Love Far from Home Box Set Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  The Pier Changes Everything

  Our Song

  Head Over Heels

  Falling to Pieces

  Read More

  About the Author

  Copyright Notice

  Love Far from Home

  A Box Set of Three Romantic Novellas

  By Annette Lyon

  The Pier Changes Everything

  Chapter One

  To many people, the flight from Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix to Long Beach would have felt like no 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 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 and 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 Designed, 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 then 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 about 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 Madeleine 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 around big holidays and anniversaries. Jason’s birthday was 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 out 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, believing she could succeed and insisting she use the money he’d never be able to spend and wanted her to have.

  On their wedding day, she’d still been slim thanks to the fat camp, where her fourth foster family had sent her the summer they’d toured Europe. She regained the weight after Jason’s death, drowning her stress and depression with food. At least she’d lost the weight. Again. He’d have been proud of her, and she hung on to the thought because the one other person who’d watched her transformation — a boy at fat camp who was her first kiss — had never contacted her again. She’d emailed him after camp, but the message bounced. She figured he’d given her a bogus address.

  At one point, she’d thought of that boy as the person who’d first broken her heart — she’d considered him her best friend, until she got home and never heard from again.

  She knew better now; that wasn’t loss, not really. Even though she’d cared about the guy, she couldn’t really blame him. Teens’ emotions were fickle things. Even though what they’d shared that summer was real — she still believed that — he’d probably forgotten about her and moved on, like normal people did.

  On her wedding day, she’d felt whole for the first time since middle school. In a sense, she’d gained a family in Jason. Her older sister, Joe, aged out of the foster system long ago but never had a stable enough situation to get custody before Alex, too, aged out.

  She hadn’t thought about so much of her past in years, yet as she contemplated her wedding day, so many things that marked before and after tumbled back into her mind. She really could split her life into Before Jason and After Jason. BJ and AJ.

  “How may I help you?” the young man on the other side of the counter said, tapping on his keyboard as the other customer left with a key to his rental.

  Alex blinked. Thoughts of Madeleine Kendall, Jason, the last year of his life, all swirled in her mind. For a moment, she couldn’t find any words to say, couldn’t pull herself back to the earth, to this moment. She looked at the employee again and blinked once, twice.

  “Miss? May I help you?” He didn’t sound annoyed. If anything, he sounded concerned.

  Finally, the situation crystallized in front of her, and the past faded again. Not entirely, of course; it never did. But it slid to the periphery, where it hovered, letting her focus on the now.

  “Yes, sorry.” She fished inside her purse for her credit card and driver’s license. “I need to rent a car. A compact, preferably.”

  She assumed those would be cheapest. Not that she couldn’t afford something nicer, but she took care with how she spent Jason’s money. Each month, she spent less of his and more of her own. In spite of what Madeleine Kendall believed, Alex hadn’t married Jason for his money. With every purchase, she tried to prove that, if only to herself.

  The next fifteen minutes were a blur as she answered questions, filled out paperwork, then finally put her suitcase into the trunk of a silver Corolla. After climbing into the driver’s seat, she let out a deep sigh, then pulled up the hotel’s address on her phone. But as she was about to start the GPS navigation, her finger hesitated over the icon. She glanced at her shoulder bag on the passenger seat, as if she could see through the red leather to the jar inside.

  I’m a widow. The term felt wrong, as if it belonged only to great-grandmothers who played Bingo on Saturday nights at the senior center. A widow wasn’t supposed to be approaching her five-year class reunion. At the age a lot of women were finishing college, she’d created a successful career.

  As she sat in the rental car, her phone stared at her with accusation. Instead of starting the navigation directions, she checked her texts. Sure enough, most were from Madeleine Kendall — all but two. One from Charlotte, the other from her sister. That was the one Alex tapped first.

  Today must be hard on you. Hang in there! Remember that Jason would be proud of you. Don’t let MK get you down. Love ya tons! No worries — I’ll take care of the cemetery!

  Then an emoji of a red heart.

  Her sister knew what today meant and that Madeleine Kendall would try to cause problems. Alex smiled and decided to not even look at the texts from “MK,” as Jo called her, not until later. Not until after she finished what she’d come to California for.

  At a sudden tapping on the car window, Alex jumped. The young man who’d helped her — Chad, his name tag said — called through the glass. “Miss? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, thank you.” She gave him her best fake smile, then clicked her phone off and slipped it into the cup holder — MK’s texts unread, voice messages unheard — and started the engine.

  Chad waved and walked away a few yards, but then stopped, clearly waiting to make sure she got off all right. She pulled out of the lot and into traffic, only then realizing that she had no idea where she was headed because she hadn’t started the GPS. She stopped at a light, then pressed the button on the bottom of her iPhone to get directions to the one California beach she knew by name.

  “How do I get to Santa Monica Pier?” she asked Siri.

  Her phone pulled up a map, and Alex was off, heading for the beach where she’d free the last physical part of James she still had. Then she’d check in at the hotel, get a big dinner from room service — with a decadent dessert, because she deserved it — and then collapse, hopefully into a deep, dreamless sleep, unless she could dream of happier times with Jason.

  Before he’d grown really weak at the end.

  But after they were husband and wife: the trip to France, the late-night movies. Laughing so hard they cried. The times they’d been happy — really happy.

  The traffic light turned green, and she was off.

  Chapter Two

  Michael Montgomery paid the exorbitant fee to park at the Santa Monica Pier, then found an empty spot for his Mustang — one facing away from the ocean. He put the top back up before getting out and locking the doors, studiously avoiding the moment he’d have to look at the water. At least it was at a distance.

  Beyond the parking lot was a bike trail that was practically a thoroughfare where pedestrians had to look both ways or risk getting cursed out. Past that was maybe a hu
ndred yards or so of sand before the rolling waves of the Pacific.

  The timing of this whole thing couldn’t have been more ridiculous. He should have come on a day he wore his usual casual clothes to work. But today he’d had an important meeting with label execs, so he’d dressed up.

  So I should have gone home to change first. Yet he knew that if he’d taken a detour, he probably wouldn’t have kept his promise to come.

  Not wanting to scratch up his dress shoes, he walked to the front of the car to take them off. That way, his back was still to the beach.

  Why are you avoiding it? He chastised himself as he untied the second shoe. The beach hurts. That why I’m avoiding it.

  After peeling off his dark-gray socks, he stuffed them into the toes of his shoes, then rolled up the cuffs of his slacks. He took a deep breath, locked the car with the key fob again — just to make sure — then headed for the beach.

  As expected, the sight of the pale sand with the seemingly endless ocean beyond twisted his gut. He stood there, looking out over the vast ocean. The scent of salt reached him, bringing back memories, and with them, pain. Coming out here had been a dumb idea. He no longer cared that Nate, college-roommate-turned-therapist, had suggested he come as an exercise in letting go. Nate might have a Ph.D., but that didn’t mean he knew what he was talking about when it came to Rachel.

  Just thinking her name hurt. He gritted his teeth. This was a dumb idea. Dumb, dumb idea.

  But agreeing to come here now, at the very hour Rachel was walking down the aisle and making vows with another guy? That was downright asinine.

  Cathartic, Nate had called it. It’ll bring closure, he’d assured Michael.

  Sure, if closure meant ripping open old wounds and pouring alcohol on them. That’s about what this felt like. He stood there, ostensibly waiting for a few bicycles to pass, but his mind had drifted to the fancy church wedding Rachel had always wanted. He could see himself waiting at the end of the aisle as she walked down it, smiling through her veil and looking angelic as she reached his side and they took hands to face the minister.