Beach House Summer, page 1
Praise for the novels of Sarah Morgan
“The ultimate road-trippin’ beach read and just what we all need after the long lockdown.”
—Booklist, starred review, on The Summer Seekers
“Warm, funny and often insightful, The Summer Seekers is a satisfying dose of escapism with plenty of heart.”
—Shelf Awareness
“Her lovingly created characters come to life, the [dialogue] rings true, and readers will fly through the pages and then wish for more.”
—Library Journal, starred review, on How to Keep a Secret
“A journey of love and festive cheer.”
—Woman’s World on The Christmas Escape
“Morgan’s latest Christmas tale will delight readers and give them the perfect excuse to snuggle up for a few hours with a cup of hot cocoa.”
—Booklist on The Christmas Escape
“Morgan expertly avoids cliché and easy fixes, resulting in a deeply believable portrait of a family relearning how to love each other. Readers will be delighted.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review, on One More for Christmas
“Morgan’s gently humorous aesthetic will leave readers feeling optimistic and satisfied.”
—Publishers Weekly on A Wedding in December
“Packed full of love, loss, heartbreak, and hope, this may just be Morgan’s best book yet.”
—Booklist on One Summer in Paris
“The perfect gift for readers who relish heartwarming tales of sisters and love.”
—Booklist on The Christmas Sisters
Beach House Summer
Sarah Morgan
SARAH MORGAN is a USA TODAY and Sunday Times bestselling author of contemporary romance and women’s fiction. She has sold more than twenty-one million copies of her books, and her trademark humor and warmth have gained her fans across the globe. Sarah lives with her family near London, England, where the rain frequently keeps her trapped in her office. Visit her at www.sarahmorgan.com.
To Britt, with love
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Acknowledgments
Excerpt from Snowed in for Christmas by Sarah Morgan
1
Ashley
She slid into his car, hoping this wasn’t a mistake. It hadn’t been her first choice of plan, but the others had failed and she was desperate.
He smiled at her, and there was so much charm in that smile that she forgot everything around her. The way he looked at her made her feel as if she was the only woman in the world.
To add to the charm he had the car, a high-performance convertible, low, sleek and expensive. It shrieked, Look at me, in case the other trappings of wealth and power hadn’t already drawn your attention.
Her mother would have warned her not to get in the car with him, but her mother was gone now and Ashley was making the best decisions she could with no one close to offer her advice or caution. She remembered the first time she’d ridden a bike on her own, unsteady, unbalanced, hands sweating on the handlebars, her mother shouting, Keep peddling! She remembered her first swimming lesson where she’d slid under the surface and gulped down so much water she’d thought she was going to empty the pool. She’d been sure she was going to drown but then she felt hands lifting her to the surface and a voice cutting through water-clogged ears: Keep kicking!
She was on her own now. There was no one to tug her to the surface if she was drowning. No one to steady the wheels of her bike when she wobbled. Her mother had been the safety net in her life and they’d grown even closer after her father died. But now if she fell she’d hit the ground with nothing and no one to cushion her fall.
He turned onto Mulholland Drive and picked up speed. The engine gave a throaty roar and the wind played with her hair as they sped upward through the Hollywood Hills. She’d never been in a car like this before. Never met a man like him.
They climbed higher and higher, passing luxury mansions, catching glimpses of a lifestyle beyond the reach of even her imagination. Envy slid through her. Did problems go away when you had so much? Did the people living here experience the same anxieties as normal people or did those high walls and security cameras insulate them from life? Could you buy happiness?
No, but money could make life easier, which was why she was here.
Spread beneath them were views of downtown, Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley.
Stay focused.
“I know the best place to see the sunset.” His warm, deep voice had helped propel him from yet another TV personality to a megastar. “You’re never going to forget it.”
She was sure of it. This moment was significant for so many reasons.
What would happen to that confidence when she told him her news?
Nausea rolled in her stomach and she was relieved she’d been unable to eat breakfast or lunch.
“You’re quiet.” He drove with one hand on the wheel, supremely confident. One hand, his eyes mostly on her. She wanted to tell him to keep his attention on the road.
“I’m a little nervous.”
“Are you intimidated? Don’t be. I’m just a normal, regular guy.”
Yeah, right.
He was driving fast now, enjoying the car, the moment, his life. She knew that was about to change. She’d rehearsed a speech. Practiced a hundred times in front of the mirror.
I’ve got something to tell you.
“Could you slow down?”
“You prefer slow?” His hand caressed the wheel. “I can go slow when I need to. What did you say your name was?”
He didn’t recognize her. He didn’t have a clue who she was. How could he not know?
She sat rigid in her seat. Was she really that forgettable and unimportant?
In this part of town, where everyone was someone, she was no one.
She fought the disillusion and the humiliation.
“I’m Mandy. I’m from Connecticut.”
Her name wasn’t Mandy. She’d never been to Connecticut. Couldn’t even put it on a map.
He should know that. She wanted him to know that. She wanted him to say, I know you’re not Mandy, but he didn’t, of course, because women came and went from his life and he was already moving on to the next one.
“And you’re sure we’ve met before? I wouldn’t have forgotten someone as pretty as you.”
She’d had dreams about him. Fantasies. She’d thought about him day and night for the past couple of months, ever since she’d first laid eyes on him.
But he didn’t know her. There was no recognition.
Her eyes stung. She told herself it was the wind in her face because her mother had drummed into her that life was too short to cry over a man. She wouldn’t be here at all except that she’d felt alone and scared and needed to do something to help herself. She was afraid she couldn’t do this on her own, and he had to take some responsibility, surely? He shouldn’t be allowed to just walk away. That wasn’t right. Like it or not, they were bonded.
“We’ve met.” She rested her hand on her abdomen. Blinked away the tears. The time to wish she’d been more careful was long gone. She had to look forward. Had to do the right thing, but it wasn’t easy.
Her body told her she was an adult, but inside she still felt like the child who had wobbled on that bike with her ponytail flying.
He glanced at her again, curious. “Now I think about it, you do look familiar. Can’t place you, though. Don’t be offended.” He gave her another flash of those perfect white teeth. “I meet a lot of women.”
She knew that. She knew his reputation, and yet still she was here. What did that say about her? She should have more pride, but pride and desperation didn’t fit comfortably together.
“I’m not offended.” Under the fear she was furious. And fiercely determined.
She wasn’t going to let this guy ruin her life. That wasn’t going to happen.
They were climbing now. Climbing, climbing, the road winding upward into the hills while the city lay beneath them like a glittering carpet. She felt like Peter Pan, flying over rooftops.
Should she tell him now? Was this a good moment?
Her heart started to pound, heavy beats thudding a warning against her ribs. She hadn’t thought he’d bring her somewhere this remote. She shouldn’t have climbed into his car. Another bad decision to add to the ones she’d already made. The longer she waited to tell him, the farther they were from civilization and people. People who could help her. But who would help? Who was there?
She had no one. Just herself, which was why she was here now, doing what needed to be done regardless of the consequences.
Thinking of consequences made her palms grow damp. She should do it right now, while half his attention was on the road.
She waited as he waltzed the car around another bend and hit another straight stretch of road. She could already see the next bend up ahead.
“Mr. Whitman? Cliff? There’s something I need to tell you.”
2
Joanna
Joanna Whitman learned of her ex-husband’s death while she was eating breakfast. She was on her second cup of strong espresso when his face popped up on her TV screen. She grabbed the remote, intending to do what she always did these days when he appeared in her life—turn him off—when she realized that behind that standard head and shoulders shot wasn’t a sea of adoring fans, or one of his exclusive restaurants, but the mangled wreckage of a car in a ravine.
She saw the words Breaking News appear on the screen and turned up the sound in time to hear the newsreader telling the world that celebrity chef Cliff Whitman had been killed in an accident and that they would be giving more information as they had it. Currently all they knew was that his car had gone off the road. He’d been pronounced dead at the scene. His passenger, a young woman as yet unnamed, had been flown to the hospital, her condition unknown.
A young woman.
Joanna tightened her fingers on the remote. Of course she’d be young. Cliff had a pattern, and that pattern hadn’t changed as he aged. He was the most competitive person she’d ever met, driven by an insecurity that went bone deep. He wanted the highest TV ratings, the biggest crowds for public appearances, the longest waiting lists for his restaurants. When it came to women he wanted them younger and thinner, choosing them as carefully as he chose the ingredients he used in his kitchens. Fresh and seasonal.
On most days Joanna felt like someone past her sell-by date. She was forty. Were you supposed to feel like this at forty? She’d wasted half her life on a man who had repeatedly let her down.
She stared at the TV, her gaze fixed on the smoking wreckage. Hadn’t she always said his libido would be the death of him?
Her phone rang and she checked the screen.
Not a friend (did she have any true friends? It was something she often wondered), but Rita, Cliff’s personal assistant and his lover for the past six months.
Joanna didn’t want to talk to Rita. She didn’t want to talk to anyone. She knew from painful experience that anything she said would find its way into the media and be used to construct an image of her as a pathetic creature, worthy of pity. Whatever Cliff did, she somehow became the story. And no matter how much she told herself that it didn’t matter because they didn’t matter, and that the woman they wrote about wasn’t really her, she still found it distressing. Not only the intrusion and the inaccuracies, and there were many of those, but the constant reminder of her biggest mistake—not leaving him sooner.
She’d stayed ridiculously loyal to him for two decades, and yes, she regretted it now. He’d made her extravagant promises and told her she was the best thing in his life and that this time things were going to be different, and naively she’d believed him. And she hadn’t just done it once. She’d done it repeatedly. She’d thought, This time he means it and things will be different, but things never were different and he hadn’t meant it. And now she felt stupid for believing he’d ever change, and that the things he said would ever be anything other than empty words spoken to induce her to stay, but she’d so badly wanted to believe him because the alternative was to accept that under the charm and the warmth Cliff Whitman was a cheat and a liar, and that she’d stayed with him far too long.
She’d finally left him, but the news stories never went away, which meant that even though she’d finally divorced him she still sometimes felt as if they were together. Her mistake was an anchor that held her fast. Whatever she did in the future, she’d be dragging her past with Cliff along with her.
She rejected the call, muted the sound on the TV, but continued to stare at the words scrolling along the bottom of the screen.
Celebrity chef Cliff Whitman killed in car accident.
Dead at the scene.
Well, damn.
She’d spent the last year wanting to kill him herself and she didn’t know whether to feel elated or cheated. After everything he’d done, everything he’d put her through, it seemed unfair of the universe to have deprived her of the chance to play at least a small part in his demise.
A hysterical laugh burst from her and she slapped her hand over her mouth, shocked. Had she really just thought that? She was a compassionate human being. She valued kindness above almost all other qualities, possibly because her encounters with it had been rare. And yet here she was thinking that if she’d seen his car hovering on the edge of a ravine she might have given it a hard push.
What did that say about her?
Her legs were shaking. Why were her legs shaking? She sat down hard on the nearest chair. Dead. Her journey with Cliff had been bumpy, but she’d known him for half her life. She should be sad, shouldn’t she? She should feel something? Yes, Cliff Whitman was a liar and a cheat who had almost broken her, but he was still a person. And there had been a time when they’d loved each other, even if that love had been complicated. There had been good parts. At the beginning of their marriage he’d brought her breakfast in bed on Sunday mornings, flaky, buttery croissants he’d baked himself and juice freshly squeezed from the citrus fruit that grew in their home orchard. He’d listened to her. He’d made her laugh. She’d organized his chaotic life, leaving him free to play the part he enjoyed most—being Cliff. He’d said they were a perfect team.
She stood up abruptly and fetched a glass of ice water. She drank it quickly, trying to cool the hot burn of emotion.
Whatever had happened between them, death was always a tragedy. Was it? Was she being hypocritical? She should probably cry, if not for him, then for the woman who’d made the bad decision to get into the car with him. Joanna sympathized. She was never one to judge the bad decisions of another. She’d made so many bad decisions in her life she could no longer count them.
She thought about Rita. Would she be shocked to discover she hadn’t been the only woman in Cliff’s life? Why was it that a woman so rarely believed that a serial cheater would cheat on them? They all thought they were different. That they were special. That they would be the one to tame him. When he said, You’re the one, they believed him.
Joanna had believed that, too. She’d needed to believe that. When she’d met him she’d been vulnerable and heartbroken. She’d wanted so badly to be special to someone. To have someone whose love she could rely on. She’d thought love meant security, and it had taken a long time—too long—for her to understand that they were different things.
Putting the empty glass down, she took a deep breath and forced herself to think. She and Cliff were no longer married, but they still shared the business. Cliff’s was a brand, but now the figurehead was gone. What did that mean for the company they’d built together? She’d invested more than twenty years of her life into its growth and success, which was why she hadn’t walked away from it at the same time as her marriage. It had represented the only consistency and security she had left. Also Cliff’s gave her a focus, and she needed that. The media didn’t understand, of course. They didn’t understand how she could still work alongside a man who had repeatedly humiliated her.
She closed her eyes. Forget that. Don’t think about that.
Right now the worst part was that there would be a funeral, and she hated funerals. No matter whose funeral it was, it was always her father’s funeral. Again and again, like some kind of cruel time-travel trick. And she was always ten years old, shivering as the cool Californian rain blended with her tears. This was different, of course. She’d adored her father, and her father had adored her back. He was the only man whose love she’d been sure of. But even with him love hadn’t meant security because he’d left her, felled by a heart attack in the middle of the living room with her as a witness. She could still hear the sickening thud as his body had hit the floor.
And now there would be Cliff’s funeral. Did she have to go? The thought of it made her want to reach for a drink, even though she wasn’t much of a drinker.
