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I flipped on the light to my bathroom and flinched at the sight of what greeted me.
“Jesus. Christ.”
Janice had been upstairs trashing my bathroom while I thought she was getting dressed to leave. Fucking Bastard was scrawled on the mirror in her red lipstick. She’d smeared shampoo, toothpaste, and God knows what else everywhere from the walls to the countertops to the floor. Towels had bee
n shoved into the toilet. The contents of the drawers had been dumped out and thrown around. Utter mayhem and destruction. I checked the cupboards but the stuff there appeared untouched, somehow miraculously escaping The Wrath of Janice. I was almost expecting a severed horse head or a dead bunny rabbit to be behind the doors when I opened them to check. The whole thing was straight out of Fatal Attraction and creepy as fuck.
I shut off the light and headed for the guest room to take my shower, draining my beer as I went. I felt sorry for Ann having to clean it all up tomorrow, but the mess was too much for me to deal with right now. I’d be sure to thank Ann with an extra paid day off during the week for her trouble. I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket.
Oh goody, a picture. From Janice. Of her sucking what I assumed was James’s cock no less. She even added a message to go along with it. You will be so sorry you ever fucked with me, Caleb Blackstone.
I was already sorry. And Janice was seriously unhinged.
I did three things before powering off my phone for the night: Deleted the photo. Blocked Janice’s number. Texted James to tell him she was posting pics of his dick in her mouth. His father, a judge for the First Circuit Court of Appeals, wouldn’t be too keen about it should the picture get leaked. Well, four things. I went back for another beer and downed it before going to the guest room for my long-overdue shower.
As the too-hot water poured over my skin, I made a promise to myself to stay away from women for a while. Dating certainly wasn’t doing me much good, and I’d had it with all of the crazy females who only wanted to use me for open access to my money or trap me into marrying them.
Where were the normal women of the world?
Were they only a myth?
I remembered something Dad had said to me before he’d died. “When you find whatever it is that makes you happy, Caleb, hold on to it with everything you’ve got. Your heart will let you know.”
I wanted to believe what Dad had told me was true, but the fact of the matter was my heart hadn’t told me a thing in a very long time.
Brooke
Blackstone Island, Massachusetts
Living on an island had its perks, but the hour-long commute on the ferry into Boston wasn’t one of them. There were other reasons for being here, though. Good reasons, I reminded myself as I pulled my coat a little tighter against the autumn chill breezing over the water.
My nan needed me now, and there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for the woman who’d taken me in at fifteen after Mum and Dad were killed. I don’t really remember a great deal about when I first came to live on the island with Nan. I must have blocked it out due to the terrible shock of what had happened to my parents and being so suddenly uprooted. The high-end, touristy retreat called Blackstone Island couldn’t be more dissimilar from the place I’d previously called home. From the suburbs of London to a swath of colonial America separated from the mainland by Massachusetts Bay. Well, at least the language was the same.
Sort of.
“Oh, you have an accent.” No, you’re the ones with the accent.
“You’re from Australia, right?” Wrong hemisphere.
“Hey Brooke, say something in your English accent for me.” Something.
I had heard every joke and had been asked nearly every question imaginable, but it didn’t bother me. Not really. I knew people were merely curious about how I’d come to be here and tried to be friendly.
In time I came out of my shock. I went on to finish what they called high school here on the island, and then later attended university at Suffolk where I earned my degree in interior design. I didn’t realize it then, but those were the happy times.
Then I met someone and made a terrible mistake, and had to leave Nan on the island while I lived far away in Los Angeles. I suffered through my terrible mistake for a year and a half until the day came that I didn’t have to endure the suffering anymore. Not physically at least. The sorrow was still with me and probably always would be, but I was determined to keep moving forward in a positive way. And I’d made a promise to myself not to let the bad parts of my past hurt me anymore. It was a goal and I planned to stick to it.
Five months ago I left LA and came back to Boston and then went about the process of getting my life back. Nan was still in her darling cottage on Blackstone Island where she had come to live all the way from England as a young bride. Many a time I’ve heard the locals tell the story about how my grandfather had brought home an English girl for a wife, as if she’d come from an alien planet. Nan and I had our citizenship in common—both British born but called America our home.
I’d lived in the US for so long now it was home in my mind.
“Penny for your thoughts, young lady.”
I turned toward twinkling blue eyes that regarded me kindly and smiled. Herman was a dedicated flirt. Since he had to be pushing seventy and was also the mayor of Blackstone Island, I gave him a pass. He was rumored to own most of the property on the island and to be worth millions. You’d never know it, though. He lived what appeared to be a modest life in a small house, with a really big oceanfront view—probably what constituted the millions he purportedly had—and was one of the most cheerful people I’d ever met in my life. He always greeted me warmly and asked about Nan. I’d wondered if he might be a little in love with my nan, actually.
“Good morning, Mayor. What has you heading off-island today?” I asked, suddenly curious. I’d never seen him on the morning ferry to Boston before.
“County council quarterly meeting in the city.” He looked out at the view of the shoreline and seemed pensive as he studied it. “One of the few reasons left to get me to leave, otherwise I wouldn’t.”
