Page 1 of Hearts Colliding
CHAPTERONE
“Come on, girl, let’s make a run for it.” Ryan attached the lead to Tina’s collar, looking over his shoulder as he carefully opened the door leading into the pub’s back yard. The hinges screeched, and he sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth, ready for the inevitable.
“Ryan! Before you go, I want you to change a couple of barrels.”
He swore under his breath as the shuffle of slippers approached. Was he never going to get away? He could change the barrels in his sleep, and it wouldn’t take long, but it would be the first in a long line of jobs which would eat up his few precious hours of free time, between the end of the lunchtime shift and the start of the evening’s.
“Ryan!”
“Can’t hear you, Nan. Sorry.”
His nan’s slippered footsteps were growing louder. It was now or never. Ryan darted through the door, slamming it closed behind him. Tina shot forward, straining at the leash, almost pulling him over. Even his mutt of a dog was ready to run as they escaped through the back yard and crossed the cobbled harbour front, making their way onto the path that led to the cliff top above Love’s Harbour.
Letting Tina off her lead, Ryan’s face creased into a grin. It was always the same, as she bounded ahead. Ungainly and clumsy, it was like watching a new born foal take its first steps. Individual was probably the kindest descriptor for his mutt of a dog. A scruffy bundle of fuzz, balanced on top of four very long, very skinny legs that reminded Ryan of spaghetti strings that were always in danger of tying themselves together into a knot. She was as far from pedigree as Love’s Harbour was to Mars, but Tina was his dog and that meant she was beyond criticism. Except from him.
The climb up the hill was what he needed. Stretching out and rolling his broad shoulders, the tightness in his body began to ease. Breathing in deep, he gazed out at the wind-whipped sea beneath a pale blue sky through which a watery sun was attempting to shine. Scrubbing his fingers through his hair, he sucked in another deep lungful of salt-tinged air before letting it go in a long exhale.
He’d been run off his feet since he’d got up, way too early, putting in what felt like a full day’s work even before they’d flung open the pub doors for the first flow of customers for the lunchtime shift. Villagers whose families had been in the Harbour for generations alongside newcomers who’d fled the cities to find their own piece of rural heaven, he was happy to serve them all. Except when they were dithering. Was it really so difficult to choose between a pint of either Badger’s Arse or Jolly Sailor? Or between a cheese and pickle sandwich, or a ploughman’s? Really? Was itreally?
At the top of the hill, Ryan flopped down onto the grass, crossed his arms behind his head and stared up at the gulls wheeling overhead. If indecisive customers was all he had to complain about, life really wasn’t so bad. He should, as his nan was apt to say, count his blessings.
The Fisherman’s Arms, which was both his family’s business and his home, was the most successful pub in the village — or any village for miles around. Business was good, and getting better by the day… No, nothing to complain about at all… Ryan yawned and his eyelids dropped to a close as the weak summer sun broke through the clouds and bathed him in a rare burst of warmth. Perhaps he’d stay up here and soak up the rays, just for a little while… His breathing evened out and deepened, as the squawk of the gulls faded and disappeared.
“What? Eh?” Ryan jerked up, blinking hard as his head snapped from side to side. He yawned, and glanced at his watch. He’d been asleep for no more than a few minutes, but he’d been out for the count.More tired than I realised…
Tina’s sudden yelping swept the last remnants of sleep away as she hurtled towards him on long, uncoordinated legs, her forward momentum stopped when she thudded into him.
“Tina? What’s wrong, girl?”
Whining and panting, she tried to burrow into his side as a couple of small rabbits skittered across the rough, tufty grass.
“You dopey mutt, you ran away from acouple of bunnies?”
Ryan shook his head as he bundled her into his arms, where she did her best to crawl up under his T-shirt.
“Tina, no.” Ryan’s voice was full of mock severity, but as Tina looked up at him with her big chocolate brown eyes, Ryan couldn’t resist planting a quick kiss on top of her scruffy head.
The sun scudded behind a cloud, taking its warmth with it, the hint for him to get moving. With Tina sticking close to his side, the pair made their way across the cliff top before looping inland and picking up a path skirting private land before it divided, one of the two forks a short cut back to the village, the other taking a longer route.
Just short of the fork, Ryan stopped and stared.
The New House stood in a dip between two low lying hills. It was a misnomer, because it was anything but new. For all of his twenty-four years, Ryan couldn’t remember the Georgian manor house being lived in for more than a few weeks each year, and in the last few years not at all, as the owner had chosen to spend his days anywhere but in the depths of the Devonshire countryside.
But not anymore.
Taking cover behind a rusted and collapsed railing being strangled by a large gorse bush, Ryan looked down onto the circular driveway, where a Land Rover sat next to a low, sleek sports car. A few feet away, near the entrance to the manor house, a couple of men emerged from the back of a van carrying boxes and packing crates which they took inside the house.
“This is a bit of a turn up, eh Tina?”
It was more than a turn up, it’d be big news in the village that the lord of the manor had returned… Ryan scrunched his eyes as he searched for the name. Sir Anthony Love. Yes, that was it. So he’d returned to his ancestral pile after years of absence. And it looked like he was the first to know. Ryan snorted out a laugh.
“Don’t know how Nan missed this happening, Tina.”
Or any of the other mature ladies of the village, a network his friend Joss called the Grannies’ Grapevine. The internet, Joss always said, had nothing on the grannies of Love’s Harbour. But not this time, because the Grapevine must have been having buffering issues.
“Let’s go, girl—Eh, what’s this?”
A guy emerged from the house and stalked over to the sports car. Ryan snorted. Oh yes, he knew the type. A green waxed jacket and a flash and expensive car, the must-have accessories of the city boys and girls in search of a piece of rural heaven. He squinted, trying to get a better look but he was too far to see clearly. A sudden gust of wind whipped up and Ryan shivered. June, and the wind wascold?
