Page 11 of Christmas at Sturcombe Bay (Sturcombe Bay Romances #3)

Jess woke with a mild headache again. She hadn’t slept well, but she didn’t want to think about what had disturbed her dreams. A glance at the small clock on her bedside table told her that it was almost nine thirty.

But that was okay — she wasn’t due to start her shift on the reception desk until two, so she had the whole morning to kill.

Wearily she rolled out of bed, shrugged into her dressing gown, and padded over to the bathroom. Maybe a shower would make her feel better. The staff corridor was deserted, only four of the rooms being occupied at the moment anyway. No one to talk to.

After scrubbing herself dry on the rough towel, she wandered back to her room to get dressed. The headache was fading and she was feeling restless.

The strange thing was that it was nothing to do with Glenn or thoughts of her abandoned wedding that kept dancing an irritating tap-dance through her brain, but images of another man — a man with wide shoulders and curling black hair.

But she didn’t want to acknowledge that.

Sitting down at the small dressing table she dragged a comb through her long wet hair. Maybe she’d get it cut — it would be easier to manage. Wasn’t that what women did when they left a long-term relationship? Reinvent themselves?

What a cliché!

She didn’t need to reinvent herself to leave Glenn behind.

It was her future she needed to figure out.

But there was no rush for that. If the hotel closed, which the rumours suggested it might, that would be time enough.

For now, drying her hair and getting some breakfast was as far ahead as she wanted to plan.

Forty minutes later saw her strolling over to the Ellis’s house. She found Julia in her office. She glanced up from her desk with a smile.

“Hi, honey. How are you?”

“Oh . . . fine.”

She wandered listlessly round the small room, reading the labels on the files stacked on the bookshelves, admiring the child’s drawing — Ben’s, of his mum and dad.

Hobo, the three-legged grey Lurcher, was reclining on an old pink blanket in the corner.

Jess hunkered down and scritched the magic spot behind his ear.

“You’re a handsome chap, aren’t you?” she murmured to him. “Are you a good boy?” The dog stretched out his long pink tongue and licked her wrist. “How did he lose his leg?”

Julia smiled grimly. “Remember that Alan Cowan we told you about the other night?”

“The one they went camping with, when they all got soaked?”

“That’s the one. He got him as a puppy, but he never took proper care of him.

Poor Hobo hurt his leg on some barbed wire, and instead of taking him straight to the vets, he just wrapped a bit of old cloth round it and left it.

By the time he did take him in to Diane’s surgery it was really bad — the infection had got into the bone, and the only thing she could do was amputate. ”

“Oh, that’s awful. Poor Hobo.”

The dog seemed to appreciate her sympathy, resting his head heavily on her hand.

“Cowan got really stroppy about it, refused to pay for the treatment — told her to put him down. Diane just about blew his head off.” She laughed dryly.

“I’d have loved to have seen it. She doesn’t look it, but she can be quite a force to be reckoned with when it comes to any kind of animal cruelty. ”

“I can imagine.”

“Anyway, she threatened him with the RSPCA, and made him sign Hobo over to her.”

“Ah, bless.” She fondled the dog’s whiskery grey head. “So now you have a nice cosy home and a blanket to sleep on, and lots of treats. He does seem to manage pretty well with only three legs.”

“Oh, it doesn’t bother him at all. Would you like to take him for a walk?”

Jess glanced up in surprise. “Would that be okay?”

“Of course. Take him down to the beach — he loves the sea.”

“Oh, right. But if I let him off the lead, will he run off? What if he won’t come back to me?”

Julia laughed, taking a packet of dog treats out of her desk drawer. Hobo heard the rustle and was instantly alert. “Take these and he’ll be your best friend forever.”

A walk on the beach was exactly what she needed to blow the cobwebs away. Jess felt her steps lightening as she strolled through the Memorial Gardens.

The trees were beginning to shed their leaves, but the grass was neatly mowed, the flowerbeds all weeded. Some of the rose bushes were still in bloom, and so were the pansies, chrysanthemums and pretty mauve asters, asserting their bright colours against the slow creep of autumn.

She paused by the War Memorial to read the names engraved on the weathered brass plaques, of the men killed in the Boer War, both World Wars and even the Korean War.

Some of the surnames told that they were from families who still lived here in Sturcombe: a couple of Channings, three Cullens, three Crocombes.

The dates showed they had almost all been young men — nineteen, twenty, twenty-one. Now they would have been great-grandfathers, great-great-grandfathers, but they had never had that chance.

But Hobo was quickly bored, so she let him tug her out to the concrete ramp down to the beach.

The sky was a pale misty blue above a silvery sea, but the October sun gave just enough warmth to take the edge off the cool breeze blowing in across the bay. She paused for a moment to breathe in the fresh, salt-tanged air, feeling it chase away the last of that lingering restlessness.

The beach was almost empty, just a few elderly couples in deckchairs, a young mum with a toddler looking for shells to collect, a few dog walkers throwing balls for their pooches to chase.

The moment she let Hobo off the lead he raced away joyfully, hirpling down the beach to splash in the shallows, where the waves rolled in gently, lazily unfurling their long ribbons of white lace over the wet sand.

She stood and watched him for a moment, smiling at his sheer joie de vivre. Put him down? No wonder Diane had blown her top at that horrible man. He should have been put down himself.

A little further out she spotted a dark head moving through the water. Incredibly, someone was swimming out there. It must be freezing! But he seemed to be wearing a wetsuit and was carving through the waves with a powerful overarm stroke.

She watched as he swam across the width of the bay, then back. As he finally stood up and started to wade in towards the beach, Hobo barked ecstatically and bounced over to him, cannoning into him and licking at his face.

“Hobo!” As she had feared, he ignored her. “Hobo, here! I’m sorry, he . . . Oh!” She stopped dead. Paul Channing. “It’s you!”

A slow, lazy smile curved his well-made mouth. “Ah, what a wonderful warm greeting. It does so much to revive my poor bruised ego.”

“I doubt your ego needs much reviving,” she retorted tartly. “It seems to be in perfectly good health.”

He laughed, not at all troubled by her barb. “I really did get off on the wrong foot with you, didn’t I?”

“I’m not sure there’d be a right foot.”

Hobo was still splashing around him with boundless enthusiasm. Weren’t dogs supposed to have a sixth sense about people? The stupid Lurcher seemed to lack a brain along with his leg.

Though her own brain really couldn’t lay claim to much sense either.

She couldn’t help but be aware of how good he looked in that wetsuit, all wide shoulders and tapered torso and taut butt.

It was a very unforgiving garment, showing up any lumps and bumps, but when the package inside was that good it could be spectacular.

“Isn’t it a bit cold for swimming?” she remarked, to distract herself from the way her heart was thumping.

He shook his head. “Not if you swim every day — you get acclimatised to it.”

“Every day?” Her eyes widened in surprise. “Even during the winter?”

“Pretty much, whenever I’m home. It’s the best exercise in the world. Do you swim?”

“Yes. But only when the water’s warm.”

“Chicken.”

“Huh!” But she couldn’t quite suppress a bubble of laughter. He really did have more charm than was recommended under health and safety guidelines.

He laughed too, and picked up the towel he had left lying on the beach, indulging Hobo in a brief game of tug-of-war with it before scrubbing it over his hair and tossing it round his shoulders.

“Well, now that I’ve got a laugh out of you, perhaps I’d better quit while I’m ahead.

See you around.” And he strolled away to the steps that led up to Cliff Road and the tall, elegant Victorian townhouses there.

Was that where he lived? It seemed a rather incongruous choice for an ex-professional footballer.

But then she had to admit that Paul Channing didn’t entirely conform to the stereotype. Calling to Hobo, who was looking distinctly disappointed at losing his friend, she turned and walked back along the beach.