Seashell Holiday Cottages. ‘You’ve told me too much about him already. I mean, I like a challenge, but even I have my limits. And right now, my body is telling me I’m at my lower caffeine limit. I’m off to fetch coffee. Enjoy lunch with Paul – if you can!’
She pressed a swift kiss to Miranda’s cheek and sped off across the road, towards the Crab Leg Cafe.
Miranda smiled, watching her friend dart around the town like she’d always been there. Christabel was a breath of fresh air on the island and, as much as Miranda normally liked things to stay exactly the same, she couldn’t deny that life had been a lot more fun since she arrived.
With a last glance back at the town behind her, Miranda unlocked the office door and set about finding her spare clothes, showering in record time, and being behind the reception desk again by 9 a.m. sharp.