Love comes when you least expect it...
Tressa Buckland likes her quiet life in Port Lowdy, with its cobbled streets and colourful terraced houses overlooking the sea. Her job at the local paper allows her to pursue her art in her free time, with no one but her tabby cat Ginger Pickles to mind her in Mermaid Terrace. But then the owner of the paper is called away on an emergency, and it's up to Tressa to run the paper for six months. Her first task: find a new part-time journalist.
Dan Byrne is the angriest man in Ireland – or so the readers of his very successful column, 'Dan takes on the world', think. But after a story goes south and he loses his job in Dublin, Dan has no choice but to start afresh. When an opportunity comes up in sleepy Cornwall, Dan and his Golden Retriever Ritchie set off for a new adventure.
For Tressa, Dan's arrival to Port Lowdy changes everything. Tressa tries not to look too deeply at her own life, but Dan sees a story to uncover in absolutely everyone – even her. The two of them couldn't be more different... yet, if they can find a way to work together, they may just breathe new life and joy into this sleepy seaside village.
Finding Love at Mermaid Terrace is a heartwarming new village romance about the power of love and kindness, from the bestselling author of Starting Over at Acorn Cottage.
Mermaid Terrace was her heaven, a stone terrace house with a bay window that looked out over the few fishing boats left over from a previous era. She had bought it with money her grandmother left her. She often wondered if her grandmother had understood how difficult it was to grow up under the mothering of Wendy Buckland. Her parents’ house was so grand and so perfect that people stopped to take photos of it. Inside, it was impossible to put down a glass or a mug without a coaster appearing from somewhere. Tressa used to wonder if her mother had a holster of them ready to fling at anyone from ten yards like a cowboy, protecting the heavy furniture from unsightly water rings.
As she rode through the village, the freshly laundered tablecloths from The Black Swan pub snapped in the wind, bickering with each other. She waved at Marcel the owner, who was sitting outside the pub drinking a coffee and reading the paper. Marcel made a lovely crab bisque with croutons, which was old-fashioned, but Port Lowdy was that sort of place. This suited Tressa. She painted old-fashioned pictures that weren’t popular with the art market but they made her happy.
Penny Stanhope the postmistress waved as she turned over the Closed sign on the door. The post office also served as the bank, the local passport office, and the insurance office. Penny sold chutneys and jams made by some of the local women and questionable shell craft with googly eyes and the occasional diamante for pizazz. Port Lowdy didn’t really do pizazz so the shell craft didn’t sell but the jams were popular.
The bakery with its striped red awning was already open, the Cornish pasties just out of the oven and the scones rising for morning tea. There was a small garden out the side of the bakery with a white picket fence where tourists could eat their Cornish cream tea under the apple trees and watch the passing foot traffic.
Tressa pedalled up the small hill and came to the front of the little office that was both the headquarters of The Port Lowdy Occurrence and the local car rental in the summer. She pushed open the door, trying to balance the bike and the heavy wood door. She took off her bicycle helmet and felt her curls spring outwards in protest after the short ride.
Tressa’s black curls had a life of their own. Her brother didn’t get them, in fact, no one knew where the curly hair gene had come from in the Buckland family. Everyone else was blonde and brown-eyed but Tressa had dark hair and blue eyes. As a child, she used to pore over the family tree in the old family Bible on the bookshelf. Her curls were from ancestors unknown, and it always gave Tressa a thrill to think of the relative who bequeathed the hair to her, generations later, like a charm. Her skill for drawing was also an unclaimed talent: no one could see where it came from in the family tree. Tressa cherished these differences because they made her special – and God knows it was hard to be special in her family.
Anything for a peaceful life, her boss George Fox said, and she agreed. George was the owner and editor of The Port Lowdy Occurrence. It was just the two of them working at the Occurrence, but the paper made enough to pay her wage and keep George in whisky, and it funded his passion for antiques. They were busy enough through advertising from the fishing and holiday community and George had business all over Cornwall, with the car rental in the summer and numerous other fingers in other Cornish pasties.
I live in Melbourne, Australia with my husband, two children and dogs and I can be found nursing a laptop, surrounded by magazines and talking on the phone, usually all at once. I am an avid follower of fashion, fame and all things pop culture and I am also an excellent dinner party guest who always brings gossip and champagne.
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