Summer on Seashell Island: Escape to an island this summer for the perfect heartwarming romance in 2020 (Riley Wolfe 1)

by Sophie Pembroke

  Miranda sighed. ‘I know you thought he was wrong for me. And you were probably right. But he was . . . safe.’

  ‘A ringing endorsement for a passionate romance,’ Christabel deadpanned. Then she put an arm around Miranda’s shoulder and hugged her close. ‘But I am sorry. Because even if it is the right thing in the long run, it’s hard now, and I’m sad that you’re hurting.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Giving a small, sad smile, Miranda stepped out of the hug and towards her nieces. ‘Anyway. Even that wasn’t the low point.’

  ‘Look at the size of this ice cream, Auntie Miri!’ Abby cried, half of it dripping down her face.

  ‘It’s huge!’ Miranda said, appreciatively. ‘Girls, this is my friend Christabel. She runs a bike ambulance service here on the island.’

  ‘Cool!’ Mia said. ‘Maybe Dad will take us out on bikes this summer.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Miranda said, trying not to sound too doubtful. ‘Now, shall we walk over to the rock pools at the end of the beach?’

  The girls nodded enthusiastically and, despite still eating their ice creams, outpaced the adults in seconds with their excited steps. The rock pools sat in the cliffs and rocks at the opposite end of the island’s fan shape to the Lighthouse, and Miranda figured the walk would give her plenty of time to fill Christabel in on everything that had happened that day. As they crossed the beach, she detailed it all – her mother’s call, discovering the B&B had no bookings, and then Leo’s unexpected arrival.

  ‘Sounds like your brother is going to have to think about something other than work this summer after all,’ Christabel commented, her eyes on the girls as she spoke.

  ‘Hopefully,’ Miranda agreed. ‘I know he was counting on Mum and Dad looking after the girls for him, but they’re not here, and I have an actual job at Seashell Holiday Cottages, plus my VA work, so he’s going to have to step up. And I’m going to need his help with the B&B. Assuming we ever get any guests.’

  ‘Do you want some?’ Christabel asked. ‘Wouldn’t it be easier to just let the place stay empty until your parents do get back?’

  ‘Probably.’ But the thought made her feel uneasy, unsettled. It was summer. The Lighthouse was always full at summer. ‘I guess I’m worried that if there aren’t any guests over the summer holidays, there might not be again. My parents . . . they don’t always think things through before they do them. I don’t even know if they’ve considered the financial implications of this.’

  ‘You’re worried the Lighthouse could go under without more guests?’ Christabel asked.

  Miranda nodded.

  ‘Hmm.’ Christabel looked thoughtfully towards the mainland. ‘Well, only to enhance my reputation as a problem-solver, of course, but I have some friends of a friend who posted on social media last night that they were looking for a place to hole up this summer and write some music. I’ll mention your place to them.’

  ‘That would be . . . great. Thanks, Christabel.’

  Christabel shrugged, and slipped an arm through Miranda’s as they hurried to catch up with Mia and Abby, who had finished their ice creams and found a crab. ‘Hey, that was the easy part. You’ve got to persuade your brother to stop working and engage with his kids this summer.’

  ‘Don’t suppose you fancy doing that too?’ Miranda asked, hopefully. But Christabel just grinned and shook her head.

  LEO

  ‘Emily? I need you to call me back the minute you get this. You have good travel insurance, right?’ She could cancel the honeymoon, take it at another, more convenient time. One when his parents were here to help. Easy.

  Leo hung up on his ex-wife’s voicemail for the third time, then remembered Mia jumping to the worst possible conclusion earlier, and dialled it again. ‘The girls are fine, by the way,’ he added, after the beep. ‘Just . . . call me.’

  Some of his friends hadn’t been able to understand how he’d been able to maintain such a good relationship with his ex after the divorce, but then, they’d never been married to Emily. Emily was a force of nature – had been since the moment they met. She’d decided he was the one for her, and so he had been. Until she’d realised he was the one thing she couldn’t change, couldn’t bend to her will. Then she’d decided to move on.

  But as for staying friends . . . she hadn’t really given him any other option and now, three years down the line, he was glad about that. It definitely made his life easier, having her in his corner, even if they weren’t married any more.

  Until now, when she was obviously having far too much fun on her honeymoon to call him back when he needed her.

  Even after three years, he still felt a small pang imagining Emily happy with another man. But he was honest enough with himself to know it was more because he hadn’t made her happy, than because of jealousy. He loved Emily dearly, but as part of his youth, his family, his past. They’d been nineteen when they got together, their first year at university, and twenty-nine when they’d divorced. He figured that ten years of Emily was probably more than most people deserved anyway.

  They weren’t the same people they’d been when they’d met. They wanted different things. All the usual clichés.

  And normally that was all fine. But right now, it posed one hell of a problem.

  Leo was used to making the most of his time at work, but he was also used to that time being as much of his day – or night – as he wanted or needed it to be. Right now, that wasn’t the case. Checking his watch, he figured he had at least an hour or so before Miranda and the girls made it back from the beach. Which meant he needed to use that time wisely.

  Grabbing his laptop rucksack from the hallway, Leo headed up to what had always been his dad’s study, ignoring the nagging sense in his gut that he was trespassing just by opening the door. He needed a place to work, and there had only ever been one quiet space in the whole of the Lighthouse – Dad’s study. Besides, it wasn’t as if Dad was there to object.

  He’d sent them both texts to the message group he’d titled ‘Parental Units’, asking what the hell was going on, but there’d been no response so far. Part of him still hoped that was because they were on a plane home, but Miranda seemed to think that was pretty unlikely.

  Dealing with just the most urgent emails – including two from Tom on the train home – took over half the hour Leo had allotted himself. Now he was down to thirty minutes, and he still hadn’t done any of the actual creative work that clients paid him for.

  This wasn’t going to work. His business focused on branding, online marketing and social media management for small, local businesses, which could technically be done from anywhere – except that Leo’s unique selling point was that he knew the area, the customers, the feel of the place because it was his home too. And all his clients were local to his little corner of South London, not to Seashell Island.

  Most of all, he couldn’t run a business on the odd hour here and there in the day when the kids were occupied, plus whatever time he could steal back after bedtimes or before wake-ups. It wasn’t enough.

  Which meant, if his parents weren’t here to help him out, Miranda had her own job to go to, and Emily still wasn’t returning his calls, he needed a new plan.

  Pulling up a new internet tab, he searched for childminders on Seashell Island, holiday clubs, anything. He fired off three or four hopeful emails then, crossing his fingers, called Tom.

  ‘Is this about the McMullin proposal?’ Tom asked, the second he answered. ‘Because I’m still on the bloody train and the Wi-Fi is terrible so just emailing you has been a challenge, never mind accessing the company cloud. Plus there’s a hen party sitting behind me. Say hi, girls!’

  A loud whoop went up from the hen party. Leo winced.

  ‘It’s not about the McMullin proposal,’ he said. ‘I need you to come to Seashell Island. I’m expanding your duties.’

  ‘Last time you said that I ended u
p dog sitting for your ex-wife’s Labrador for a fortnight,’ Tom pointed out. ‘And you still owe me the promised raise for that.’

  ‘This time is different. No dogs, I promise.’

  ‘Then what?’ Tom asked. ‘Do you need my help to win the annual sandcastle-building competition? Because I admit, I am a dab hand with a bucket and spade. Or, ooh, no! Your parents want to launch a new marketing campaign for the B&B and you’re giving me the project as my first solo campaign?’

  ‘What have the hen party been giving you to drink?’ Leo asked.

  ‘Half a sip of pink prosecco. I didn’t even know it was a thing, did you? So, not the solo campaign for your parents, then?’

  ‘No. Not least because my parents have decided to extend their bloody holiday and aren’t even here. Which is why I need you.’ Part of his rational mind knew that he should have spoken to his parents about his plans for the summer beforehand; if they’d known he needed them, surely they’d have come back immediately? But he’d kept hoping that Emily would change her mind, that the wedding wouldn’t go ahead. And then when it did . . . well, he hadn’t actually believed that she’d leave the girls with him for the whole summer. Until she showed up with them on her way to the airport, and left them and their suitcases in his hallway with a kiss goodbye and a promise to call.

  Which was what had prompted his sudden desire to decamp to the island for the summer.

  Anyway, what was done was done. Now he just needed Tom to agree to the next stage of his plan . . .

  ‘No,’ Tom said, before Leo had even had a chance to tell him about it.

  ‘What do you mean, no? I haven’t even told you what I need you to do yet.’

  ‘You want me to come to Seashell Island and babysit your children all summer, while also doing my actual job.’ Which was . . . scarily accurate. ‘I’m not doing it.’

  Leo stared up at the ceiling where his mother and Juliet had, long ago, painted tiny constellations to provide his father with inspiration. Time to employ the boss voice, clearly. ‘You do remember which one of us pays your salary, correct? And exactly how that boss–employee relationship is supposed to work? I tell you what to do, you do it.’

  ‘Leo, you hired me as a personal assistant and marketing admin. Not a childminder. Incidentally, have you heard of them? They’re people you can hire to look after children. Marvellous invention.’

  ‘And I have emailed two of them, plus the local holiday club,’ Leo said. ‘But it’s Friday afternoon. Even if they get back to me, it might not be until after the weekend and I was planning to work on the McMullin proposal this weekend.’

  ‘Whereas I was planning on having an actual life this weekend.’ Tom sighed. ‘Leo, even if I head straight back after I get home and pack, I won’t make a train or a ferry to the island until tomorrow at the earliest. And I’ll have to head back Sunday afternoon because you wanted me to meet with the Posie Plants people about their Instagram feed first thing on Monday morning. Plus, I am terrible with children and I’ll do something awful by accident and they’ll end up in therapy for years, which I will be duty-bound to offer to pay for because of my guilt complex and you do not pay me enough for me to afford that.’

  ‘You are terrible with kids,’ Leo admitted. Of course, so was he. That was part of the problem.

  He loved his daughters, dearly. He just never seemed to know what to do with them without Emily there to prompt him.

  ‘The McMullin proposal can wait until Monday,’ Tom said. ‘Take the weekend off. Build a sandcastle with your daughters. Then hunt down each of those childminders and holiday clubs on Monday and beg them to take your kids.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right.’ It wasn’t that he didn’t want to spend time with his kids. He just didn’t really know how to. Emily had always been so fantastic at it – building dens and planning picnics with friends and finding out what events were on locally that they’d enjoy – that he’d never had to. Even now she always left him with a list of possible activities when she dropped the girls off for the weekend.

  But not this summer.

  This summer, she’d left him orders. He pulled her email up again on his laptop for inspiration, but mostly it just looked like a lot of boring rules. Make sure they eat actual vegetables every day. Abby MUST be in bed by eight. No more than one pudding a day.

  Yeah, that kind of rule definitely wasn’t going to help him get through the summer. If he didn’t have ice cream as a bribe, how was he going to cope?

  ‘I’m definitely right,’ Tom replied. ‘Now, if that’s all, boss, a lovely young lady in a sash has just handed me a gin in a tin and, since it’s well after knocking-off time, I’m going to go and drink it. I’ll call you on Monday after the meeting. OK?’

  ‘Yeah, OK. Have a good weekend.’

  Leo hung up, and pushed the chair back from the desk, stretching out his legs in front of him. Tom had a point; it wouldn’t kill him to spend the weekend with the girls. And they were used to spending some of the summer at holiday clubs and so on, while he and Emily worked. But all the ones they used in London had been booked up months ago, and there was a solid chance the same would be the case here on Seashell Island, he supposed.

  Plus . . . the girls were looking forward to a whole summer here, and everything that contained. This could be his chance to finally step up, to be the dad they needed him to be. To show Emily – and the perfect Mark – that he could parent too. He didn’t need their lists of fun activities, or Emily’s schedule and rules, reminding him of their bedtimes and mealtimes and what they liked to eat. They weren’t babies any more; they could discuss those things with him. And when he was in charge, he got to decide bedtimes anyway, right?

  He shouldn’t be panicking about this. He could parent and work – millions of people did, every day. He was an intelligent, accomplished businessman. If he couldn’t manage two kids and a job, what was he even doing here?

  It would all be fine. He just needed a proper plan.

  Reaching for his laptop, Leo pulled up his project management software and started a new file.

  Project Summer.

  JULIET

  The ferry ride across to Seashell Island was every bit as awful as Juliet had expected it to be. She passed the time by scrolling through her social-media apps, catching up on the lives of all the school friends who never left the island in the first place, and skipping past the few who’d made themselves perfect lives on the outside.

  She needed to be reminded that at least she had left, for a time. That she’d been more than this stupid tourist trap, for a few years. She’d followed her dreams, just like she always told everyone she would.

  Even if she was back here now, her life merrily falling apart around her.

  It wasn’t just her family she had to face on Seashell Island. It was everyone else she’d left behind. All the people she’d told, over and over again, that Seashell Island wasn’t big enough for her. That she was destined for bigger, better things – the implication being that they weren’t. That she was better somehow, even if that wasn’t what she’d meant.

  Of course, as a teenager she hadn’t grasped how insulting she’d been. She’d only meant that she’d felt so hemmed in on that island she might scream. But now she cringed at the memory, as she realised what people must have heard.

  Her school friends. Her parents’ friends. The council, the shopkeepers, the fishermen. Miranda. Rory.

  She’d basically told him straight to his face that he wasn’t enough, that she didn’t love him enough to stay on Seashell Island with him when his dad got sick a month before they were both due to leave and start their new lives on the mainland.

  Was there anyone on Seashell Island she hadn’t offended before leaving? Talk about burning the bridges she might have to walk back over.

  When looking at the screen of her phone started to make her feel even sicker, sh
e switched to staring out over the waves, imagining how she was going to explain her unexpected arrival on the island to her parents.

  Mum, Dad, I have some news . . .

  Mum, I did something stupid . . .

  Hey, great news, you’re going to be grandparents again!

  Dad, I know you’re going to be disappointed in me, but . . .

  Yeah, there was no good way to break this news.

  She hoped she could talk to her parents without Miranda being there. Disappointment and upset from Mum and Dad she could weather – she certainly had before. But Miranda’s rolling eyes and total lack of surprise would finish her off. Hadn’t she always said that Juliet was too flighty, too flaky, not to get in trouble once she was out in the real world alone? And heaven knew Miranda loved being proven right. Especially when it came to her siblings.

  Whether it was the ‘I told you so’s when Juliet got caught drinking underage in the local pub, or the warnings that if she didn’t study she’d fail a test, Miranda had always been the one telling her how she should live her life. Or how Miranda would have lived her life, more accurately. Their parents had a much more laissez-faire attitude to parenting, letting them make their own mistakes and learning from them. But Juliet guessed that Miranda had always felt like she had to make up for that when it came to bossing her younger siblings around.

  Or maybe it was just the age gap. With seven years between her and Miranda, by the time Juliet had hit her teenage years Miranda had been an actual adult. Leo was sandwiched between them, closer in age to Miranda but nearer in temperament to Juliet, and he had usually made an effort to keep out of the way when the girls clashed. But it was always Juliet he came to find afterwards, to make sure she was OK.

  Juliet wished she could have spoken to Leo before she left London, but with Emily away on honeymoon she knew he’d be busy with the girls. If anyone could possibly understand how she was feeling, it would be Leo. After all, if Emily hadn’t got pregnant when they were both twenty-three, they probably wouldn’t have got married so young. Although it had worked out for them, until it hadn’t.