After my father had gotten sick, I’d been his primary caregiver for so long that I’d had to go to therapy to relearn how to take care of myself. He was better now, but I still firmly believed in the power of my routine.
It kept me sane, centered, and had given me a reason to get up every morning for a long, long time. There had been plenty of dark days when I’d needed to put one foot in front of the other to make it from one moment to the next. Knowing which foot to put where and when had certainly helped.
I didn’t like to dwell on that time in my life, but I did touch on it in my memories occasionally to remind myself that life could change in an instant. It wasn’t always sunshine and daisies, and when it was, I made a point of appreciating every good minute I got.
So, I smiled to myself when I woke up every morning simply because I’d woken up healthy and able to tackle another day. I was one of those people who literally stopped to smell the roses. My phone was filled with hundreds of snapshots of things like the wildflowers starting to bloom on the forest floor or beautiful sunsets over the water. I also took the time to feel the sun on my face before I even got out of bed in the morning—just because I could. And I knew just how damn lucky I was to be able to do it.
Life had already kicked me right in the butt once. It could be sneaky that way. If it ever happened again, I wanted the evidence and the memories of how incredible even the simple moments could be.
These thoughts were like my personal form of meditation, and I lingered on them for a few minutes before climbing out of bed.
The radio in my kitchen was set to start playing when it was time for my alarm to go off, which was usually right around the time I’d finished the reflection part of my routine and moved into action.
Once I’d done my stretches and gotten cleaned up, I dressed in a yellow maxi-skirt with boldly colored flowers on it, paired it with a white top, and tied my hair in a ponytail on top of my head. I grinned at my reflection, only adding a touch of mascara and a swipe of clear lip gloss before I was done.
A quick glance at the round clock above my door told me it was two minutes to nine. Right on time.
At nine on the dot, I was downstairs with my tea in hand while I unlocked the Tourism Center. A sunny spring Saturday was bound to bring tourists through the doors, and I couldn’t wait for the chance to tell people all about my hometown and everything it had to offer.
Mackinac Island was where I’d been born and raised. It was my favorite place in the world, and since most of its economy relied on tourism, it had made sense for me to do my part by taking a job at the Tourism Center.
I was a small-town girl through and through, and I was proud of it. All five hundred and something of the year-round residents felt like family to me. We were a close-knit community, and I wanted everyone’s businesses to thrive. Pointing tourists in the right direction and making sure they knew about every gem of a store was the only way I knew how to do that.
After making sure the door was propped open, I pulled up the blinds and walked over to the windows facing Main Street. Looking out over our manicured front lawn and across the dirt road where bicycles and horses went by, I waved at the some of the locals who came past while I sipped my tea.
There were no cars in this little island town. Ample parking was available on the mainland at all of the ferry docks for the tourists to park there before catching the boat over. I knew some might think it was unbelievably odd, but it was a big part of the charm of this place.
Mackinac was a safe haven, away from all the hustle and bustle of western civilization. It was a place untouched by cars, buses, trains, and planes. Well, most planes.
We had one airstrip suitable for propeller planes and small jets. From early January to mid-April, it was our only link with the mainland. An unthinkable situation for most, but yet another thing that made us so different from the vast majority of other small towns.
The air was clear and I could see Lake Huron from the window, along with the grassy slope on the other side. Later, in the early afternoon, couples would be setting up blankets there, bringing their books and picnic baskets to have quiet dates in their tranquil surroundings.
A pang shot through me when I remembered the days when I used to be part of one of those couples. It was so long ago that I barely felt those pangs anymore, but when I did, at least they didn’t cause crippling pain.
That had been a part of the time I liked to think of as the before. Before my dad got diagnosed with cancer. Before I had to start working three jobs while trying to maintain my grades as a senior in high school. Before I’d driven the boy I loved away with a lie so he would be free to live his life.
Back when William and I had been one of the couples spreading open a blanket on that slope, it’d felt like we were in the prime of our lives. I’d just started senior year, and even though we’d had drastically different views of what the future looked like, we were teenagers in love. We thought we’d figure it out and that we had all the time in the world to do it.
That was when real life had come knocking. Beautiful, ugly, devastating, and joyous, we’d thought we’d seen it all. Oh, to be young and naïve again.
Actually, scratch that. There was no way I wanted to be young and naïve again. Sure, the part where my dress for Homecoming had been my biggest worry and trying to think of a place to be alone with William so I could kiss him until my lips went numb had been fun.
On the other hand, not having to worry about dresses at all and having a place where I could kiss whomever whenever was much better. Not that I’d kissed anyone in a long, long time. So long that I probably ought to have been embarrassed about it. But the point was that if I wanted to roll around making out with someone all night, I now had a door that could lock and a bed that wasn’t under my father’s roof.
Yep, being young and naïve is definitely not all it’s cracked up to be.
Smiling as I shook my head at myself, I turned around and began sorting flyers on the shelves instead of weighing up the pros and cons of adulthood versus youth. God knows adulthood comes with its own challenges.
Every business in town had brochures here, and I made sure every local attraction was organized into the right section. Sorting and refilling kept me busy enough that my thoughts were soon forgotten.
It was going well until Mildred came hobbling in. She was my boss, a sixty-five-year-old woman with the temper of a toddler—and the height of one too. Her arthritis was just as bad as her moods.
As she leaned on her cane and scowled at me, I committed what had to be the worst offense possible in her books. I had the audacity to smile and give her a cheerful greeting.
“Good morning, Mildred. How are you doing today?”
Her scowl didn’t go anywhere, but it never did. “Why are you always so happy?”
“There’s nothing to be unhappy about today.” I shrugged and gestured at the open window, my bright smile firmly in place. “The sun is shining. The world is turning. The day is about to begin. It’s a perfectly good day.”
She muttered under her breath about how I was delusional, her cane thumping along as she made her way to the back. It was only once she was gone that I let the smile drop.
The woman was insufferable, truly. Not even an eternal optimist like me could spin a silver lining about working for her. Except that maybe remembering her in the future would make any boss I could have seem like a shiny angel in comparison.
What should have been my dream job, showing off my unique town and bragging about the people in it all day for a living, was always at least five notches less dream-worthy whenever Mildred was around. Regardless of how much I loved my job, I’d been looking for something else for ages because of her.
One of the only drawbacks of living in a town with only five to six hundred permanent residents was that jobs weren’t exactly a dime a dozen. So, for now, Mildred and I were stuck together.
The door to her office closed, and I settled in to respond to some emai
ls, ready to send links to some of the accommodation options in town and arranging air taxis for inbound tourists. When I opened the program, though, it wasn’t a request for an itinerary that caught my eye first but an email from my best friend.
Jessie ran a bed and breakfast out of her old family estate home on one of the bluffs. Her email address was one that popped up in my inbox often, but it wasn’t just because we worked in the same industry.
She knew exactly how I felt about Mildred, and since she’d been trying to lure me over to the B&B for years, she liked to remind me regularly of who I worked with instead of her.
I couldn’t take her up on her offer, though. As much as I’d rather have been working at the B&B with her than here with Mildred, I wasn’t in the business of taking handouts. It’d been drilled into me by my father back in the day that people had to stand on—or fall from—their own two feet.
He’d been so adamant about it that I now had something of a complex about accepting that kind of help. I appreciated her emails about Mildred, though.
Today she had attached a funny meme making fun of my boss and comparing her to a toad. A loud shout of laughter escaped me, but then I clamped my hand over my mouth, turned bright red, and deleted the email just as said person came around the counter.
That had been way too close for comfort. I really needed to start paying more attention to her. Cane or no cane, she could move like a ninja when she wanted to. I wonder whether she’ll let me attach bells to her shoes for Christmas this year.
I doubted it. The woman wouldn’t know the festive spirit if it bit her in the ass, but it was worth a try. If I’m still here by Christmas, I swear I’ll give it my best shot.
It wasn’t much of an “if.” Chances were that I’d still be here by next Christmas and even the one after that. But, hey. A girl’s gotta dream, right?
Right. I squared my shoulders. I wouldn’t give up, no matter how long it took. Anna Holland was no quitter.
Except that I wanted to quit my job. I’d also quit the only romantic relationship I’d ever been in. Okay, so maybe I am a bit of a quitter. But not with everything. Not with this.
Chapter 3
WILLIAM
Saturday morning rolled around and greeted me with a hangover like I’d never felt before. Although I didn’t make a habit of hitting the hard stuff too often, I was no stranger to feeling like a furry creature had died in my mouth. I was also well acquainted with tiny gnomes in my head digging their axes into my skull as they tried to burrow their way out.
But this was not just that. I felt like I’d been hit with a cargo train loaded up with straight vodka. White spirits, especially the good shit, didn’t usually leave a stench behind but I could smell it evaporating from my pores as soon as I opened my eyes.
Gently bringing my arm over my head after snapping my stupid eyes shut again, I realized that I was in for a mountain of pain for the rest of the day. I reached for my nightstand and tapped around on it as I looked for my phone. The clock on it had already told me it was just before noon with those judgy red numbers glowing at me, but I needed to figure out what the fuck had happened last night.
My fingers finally brushed against something hard and rectangular, and I let out a sigh of relief. Well, whatever happened, at least I didn’t lose my phone.
As luck would have it, I might not have lost it but I hadn’t plugged it in either. In my drunken state, I must have passed the hell out when I hit my bed.
Groaning as I made the herculean effort it took to roll over, find the cord, and plug it in, I got the job done and rolled onto my back. As I stared up at my bedroom ceiling, I began to piece together why I felt like such a wreck.
The shots.
The dance-off.
Going outside for air.
The paparazzi.
The questions.
Angelina had fucking cheated on me. After Dave and I had left the club, we’d come back here where we’d proceeded to drink our way through my liquor collection like it was Red Bull. Fuck.
I squeezed my eyes shut so hard that they hurt. Nausea rolled in my gut when all I kept seeing were the pictures of Angelina with him. Between the pictures and the videos that had flooded all my inboxes, there wasn’t a second of it that wasn’t seared into my brain for the rest of time.
My Angelina. Kissing another man. Passionately.
His hand had been clearly visible going under her skirt, and considering it hadn’t had much length, there was no doubt what his fingers had been aiming for. Disgust made bile rise to the back of my throat, fury whipping through my veins hot on its heels.
How could she let someone else kiss her? Touch her? Why?
Our relationship wasn’t perfect, but I was pretty sure there wasn’t a couple in the world who could honestly say theirs was. We always had a good time together, and the sex was phenomenal—and I knew she wasn’t faking for reasons that were too graphic to think about with a hangover when I didn’t even know who she was waking up to this morning.
If our problem wasn’t in the sack, it had to be somewhere else. But where? We talked and spent a lot of time together. I bought her everything she wanted, kissed her for nothing, and kissed her again for everything. I even bought her flowers at least once a week just because I appreciated her.
That last bit was a result of my hometown roots showing, I was sure, but my first girlfriend had taught me well. Anna. Fuck. When was the last time I even thought about her?
If my mind had turned to Anna, it was time to stop the fucking wallowing. Throwing the six-million-thread-count sheets Angelina had insisted on off of me, I stumbled out of bed and went to find Dave.
He had to be around here somewhere. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t just have left my place in the dead of night, drunk as a lord and a skunk combined. Ha. Lord Skunk. I should make a movie out of that.
Shoving the thought aside when I found him in one of my living rooms, I grimaced when I realized he was lying face down in puddle of his own drool. It pooled on the sofa beneath his head, but at least the snore that ripped out of him told me he was still alive.
Our livers are going to hate us for at least a month after this. Using my forearm to swipe clammy sweat from my forehead, I leaned over to shake his shoulder.
“Dave? Bud? You in there?”
My friend groaned but didn’t move until I gave him a solid shove. His eyes were wild when they opened, looking around frantically until he recognized his surroundings.
He was in horrible shape. Possibly even as bad as I was. A low moan tore out of him when he lifted his head. He must’ve decided it wasn’t worth it because it flopped back to the sofa and only his brown eyes turned up to mine, although even that looked like it hurt.
He winced, shielding his eyes from the sun streaming in through the window before he managed to speak. “Well, that was a complete shitshow. How much did we drink?”
For the first time, I let my eyes wander to take in the carnage we’d left behind. My house was a sprawling place right on the beach in Malibu. It was a pretty open-plan, allowing me to see into the kitchen, onto the balcony that led off this room to the pool, and into the dining room beyond the den next to this room.
Fallen soldiers in the form of empty bottles from my bar and wine cellar were strewn across just about every surface. There was a giant inflatable unicorn I’d once bought for a cast after-party floating in my pool, even though it’d been at least two years since I’d last seen it.
Various other knickknacks littered the balcony and the floors inside. A couple of pizza boxes, though I definitely didn’t remember eating. Some beer bottles on the loungers outside. Even a remote-control car and a drone I’d gotten to test them out for something for the show once.
I rubbed my eyes, closing them before I risked the possible pain of shaking my head. “Everything. I’d say we drank pretty much everything.”
Holding his palm over his forehead, he moved into a sitting position as slowly as an octogenarian and scr
ubbed his free hand over his face. “That sounds about right. Fuck. When was the last time we drank this much?”
“Long enough ago that I don’t remember it.” A vague memory flashed in my head at the words, and I snapped my fingers. “No, wait. It was after you found out your script for that fairy-tale retelling got canned.”
Another much longer groan came out of him. “Right. You’re right. Or no. Maybe not. Did your family history not get leaked after that? The great Bootlegger Scandal of oh-whatever-the-fuck-it-was. Do you remember the shit they said about you? That you were ‘somewhat of a baddie with a gritty reputation to be rough around the edges.’”
I laughed and then immediately regretted it when the sound made the gnomes increase their efforts tenfold. “That bender was epic. Truly worthy of my forefathers who risked their lives for the sake of prosperity and getting people wasted in the prohibition era. I’d drink to them if I was planning on ever drinking again.”
“I’m pretty sure we drank to them last night. At the very least, we’d have done them proud once more.” He put his hands behind him on the sofa, slowly swinging his legs off until his feet touched the floor and he stood. He swayed a little once he was on his feet, his lips curling like he’d smelled something disgusting. “I’m joining your sweeping declaration, though. No more drinking. I can smell myself, and it’s not good.”
“Nope, but I have the perfect cure for this hangover. Follow me.” Going outside into the blinding, scorching sun sounded like torture, but the pool was out there, and we desperately needed it.
“Just letting you know that I’m barely keeping it together here,” he grunted as he followed me to the stackable sliding doors. I could practically hear the nausea in his voice.
“Hang on one minute. You’ll feel better soon.” I didn’t bother to open the doors all the way, choosing to open the first couple wide enough that we could get through before slipping out.
It felt like the sun was raining its very own hellfire down on me when I stepped onto the tiled balcony. Fuck it. I’m making a run for it.
The Billionaire’s Second Chance: A Small Town Romance Page 2