The Next Season (novella)

The Next Season

Rachael Johns

www.harlequinbooks.com.au

The Next Season
Rachael Johns

Sometimes going home is the hardest thing you can do…and sometimes the hardest thing turns out to be the best.

When Zoe Bennett's boyfriend cheats on her, leaving her homeless, jobless and practically broke, she returns to the only place she's ever felt safe and at home – Wildwood Point. She hopes to heal her heart and find a job to get herself back on her feet – but she has forgotten how small Wildwood Point is.

Until a couple of months ago Shaun Elliot's life was sweet – a job he loved and big plans for the future. Until, that is, his long-time girlfriend turned down his romantic New Year's Eve marriage proposal in front of all their family and friends. Angry, hurt and feeling like he is the laughing stock of small town Wildwood Point, Shaun has sworn off relationships while he works out what to do with himself and his life.

The last thing he needs is to find his high school sweetheart stranded on the side of the road. She broke his heart when she left him seven years ago, but he's never been the type to ignore someone who needs help…

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Epilogue—four weeks later

More bestselling Rachael Johns titles from Harlequin Mira:

One

Welcome To Wildwood Point—population 1899

Zoe Bennett slowed her hot pink Kingswood station wagon and sighed as she read the sign at the edge of the only town she'd ever felt truly at home. Just another kilometre or so and she could stop panicking. It felt like she'd been holding her breath for the last twenty minutes. She eyed the flashing fuel light on the dashboard and offered up a silent plea to a God she didn't believe existed, driving more sedately than she usually did in a mission to conserve petrol.

She'd used her last fifty dollars to fill up in Mandurah. Well, not quite her last. There was about ten dollars' worth of loose change in the bottom of her handbag but she planned to use that to buy a beer at The Wildwood Tavern. After all she'd been through, she needed that beer. She'd drink it in celebration of new beginnings. Zoe had started afresh in Wildwood Point once before, so she could to do it again.

Her eyes flashed from one side of the road to the other, drinking in the familiar and comforting surroundings of forest on one side and ocean on the other. Despite her dire last few months, she could smell hope in the air. Okay, so maybe that was the salty sea breeze, but to Zoe that
was
hope. So many of her happy memories had taken place here, in this little tourist town on the south west coast of Australia. Many of them in the waves. There was a reason board riders flocked to this region—it had some of the best swells in the world—and she'd been lucky enough to learn to surf in them.

She glanced in her rear-view mirror at the love of her life. ‘You okay there, Josie? Not long to go.' Her surfboard took up most of the back of the car but she wouldn't go anywhere without it. Maybe one day she'd get a roof rack for it. That would be the practical thing to do; then again, she'd never been the most practical of people.

Lost in thought, trying to flood herself with happiness and hope (power of positive thinking and all), it actually came as a shock when her car shuddered. Reacting quickly, she turned the wheel towards the side of the road and only just made it to the gravel shoulder before the engine conked out completely.

‘Well. Shit.' Zoe laid her head against the steering wheel and took a deep breath, determined not to cry. It wasn't like this was the worst thing that had ever happened to her. Lust for a beer had been her downfall. If only she'd spent those last few coins on a few extra litres of petrol.

She'd been head over steering wheel all of ten seconds when she heard another vehicle pull up behind her. A car door slammed and she wiped her eyes, taking another glance in the rear-view mirror to scope out the figure loping towards her.

Definitely a guy. Tall and tanned, wearing board shorts and a t-shirt (pretty much uniform in these parts). That was the extent of the detail she could identify as he was also wearing sunnies and a cap. So, when he arrived at her car and stooped to look in through her window, she wasn't prepared for the jolt of recognition that hit her hard in the chest. Or was it the heart?

‘Shaun? Shaun Elliot?'

‘Zoe?' He sounded equally shocked as he popped his sunglasses atop his cap, showcasing his dark, sparkling eyes and the smile lines around them. He wasn't smiling now. His mouth hung open in astonishment, revealing two rows of the sexiest teeth on the planet. Her mind immediately transported her back to when she'd been a smitten seventeen year old and that mouth had first claimed hers. Heat flared in her cheeks and
awareness skittered down her spine. Was it a good or bad omen that the first person she'd run into was the guy she'd lost her virginity to? If Shaun was cute back then, now he positively dripped with sex appeal from his dark chocolate mop of curls right down to the toes, which peeped out of his Havaianas. All she could think about was reaching out and running a finger over his razor stubble.

Realising she was practically drooling, she snapped her lower lip back up to meet her upper, smiled and then said, ‘Hi. How are you?'

It wasn't much of a greeting after the history they shared and all the time they'd been apart, but she was too bamboozled to think of anything better.
Stupid.
She should have known when she'd decided to return to Wildwood that the chances of running into Shaun were high. His family had lived here for generations and owned a renowned furniture gallery in town. She hadn't kept tabs on him or anything, but occasionally Sandee—her surrogate mum—sent her copies of
The Wildwood Whisperer
and once in a while the Elliots got a mention, so she'd known he still called this small coastal town home.

‘I'm…okay.' He rubbed the side of his totally delicious jaw. ‘Wow, it's really you. Is this a fleeting visit? Have you come to see Sandee or are you—'

‘I'm not sure,' she interrupted with a shrug. ‘You know me. Never was good at staying in one spot for too long, but I missed this place. Thought it was time for a little catch up.'

He nodded, and then glanced towards her the front of her Kingswood. ‘Is there something wrong with your car?'

Zoe sighed and shook her head. ‘Not exactly. I've… This is so embarrassing. I've run out of petrol.' She should have been used to mortification by now, but that didn't mean she wanted to look stupid in front of Shaun.

He chuckled and then straightened up. ‘Let me give you a lift to the servo then.'

She bit her lip, hesitating a moment. It wasn't the idea of being in the confined space of Shaun's car that panicked her but rather what he would think when they got to the service station and she could barely afford a container to put petrol in, never mind the fuel itself. ‘Thanks, but I can walk,' she said, trying to inject fake chirpiness into her voice. She wondered how long she could leave her car on the side of the road before someone reported it as dumped.

He raised an eyebrow. ‘And let word get back to my mother that I left a damsel on the side of the road in distress? I don't think so.'

She threw him a glare. ‘Hey, I'm not a damsel!'

‘But you are in distress?'

Oh boy, if he only knew how much.

‘Fine.' She tried to smile her resignation, tugged her keys out of the ignition, grabbed her handbag off the passenger seat and undid her seatbelt. If anyone had to rescue her it may as well be Shaun. His easiness on the eye was an unexpected light in what could possibly be the darkest period in her life. And that was saying something.

He opened the door and held it for her as she climbed out. Shaun had always been a gentleman; it was one of the many things she'd found so appealing about him. As a teen who'd been tossed about from one foster home to the next, Zoe hadn't experienced much chivalry, and it had set him apart from the other boys their age who'd only been interested in one thing but couldn't be arsed putting in any effort to get it. She was glad to see he hadn't changed.

Shaun waited as she locked Jemima and then they traipsed across the gravel to his ute. He opened the door for her again and she slid into the passenger seat, stealing another
sweet glance down his broad torso as she did so. Yes, he was most definitely hotter than ever.

When he sat in the driver's seat beside her and started the ute, he asked, ‘Does Sandee know you're coming or is this a surprise?'

She buckled her seatbelt and held her handbag tightly on her lap, not trusting herself to look at him again. ‘Um… I mentioned the possibility of a visit when we talked a few weeks back, but in the end it happened rather quickly.' The mess with Jasper, which included losing her job and being turfed out of their house…well, that had forced her hand.

‘She'll be stoked to see you,' Shaun said, seemingly oblivious to her discomfort as his long fingers caressed the steering wheel. Looking at his hands had her memory once again rewinding to the distant past. A time when nothing had seemed more pressing than having those fingers running riot over her body. She shivered at the recollection, while inwardly telling herself not to get sentimental over first love.

‘Is the air con too cold?' Shaun asked.

‘No.' She swallowed and shook her head, her spine tingling at the knowledge he'd noticed such a tiny thing. ‘I…' Her voice drifted off. What should she say? That her shivers had nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with the way sitting so close to him made her feel after so long.

On the one hand it was nice to feel
anything
, after the bitter end to her two-year relationship (the longest she'd ever managed to hold down), but right now men and sex were low priorities. There were more important things to get straight before she even contemplated either of them again.

Sitting up straight, she made an attempt to direct the conversation away from herself. ‘So, what have you been up to in the last few years? Still surfing? Married? Kids?' She feared her voice caught on the word ‘married' but it was a reasonable question. Even years ago, Shaun had made no secret of the fact that he couldn't wait to settle down and have a family. She supposed it was the result of coming from large, happy family himself—something she knew jack shit about.

Shaun swallowed and gripped the steering wheel tightly at Zoe's questions. He'd been so lost in the surprise of seeing her again after all these years, at trying not to look sideways and stare, at trying to ignore the alluring scent of some kind of floral goodness emanating from her, that what was a pretty run-of-the-mill enquiry felt as if it had come out of nowhere. It would be easy to give her the short answers—‘yes', ‘no' and ‘no'—but if she hung around Wildwood Point more than a few hours, she'd hear his whole sorry story soon enough.

Almost two months had gone by since New Years Eve, when he'd embarrassed himself in front of his family and half the town, but nothing much had happened since to take the focus away from him. Even his future brother-in-law, Matt, buying a chocolate shop for his sister, Hannah, had only caused a temporary distraction.

The question was, did he want to be the one to tell Zoe, or would it be better if he let her learn it behind whispered hands in the supermarket or at the post office?

‘I surf every morning,' he said, buying himself a little time. A voice inside him said it didn't really matter what she thought of him anymore, but he found it did. Something had shifted inside him when he'd made eye contact with her on the side of the road only minutes ago. ‘Or if the waves aren't playing, I run and swim. But yes, I still spend as much
time as possible on the beach.' Hoping to deflect the conversation away from himself, he added, ‘I noticed you brought your board.'