Thanks as ever to my wonderful family and friends for their support and love, and the biggest thanks of all go to my readers. Thank you for sticking with me, I love you all. Here’s to many more book boyfriends being taken (dragged) on adventures by kick ass women who are not afraid to show their heart AND their teeth.
Never let anyone tell you romance is just fluff, it’s the gravy of life. We need it in our lives, so thank you for reading my stories and enabling me to write even more. Bookworms rule.
Keep reading for an excerpt from The Second Chance Hotel …
To You
If I was writing this letter under better circumstances, I could have written a much better opening. I’m sitting here on my bunk trying to think of what to say. I don’t even know what to call you. I know we have to be careful. If I could, I would say your name over and over for the rest of my life. How lucky people who see you every day are, for they get to say it willy-nilly.
For you, nothing seems appropriate, or enough, so I decided that You will have to do. My You. My one and only You.
I have the shell you pressed into my hand that night, and I haven’t stopped looking at it. It smells of you, of home, and it makes me feel like my recurring nightmare was just that, and that my real life is still there, at Shady Pines with you.
How long do we have left, till the letters have to stop? I fear the day, yet I know it must come. You must live your life, and I should at least try to start mine. Even with the huge You-shaped hole in my soul. Don’t tell me, not till you have to. While you’re free, let’s pretend, just you and Me.
G
Chapter 1
April Statham sat as close to the steering wheel as she could get, nudging herself and her clapped-out brown Ford Escort along the road, turning slowly into the entrance to the chalet park. Unfortunately, a few seconds earlier, a horse rider had passed, and now his steed was going to the toilet in the middle of the road, leaving a huge steaming pile of horse plop right in the entranceway. April wasn’t really one to believe in signs, but this was kind of hard to miss.
‘Er …’ She wound her window down. ‘Excuse me?’ The horse, and the rider, a thin man whose long features mirrored that of his thoroughbred, dipped their heads to look at her. ‘Could you possibly move your horse? I need to pass.’
The horse snorted loudly. Or was it the rider? Both parties looked equally nonplussed, but the man nodded once and the horse trotted away, leaving his … offerings. April turned the car into the lane, avoiding the pile, and headed for the large wooden hut marked ‘Reception’.
‘Bloody great pile of steaming poo in the entrance, great advert for the place,’ she muttered under her breath, her eyes flicking down to her petrol gauge, which was pointed straight at zero. Past zero, truth be told. She could feel the change in the engine, the car chugging along on petrol fumes. She pulled into the space marked ‘Management’ in between the reception hut and a small chalet. She yanked up the handbrake and turned the key in the ignition to off. She could swear that her car breathed a sigh of relief as the engine cut out. They had made it, her and her little car, all the way from Yorkshire to the tip of the Cornish coast. She sat back in her seat, her limbs and back stiff and wizened, as though she had been tied in a knot somewhere along the A38 and had driven bunched up like a pretzel ever since.
She was just easing the knots out of her neck when a sharp tap on her window made her jump. A woman stood there, her face pinched up tight, her dark hair tied into curling rollers on her head. She was wearing a pink dressing gown and dark green wellies, and looked more than a little crazy, even at 8 a.m. on a Monday morning. April wound her window down wearily, plastering a patient smile on her face.
‘Are you lost?’ the woman said pointedly, looking from inside the car to the boxes and suitcases strapped to a roof rack that April had nabbed from a Freecycle site. Her suitcases came from there too, with her not wanting to take the monogrammed luggage set she had been given as a wedding present. His and hers. She’d left it next to Duncan’s in the detached garage. Camped out in her late mother’s house. They’d looked so pathetic sitting there together, never to be used again, as they once were on honeymoon, and on their exotic holidays and horrifying business trips he’d dragged her along on.
‘No,’ said April. Yes, I am a bit. I think I’ve made a big mistake. ‘I’m not lost.’
The woman looked again at the worldly belongings strapped to the roof and sighed, a small unsympathetic sigh that made April feel about an inch tall.
‘Well—’ the woman raised her eyebrows again ‘—you look lost. Can I call someone for you? We’re expecting the hotshot new owner at some point today.’
‘I’m the new owner,’ April tried, her voice a faint whisper. ‘I own this place.’
The woman, having caught the gist now, looked at her with wide eyes.
‘You?’ She leaned into the car window, her head floating there like a balloon. ‘You—’ punctuated by a jab of the finger in her direction ‘—actually bought this place?’
April nodded slowly. The woman began to laugh.
‘Pull
