California Dreamin' Collection

by Heather B. Moore, Kaylee Baldwin, Annette Lyon, Jennifer Moore, Shannon Guymon, Sarah M. Eden

  “You’re back,” he said with relief. He took Claire’s hands and leaned in for a kiss, but she yanked away before their lips could meet.

  “Claire!” her mom admonished under her breath.

  A vision popped into Claire’s head of exactly what awaited her for the rest of her life if she left this dock with her mom and Everett. She’d marry him, but he’d love success more than he loved her. Mom would always be there to make their life decisions— where they lived, how many kids they had, what she did at work.

  Mom would set her lounge chair by Claire’s front door then yank and cast and reel until Claire’s life turned into nothing but a tool for everyone around her to use how they saw fit.

  She couldn’t face a future like that. Not now. Not ever.

  “I won’t marry you,” Claire told Everett. His eyes widened in disbelief. She folded her arms to ward off any attempts he might try at persuasion. “My answer is no.”

  Mom gasped and grabbed Claire’s arm. “She doesn’t mean it, Everett. It’s the sun getting to her. She must have heatstroke! Or it’s her irresponsible father. That man—”

  “Mom, stop,” Claire snapped, and to her astonishment, her mom actually shut her mouth. “Don’t talk bad about Dad. Don’t follow me around like I’m a teenager. Don’t try to run my life or set me up with people who only want to move up in the company. Better yet, don’t set me up with anyone, ever. Let me live my life!”

  Mom’s eyes darkened, her mouth tightened, and it was as if a box had closed, tucking away every emotion but anger. “You would do well to remember that not only am I your mother, but I am also your boss. I’m the one who makes sure you get the assignments you love. Or don’t love.”

  “I quit.” Once she said it, a sense of rightness filled every part of her. “I quit,” she repeated because she liked saying it so much. A huge weight had lifted from her shoulders, and she even laughed.

  “You can’t quit. You love your job!”

  “I did. But working together isn’t good for us. Being out here showed me that I have to go out, do my own thing for a while. Find out who I am and what I want to be.”

  Mom’s eyes narrowed even further. “You sound just like your dad.”

  Even though Mom didn’t mean it as a compliment, Claire smiled. “Thank you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have something to do.” Adrenaline rushed through her body, much like when she’d jumped into the ocean to save Ethan.

  Everett tucked his arm around her stunned mother, and walked with her toward the parking lot without even a goodbye. Claire knew this wasn’t over— Mom wouldn’t let her go that easy— but she was firm in her decision. She was jobless and soon to be homeless, but she was free, and right then there was nothing else she’d rather be.

  “Hey!” she yelled at the empty ship. “Dad! Miguel!”

  The men came out from the galley, Miguel still in his board shorts but no shirt, her dad wearing sunglasses and a floppy hat that a client had given him. The sun was too bright for her to read their expressions, so she couldn’t tell how they felt about seeing her so soon after saying goodbye.

  “Any chance you could use a crew member?”

  Miguel let out a whoop, and Dad threw his hat into the air before helping her back onboard. “I knew if you came out here once, you’d never be able to go back.”

  On some level, Claire had known that all along. Maybe that was one reason she’d taken so long to get out here.

  Before she could respond, she was wrapped up in Miguel’s embrace, her face pressed against one of the tattoos on his chest— some kind of bird, though it was difficult to tell from this angle. Pulling ropes and working on a ship had been good for him. Very good for him.

  “You still going to try to convince your dad to try to give this all up?” Miguel asked.

  “Nah. Thought I might make you guys a decent website instead. I actually worked out an entire business model that has the potential to make Double B’s very successful over time—”

  Miguel’s mouth dropped over hers in a thorough kiss, interrupting her explanation. Not that she minded one bit.

  Epilogue

  One year later

  “You know, in romance novels, making out on the beach always seemed more romantic than it actually is,” Claire said, tugging at the edge of her swimsuit to let some of the sand out.

  Miguel laughed, the full-body kind that always made Claire’s heart skip a beat. That was something she’d grown to love about Miguel— he was all in with everything he did, whether it was laughing, growing a beard, or building a business.

  And relationships. He was pretty good at those, too.

  They lay, tangled together in the soft sand of Flamenco beach, watching the sun set over the sparkling turquoise water near Culebra. Claire didn’t know if she’d ever seen anything more beautiful.

  “Is it weird that I wanted to go to a beach for our honeymoon?” she asked. They spent almost every day on a boat, working and living with her dad. Her awe of the ocean should have worn off by now, but instead, she fell in love with it all over again every time they went out to sea.

  “No weirder than anything else you do.” Miguel tickled her side until she laughed with him.

  “So I’m the weird one?” she said, out of breath. “Who goes all recluse-bomber hairy once a month? Hmm?”

  “You know you love the beard. Admit it. You fell in love with me because of that very thing.”

  “If I remember it correctly— and I do— it wasn’t until after you shaved it off that I fell for you.”

  “Nope. We had a moment before then, when you jumped onto the boat to escape your crazy mom. I held you, you looked into my eyes, your heart leapt at the manliness of my beard, and you knew right then that you’d give up everything to be with such a manly man.”

  Claire groaned and brushed more itchy sand off her legs. Her mom had come to their wedding but still didn’t think Miguel was good enough for her daughter. Too many tattoos, not enough degrees. Mom and Jade had come out together, but had left soon after the ceremony. Claire’s relationship with her mom would never be the same, but in a lot of ways, that was okay.

  “You’re going to tell that version of how we fell in love to everyone we meet, aren’t you?”

  “It’s the truth!” He placed light kisses along her jaw and neck, turning her mind to mush.

  “We’ve come a long way,” she breathed as his mouth continued to work its way down her shoulder.

  In the past year, Double B’s had expanded so much that they now owned two ships and had additional staff besides the three of them. A Double B’s storefront was set to open in a month, complete with equipment for purchase and a real office. They’d even been able to take off a full week for their wedding and honeymoon without worrying what would happen to the business in their absence.

  Well, Claire worried a little.

  “Do you think Dad will remember how to update the website? He doesn’t even have to worry about HTML…”

  Miguel growled and tackled her back onto the sand. “I love it when you talk corporate to me.”

  Claire laughed then tucked her fingers into the silky strands of his hair. “I worry too much, don’t I?”

  “You do. He’ll probably do it wrong, and you’ll have to fix it when we get back, but who cares? I’m in paradise with the most beautiful girl in the world, and for some reason, she’s in love with me.”

  “It’s the beard,” Claire teased, running her fingers along his stubbly jaw. “And the tattoos. Have I ever told you how much you look like a pirate?”

  “A few times.” He pressed his mouth into hers again, and Claire poured her entire heart into the kiss. Soon all thoughts of itchy sand and potential website disasters at home drifted far from her thoughts. Nothing mattered but this moment with the man who’d helped make her dreams come true.

  There would always be a million things that could go wrong, but right now, she wanted to focus on what was perfectly right in her life. Miguel’s a
rms held her close, and she knew that with him, she would have a lifetime of beards and banter, endless chapters of adventures at sea, and love like she’d never felt before.

  Life couldn’t get much better.

  A glamorous day in the life of Kaylee Baldwin includes: chasing after her four children, obsessively checking her email, writing her latest book, trying to get motivated to train for that race she shouldn't have signed up for, hanging out with her seriously awesome husband, and reading in every spare second she can find.

  She graduated from Arizona State University with a degree in English lit and currently lives in southern Arizona with her family. Her books include Whitney Award finalist Meg's Melody, Six Days of Christmas, and Silver Linings.

  Kaylee blogs at www.kayleebaldwin.com and loves to connect with readers on Twitter: @kayleebaldwin1

  Chapter One

  To many people, the flight from Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix to Long Beach would hardly have felt like a flight at all. In truth, as flights went, this one was short— only about 80 minutes. Alexandria Davis had certainly been on her share of long flights before, ones you counted in double-digit hours instead of minutes. But the truth was, she’d been so eager to leave Arizona that this time, the entire process of flying— from going through security, to boarding, to watching the instructional video, to takeoff, and finally, to landing— felt like it had all taken much longer than her flight to France.

  Of course, traveling with someone you cared about to do something particularly fun beat the pants off of flying away to do something you weren’t so crazy about doing. Even when it meant escaping nastiness at home.

  The plane finally landed in California. She disembarked on an outdoor ramp instead of through a jetway. After getting her luggage, she’d rent a car, and then... She hadn’t thought past that. Maybe she’d check into a hotel right away or get something to eat first. The beach— and Jason’s ashes— could wait a few more hours, even if the screw-top jar in her big red purse felt as heavy as a barbell pulling at her shoulder.

  This day had been in the making for five years. She rarely dwelt on the past— anymore, anyway. But this trip inevitably shone a spotlight on it, not exactly letting her forget everything that had led up to this point.

  When she’d first made the promise to release Jason’s ashes over the Pacific Ocean on their fifth wedding anniversary, the future had stretched before her like a long, meandering road through the woods. The end of that five-year path had seemed like it would always be a lifetime away. She’d even argued that she wouldn’t be able to spread his ashes at their five-year mark, because of course he’d still be alive.

  She’d even meant it, even though his bone cancer was terminal. Truthfully, Alexandria still had a hard time grasping the finality of death. And how fast time moved.

  Did Einstein ever account for that kind of relativity? The kind that could make some years fly by like weeks and others feel like decades? Because even at twenty-three, she sometimes felt old enough to be checking for gray hairs.

  From the ramp, she walked across the pavement and into the airport, following the other passengers as they headed toward the luggage carousel. She passed palm trees bigger and greener than those in Arizona. Out of habit, she took her phone out of her purse and checked for messages, only then realizing it was still in airplane mode. She turned that off and waited to make sure she didn’t need to respond to anything urgent.

  At the carousel, she quickly found her pink-and-white polka-dotted suitcase, something she used not because she loved it— the fuchsia polka dots bordered on overkill— but because it was easy to spot in a sea of blue and black suitcases. Some people thought her red purse clashed with her auburn hair as well as with the pink suitcase. Not that she cared. She rolled it behind her as she left the airport, crossed a parking lot, where she found a car rental. Inside the small building, a long counter ran down the length, separating the small office area from customers.

  Alex stood in line behind the only other person there, a middle-aged man. The door jangled behind her at the same moment her phone began chiming over and over with incoming texts and phone messages, as if frantically catching up.

  She sighed. It wasn’t as if she’d been out of reach for long. But she was flying on a workday, so she couldn’t exactly be surprised at the deluge. She just hoped most of her missed communications would be via email; those tended to be sent by non-panicked clients. Lots of texts and phone messages usually meant she’d be talking someone off a ledge.

  She tossed her long braid over her shoulder and grabbed her phone from a purse pocket. Hopefully none of her clients had an urgent crisis, like a tech package missing major specs. That had happened only once, when she’d first started her pattern design business and before she’d fully learned the computer end of things. Instead of handing over a packet with every piece of information any clothing factory in the world could use to create her pattern, the client had been stuck until Alex frantically found the missing information and sent it over. She’d never made that kind of mistake again.

  She thought through her current projects and decided that the most likely “emergency” would be from Charlotte, the owner of Isn’t She Lovely Design, a line of clothes for little girls. She’d asked several times when the work would be done, in spite of the fact that the contract spelled out the delivery date. Alex never missed a deadline, and even when she finished early, she sometimes waited until the promised day to return the work to avoid these kinds of calls for future projects.

  Her phone showed seven texts and four missed calls— probably all from Charlotte. She’d made contact in some way— calls, emails, texts— several times a day over the last month. Alex was ready to add a clause to the contract saying that any communications beyond fifty in the first month would be charged extra, if nothing else, than to rein in the Charlottes of the world.

  She took a sip from her bottled water as she checked the phone log. Two people had called. Sure enough, Charlotte had called a little over an hour ago.

  All three of the other calls were from Madeleine Kendall— Jason’s mother. Technically, Alex’s former mother-in-law, although they’d never had anything remotely approximating that relationship. No, theirs resembled more that of a velociraptor stalking its prey, and Alex could never prove that she didn’t deserve to be eaten, consumed, and discarded.

  It’s not my fault that your son died. Or that he wanted to marry me. Or that I inherited his money. The thought had become almost an automatic response to thoughts of Madeleine Kendall.

  To Alex, the woman was never just Madeleine or even Mrs. Kendall. During the few times they’d crossed paths in person, for better or worse— usually worse— she’d referred to Jason’s mother as Mrs. Kendall but secretly wondered if she could provoke a heart attack by calling her Madeleine.

  Alex stared at her phone, unwilling to listen to Madeleine Kendall’s messages and not wanting to look at her texts, either. She was quite sure, now, that most of them were also from Madeleine Kendall.

  More than once, Alex had considered changing her cell number just to avoid the woman, and she would have gone through with it in a heartbeat if it hadn’t also meant antagonizing her further, confirming in her mind that some teenage hussy had brainwashed her only son and taken him from her.

  But the biggest reason she kept her old number was the hassle a new one would create for business. Alex’s company had grown a lot in the last eight months— she’d landed several contracts with international clothing companies— and she didn’t want the pain of making sure a couple of hundred other people had her new number, printing up new business cards, and changing her website information, or risking losing word-of-mouth referrals from people who had only her old number, all because of a woman who harassed her a few times a year.

  Most of the time, it wasn’t too bad anyway; Madeleine Kendall went weeks— sometimes months— without any contact save for the occasional passive-aggressive Facebook post, interspersed with calls arou
nd big holidays and anniversaries. Jason’s birthday in March. The anniversary of his diagnosis in May. The day he passed away in July, something Madeleine Kendall would never forgive Alex for, because as his mother, she had earned the “right” to be at his side when he took his last breath. She refused to believe that Alex hadn’t known he would die when he did. That she’d kept trying to call Jason’s mother but that Jason had kept begging her to hold his hand, to keep talking to him. And he’d passed away without Madeline Kendall’s presence.

  Probably as he wanted it to be.

  But his mother had certainly made her presence known ever since, particularly on the anniversary of, in her words, “the biggest betrayal of her life,” the day Alex and Jason sneaked off to a justice of the peace. He’d walked— slowly— on his prosthetic leg. She’d carried his medications in a bag over her shoulder. And they’d gotten married— on this day, April 25, five years ago. It had been more than a month before their high school graduation. Both of them were legal adults by then, so no one could stop them.

  In her memory, their wedding day stood as a landmark for so many parts of her life, events she’d always think of as either before her wedding or after her wedding. Moments that made her head spin to think of all.

  They’d married after Jason made almost a million dollars from three brilliant apps. They all still sold like crazy, with regular deposits into the account he’d moved all of his income into after turning eighteen so his parents couldn’t touch it.

  The understated wedding took place before he’d grown too ill to do basic things like walk around the grocery store or go to a movie… or eventually, feed himself, dress himself, brush his own teeth.

  Yet when they wed, he’d already been given less than a year to live.

  When Alex had said I do, her business was no more than a sparkly idea scribbled into a notebook, but Jason insisted that she pursue her company full throttle, fully believing she could succeed and insisting she use the money he’d never be able to spend and wanted her to have.