Two Scrooges come together for a festive-free holiday season by the sea and find all their anti-Christmas plans going up in smoke when they decide to play Santa for a single mom and her child.
Eloise Garrett thinks Christmas is overpriced, overhyped, and overrated, and without any family to share it with, she feels sad, lonely and isolated. The “season for giving” is just a constant reminder that she’s single, sixty(ish), and staring down retirement. But not this Christmas. Determined to avoid the most magical time of the year, Eloise decides to spend Christmas in Honeycombe Bay. Surely a seaside village in the middle of winter won’t be too festive?
Ever since his wife passed away, Bartholomew Knott hasn’t felt up to welcoming visitors to his guest house. With the prospect of another long, lonely winter, and having become more Scrooge than Santa over the years, Bart is dreading Christmas. However, when he’s contacted by someone who dislikes decking the halls just as much as he does, Bart has the brilliant idea of opening the guest house to people who want to escape all things festive.
Christmas isn’t easy to ignore, though, not even in off-season Honeycombe Bay. So when fate forces Bart to give shelter to a single mother and child whose holiday has been devastated by a terrible fire, Eloise finds herself playing Mrs. Claus to Bart’s Santa—dragging the house’s other guest, a heartbroken teacher looking for a break during the holidays, into the action as well. But holiday cheer isn’t the only thing sparking under the mistletoe. Will the guests at Honeycombe Bay realize that, sometimes, the best way to escape Christmas is to let it into your heart?
Christmas at Honeycombe Bay features two heartwarming romances and all the holiday romance tropes including: a small-town that is “all in” for Christmas, a later in life romance, a widower hero, forced proximity in a charming B&B, a grumpy/sunshine couple with a single mom character, and plenty of carols, cocoa, and decking the halls.
Release date:
September 29, 2026
Publisher:
Dell
Print pages:
304
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If the next tune was another sodding Christmas song, Eloise Garrett was going to grab the nearest pair of scissors and sever the damn radio’s electric cable. As far as she could tell, there wouldn’t be any downside: She’d have instant silence and an instant perm, which would save her from having to listen to the hairdresser’s constant chatter about blimmin’ Christmas plans while she was having her hair done.
Everyone else’s plans, that is, not her own, because Eloise didn’t have any. Not this year.
When Eloise wasn’t working, she usually hung out with her friend Hannah over the Christmas period. As two singletons, they celebrated (although for Eloise “celebrated” would be better described as “tolerated”) Christmas together, but this year Hannah was otherwise engaged. Not literally, because Lee hadn’t proposed, but Hannah was in love, and although Eloise had been invited to join her and her partner for the festive season, she wasn’t keen on being a third wheel. Anyway, as a newly loved-up couple, they needed their privacy.
“What about you, Mrs. Pendleton?” Becky, the owner of Becky’s Barnet, asked the woman in the seat on Eloise’s right. “Will you be going to your daughter’s for Christmas?”
Mrs. Pendleton, her head covered in silver foil like some kind of alien experiment, beamed widely, as yet more foil in the form of garish retro Christmas decorations à la 1970 dangled from the ceiling above.
Reaching for the complimentary mince pie in front of her, she said, “I wasn’t going to, but she needs me even more now she’s expecting again. That husband of hers is useless. Doesn’t have a clue. Last year, he offered to wash up after lunch but made such a poor job of it, I had to do it all over again. You should have seen the state of the roasting pan!” She shook her head, the foil glinting in the fluorescent overhead lights, and tutted to show her displeasure as she bit into the pastry. However, the happy gleam in her eye and the satisfaction in her voice told a different story. Mrs. Pendleton was thrilled her washing-up services had been needed.
“They should get a dishwasher,” Becky said, “then you wouldn’t have to do it.”
A flare of panic lit up the other woman’s face, and she almost spat out her mouthful of mince pie as she spluttered, “Oh, I don’t mind helping. After all, it is Christmas.”
“And don’t we know it,” Eloise grumbled, as a singer on the radio warbled about rocking around the Christmas tree and everybody being jolly. She gritted her teeth and shoved her hands underneath her trouser-clad thighs to keep them away from the scissors.
“It’s all about the grandkids, isn’t it?” Mrs. Pendleton carried on. “Bless ’em, they get so excited.”
Eloise was well aware of that. Next door had three children under ten, and last year they’d got their parents out of bed at four o’clock on Christmas morning. She knew this because the shrieks of excitement through the adjoining wall had woken her up. And don’t get her started on the party her neighbours on the other side had thrown in the evening. They must have had a whole football stadium of relatives, who’d kept up the racket until well after midnight. Eloise had been exhausted, and she was dreading it happening again this year. All she wanted was a bit of peace and quiet. Was that too much to ask?
“Right, Miss Garrett,” Becky said. “Let’s get you shampooed.” She led her to a basin, where a college student took over.
Leaning back, with a towel draped over her chest, and her neck at an awkward and decidedly uncomfortable angle, Eloise closed her eyes, wishing she didn’t have to look at the gaudy plastic gold star tacked to the ceiling, which was directly in her line of sight. It was either that or look up the junior’s pert little upturned nose.
“Got anything nice planned for Christmas?” the youngster asked, wetting Eloise’s hair with warm water. “Any parties?”
“No.” She’d never been one for Christmas parties, although she used to quite enjoy the annual bash at the grand hotel that Steerhope Pharmaceuticals Ltd. used to put on. And so she should, since she was the one who organised it. Mr. Steerhope used to leave that kind of thing to her. As his PA, she was used to him leaving a lot of everything to her, and she’d been more than happy he did. She’d loved her job . . .
“Bought all your presents?” the girl persisted.
Eloise made a face. She hadn’t bought a single gift yet, although she intended to buy Hannah and her new man something nice, and get the postman a tin of the shortbread biscuits he liked. She also had a couple of former colleagues with whom she exchanged the obligatory boxes of chocolates or bottles of wine, but apart from that, she had no one to buy presents for.
A pang struck her in the chest, and she hastily suppressed it. There wasn’t any point in feeling sorry for herself, or in regrets. It wouldn’t do anyone any good, least of all her.
The girl chirped away, chattering about how much she was looking forward to Christmas, while Eloise valiantly attempted to ignore both her and Michael Bublé. Yes, Michael, she grumbled silently, it’s been looking a lot like Christmas since the end of October. No sooner were the fake cobwebs and plastic pumpkins taken down than people were putting up enough fairy lights to land a small plane and jabbing Santa Stop Here signs in their front gardens.
Finally, thankfully, Eloise’s hair was washed and towel-dried, and she was returned to Becky’s workstation, where Becky singsonged brightly, “What are we having done today?”
Eloise really disliked being called “we.” It wasn’t as though Becky would be having her hair styled the same way, was it? Although maybe Becky should consider toning it down a bit. The hairdresser’s long locks were coloured bright red and swept into a messy updo, topped off by a sparkly headband with flashing Christmas trees bobbing around on wire springs.
“I was thinking of having stripes shaved into one side of my hair, and the other side dyed green. No, not green—purple,” Eloise told her, deadpan.
Becky froze, her fingers buried in Eloise’s short, platinum hair, and stared at her in the mirror. Then she relaxed and let out a giggle. “Oh, Miss Garrett, you are a one. Same as usual, is it?”
“Actually, no, I don’t want the same as usual.” Her usual was a three-monthly perm to give her fine hair some much-needed body, interspersed with a trim at the six-week mark to stop it becoming too flyaway and to keep its shape.
Another pause, as Becky’s eyes widened. “You’re not serious about the stripes, are you? What would you do with the other side? And purple can be a bit harsh. How about a nice shade of pale lavender? That will work well with your skin tone.”
Lavender? Good grief! That shrieked of old lady. “No, I’m not serious,” Eloise told her. But she did want something different. She just wasn’t sure what.
“Age shouldn’t be a barrier,” a young woman on Eloise’s left said. “If you want to have stripes put in or shave one side, go for it. If you can’t have the hairstyle you want or wear the clothes you want at your age, I mean, what’s the point? I’m gonna wear what the hell I like.”
The woman was around twenty-five, and despite the temperature outside being barely above freezing, she sported bare legs, ankle boots, a short knitted skirt, and what amounted to little more than a bra covering her top half. Eloise surmised that with a nose piercing, an eyebrow piercing, and a rather fetching tattoo just below her collarbone, she already wore what the hell she liked.
“At my age?” Eloise echoed stonily, raising an eyebrow. Both, actually, because she’d never mastered the art of raising just the one.
“Yeah, you know, old, like.”
Eloise was flabbergasted. Sixty wasn’t old. Though try telling that to the umpteen companies she’d sent job applications to over the past three months. Most hadn’t responded, and the ones that had had sent a “thanks, but no, thanks” reply which she strongly believed was due to her age.
“So, if you don’t want a perm,” Becky huffed impatiently, “what do you want?”
“I want to forget about Christmas,” Eloise replied without thinking, as Mariah Carey announced that all she wanted for Christmas was you.
“Don’t you like Christmas?”
“Not particularly.” She’d never been keen, finding the hype and unrealistic expectations too much; but she’d grown to tolerate it, and for the most part she’d been able to ignore it, especially since Steerhope Ltd. had always conducted a stocktake in early January which she’d been heavily involved in, and the preparation and planning had been extensive.
But this year everything was different, and without work to occupy her, Christmas seemed to have taken a front seat.
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