Cottage at the Beach (The Off Season)

by Lee Tobin McClain

  Escape to the Chesapeake Bay, where beach life is full of love, surprises and second chances...

  When an injury forces K-9 officer Trey Harrison onto the sidelines, his only thought is getting back to the police force where he belongs. And he’ll do anything to make that happen—even volunteer in a small waterfront community, just to please his boss. But no one ever said Trey had to enjoy it...

  Since the surgery that destroyed her dreams of having children, schoolteacher Erica Rowe has grown even more dedicated to her work with at-risk teens. So she doesn't need some cop with a chip on his shoulder putting the program's future in jeopardy. But when Trey finally connects with the students, Erica's heart melts. And when, in a tender moment, he admits he longs to have children, her heart breaks. She's convinced he'd be better off with someone who can give him everything, but she can't seem to shake the hope that maybe love is enough...

  Praise for USA TODAY bestselling author

  Lee Tobin McClain

  “Lee Tobin McClain dazzles with unforgettable characters, fabulous small-town settings and a big dose of heart. Her complex and satisfying stories never disappoint.”

  —Susan Mallery, New York Times bestselling author

  “Fans of Debbie Macomber will appreciate this start to a new series by McClain that blends sweet, small-town romance with such serious issues as domestic abuse.... Readers craving a feel-good romance with a bit of suspense will be satisfied.”

  —Booklist on Low Country Hero

  “[An] enthralling tale of learning to trust.... This enjoyable contemporary romance will appeal to readers looking for twinges of suspense before happily ever after.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Low Country Hero

  “Low Country Hero has everything I look for in a book—it’s emotional, tender, and an all-around wonderful story.”

  —RaeAnne Thayne, New York Times bestselling author

  Also available from

  Lee Tobin McClain

  and HQN

  Safe Haven

  Low Country Hero

  Low Country Dreams

  Low Country Christmas

  For additional books by Lee Tobin McClain, visit her website, www.leetobinmcclain.com.

  Cottage at the Beach

  Lee Tobin McClain

  Cottage at the Beach is dedicated to my late mother, Janet L. Tobin, and to the many young women who face their genetic predisposition to cancer with courage and grace.

  Contents

  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 NINTETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  EXCERPT FROM REUNION AT THE SHORE BY LEE TOBIN McCLAIN

  CHAPTER ONE

  TREY HARRISON SLID farther 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 tail beat rhythmically 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 for a while, 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 Chesapeake Bay. 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 lapping of waves against the rocky shoreline.

  Several of the cottages, including the blue-and-white one, had little signs hanging from gateposts or vine-covered arbors. From his parking place he could read some of them: Hawthorne Cottage, Escape on the Water, 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. He sure didn’t feel like a hero.

  He wanted to just drive away.

  Except he couldn’t. Financially, he didn’t have any other options, and for whatever reason, his chief really wanted him to participate in this new program for disabled police officers. Insisted, basically. “You need it mentally as well as physically,” he’d said, and had implied that it was the only way Trey had a chance of getting his old job back.

  It was Trey’s own fault. Even if he hadn’t gotten injured, his impulsive behavior at work had been about to land him in a desk job.

  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 they’d sent him into the lock, wincing as pain radiated out from his lower back.

  The key didn’t want to work; it was rusty, a little bent. Didn’t fit, just like he didn’t. Just like King didn’t.

  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 in a tiny, tidewater town.

  He wiped sweat from his face. April in Maryland shouldn’t be this hot. Weren’t there supposed to be waterfront breezes?

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

  King panted up at him, his face a doggy smile, and Trey stood up straighter. He needed to stop feeling sorry for himself. He had to do his wretched physical therapy, which so far seemed to hurt more than it helped. Hide his bad attitude. That was the only way to get back to the thing that never let him down: work.

  The whine of a vacuum cleaner from inside the cottage startled Trey. 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 with curves worthy of an old-time movie star. He liked curvy women, or had, back 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 gray and gave him a rueful smile. “I’m Julie White. I manage the place. But we’re not quite ready for you.”

  “We will be, by check-in time.”
The voice, practical and friendly, came from behind the older woman. “That’s 3:00 p.m. Just take a walk along the shore, or get lunch at Goody’s 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.”

  “Why do you always think I’m breaking down? I’m fine!”

  The conversation got harder to hear as he reached the sidewalk and looked up the street, wondering whether to go for a beach walk, get lunch 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, probably tomorrow, to clean it out for the new owners. Not to stay.

  He should do as the woman had suggested, hit the beach. Light walking was recommended for his injury, and it might clear some of the gray 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 Earl Greene.”

  Was his identity as a so-called healing hero that obvious, or was this just a really small town? Trey forced his lips into a polite smile. “Pleased to meet you,” he lied. This guy would write the report that might convince his chief to give him his old job back. Depressing to be at the mercy of an over-the-hill, small-town cop. He glared at the guy’s badge.

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

  The guy’s expression was exactly what kids looked like when they saw a toy they really, really wanted, and that made Trey look back toward the cottage, too. There was nothing to see, just the door to his new home-away-from-home closing.

  Officer Greene 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 Healing Heroes program, but he hadn’t paid much attention. He’d been most interested in the rent-free opportunity to get out of town and heal. He flicked imaginary dirt from King’s head to conceal his ignorance. “I’ll look forward to hearing about it, sir.”

  Officer Greene’s eyes narrowed, just a little, and Trey realized he hadn’t sounded convincing. “Hope you enjoy working with at-risk teenagers, because that’s a big part of the program’s mission,” the man said. “You’ll be helping out at an academy 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. Yeah, he’d been one, but that didn’t mean he was great at relating to them as anything but a cop.

  * * *

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

  The narrow little beach was empty. Good. At eleven months old, Ziggy was still a puppy, but due to his large 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 off 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’s behavior support 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 Pleasant Shores’ newer residents.

  No wonder she was stressed.

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

  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. “Sorry!” she said. “He’s young. Stop it, Zig,” 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 private property along this stretch of shore,” 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 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 in Pleasant Shores, and it’s important they be safe. That’s why...” She pulled out her phone. “Everyone 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 Shoreline Way,
the cottage at the end of the lane. Julie White manages it. 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 three months ago, 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. Rumor had it the place had sold, although Erica had never seen a for-sale sign.

  Come to think of it, though, there had been some activity there this week. So maybe the movie star 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 Pleasant Shores.”

  “Thanks.” He gave her hand a quick shake with his own large, calloused one, and his eyebrow lifted, just a little, his gaze lingering on her face.

  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 a couple of 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, Zig.”

  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 oyster shells.

  As they walked on, the silence got awkward. Erica glanced over at her new neighbor. “Does your dog ever get to play?”

  “He’s a working dog,” Trey said.

 
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