Stranger on the Shore Read online

  Stranger On the Shore

  Claire Highton-Stevenson

  Copyright © 2022 Claire Highton-Stevenson

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Dedication

  Learning to love yourself is a process that takes dedication to ensure your happiness and fulfilment in life.

  -Barbara Cain

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks Dor for jumping in and saving the day!!.

  Prologue

  My name is Quinn Harper and for the most part, my life has been a steady existence. I went to college and got my degree, and then I headed to the West Coast and got my first job in Hollywood, waiting tables like every other young actor or screenwriter like me. I soon dropped the acting part, figuring I was better at putting words into other people’s mouths than trying to convey them myself.

  It worked out well for me. I got a big break when a studio hired me and the rest, as they say, is history, but this story isn’t just about me. I just figured that I am the best person to tell it.

  It’s a story of love and loss, of heartbreak, and I’ll be honest with you, there are some truly horrific moments in this story, but without telling them, you can’t understand the pressure and intensity that surrounded me and my life during this time. And though it almost broke me, I’d do it a thousand times over again if it meant that I ended up where I am. Because I am happy, finally.

  But love isn’t always a Hollywood romantic comedy.

  Sometimes it’s a battle just to hold on for one glorious moment until the bad guy ruins it all over again. Sometimes the good guys lose, and the bad guy gets to do whatever the hell they want because there are no rules in life when it comes to love, ego, and power.

  And in the end, the happy ever after is often whatever the main characters can salvage and grab for themselves. No matter how messy it gets.

  So, brace yourself because my and Natasha’s story is anything but uneventful, and some of you are going to be triggered by the events that follow, so be prepared. But I think it’s a story worth telling. Proof that when you really want something, the dream can come true.

  Now, sit back and let me tell you a story…

  Part One

  Chapter One

  It was a Thursday in December, that much she definitely knew. Christmas was coming but Quinn wasn’t that bothered. She had other things to be concentrating on. It was a much of a nothing kind of day where all that had happened of interest so far was that Quinn had gotten up, managed to get dressed, and was at her desk finally doing some work. Outside, the weather was doing a good impression of mustering up a storm. A dark and gloomy sky rebounding off the ocean to create a never-ending blanket of grey. It was cold too. California had a reputation for being a sunshine state, but those who actually lived on the beach knew that winter could be just as mean here as it was in a lot of other places.

  Logs burned in the fireplace, a big marble mantle that was far too big for the size of the room, but Quinn hadn’t cared. The fireplace had been the second biggest selling point when it came to buying this house over the one further along the beach. The first selling point had been the floor-to-ceiling windows and doors that looked out from the lounge onto the beach. It was a view that was worth every penny, and Quinn had fallen in love with it the moment she had seen it. She wasn’t even really looking to buy a house. Content to rent the little condo she’d been in for years, but a big contract on a new TV show had meant her financial advisor did what she paid them to do and advised her. Buy a house. Put the money into bricks because it would be the best investment she could make. And he was right, this house was the best investment she could have made because she loved it.

  And on this boring, nothing out of the ordinary Thursday morning, Quinn fell in love with something else too.

  As she sat back in her chair, her pen stuck between her teeth as she considered the next part of her script.

  Quinn glanced out of the windows as she always did. Sometimes just staring at the water ebbing and flowing was all she needed to clear her mind and let the story unfold in her imagination. But today her line of sight was obscured by a lonely figure sitting on the sand about a quarter of the way toward the ocean.

  Honey blonde hair was tied neatly at her nape, the wind whipping it up would blow it into her face. The complete opposite of herself, with her short hair cut into the nape of her neck. Dark and brooding her look right now. She contemplated why she was there.

  Quinn watched as the figure would reach up, her arm jerking slightly with the movement as she pushed the hair away or slid it back behind her ear. Other than that, she just sat there, still.

  Intrigued, Quinn stood and walked to the window for a better look.

  It was cold. Not the kind of day anyone would choose to sit on the beach, as was evident by the fact that it was completely deserted in both directions apart from the odd jogger or dog walker. The weather reports indicated several big storms over the coming days and some local residents had literally battened down the hatches and took off back to their more inland residences.

  A frenzy of salty spray hit the windows. Grey swirls of angry waves crashed against the shoreline before racing backwards, sucked up once more before being spewed back against the sand, the water’s edge inching ever closer inland with each turn. Quinn wasn’t worried about that, the water never made it this far up the beach. It would take a mini tsunami to cause any issues like that, but she was concerned about the woman.

  She wasn’t dressed for this kind of weather. She stood out like the proverbial sore thumb in just a thin blue knitted cardigan that was wrapped around her and held tightly in place by thinner arms that hugged her knees to her ribcage. Her chin rested there, she seemed content to just stare out to sea.

  Every now and then, there would be a jerky movement as one hand released its grip of her legs and wiped at her face or hair. She looked as though she were in pain.

  Standing there, warm in her expensive mohair jumper and expensive chinos, Quinn was brought from her thoughts by the sound of The A-Team theme tune blaring loudly from her phone. She turned abruptly to pick it up and couldn’t find it. The tune was coming from beneath the piles of paper, old scripts, and new contract offers that hung precariously on the edge of her desk. She knew from the ringtone that it was her agent, wanting to know if she had read the offers on the same pile that had hidden the phone.

  “Well, yeah,” she said in response to the question. It wasn’t a lie, not really, she had skimmed through them briefly when they had arrived over a week ago. Currently, Quinn was working on a cop show, Jackson & Jones, and loving it, but her agent had other ideas and was constantly trying to woo her away to other, bigger projects.

  But she had a healthy bank balance, her home was bought and paid for, and all in all, her life was good right now. And she could name-drop several now A-list stars as firm friends if she wanted to be the kind of person who name-dropped for a good impression, but that wasn’t really who Quinn Harper was. Enjoying the backdrop of celebrity, without actually having to be one and live in that constant spotlight, was perfect as far as Quinn was concerned. She could attend all the big events, go to all the parties she wanted, and not once would the paparazzi even spare a second to take her photo. Living the dream, that’s what they called it, right?

  She could stroll around and be completely ignored, just like every other nobody in this town and that was just how she liked it.

  With her agent still talk
ing, Quinn turned away from the window and the woman on the beach and flopped down into the armchair nearest the fire. Letting the warmth of it soothe her. But as she sat there, half-listening, her mind kept being drawn back to the woman on the beach.

  “I’m just not ready to sign up for anything else yet,” she said into the phone as she leaned forward and added another log to the fire. “Because nothing really grabs me, you know? And I like this show. We’re looking good for a TVSAA nom.”

  And that was the reason her agent was pushing for other things. The Television Screen Actors Awards were exciting enough for Quinn.

  “Look, as soon as I find what it is I want, trust me, I’ll be the first to tell you,” Quinn assured. “Sure, okay. Bye for now.” She closed off the call and got on her feet again. As she neared the window, she fully expected the woman to have gone, but she hadn’t. Had she even moved?

  The sight of her, sitting out there alone in the cold concerned her somewhat. The question ‘why’ kept playing on Quinn’s mind. Firstly, because she was a human being who cared about others and this woman had her on high alert. But also because people watching was a master skill of any writer, and people didn’t sit on a beach by themselves, in the cold, in the middle of winter, because they were happy.

  Not to mention that this wasn’t the part of the beach that generally attracted tourists. The houses that lined this stretch of Malibu beach were all privately owned, not hotels or places that people might visit. Each plot had its own area of the beach fenced off, but the rest was free to be used by anyone. The public walked past often, but mostly it was locals who used the beach, and you got used to seeing those regular faces. Nodding good morning or even waving a hello here and there. But just sitting there, in the damp and cold, by yourself, rang alarm bells for Quinn.

  The clouds were darker now. The sky looking like a swirling marble of greys and black with the familiar blue of a Californian sky nowhere to be seen. Rain was needed, that much was true, so nobody was against a few storms. The previous summer had been a scorcher, so a little rain would be welcome in any other circumstance. The wind whipped up again, a little stronger this time, and sent sand and spray against the window with a hard rat-a-tat-tat.

  Quinn hoped that the woman would go home before she caught her death, but at the same time, she felt strangely drawn to wanting to watch her. It had been a long while since she had been interested in anyone, but this wasn’t quite the same thing, still, the woman already intrigued her by just sitting on the beach, more than anyone else had done over dinner and drinks recently.

  It was usually around this time that Quinn headed out for a run, though she hadn’t done so for a couple of days now. Laziness, the weather, and being absorbed in work had meant it had slipped off her radar of important things to do. Five kilometres along the shore then five back every day helped keep her fit and active. Rain or shine, she had no excuses not to get moving usually, and she decided there and then that she could kill two birds with one stone. Get back into the habit of exercise and take a closer look at the intriguing woman on the beach.

  She ran up the stairs and changed into her running gear, choosing long sweatpants over her usual shorts, and a Lycra long-sleeved top instead of the usual sleeveless shirt. She strapped her iPod to her arm, connected the fancy wireless earbuds to it and pushed them into her ears, her feet pushing into comfortable shoes.

  Stepping out into the cold wind was an experience. It wasn’t just cold, it was bitter. The spray and sand stung her face as she took those first steps that led her into a slow jog past the woman. Quinn was surprised when the woman looked up at her and made eye contact. For a moment, Quinn almost lost her footing, she was stunning. Quinn nodded at her as a sign of acknowledgement before tearing her eyes away and gazing at the more familiar scene ahead, of sand, and more sand.

  As Quinn ran, all she could think about were the woman’s eyes. Green or maybe blue, marine, or sea foam, they deserved a fancy name like that. Quinn had never been so captivated in her life. Those eyes that were wet with tears, from sadness, or just the stinging coldness of the wind, she didn’t know. What she did know however, was that she didn’t want to run any further, and cutting it short, she turned and retraced her steps back towards her house, and to her. The stranger on the shore. But it was too late.

  She had gone.

  Chapter Two

  Nothing much else happened over the weekend. Quinn actually read through all of the contract offers and politely declined them all. She had a reputation to uphold after all, and the next job that she took, be it for TV or film, needed to be something that a) she would enjoy, and b) added something to her already impressive CV. But every now and then she would glance out through the windows just in case. Something about the woman had stuck with her and now she wished she had stopped and talked to her, but then she reminded herself that privacy was often what most people wanted when they took themselves off somewhere quiet.

  Saturday had become Quinn’s roaming day, as her mother would have called it. Wandering around antique shops and flea markets, in search of nothing in particular, she just enjoyed it. Sometimes something caught her eye, and she imagined the backstory to it. Who had owned it, had it been a gift from a lover? Maybe that was why she liked antiques, they all had a history, stories waiting to be told. She didn’t buy anything though, she rarely did. But from a young age, sitting on her grandfather’s knee, to now, as a fully grown adult who ran, not to music, but to audiobooks, because she loved the stories. He had told her about the things he had brought back from the war, and his travels after, and it had all enthralled her growing imagination.

  With music, she could never get the rhythm right and tended to run too speedily and tire too easily if the beat was fast; but a story? She could get lost in those, and she often did. Running much farther than she had planned to. So, stories were healthy as far as she was concerned.

  The storm that had been threatening on Thursday had hit and lasted well into Friday. Thunder had crashed, and lightning forked and lit up the sky out at sea. On Sunday the heavens opened and a downpour to end all downpours burst from the sky.

  Quinn had the fire burning almost continuously in an effort to keep warm. The house was nice and cosy, just how she liked it. It was a fair description of a lot of things in Quinn’s life, herself included.

  It wasn’t a big house in comparison with some of her neighbors, but it was a home. Not a weekend getaway, or a summer vacation place, this was Quinn’s home. The downstairs consisted of the large living room on the beachside of the house with its fireplace and floor-to-ceiling windows and doors that opened onto the beach and gave spectacular views. It was the room Quinn spent most of her time in. At the back, where the house backed onto the street, was the open plan kitchen diner and downstairs water closet and utility room.

  Upstairs housed three double bedrooms, two with bathrooms attached, and a family bathroom for anyone else to use who might be staying. Not that Quinn had guests to stay very often, but the rooms were there just in case.

  She didn’t keep too much stuff around the house. An ex had liked to keep things tidy, and it had kind of rubbed off on Quinn, now, she’d probably be described as edging towards minimalist. There was a small cabinet on the wall in the living room that housed several awards she had received over the years, mostly for her work on some of the top TV shows of the time. Gods on Top, The Cost of it All, and I See You, to name a few. None of them were on air any longer, but the re-runs popped up here and there. They were still popular with the audiences at home.

  She had one, though, that took pride of place in her heart, but she still locked it inside the cabinet along with the rest.

  The golden statuette for Best Original screenplay that she had won for her part in creating the blockbuster Euphoric. It swept the board and catapulted all four of the writing team to the status of Oscar winner, a coveted position that everyone in Hollywood endeavored to reach, and she had done at the age of twenty-eight She was thirt
y-six now, and still living off the glory of that one night on the red carpet, when her face and name was ‘something’ people recognized for about thirty-six hours.

  Quinn sat down and began working on a few ideas that had been swimming around in her thoughts for a while now. Making use of her self-imposed sabbatical to see if she could come up with something all by herself was both exciting and terrifying.

  Mostly for TV, you wrote episodes as a collective, sometimes one would take the lead and put forward most of the structure, but there would be input from everyone else, and those teams could be quite big on some shows.

  It had been the same for Euphoric, except a smaller group of four writers all giving input to create a vision that could be moved from words on a page, to action on the big screen. So, it was a new concept for Quinn to try her hand at something as a solo writer again.

  Occasionally, she would glance up from her desk and look out of the window to the sand, hoping to see the stranger. She had no idea why this woman had suddenly become so important to her, but something about her had struck her empathy. She wasn’t there though, and so, Quinn stopped thinking about her and got on with the job at hand, her work. Because at some point, she would have to actually do something that paid her bills and got her out of the house and back into the real world, where other people existed and connected because she was definitely in need of that. She made a mental note to give some friends a call and organize something.

  Chapter Three

  Tuesday morning brought with it the much-needed sunshine that Californian residents were used to. It was cool, but not cold, and as Quinn was preparing for her daily run, she glanced out of the window, like she’d been doing every time she entered this room, and it wasn’t just for the view. Every day, there was a small selfish bubble of hope that the woman would be back.