Chapter 2

Six weeks earlier

"Don't look so guilty. We deserve this!" Chelsea's hazel eyes sparkled from the glow of the setting sun. We were standing at one of the many railings along the resort edge, overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

Inhaling the salt air, I nodded. "We do. We've worked hard. I-I guess, I've never..."

"Let me help you," she said with a smirk. "You've never let yourself have fun." With more seriousness, she added, "Your grandparents left you that trust fund. Tell me, when have you ever used the money for anything other than education and essentials?"

I shrugged. "I'm sure if you asked my attorneys, I haven’t always made the best financial decisions regarding either of those."

"To hell with them.”

That was part of what I loved about Chelsea. No matter the situation, she said exactly what she thought. Granted, sometimes it was too much information, but nonetheless, you knew exactly what you were dealing with.

“Besides,” she went on, “in two years the money will be all yours. You won’t have to answer to some stuffed-shirt lawyer.”

“Hey!”

“You know what I mean. And in three years you’ll be someone else's lawyer. Then you can tell whomever what they can and can't do with their own money."

I scrunched my nose. "I don't know for sure, but I don’t think civil law is for me. It seems boring. I want something more exciting."

My best friend’s arms dramatically spread toward the horizon. "I can see it now. Some high-profile case and there you are, on the steps of a big courthouse somewhere." She spun toward me. "I know! That one on the T.V. show—Law and Order. It's in New York." She nudged her shoulder against mine. "The perfect place for a Columbia graduate."

I didn't want to think about law school, not yet. I'd just graduated from Stanford and the four years I'd spent in California were undoubtedly the best of my life. I loved everything about the West Coast, from the beautiful campus nestled in the Palo Alto valley to the winding beautiful coastal highway. The idea of heading back east made me physically ill.

"Stop that," Chelsea said with her hand on my arm. "Stop thinking about it. You know applying to East Coast schools made the most sense."

"I know. But I would’ve loved to have stayed here."

"Just like Professor Wilkerson told you, you've made your mark here. Summa cum laude. California knows you. Now it's time to make your mark back east. In three years you'll be the most sought-after attorney from coast to coast. Every big firm will want you."

"Chels, I really don't want to think about any of it. Not this week. This week is for us." I grabbed her hand and squeezed. "I don't want to think about being without you next year. I want us to have the time of our lives."

“You know I'd love to pick up and move with you. But when it comes to right now—I couldn't agree more. For this one week, let's forget about everything. Let's be the opposite of ourselves."

Let's be each other?

I stopped myself from saying the thought aloud. Instead, I looked out over the gorgeous view. The setting sun was casting shadows over the cliffs in the distance, as rolling white-capped waves crashed against the rocks and shore. This was one of the scenes I'd miss on the East Coast. There may be an ocean, but never on the beaches of Georgia had I ever seen waves or felt the refreshing breeze as I did here.

"I'm in. As a matter of fact," I whispered with a grin, "no more Alex or Alexandria. For the next week I'm Charli.”

Chelsea’s eyes narrowed.

“It’s short for Charles, one of my middle names." I lowered my voice, but before the pounding surf and murmuring voices around us could dominate, I added, "I think Alex needs a break."

Locking our elbows, Chelsea sighed. "Girl, that's the best thing I've heard since we've met. If you ask me, Alex has needed a break for a long time!"

As we made our way to our suite, I contemplated the possibilities of leaving Alex behind, if for only a week.

Can I do that?

I could. I’d done it before.

I’d put away the pretentious snob I'd been raised to be when I left Alexandria Charles Montague Collins in Savannah. The minute I'd stepped off the airplane in California and made my way to my freshman orientation, I'd vowed that Alexandria had been left behind and I became Alex.

She was a clean slate, with no demons on her back or skeletons in her closet. I had the rare opportunity to reinvent myself into someone I liked to be, and I did.

Alex was everything I'd wanted to be growing up: a hard worker, a good student, and someone who refused to stay trapped in the cage created by the Montague name. After my mother shared a secret with me right before I left Savannah, I had the confidence to do what she was never able to do.

For that one evening, with her husband Alton out of town on business, I had a real mom. It's a night I'll never forget. She even looked different. Instead of her normal designer clothes, when she came to my room she wore shorts and a t-shirt. I hadn't known she owned regular clothes. With her hair pulled back in a ponytail and little to no makeup, she knocked on my bedroom door. The knock had been so faint that over the sound of my music, I almost didn't hear it.

For a change, the sound didn't alarm me. I knew Alton was away and I knew I'd be gone before he returned. When I peered around the door, I almost gasped. Adelaide Montague Collins Fitzgerald looked like she could have been my sister instead of my mother. With her large blue eyes, she looked at me with a mixture of love and regret. Though everything within my eighteen-year-old self wanted to tell her to leave, I couldn't.

There was something final about that night. Though neither of us came out and said it, I think she understood I didn't plan to return. I sometimes wonder just how much she knew.

Instead of saying anything, I opened the door and welcomed her into the chaos. My bed was covered in suitcases. The drawers to my dressers were in all stages of openness while my closet doors were spread wide. Not once did she use the tone I'd come to expect and admonish the disarray. Instead, she gracefully sat on the edge of my bed and asked if she could help.

Though years of secrets and regrets momentarily swirled about us, as I listened to her sincerity they disappeared. For one evening we were more than mother and daughter. We were friends. Time passed as we packed, laughed, and cried. She told me that she was proud that I was going to Stanford. It wasn’t only that I'd been accepted—which was an accomplishment—but she was also proud that I was moving away. She confessed that her parents didn't want her to move away. After all, she was the last Montague. Even though she wasn’t a male, continuing the bloodline was her responsibility. The way my grandparents saw it, her only purpose in higher education was to find a man worthy of fulfilling that role of husband. Of course that meant a man who understood the heritage.

That night, in my room, she did what she always did and spoke favorably of my father. She said he was a good man, a revered businessman, and a man of whom my grandfather approved. It wasn't until I was in high school that I realized she never mentioned the word love. Not in relation to her affection for my father or for Alton. The only time she mentioned love was to remind me that my father, Russell Collins, loved me.

For the first time I could recall, she admitted to wanting a different life. She confessed that when she was my age she wanted to leave Georgia and find a life away from Montague Manor. Holding tightly to my hands, with tears in her blue eyes, she told me to do what she couldn’t. She told me to go and discover life beyond Savannah.

My entire life, I’d been told that even though the Montague assets were now handled under the name of my stepfather, Alton Fitzgerald, and my name was Collins, one day I would be expected to take my rightful place. It was what my grandmother, grandfather, and mother had told me since I was old enough to remember—I was the heir to a prestigious name. Since my father was killed in a car crash while out of town when I was only three, I couldn’t remember him ever telling me about my future.

On a late August afternoon, when I stepped off the airplane in San Francisco, I chose to do what my mother never could: discover life—not Alexandria’s, but Alex’s. The blue sky was my encouragement. For the first time in my life, it seemed as though the clouds that loomed around Montague Manor couldn’t reach me. On the West Coast I could breathe.

As if being reborn at nearly nineteen years old, I put Alexandria behind me and became Alex Collins. Since my tuition was paid by my trust fund, neither the name Montague nor Fitzgerald was associated with the new me. I suppose if someone dug into the fine print my past could be found, but no one needed to do that. My grandparents’ law firm handled all my monetary needs. Even now, ascending the heights of the Del Mar Club and Spa in the glass elevator, it was only the law firm of Hamilton and Porter who knew my whereabouts. They'd been the ones to wire me the money for our excursion, not my mother or her husband.

For four years I was able to live a life free of anyone’s expectations but my own. I created the perfect persona with real personal edges. I put away the ghosts from the past and discovered what life had to offer. Though Alex was different than Alexandria, I sometimes wondered if either one was really me.

Who am I?

Maybe for one week, I could live without the pressures of my old or new life. Maybe I could experience life as others did—as Chelsea did—completely untethered from the monsters of my past or the aspirations of my future. Alexandria Charles Montague Collins had a perfect façade to maintain. Alex Collins had a future and a career to build. For one week, Charli—no last name—wanted to see what life could be like without a past or a future.

*****

"Look…no, don't," Chelsea whispered as she covered her lips with the edge of a fashion magazine. Her sunglass-covered eyes scanned the deck around the large pool.

"How can I look and not look?" I asked playfully between sips of my strawberry-mango slushy.

“Do you see those guys over there?”

“You told me not to look,” I reminded her. Yet I had seen them. It was hard—no impossible—not to look. The patrons of the exclusive resort were beautiful. After all, the resort catered to the wealthy, and those people spent a lot of money to maintain their perfection.

“Just take a quick look.”

As I turned my head, I caught the stare of a man about our age. He was tan and blond and looking our direction, not even pretending to be looking elsewhere. With his sunglasses down, he peered over the frames, lifted his brows, and smiled. His closed-lip grin was both cocky and confident. My first instinct was to look down at my Kindle, but as pink filled my cheeks I remembered my mission. This was my week to live, to do what Alex wouldn't and Alexandria couldn't.

Lowering my sunglasses, I returned his grin.

“Oh shit,” I whispered. “He’s coming over here.”

Nearly dropping her magazine, Chelsea sat taller in her lounge chair. “I said look, not invite him over.”

I didn’t have time to reply before Mr. Tanned Surfer Dude and his equally attractive friend were at the foot of our chaise lounges.

“Hey, we haven’t seen you two around here before,” Mr. Surfer Dude said.

“We got in last night,” Chelsea replied.

Guy number two extended his hand. “Hi, I’m Shaun and this is my nosy friend, Max.”

“I’m Chelsea and this…” She looked my way. “…is Charli.”

Max lifted his brow. “You don’t look like any Charlie I’ve ever met.”

“It’s Charli with an i.”

He sat on the end of my chair. “Well, Charli with an i, would you like a drink or something?”

I turned toward my half-filled glass of slushy. “I’m good, thank you. Besides, it’s not even noon. Isn’t that a little early for drinks?”

Shaun laughed. “We’re on vacation, and if you haven’t heard, it’s always five o’clock somewhere.”

Chelsea swung her legs off the chair and offered her hand to Shaun. “I have heard that, and I’d love a drink.”

I tried to maintain my smile as Max settled onto Chelsea’s recently vacated seat. I loved Chelsea, but playing the field, and playing men for drinks and whatever else, was her specialty. Why hadn’t I realized that bringing her to an exclusive resort would be like taking a child to a candy store?

“We are having a nice time. Thanks for asking,” Max said with a grin.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I was just thinking about my friend. As you can see, she has a hard time making new friends.”

He cocked his head to the side, his tanned torso absorbing the sunshine, and his long legs stretched out on the lounge chair. “I bet you don’t have any trouble making friends either.”

“I guess that only leaves one of us.”

His hand flew to his chest. “You wound me! First you don’t listen to a word I'm saying, and then you send me back to second grade.”

“Second grade?”

“You know, when I did have trouble making friends.”

I shook my head. “I doubt you ever had trouble. The thing is that this week is supposed to be about my friend and me. We’ll be going different directions soon. I thought she might, I don’t know, hang around with me for more than breakfast.”

“Where are you going? Or is it her?”

“It’s both of us. Tell me about you.”

“Oh,” Max said, “I get it. We’re being secretive. My guess is there’s a boyfriend…” He glanced at my hand. “…no ring. So it can’t be a fiancé. But there’s someone back wherever home is.”

“Guess again.”

“You’re an aspiring actress, and this is the week before you do a big shoot.”

I laughed. “Two strikes. One more and you’re—”

“Out.”

Max and I turned to the deep voice coming from beside Max's chair. With the sun shining directly behind him, the source of the baritone command was partially hidden by shadows. But as my gaze lingered, allowing my eyes to adjust, my breathing hitched. The man beside us was tall and tan, with broad shoulders that cast a shadow over both Max's and my legs. He wasn’t as young as Max, but then again, he wasn’t old. The longer we sat in stunned silence, the more visible the pulsating vein in his neck became. This man was obviously upset with Max.

When we didn’t speak, he repeated, “You’re out.”

“Excuse me?" Max asked. "Who the hell are you?”

I lowered my glasses and continued to appreciate one of the most perfect specimens of man I’d ever seen. Small droplets of water hung from his short dark hair and glistened against the cobalt blue sky. More evidence of his recent swim coated his defined abs and his wet swim trunks clung to his thick thighs...

Everything about this man screamed confidence. Not the cocky kind I'd seen in Max. No, this man wasn't a college kid who specialized in picking up girls. This man dominated every situation. He was a man who knew what he wanted and took it.

Moving my gaze back upward, I sucked in a deep breath at the most stunning light blue eyes I’d ever seen. As if summoned by my gasp, those eyes moved from Max and unashamedly scanned me from my auburn hair and floppy hat to my brightly painted toes. The sear of his gaze peppered my skin with goose bumps and pebbled my nipples as it lingered on everything in between.

Noticing my visible reaction, the side of his scowl moved upward to a lopsided grin. And then he once again turned back to Max and his threatening yet protective tone returned.

“I’m her husband."

Though I should have argued, I was too intrigued to interrupt.

"That person you mentioned…" he paused for effect and then went on, "is me and I'm not somewhere else. I'm here. Leave my wife alone or I’ll have you thrown out.”

Words came to my mind, ones that could both confirm or negate the charade he was playing, but something in this man’s demeanor held me mute on my chaise while simultaneously lifting me above the clouds. He obviously didn’t need my help to be convincing. Besides, this week was supposed to be about exploring life and the real me. In that instant, I knew that I didn’t want to do that with Max, but if given the opportunity to live out my fantasies, I was confident that the man eclipsing the sun would be perfect for the job.

Shaking his head and lifting his hands in surrender, Max stood. His silhouette dwarfed by that of my husband's. My insides tingled, wondering what else about this mystery man would outshine the retreating frat boy.

“Bye, Charli with an i," Max said, adding, "Maybe you should wear your rings?”

“Yes, Charli,” the deep voice scolded, “don’t tell me you’ve misplaced them again.”

“No,” I replied with a smirk, making my decision to play out this game. “I’m most certain they're right where I left them.”