Low Country Christmas

by Lee Tobin McClain

  I adore my Wednesday morning writers’ group. Sally, Kathy, Colleen, Jonathan, Jackie and Karen, you give me strong, sharp feedback clothed in kindness and humor. Kathy, I especially appreciate you for reading and providing commentary on multiple drafts. Dana and Rachel, writer friends extraordinaire, thank you for your humor and sympathy throughout the writing of the entire series.

  In the “research can be fun” department, a big thank-you to my Seton Hill colleague Jeff Bartel for the amazing ride and the insider’s view of all things Tesla!

  Sue, Ron and Jessica, I love you so much and am beyond grateful for my bookish family. Bill, my travel companion in so many ways, I’m delighted to be on this journey with you. And, Grace, my baby who’s now a full-on adult, thank you for being the light of my life.

  Finally, I am grateful to my readers, whose kind notes and reviews and enthusiastic support mean more than I could ever express. Thank you for taking time from your busy lives to escape to Safe Haven with me.

  Cottage at the Beach

  by Lee Tobin McClain

  CHAPTER ONE

  TREY HARRISON SLID further down in the seat of his 2009 Chevy pickup and frowned at the blue-and-white cottage at the end of the street, deliberately relaxing his tense hands on the steering wheel. “That can’t be it,” he said to his dog, King.

  From the back seat, King’s wagging tail beat against his crate. He gave one short bark.

  Guilt pounded Trey’s already-aching head, because he knew what that bark meant. King wanted to get to work.

  But because of Trey, that wouldn’t be happening for either of them. No more police work. Not now, and maybe not ever. His own stupidity and recklessness had stolen not only his career, but King’s.

  He moved his seat back and opened the door of King’s crate, and the big German shepherd jumped into the passenger seat and leaned against his arm. Offering trust and forgiveness Trey didn’t deserve.

  He looked again at the neat little cottage, set off by itself, the front facing the lane, the back oriented toward the beach. He’d been expecting something institutional, impersonal. Rehabilitation wasn’t supposed to be vacation-like. He clicked to confirm the address on his phone, then carefully turned his head to scan the row of small, quaint houses scattered along this side of the lane. White picket fences, flowers in every yard. Audible from beyond the houses was the cry of gulls and the steady rhythm of the surf.

  Several of the cottages, including the blue-and-white one, had little signs hanging from gate posts or vine-covered arbors. From his parking place he could read some of them: Hawthorne Cottage, Escape to the Sea, Bailey’s Hideaway.

  Trey squinted at the sign that hung from the vine-covered arbor in front of his destination, and read “Healing Heroes.”

  His hands clenched on the steering wheel as tiny fluttering birds flocked up in his chest. He wasn’t a hero.

  He wanted to just drive away.

  Except he couldn’t. He didn’t have any other options. He got out of the truck, let King out and walked up to the door. Bending down, he attempted to fit the old-fashioned key into the lock, wincing as pain radiated out from his lower back.

  The key didn’t want to work. Didn’t fit, just like he didn’t. Just like King didn’t.

  They weren’t made for lives of leisure in some touristy beach town. They were supposed to be hunting down missing persons, sniffing out drugs, chasing bad guys. Or, at a minimum, doing their monthly training exercises to keep skills sharp.

  Instead, they were in forced rehabilitation at the beach.

  He wiped sweat from his face. April on the Maryland coast shouldn’t be this hot. Weren’t there supposed to be sea breezes? And how was a heavy-coated German shepherd going to survive in this heat?

  “Just three months, buddy,” he said to King.

  The whine of a vacuum cleaner from inside the beach house startled him. He knocked, then pounded on the door. When there was no answer, he pounded again, too hard, making King woof.

  Get control of yourself. He had to get—and keep—control.

  The vacuum cleaner stopped and then the door opened. The woman who answered looked to be in her fifties, very curvy. Not that he had a problem with curvy; he’d preferred that type, when he’d been interested in romance.

  “Can I help you?” the woman asked.

  “Um, yeah. Trey Harrison. I’m supposed to be staying here.”

  “Right.” The woman forked her fingers through reddish hair streaked with grey and gave him a rueful smile. “I’m Julie Stevenson. I own the place. But we’re not quite ready for you.”

  “We will be, by check-in time.” This voice, practical and friendly, came from behind the older woman. “That’s 3:00. Just take a walk on the beach, or there are places to get a coffee just a block over. You can leave your stuff.”

  “Sure.” He caught a glimpse of a younger version of the woman who’d answered the door. A knockout, he noted with an alarming lack of interest.

  As he turned away, wincing at the twisting movement, he heard the younger woman speaking. “You can’t break down now, Mom. We’re almost done.”

  The conversation got harder to hear as he reached the sidewalk and looked up the street, wondering whether to go for a beach walk, coffee or retreat to where he’d come from.

  Not an option, remember? The house he and his ex-wife had bought five years ago, when Trey had dreamed of a Norman Rockwell family, had just sold. He had to go back there at some point, but to clean it out for the new owners, not to stay.

  He should do as the woman had suggested and hit the beach. Light walking was recommended for his injury, and it might clear some of the grey cloud that kept sinking over him. And King could use the exercise. He turned toward the access path he’d seen earlier and nearly ran into a short barrel-chested cop, another fiftysomething. “Excuse me,” Trey said, and started to pass.

  The man held out a hand. “You must be our visitor for the new program. Welcome. I’m Xavier Green.”

  Was his identity as a so-called healing hero that obvious, or was this just a really small town? Trey shook the guy’s hands and forced his lips into a polite smile. “Pleased to meet you,” he lied. If he was remembering the name right, Xavier Green would write the report that might get him reinstated to the force. Depressing to be at the mercy of an over-the-hill small-town cop. He glared at the guy’s badge.

  Officer Green looked past him toward the blue-and-white cottage and lifted a hand in a wave. “Julie. Ria.”

  Something in the guy’s expression made Trey look back in that direction, too. There was nothing to see, but he did hear the door to his new home-away-from-home slamming shut.

  Officer Green lifted his chin and looked at Trey. “Got your volunteer gig all lined up,” he said. “Once you’re settled, come on down to the station and we’ll talk it over.”

  “Volunteer gig? Oh, right.” Trey remembered reading something about that in the material explaining the program for officers with disabilities, but with his life blowing up in his face, he hadn’t paid much attention. He flicked imaginary dirt from King’s head to conceal his ignorance. “I’ll look forward to hearing about it, sir.”

  Officer Green’s eyes narrowed, just a little, and Trey realized he hadn’t sounded convincing. “Hope you enjoy working with teenagers,” the man said. “With problems. You’ll be helping out in a program for them, starting Monday.” He gave Trey a nod and headed off down the street.

  Trey looked after him, not knowing which was more startling: the quaint sight of an officer actually walking a beat, or the idea of Trey having something to offer troubled teenagers. What he didn’t know about teenagers could fill a book. What he didn’t like about them could fill a library. And his history with adolescent perps? That didn’t even bear thinking about.

  * * *

  “COME ON, ZIGGY! Let’s go!” Erica
Rowe clapped her hands as she ran down the steps that led from her beach house to the ocean, her goldendoodle leaping in hysterical circles around her. It was just after noon, and a rare early dismissal from her teaching job.

  The beach was empty. Good. At eleven months old, Ziggy was still a puppy, but due to his size—already seventy-five pounds—people understandably expected good behavior from him. That was more likely to happen if he had the chance to run off some energy.

  She jogged along beside the dog, watching him leap at the waves, jump back and then zigzag up to chase a seagull.

  She needed to run off her own stress, too, or so her sister said; apparently, she had lines in between her eyebrows and had gotten too thin.

  That was the pot calling the kettle black: Amber had no eyebrows at all and was emaciated and pretty much racked with anxiety. Erica’s heart twisted. Their move to the shore town was supposed to help Amber recover from her latest round of chemo. Or at any rate, help her fulfill a dream.

  Three months in, the dream part was looking more likely than the recovery.

  To continue helping her sister fulfill that dream, Erica had to make a success of the Academy program. It was the only job that paid enough to keep Amber, Amber’s daughter and herself living here, in the tiny town where they’d spent childhood summers.

  Erica had to stay on the good side of the misogynistic principal who’d hired her, had to convince him that the Academy’s program for at-risk teens should be continued, not terminated at the end of the school year per the wishes of some of Peaceful Shores’ newer residents.

  No wonder she was stressed.

  Ziggy started running faster, more purposefully, and in the distance Erica made out two figures: a big man and a dog.

  Great. She sprinted after her out-of-control pet. “Ziggy! Get back here!”

  By the time she reached the guy and his fierce-looking German shepherd, Ziggy was in full attack mode, which meant nose-punching the shepherd and then dancing backward and play-bowing. His big plume of a tail was wagging.

  The shepherd sat stoically beside the guy, who was...wow.

  Was he some movie star she didn’t recognize? The guy was built, with blue eyes that crinkled at the corners and a square jaw beneath a day’s worth of heavy stubble.

  Erica wasn’t in the market for a relationship, not even for a fling, but she also wasn’t dead. She sucked in air and then focused on catching her breath and grabbing Ziggy’s collar to attach his leash. “Sorry!” she said. “He’s young. Stop it, Zigg,” she added as her dog took another playful lunge at the shepherd.

  The shepherd curled his lips back and bared his teeth.

  The movie star grunted an order, which caused the shepherd to stop, midsnarl, and look up at him. Then he responded to another of Ziggy’s lunges with a low growl that made Ziggy leap away and cower behind Erica, whimpering.

  “Your dog is terrifying!” she blurted out, kneeling to comfort Ziggy. “It’s okay, buddy. Mommy won’t let him hurt you.”

  The man snapped another order at the dog, who lay down with nose on paws, looking ashamed. “You shouldn’t talk baby talk to your dog,” the man said to Erica. “He’ll just behave worse.”

  She lifted an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

  He gestured at Ziggy, a slight frown marring his gorgeous face. “You’ll just make him more timid if you act like there’s a basis for his fear. You shouldn’t let him loose on the beach, either, if he can’t be controlled.”

  She got enough mansplaining all day, every day, from the principal of her school, and she didn’t need more of it in her free time. “It’s a private beach,” she said. “Is there a reason you’re here with your, uh, highly trained dog?”

  “I’m staying up there.” He gestured toward the row of beach cottages behind him.

  She seriously doubted that. “Where?”

  He gave her a look that suggested she’d asked something rude.

  “Look,” she said, “I don’t want to be all exclusionary, but your dog looks ready to kill someone, and you don’t seem much friendlier. We have a lot of small dogs and little kids on this stretch of shoreline, and it’s important they be safe. That’s why—” she pulled out her phone “—everyone in the neighborhood has agreed to call the police if they see anybody suspicious.”

  “Wait.” He held up a hand, eyebrows coming together. “Don’t do that. My name’s Trey Harrison, and the address of the place I’m staying is...” He scrolled through his phone and then looked up. “Fifteen Ocean Way, the cottage at the end of the lane. It belongs to Julie Stevenson. She’s the one who told me to come down to the beach until they finish cleaning the place.”

  While they’d been talking, Ziggy and the shepherd had settled down and greeted each other in respectable dog fashion. Both tails began to wag.

  “You’re staying at Julie’s place?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Erica didn’t know Julie well. She’d met the woman when she and Amber had first moved into the cottage next door, had thought she’d seemed nice. Then they’d heard a lot of shouting coming from Julie’s house, and then it had gone silent and empty.

  Come to think of it, though, she’d seen some activity there this week. So maybe he was telling the truth and would be a new neighbor.

  And maybe she’d been a little abrupt. “I’m sorry Ziggy jumped all over your dog,” she said, “and that I jumped all over you.” She held out a hand. “Welcome to Peaceful Shores.”

  “Thanks.” He gave her hand a quick shake with his own large calloused one.

  She sucked in a breath. Nope, not dead. Okay, then. “Are you planning to stay awhile, or is this just a vacation?”

  “I’ll be here three months, looks like.” He glanced down at Ziggy, who was back to nose-punching his dog. “So if you live on the same stretch of beach, it would be good if our dogs got along.”

  “It would.” She turned to go back the way she’d come. “C’mon, Zigg.”

  To her surprise, Mr. Handsome-But-Cranky fell into step beside her. His dog trudged along at his side.

  Ziggy leaped and tugged until she let him off his leash again, freeing him to dart after shorebirds and sniff at clumps of seaweed.

  As they walked on, the silence got awkward. “Does your dog ever get to play?”

  “He’s a working dog,” Trey said.

  “Oh!” She glanced at the shepherd again. “Shouldn’t he be wearing a service dog vest or something?”

  “Not a service dog. He’s a police dog.”

  “Oh! Then you’re a cop.” And yet he was here for three months?

  Suddenly realization washed over her. “Wait a minute. You’re not the volunteer for the Academy program, are you?”

  He nodded glumly.

  “Starting Monday?”

  He nodded again. “Yeah. I just found out about it. Not exactly my thing, but it’s a condition of getting the house, which I need until my disability payments come in.”

  “So...you don’t have any training with teenagers?”

  He shook his head. “Zilch. Don’t much like them, either.”

  “Great.” She wondered whether it was too late for them to choose another candidate for the position.

  “I mean,” he went on, “I like little kids fine, but teenagers in trouble, not so much. At least the ones I’ve encountered on the streets of Philadelphia.”

  She looked over at him without speaking while her thoughts and emotions raced. It hadn’t been all that long since she’d discovered her high genetic risk of cancer and had the radical hysterectomy her doctor had recommended. Since then, she’d gotten even more dedicated to her students, especially now that she’d been hired to finish out the school year in the Academy’s behavior support program.

  He—Trey, he’d said his name was—glanced over at her and something must have shown on her face.
“What’s your interest in the program?” he asked.

  “I’m the cooperating teacher,” she said slowly. “I’ll be working closely with you...with whoever Officer Green recommends to be my assistant in the program.” And she’d be having a conversation with Officer Green just as soon as she got back to her place.

  She’d helped Officer Green organize the grant-funded program that would get some much-needed help for her classroom full of unruly teens. Having a cop as an assistant was meant to calm the fears Peaceful Shores’ residents had about the Academy program; the community was recently gentrified, and some of the new people didn’t want kids with criminal backgrounds anywhere near their property.

  The program was an important part of the community’s history, though, and Erica was determined to do everything in her power to make it a success. For the kids, of course. For her niece, Hannah, who needed stability and a good school. And most of all, for Amber, who deserved to have one dream, at least, come true.

  If that meant throwing handsome Trey-the-cop under the bus, well, that was what she’d have to do.

  Don’t miss Lee Tobin McClain’s Cottage at the Beach, available March 2020 from HQN Books!

  Copyright © 2020 by Lee Tobin McClain

  ISBN-13: 9781488085895

  Low Country Christmas

  Copyright © 2019 by Lee Tobin McClain

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.