Second Chance in Paradise (A Clairborne Family Novel Book 1) Read online

  Second Chance in Paradise

  A Clairborne Family Novel

  Jennifer Peel

  Copyright © 2018 by Jennifer Peel

  All rights reserved.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  To Krista, my friend and resident scientific guru.

  Thank you for helping my kids rock science fairs and their ACTs.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright © 2018 by Jennifer Peel

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Epilogue

  Sneak Peek

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  I hesitated to click on his Facebook profile page. I had resisted for an entire month . . . this time. It was a record for me. Not one I was necessarily proud of. I shouldn’t care what Porter Clairborne was up to. It had been over seven and a half years since I’d last seen him. And my, let’s say “unhealthy habit,” didn’t start until a few years ago, when I stumbled across his vlog by accident. Okay, so I’d done a search for him. I knew it wasn’t a good thing. I was too smart to keep this up, whatever it was. I wasn’t obsessed. Like I said, it was an accident.

  Don’t do it, Holland. My mouse cursor danced around his handsome face. What was he, twenty-nine now? Don’t pretend like you don’t know. His birthday was last month, February 18. My brain was filled with useless bits of information I should have forgotten. Don’t click. Resist. I stared into those eyes that looked like pools of crystal clear water, deep and alive. They were offset by his playful smile that said I’m trouble, and he was. From following his vlog, I knew that hadn’t changed. His life was one big party, just how he liked it. Now he got paid for it. I could hear him now, gloating over it. That was, if we ever saw each other again, which was highly improbable. He was living the high life in Lake Tahoe of all places, while I was living out my dream in Mobile. An odd place to live out your dreams, but sometimes you had to make the best of where you could afford to land.

  I looked around the lab from the large window in my office and smiled at all the diagnostic equipment and apparatuses working at a low hum. Yep. I was living the dream, by myself at six in the morning, running yet another round of DNA sequencing. As a doctoral student, I lived in the lab more than my cramped apartment, surviving on the university’s stipend. But it would all be worth it. In two years, I could write my own ticket when I received my PhD in pharmacology. And more importantly, figure out a better way to treat cardiovascular disease and hopefully save some lives. It was going to happen. I was confident. Mostly.

  I focused back on Porter while I waited for my sequencing report. In every aspect of our lives, we were different. He came from a loving family—whether he thought so or not—with the kind of stability and means I could only dream of. Me? I came from the kind of life that played out on tragic news stories or made-for-TV movies, but I was determined to write my own ending.

  But for the year between my seventeenth and eighteenth birthdays, it hadn’t mattered that I was the girl from the wrong side of any town, a mere employee of his parents’ resort making barely over minimum wage during school breaks and holidays. Porter only saw me. Holland Reeves. It was my name that initially drew him to me, which is the only thing halfway interesting about me. Other than my parents being felons, I was about as boring as they come.

  Somehow Porter saw past that. He got me to do things I still both cringed about and relived as the best times of my life. Like sneaking into the resort’s pools after they closed, both the indoor and outdoor ones, and the hot tubs too. Or paddle boarding in the middle of the night in the Gulf. So dangerous. So stupid. So romantic. What did an eighteen and twenty-one-year-old know about romance?

  I should have known to stay away. I was a walk-the-straight-line kind of person. Veering outside the lines only caused me to get hit by oncoming traffic. A big semi-truck by the name of Demi. Beautiful Demi with eyes of velvet brown, body of a goddess, and the kind of money that allowed her to stay at the Clairborne instead of working there.

  The kiss and her bikini that showed all she had to offer was nothing compared to the relief in Porter’s eyes when I caught them at our spot. I don’t know why I considered it our spot. A hammock between two palm trees on the outskirts of the Clairborne property and his family’s bungalow. Twice. We had used it twice. Each time I never wanted to leave his arms, the feel of his bare chest. The way he made me feel like I existed and not only for myself.

  I held my stomach. I still felt sick over seeing them together and his look of relief. Maybe if he had known how I really felt, if I had been brave enough to admit that I loved him, if I had reciprocated those three words he had been so generous with. . . But then I saw the weight physically lift off his shoulders when I caught him with Demi. I was too late. He was finally able to tell me the truth without saying a word. He was over me.

  How could I blame him? Not for the cheating—that was uncalled for. He could have told me the truth. I would have understood. I expected it after all the times I never told him what he wanted to hear. I wanted to. More than anything I wanted him to know what he meant to me. What it meant that he loved me when no one ever had. Absolutely no one. I didn’t even know enough about love to know I was in love. By the time I figured it out, it was too late. Or maybe it was me. Not even those that were supposed to love me had.

  Thinking back, deep down I knew it wouldn’t last. He acted different our last summer together. It was nothing like the first one. The one where Porter couldn’t spend enough time with me. No, that last summer something had changed. I felt the distance even when we were together, except for the nights in the hammock or when we laid out under the stars among the dunes. I asked him a dozen times if he wanted to break up with me. Each time he would stop and think before shaking his head no. But his eyes, they told a different story. Even when he said he loved me, I could hear goodbye. I should have broken up with him, but once you had a taste of love, you never wanted to let it go. And more than anything I wanted to feel what I’d been missing my entire life. If I’d acted as smart as my IQ said I was, I would have admitted the truth and walked away. But my heart knew it would have ached either way. He was the only person that ever could get
my heart to overrule my brain.

  He still could. I let out a heavy breath and clicked on his profile. Why, Holland?

  I scrolled through his timeline, thinking I would see the links to his weekly vlog and several posts, front and center like always, touting the resort he worked for in Tahoe. Instead, there were several throwback pictures of when I knew him. He was reminiscing about home. The caption read, Best summer ever. Mine, too.

  The caption and pictures took me off guard. How could that have been his favorite summer? I had seen several pictures and posts featuring his recent summers. He was having more than a good time in them. Parties galore and beautiful, sometimes even famous people filled each photo. And not once in all the years I had “checked in on him”—Facebook stalking seemed too dramatic . . . or was that unhealthy? —I had never once seen a post about his life in Alabama or his family. That wasn’t surprising, considering all he talked about when I knew him was that he couldn’t wait to break free from the “family business” and his parents’ expectations of him finishing school.

  I thought he was crazy. What I wouldn’t have given to have a family willing and able to pay for school and a ready-made fortune waiting for me to take over. Funny how he ended up at a resort. Maybe being the social media director and face of the resort was less pressure. Or maybe he liked the mountains better than the beach. Or perhaps he didn’t mind taking direction from someone that wasn’t his parents.

  I touched the photo on the screen; it was taken the summer we met. The golden, sun-kissed man—who’d had hints of a boy in his eyes—with dark, flippy hair, could still send flutters through me. In the photo, he was playing volleyball on the beach at sunset. The first time I ever saw him was on that beach. He was catching rays while I was setting up umbrellas and lounge chairs for guests. He asked me what my name was while I stared blankly at his toned chest, not able to say a word. He laughed and approached me to look at my name tag. That’s where it all began.

  I sat back in my office chair and sighed, never taking my eyes off the picture. We shouldn’t have dated. It was against the rules. Working for his family meant I was off limits. His parents, technically his dad and stepmom, had a rule against him dating employees. Beau and Natalie Clairborne were the nicest people I had ever known. One of the few decent things my uncle and legal guardian ever did for me was helping me a secure a job with his old acquaintance, Beau Clairborne. It was probably more to get me out of the way, but no matter how cold and indifferent my aunt and uncle were to me after taking me in, I would always thank Uncle Stan for my job at the Clairborne. Literally in Paradise. Paradise, Alabama, that is, a tiny island in the Gulf of Mexico. I did everything: cleaning rooms, serving food, washing dishes, and servicing guests on the beach. My second and last summer with them, I helped run the souvenir shop on the property.

  That first summer, Porter followed me around pretending to check on my work or teasing me about my name. He was kind of cocky, pointing out if I ever missed a spot on a dish or a streak on a mirror. But those interactions soon turned into him showing me the best place to eat lunch, down by the wharf on the Gulf near the marina. We spent many lunch hours there, dipping our toes in the water and talking about everything from our favorite subjects in school to what we wanted to be when we grew up, or in his case what he didn’t want to be—the owner and operator of the Clairborne.

  Lunch breaks turned into him convincing me to stay after hours. It’s not like anyone cared if I came home, but I hated breaking his parents’ rules. I never even colored outside of the lines as a child. Porter never stayed in them.

  I sat up and scrolled to the next photo. He was holding up a fish he’d caught on his family’s boat. How many times had we snuck out on that thing? More than we should have. I hated the sneaking around, but Porter was good at it, and some other things. I felt a tingle of a memory on my neck. One of his lips’ favorite landing spots.

  I rubbed my neck and clicked on the next picture. There he stood with his parents and his sister, Charlotte, who was nine at the time, in front of the Clairborne sign that stood majestically at the entrance of the resort in front of the gorgeous water wall made of terracotta granite. They were a handsome family. Another twinge of guilt panged me. I hated lying to his parents. They were good to work for and even better people. The kind of people that always went out of the way to make their guests feel like they were at home and their employees like they were part of the family. For some reason, they were especially kind to me. I remember Mrs. Clairborne always asking me if I was happy and if she could do anything for me. I found it odd that she cared. Even odder was that during those summers I was happy. For the first time in my life I’d felt free enough to allow myself the luxury of happiness.

  I let my guard down so much I began to naively dream that one day I would trade Holland Reeves in for Holland Clairborne. For someone so smart, I was sure dumb, at least when it came to Porter.

  I didn’t know if his parents ever found out that I had broken their rule. It still killed me to think I violated their trust, especially since they gave me a nice bonus to use for school at the end of that summer where I woke up from one dream and left to pursue the one I was chasing now. I was getting there slowly but surely. I already had my undergraduate degree in molecular biology and a master’s in chemistry. Someday, someday, a doctorate in pharmacology.

  I blew enough hair out to ruffle my bangs. I wasn’t even sure why I kept a Facebook page. I had very few friends on the site, even fewer in real life. My only posts were links to scientific journal articles I found insightful, or links to when I got published in them. The highlights of my life.

  I needed to quit torturing myself. I scrolled down far enough in Porter’s feed to where I could remind myself he dated models and even a B-list actress that did made-for-TV movies. He hung out with the rich and famous. I couldn’t believe how many pictures there were of him in a tux. That wasn’t the man I knew. The man I knew wore cargo shorts and t-shirts, or swim trunks, his favorite article of clothing. He looked great, but it wasn’t him. At least not my him. But that guy didn’t exist anymore. Maybe he never had. Maybe he was never mine.

  I stared at several pictures of beautiful women draped all over him or kissing his cheeks and taking a selfie. I laughed at the thought of him taking a selfie. I would have thought the Alabama boy in him would have objected. But the women were extremely attractive. I doubted he was thinking with his brain.

  I caught my own reflection in my laptop screen. I could see my tired green eyes and pulled-up, damp, strawberry-blonde hair. The white lab coat was a far cry from an evening gown or those cute snow bunny outfits his girlfriends over the years had worn. I hadn’t even bothered with makeup today. It’s not that I didn’t care about my appearance, but I was busy.

  “I shaved my legs today,” I said out loud to make myself feel better.

  In my final act of torture, I watched the last vlog he posted a few weeks ago. I clicked play and there he was out in the brilliant white snow surrounded by awe-inspiring mountain peaks lined with ski lifts. He was giving his report on the excellent ski conditions and all the newly fallen powder. I noticed he looked tired too. He wasn’t his enthusiastic self. In fact, he hadn’t been the last couple of times I’d watched his vlogs.

  He was still handsome. His dark hair was cut close on the sides and longer on the top. Long gone was the flippy mop. You could tell he had been enjoying the powder himself. His face was tan except for the outline of where he wore ski goggles. The stubble and raccoon eyes worked for him. But his eyes were like mine—worn. Maybe he was burning the candle on both ends partying.

  He must have been exhausted because his southern accent slipped in. He usually made sure not to sound like his roots. “Y’all make sure . . . I mean, you don’t want to miss our buy two get one half-price lift tickets, on sale now.”

  I wondered why he was trying to hide who he was. Surely he wasn’t ashamed. He came from a well-bred family full of manners, charm, and money. He
was lucky. I don’t think he ever knew how much.

  I tapped my fingers on my desk. Why was he unhappy? Stop it, Holland. First loves were never meant to last. You had to have a first to have a last. Someday I would get there. Or perhaps love was never meant to last. Did I even know how to love? I loved my work. I was married to the lab now. It wasn’t a complaint. But it was lonely, even when I wasn’t the only one there.

  I talked to and mentored several grad students a day, but I never found the same connections I had once upon a time in Paradise. Not only had I found Porter there, but Jaycee too. We worked almost every shift together. She became my confidant, Porter-enabler, and friend. But when I let Paradise go, she had to go too. At the time, it seemed like cutting all ties was the best thing to do. It was what my own family, if you could call them that, taught me. Nothing lasted forever. I had to depend on myself.

  And that’s exactly what I was going to keep on doing.

  I sighed and vowed once again to never check in on his life. I was getting ready to click out of the site when a new post showed up. And it included me.

  I felt as if someone had doused me in lidocaine; I was numb from head to toe. I fixated on the only photo that existed of our time together so long ago. Jaycee had taken it with Porter’s phone. We looked so young and I looked ridiculous, while he looked perfect. I was sitting on his lap while he kissed my cheek; my eyes were closed. I was giggling because before the sweet kiss on the cheek he had been giving me playful kisses and making obnoxious sounds against my skin.

  Some feeling came back and I touched the screen. We looked so happy.

  Then I noticed the caption. Best girl ever.

  It was as if the room had become a vacuum-sealed pack. There was no air. No words to describe the shock. Maybe he was intoxicated. Why else would he lie like that? Or maybe he posted the wrong picture, surely he meant one of his snow goddesses.

  Regardless, this was all a mistake. I grabbed my mouse. We were ancient history like the Kenyanthropus, a 3.3-million-year-old skull. Okay, maybe not that old. But my time with him felt like eons ago. Sometimes I wondered if it ever happened. Staring back at me, though, was the photographic evidence.