Love on the Rocks: A Heartswell Harbour Romance Read online

  LOVE ON THE ROCKS

  A HEARTSWELL HARBOUR ROMANCE

  ✽✽✽

  MAVIS WILLIAMS

  ©2019 Mavis Williams

  Editing by Nancy Cassidy, The Red Pen Coach

  Warning: All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced aside from small excerpts for use in a review. [email protected]

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people or events is entirely coincidental.

  Acknowledgements

  Many thanks to my early readers who helped me make sense of the mess: Elaine C, Terri G, Bono M, Gail H, and always, my LAMBS.

  And, I wouldn’t be able to do anything with out my Fam Jam:

  Hannah

  Eli

  Abbie

  Molly

  Philip

  and of course, my Lily!

  A huge thank you also to the incredible community on the internet for your help and insight in wrangling the Beast that is the publishing world!

  Create If Writing

  The Writing Gals

  20Booksto50K

  Connect with me at the Blissfully Writing Studio.

  I love to hear from my readers!

  Website: www.maviswilliams.com

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  Email: [email protected]

  Heartswell Harbour Review

  A Community Newsletter: Issue # 32

  Published monthly by the

  Heartswell Association of Women who Care (HAWC)

  The altruistic heart of Heartswell Harbour, building community one initiative at a time.

  Teaching an old school new tricks!

  -HAWC President, Public Relations Manager and Social Chairwoman, Irenia Crawley

  Well Heartswellians, finally some good news in the gloom in our Nova Scotia winter! Our very own Heartswell Rural Elementary School has finally been purchased and plans are underway to revitalize that old building. You will remember our angst over the closing of the school several years ago as our rural students were moved to the new “green” school in downtown Heartswell. Well, I need not rehash that old argument, since the students seem to have adjusted to the transition, no doubt due to the ipads they have all been given, instead of pencils. But I digress. (Please refer to Heartswell Review #18 “Students’ brains deformed by technology” for a detailed exploration of my feelings regarding the invasion of technology into our education system.)

  Our very own Lucy McMahon who tragically lost her fiancé to a horrific motor vehicle accident (our heartfelt sympathies to Lucy), has left her teaching job in Halifax to return home, no doubt to regroup under the nurturing care of her Heartswell family (We’re here for you, Lucy!), has been the successful bidder in the purchase of the school. As you know, since our municipality decided they couldn’t afford the upkeep of the old school (Heartswell Review #24, “Where does the money go?”) they decided to auction off the old building for the cost of $1, with the understanding that the new owner would assume responsibility for transforming the building into a community center. Although our Lucy could not be reached for comment, it has been observed by several HAWC members that she has indeed moved into the school, no doubt beginning the renovations as we speak. HAWC all agree that the creation of a café, community garden and yoga space would be excellent options to reinvigorate the school. Rumor has it that Lucy has purchased (of all things), a goat which we can only surmise to be the beginnings of a petting zoo for the youngsters.

  I am certain that I echo the sentiments of our entire community when I say Huzzah, Lucy! We look forward to the transformation of our old school and will be watching the developments with the eager interest and encouragement that is the HAWC mandate. (Heartswell Review #1 “Irenia Crawley leads the way in community betterment”)

  One

  Lucy groaned her eyes open. She licked her cracked lips and wondered if some small animal had crawled into her mouth in the night and died. The steady pounding of her head was echoed by the heavy knocking of a fist on a door. Squinting, she rolled herself from her fetal position, pillow clutched against her stomach, sheets twisted like bad dreams around her limbs, and realized that she was awake, she was hung over, and the cops were at the door.

  “How do I know it’s the cops?” she asked Dog.

  They understood each other, her and Dog. It was the only relationship she had that didn’t depend on her being a decent human being. Dog didn’t seem to care about her drinking, her attitude or her personal hygiene.

  She credited her success with Dog to kibble. Provide kibble, receive unconditional love. If only there was kibble for men.

  “I know it’s the cops,” she said, tilting her own head, Dog-like, toward the repeated pounding on the door. “Because that’s the way cops knock, and so…”

  Dog didn’t wait for her to finish.

  He was already going ballistic; barking down the wide hallway, past the grade three classroom, the library, the Principal’s office, nails scrabbling on the tile, a dull thump reverberating through the recesses of her skull as he slammed into a wall trying to navigate a tight turn.

  Men had left her bed as quickly, sometimes with graver injuries.

  The pounding continued.

  The barking continued.

  The throbbing in her head continued.

  She shuffled through the empty school, pushed Dog out of the way and opened the wide school doors. She braced herself, trying to remember how to smile as Dog barked and spun maniacally in circles around the ankles of two police officers shining like storm troopers in the morning light. She rallied herself sufficiently to attempt her best throaty Marilyn Monroe voice.

  “Oh, hello Officers. What can I do for you?” She was wearing an oversized t-shirt, six weeks of unshaved leg hair and bags under her eyes the color of dried plums.

  She was, she realized, a shambles.

  Having thoroughly investigated the cops, Dog retreated to the shrubbery, shitting proudly as though he was the Champion Shitter of the Universe. The cops blinked at her in the sudden bark-less silence, seeming to have forgotten why they were pounding on her door at the crack of dawn.

  “It’s not the crack of dawn, Ma’am. It’s almost noon.” That was the short fat one with a ridge on the back of his head. She wondered if he’d been born wearing a bike helmet he hadn’t taken off until puberty.

  “Well… noon is early, isn’t it?” She argued semantics sometimes, in the face of authority - the cops, her mother, the Heartswell Association of Women who Care. Everything was relative.

  “It’s relatively early… in the big scheme of things.”

  “I don’t know what big scheme you might be talking about Ms. McMahon, but you gotta get that goat under control.”

  That was the tall one. With the dimples. He’d be handsome, she thought, except for the lazy eye. Were cops allowed to have a lazy eye? She would ask Ruby later. Ruby would know.

  He was certainly tall though.

  It took her a moment of rather serious consideration to piece together the gist of his comment. Yes, she thought, goats definitely should be under control.

  That seemed like good advice.

  If you were in control of goats.

  Which Lucy definitely was not.

  “Officer, I’m just wondering what the police regulations are regarding having a lazy…”

  She didn’t get to finish her sentence because at just that moment a goat cantered merrily across the parking lot in front of the school’s steps.

  Lucy blinked, feeling she should remember som
ething significant about the animal in question, but coming up empty.

  Dog, who had finished his shitting business and was now peeing conscientiously on all four tires of the police cruiser parked jauntily in the school’s basketball court, spied the goat and gave chase. The goat, much to the dismay of both Lazy Eye and Helmet Head, leapt onto the cruiser, igniting some sort of police car siren. The combination of the shrieking alarm, the baying of the hound, the frantic arm-waving of the cops and the break-of-dawn-ness of the moment caused Lucy to quietly step back into the foyer of the school and close the big double doors.

  A goat.

  Yes, it definitely seemed wise for someone to control the goat.

  ✽✽✽

  The goat had seemed like a good idea. A sober idea. A Mature Woman Getting Back to Nature Idea.

  Or, a drunk woman with no one to stop her idea, but who’s pointing fingers?

  When the goat had arrived, on the back of a pickup in a crate that seemed to have been meant for cats, Lucy had been surprised. Not quite as surprised as the driver of the pickup, perhaps, who seemed to think he was doing a good thing, delivering this puzzling cargo.

  “They said you bought it last week at the Farmer’s Market,” he offered when she told him he must have the wrong address. “They said to deliver it to the school, Ma’am. So here it is.”

  When she had become Ma’am, she wasn’t sure, but she didn’t like it much.

  “I don’t know much about goats, Ma’am, but I don’t think a Music Room is the best place…”

  The Goat Delivery Boy was approximately twelve years old and obviously not prepared for the rigors of installing a miniature goat into the Music Room of an abandoned school. It had seemed perfectly reasonable to Lucy.

  Music Room: empty.

  Goat: needing lodging.

  It was kind of biblical, she thought later. A Noah kind of thing. Except that she owned an entire school, and she was pretty sure God had abandoned her at birth. Once she was sober, she also thought the Music Room had been a bad choice, but by then it was too late. Goat seemed to like the upright piano.

  The problem was that the Music Room was technically in the basement of the school, with windows that gave direct access to the playground at ground level. Lucy had yet to determine which window Goat was using to escape, and more specifically, how to permanently shut said window to prevent further escapism.

  She did, however, enjoy watching Goat frolic amongst the defunct playground equipment.

  “Probably the closest I’ll ever get to having children,” she said to Dog. Dog commiserated, as Dog was wont to do.

  Her mother did not.

  Commiserate.

  Her mother merely… miserated. Miserably.

  Lucy watched the cops leave from the safety of the library, peering out the window with her head pressed to the cool glass. She pulled on a pair of leggings and, realizing she had no coffee, no ibuprofen and a limited will to live, shuffled across the overgrown soccer field to Mumsy’s house. She congratulated herself on not living in her mother’s basement at the age of twenty-eight, unemployed and unemployable, and instead choosing the freedom of life as a lonely goatherd. Goat bleated gently in agreement, nibbling on her fingers as it followed her across the field.

  Mother was unimpressed and wasted no time on salutations. Instead, she launched immediately into her favorite topic. The spinsterhood of her only child.

  “You think you can maintain that monstrosity with no money and no man?” Lucy’s mother, Mary McMahon, was a fan of alliteration. “A school should serve someone.”

  “It’s serving me. The school is happy.”

  Lucy had decided that the school had a personality. The school was a living, breathing thing, and she was doing a Good Thing by living in it. By housing a goat in the Music Room. By storing whiskey in the Principal’s office. “I’ll install a wood stove and invite itinerant preachers to come bless it with holy wine. It’s all good.”

  Mother would not be placated. “Healthy people don’t live in schools. Healthy people have houses, with husbands.”

  “Think of it as a big house, Mumsy. I just have to find a big husband to fill it. Or a custodian, at the minimum. Or maybe a Principal,” she giggled. Mumsy did not. “Goat needs a Principal, he’s quite unruly.”

  “A goat.” Mumsy snorted. Lucy’s mother was as far from a “Mumsy” as her tweed skirt and buttoned cardigan would allow her to be. There was nothing nurturing about Mary McMahon. No nonsense was more like it. “Goats gallivanting in the gloaming.”

  Mother was Irish. She knew what gloaming meant. She also was able to convey the censure of an entire country with the slightest frown, like an angry leprechaun in an itchy kilt. She was frowning at Lucy, who had no idea what a gloaming might be.

  “Why did you never take me to Ireland, Mums? I feel I have lost connection with my heritage, somehow.”

  “What’re ye playing at, girl? Git over yerself. That is all.”

  Despite all evidence to the contrary, Lucy knew that Mother understood. Mother sympathised. Mother hid Scotch under the sink.

  “The goat is my attempt to reclaim my Irish genealogical connection to husbandry and… um… cheese. It’s all about the cheese.”

  “Husbandry. Hmmph.”

  Lucy did, at least, have a short Irish fuse when it came to her temper.

  “Ok, Mother. I get it. I would rather marry a goat than any of the men who have graced my door in the past few… well… okay? I’m going to make cheese. That is all.” She made her way to the sink, reached deep into the recesses behind the dish liquid and shoe polish, and wrapped a happy fist around the solid neck of a whiskey bottle.

  “You’re in fine fettle. That’s no way to talk to your Mother,” Mumsy grunted, a sound that warmed Lucy’s heart. Mumsy was not offended. She seemed to enjoy it. “I thought I raised you better.”

  “I’m living with a goat in an empty school that I bought for a dollar. I was raised, obviously, by wolves.”

  Lucy stuffed the Scotch in her bag, grabbed her bundle of washed, ironed and folded laundry, a loaf of fresh bread and the shampoo that could only be bought in Halifax that her mother picked up for her along with voluminous boxes of tampons and individual servings of hummus, and, balancing a mug of steaming coffee on top of it all, prepared to exit grandly, an Independent Woman Asserting her Independence.

  “Get the door for me, Mums?”

  Peck on the cheek, a promise to remove the goat and Lucy shuffled back across the barren soccer field which separated her achingly empty school from her mother’s bungalow, promising herself she wouldn’t open the Scotch till after five.

  The goat shook its woolly head when, ten minutes later, at roughly two in the afternoon, Lucy sat on the abandoned slide with a glass in her hand.

  “Gloaming, my ass,” she thought, as the ice in her glass tinkled with the sound of weeping leprechauns.

  Two

  It was well after midnight when Dorian finally shut down his laptop and considered bed.

  “She moved like…” he said to the dark room, a pair of unblinking yellow eyes his only audience. “She moved like an old lady. She shuffled like a broken toy.”

  He drummed his fingers on the edge of the desk.

  “She moved like a really fat cat.”

  He patted his thigh and was rewarded with the solid thump of a very large feline leaping from the gloom and landing on his lap. The purring began immediately.

  “She moved, Wilma, in some interesting way which will make the reader see her as broken, hurt, and damaged,” he told the cat. He scratched the massive tabby’s head only to flinch as she buried her claws into his legs. He grimaced, but kept patting the giant feline, enjoying the weight of her pinning him to his chair. The light from the kitchen came in through the open door, illuminating stacks of books and papers strewn in piles filling the small study. It was Dorian’s favorite room. He did his best thinking surrounded by the smell of old books and cat fur.

&
nbsp; “She moved like a freight train about to leave its tracks,” he said. “Ooh, that’s good.”

  He dumped Wilma unceremoniously onto the floor and turned back to the laptop, frowning as he realized he had closed it and would have to power it back on to record his latest epiphany. He yawned, glanced at the time and decided his literary efforts for the night were over.

  He scrawled ‘freight train’ on the pad of paper by his elbow.

  Then he added ‘goat’.

  Lucy. The lady in the old school with the goat had been haunting him ever since she cracked open the school doors, looking like a train wreck and smelling like moldy socks. It was her eyes, he decided. Bloodshot, yes. But such a deep brown they were almost chestnut. With gold flecks. And a significant amount of pain.

  It wasn’t her pain that attracted him to her; it was something more visceral than that. Even with her obvious state of distraction, her eyes spoke volumes. He was reacting to that soulful look of a person misplaced. Lucy McMahon had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it had hurt her. He just knew it. She was meant for much more beautiful things in her life than whatever she was diving for in the bottom of the bottle.

  “She moved like every step took her farther away from where she needed to be,” he said.

  Wilma jumped back on his lap and began kneading his thigh.

  “Too wordy,” Dorian tipped his head back and closed his eyes.

  Lucy’s face swam in front of his eyes and he wondered if she liked to read. He loved words. He loved the dance and movement of words on the page and how an entire story could come to him whole, in one piece, with people and plot and dialogue… it was so much more difficult to understand real people.

  He knew he shouldn’t be attracted to Lucy, not when she was so obviously a disaster, but there it was. Maybe it was his writer’s mind that wanted to explore her more deeply. Like she was the heroine of one of his romance novels, waiting to be discovered.