His Horizon (His Contemporary MM Romance #1)

Chapter 1

J ude Anstey came home to Porthperrin months later than he’d promised, clutching the mast of the Aphrodite as she skimmed the Cornish coastline. Thirty metres of sleek sailing perfection, the yacht raced the dawn and sliced through waves far too fast for his liking.

He shouldn’t need to grip her mast so tightly, his knuckles bone-white like the beach his village was famed for, but Jude couldn’t make himself let go.

He couldn’t see that familiar crescent of white sand either, only some harbour lights in the distance, blinking through patches of sea mist. His stomach lurched at how soon those lights drew close, time suddenly passing so much quicker than it had while he’d been away on his travels.

“Looking a bit green about the gills, Jude.” His skipper’s gruff laugh gusted from his place at the wheel.

“Anyone would think you were the new hire, rather than a seasoned old hand. Maybe you should stay aboard for another few months. Grow a stronger pair of sea legs.” His teasing was a distraction from the brightening of the horizon.

It coloured the sea mist soft pink, gauzy banners between him and the village he’d done his level best to escape.

“Pretty place.” His skipper called out as the mist dissipated. “Quaint.”

Jude nodded rather than speaking. Porthperrin would be at its best right now before the summer season started, deserted, when its cobbled alleys would soon be clogged with noisy tourists.

They were the lifeblood of the village, their cash sustaining local business, but he couldn’t help preferring when Porthperrin was quiet.

The outline of slate-topped buildings grew steadily clearer, cottages seeming to tumble down the steep hill to pile around the harbour, the Anchor pub where he grew up nestled right at its centre.

The pub would have been a sight for sore eyes if his return wasn’t empty-handed.

His eyes stung with that fact. With no news to share with his sister—good, bad, or very ugly—he’d have to confess his failure. As the Aphrodite carried him towards that fate, Jude blinked to clear his vision.

“Yup. It’s a pretty-looking place, all right,” his skipper added, oblivious to Jude’s distress.

“But not half as pretty as the Maldives, so how about I get rid of the new hire? I’ll make that cheeky sauce-pot walk the plank.

Maybe he could help your sister run the Anchor for the summer instead of you.

Then we can get back to somewhere warmer.

I can still make that happen, Jude. All you have to do is ask me. ”

It was a tempting prospect, but Jude made himself shake his head.

“No? Where’s your sense of adventure? I’ll promote you if you say yes.”

Jude pulled himself together, loosening his death grip on the mast. “Promote me to what, exactly?” His voice was a dry rasp after hours of silence.

His skipper usually let him keep his own counsel, but now he seemed to need a verbal answer.

“I’m already your cook and bottle washer, let alone a tour guide for your rich clients.

” Jude slipped into autopilot as the harbour drew close, working in synchrony to berth her.

“What’s left that I don’t do for you already? ”

“What don’t you do for me, Jude?” The yacht slid into a free spot by the sea wall, his skipper making the manoeuvre look easy, his attention fully focussed on bringing Jude home safely.

He sent the new hire ashore before replying.

“I can think of a few new tasks I could assign.” He cast a line shoreside, his usual stoic expression troubled.

“You could call me by my first name, for a start. It’s Tom, not Skip, now that you’re off the payroll.

And you could…” He was indecisive for once, instead of his usual cool, calm and collected.

Tom scrubbed a hand through silvering, sea-damp hair.

“Well, there’s a lot you could do differently Jude, if you wanted. With me, I mean. Together.”

That was a lot to take in. Jude hadn’t seen the offer coming.

“What I’m saying,” Tom quickly added, “is that we work well together, professionally. We might work just as well personally if you stayed.” He busied himself coiling rope, his gaze fixed on it.

“You’re a godsend in the galley—a top-notch chef as well as a born sailor.

I like that you think before speaking.” His voice lowered.

“We’ve built a good working relationship.

Taking it further wouldn’t exactly be a hardship. ”

“I have to leave.” As Jude spoke, a fishing boat chugged past. The Aphrodite bobbed in its wake, her deck rising and falling as if nodding in agreement. “I promised my sister I’d come home. I promised that months ago.”

Tom followed Jude as he jumped from the gunwale onto the sea wall steps, the granite gritty underfoot compared to the smooth teak of the yacht’s deck.

He spoke quietly once they both stood shoreside, perhaps aware that the nosy new hire listened.

“I know you promised to come home, Jude, but please listen to me. Take some advice from someone older.” He rubbed at his glinting stubble.

“Finding someone you can work with so well, who knows what you need before you do, and who shoulders half of your load without asking….” His low chuckle was rueful.

“Well, when you find someone like that who’s easy to look at as well, you’d be a damn fool to let them walk away without trying hard to keep them. ”

“I… I didn’t know. Why didn’t you—?”

“Say something earlier?” Tom grasped his wrist, like Jude had clutched the mast only minutes before, his grip a squeeze of rope-roughened fingers. “Do you remember what you were like when I hired you?”

Jude thought and then nodded, that sick lurch of earlier returning.

“You were a wreck, Jude. Exhausted. How long had you been travelling for, by then?”

Searching . He’d been searching for months rather than travelling for fun, or island-hopping, like so many people his age. He hadn’t gone sightseeing in the Seychelles or snorkelled in warm Goan shallows. Instead, he’d scoured the Indian Ocean in search of news to bring home to his sister.

“Jude, it took a long time before you got your head straight.” Tom squared his shoulders and broached a subject Jude had only voiced once, drunk with grief and tiredness. “Your parents were lost at sea—”

“You don’t know that,” Jude snapped. No one did, for certain.

Tom’s nod was reluctant. “Okay. They were likely lost at sea, and you were grieving about that. I get that. I do. It took a lot for you to keep looking, despite the chances of them surviving being…” He winced before finishing. “…slim-to-none.”

Regret was a noose around Jude’s neck. It tightened with each reminder.

“A yacht the size of the Aphrodite can weather bad storms,” Tom said. “You know that. But a vessel the size of your father’s caught in the worst typhoon for decades, and him the only experienced sailor aboard….”

Jude’s throat constricted even further. Knowing all of that had been hard to live with during his first months crewing for Tom, his focus split between work and scanning each new horizon for a sign of his parents.

Later, with Tom’s steadiness to ground him, Jude had found some plainer mental sailing, even if he still searched every port for a boat called the One for Luck that his dad had spent years building.

“I had to come home sometime,” Jude just about managed to get out, wishing he was anywhere else rather than home, right then. “I promised Louise.”

“Jude, you said that before, then you changed your mind.”

“It…it seemed too soon to give up,” he said.

That was only a few months after the police had arrived midway through dinner service at the London restaurant where he’d worked.

They’d told him news that had been life-changing, and from that moment onwards, Jude had been committed to proving them wrong.

Coming home empty-handed like this though… .

Tom released Jude’s wrist very gradually.

“You can’t blame yourself for not finding them, Jude.

Or for not finding any wreckage when you didn’t exactly know where to look for it.

And you can’t blame me either for hoping all the way here that you’d change your mind one more time.

” Jude shook his head instead of replying, so Tom continued softly.

“I only want you to be sure. Really sure. You’re how old?

Somewhere in your twenties? You’ll be racing through your forties before you know it, like me, with half the world left to explore.

Just because you feel some family obligation to shackle yourself to a failing business—”

Anger let loose more words than Jude would usually spare.

“I’m not shackling myself to anything. I promised I’d come back, that’s all, to help get the pub set up for the summer.

And it’s not a failing business.” Okay, his sister’s messages hadn’t exactly been positive for a while that winter, but she’d sounded brighter whenever he called home lately.

“The pub has always done okay in the past. Once the summer tourists arrive, it’ll be business as usual,” apart from his parents not being behind the bar, he thought, still no closer to acceptance.

“Mum and Dad never meant to leave running the Anchor up to her for so long. It was only meant to be a once-in-a-lifetime adventure before they were too old to enjoy it. We just need to keep the pub going until they get back. It won’t be forever. ”

“Okay, okay. But ask yourself this, Jude: you had a great career in London, didn’t you? Or the start of one, anyhow, if you really were a semi-finalist in that best-chef competition.”

“I was.” Now that contest felt as if it happened to a whole other person.