Holiday In the Hamptons Read online

  Praise for Sarah Morgan

  ‘The perfect book to curl up with’

  – Heat

  ‘Lovers of romance will relish this tale of friendship, fun and flirting set in beautiful New York.’

  – My Weekly

  ‘Morgan excels in balancing the sweet and sexy to create the perfect blend.’

  – Booklist

  ‘A gorgeously sparkly romance about letting go and learning to love again.’

  – Julia Williams, bestselling author of Coming Home for Christmas

  ‘Full of romance and sparkle’

  – Lovereading

  ‘Morgan is a magician with words’

  – RT Book Reviews

  ‘Definitely looking forward to more from Sarah Morgan’

  – Smexy Books

  ‘Morgan’s novel delivers the classic sweep-you-off-your-feet romantic experience.’

  – Publisher’s Weekly

  ‘Perfect chick-lit’

  – BEST Magazine

  ‘Her dynamic prose like narrative is eloquent, the laugh-out-loud humor lightens the load and both her big-city and small-town settings are perfect’

  – RT Book Reviews

  ‘Another winner from Sarah’

  – Annie Cooper’s Book Corner

  ‘I am fairly certain there will never be a Sarah Morgan book that I won’t love. This was no exception. My very favourite book of hers to date!’

  – Erin’s Book Choice

  ‘A fun loving story with the sprinkling of magic I love in Sarah Morgan’s books.’

  – Sarah Mackins

  ‘Simply gold! A spectacular storyline.’

  – A Page of Fictional Love

  ‘Fresh, romantic, complexity and heart! Sleepless in Manhattan is everything you want in romance!’

  – Chicks that Read

  ‘Sleepless in Manhattan is Sarah Morgan at her best.’

  – Rachel’s Random Reads

  SARAH MORGAN writes warm contemporary women’s fiction with her trademark humour which has gained her fans across the globe. Sarah lives near London with her husband and children, and when she isn’t reading or writing she loves being outdoors, preferably on holiday so she can forget the house needs tidying. You can visit Sarah online at www.sarahmorgan.com, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/AuthorSarahMorgan and on Twitter @SarahMorgan_

  Dear Reader,

  I love writing about friendship, especially friendship between sisters. My heroine in Holiday in the Hamptons, Fliss, is a twin, but she couldn’t be more different from her sister Harriet. What could be more interesting than two people who are identical on the outside and yet totally different on the inside? Fliss is a fighter and protective of her sister, but deep down she has her own vulnerabilities. When her ex-husband appears on the scene, she’s forced to confront issues she’d thought she’d left behind. But Fliss isn’t the same person she was at eighteen (are any of us?!) and she is about to learn just how much time, and life, alter things.

  This book explores how relationships change, not just romantic relationships, but the relationship between grandmother and granddaughter, sister and sister (and woman and dog!), all against the backdrop of ocean and sand dunes.

  My first glimpse of the Hamptons was from a plane and I was captivated by the long stretches of sandy beaches, dunes and the yachts studding the sparkling ocean. It’s a favourite place for New Yorkers looking to escape the madness of the city and it seemed like the perfect place to set a summer book.

  Wherever you are this summer, I hope this book gives you the perfect escape.

  Love Sarah

  xxxx

  To Flo, with love and thanks for all the insight into life as a twin. You’re the best.

  “The human heart has hidden treasures,

  In secret kept, in silence sealed;

  The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures,

  Whose charms were broken if revealed.”

  —Charlotte Brontë

  Contents

  Cover

  Praise

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Dear Reader

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  PROLOGUE

  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

  THANK YOU

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  AS EIGHTEENTH BIRTHDAYS WENT, it had to be the worst ever.

  Fliss ran through the overgrown garden that wrapped itself around three sides of the beach house. She didn’t feel the sharp sting of nettles or the whip of the long grass against her bare calves because she was already feeling too many other things. Bigger things.

  The old rusty gate scraped her hip as she pushed her way through it. Misery fueled every stride as she took the grassy path that ran through the dunes to the beach. No one could catch her now. She’d find a place away from everyone. Away from him. And she wasn’t returning home until he’d left. The birthday cake would stay uneaten, the candles unlit, the plates untouched. There would be no singing, no salutations, no celebration. What was there to celebrate?

  Fury licked around the edges of her misery, and underneath anger and misery was hurt. A hurt she worked hard never to show. Never let a bully see you’re afraid. Never let yourself be vulnerable. Wasn’t that what her brother had taught her? And her father, she’d worked out long before, was a bully.

  If she’d had to find one word to describe him it would be angry. And she’d never understood it. She got mad from time to time, so did her brother, but there was always a cause. With her father, there was no cause for the anger. It was as if he rose in the morning and bathed in it.

  Words pounded in her head, matching the rhythm of her strides. Hate him, hate him, hate him…

  Her feet hit the sand. The wind lifted her hair. She gulped in another breath and tasted sea and salt air. Squeezing her eyes against the tears, she tried to replace the sound of her father’s voice with the familiar soundtrack of seagulls and surf.

  It should have been a perfect summer’s day, but her father had a way of sucking the sunshine out of the sunniest day, and no day was exempt. Not even the day you turned eighteen. He always knew how to make her feel bad.

  She tried to outrun her feelings, her breath tearing in her chest and her heart pounding like fists on a punching bag.

  You’re nothing but trouble. Useless, no good, worthless, stupid—

  If she was as worthless as he believed then she should probably run into the ocean, but he’d be pleased to be free of her, and she was damned if she was going to do a single thing that might please him.

  Lately she’d made it her life’s focus to live down to the low opinion he had of her, not because she wanted to make trouble but because his rules just didn’t make sense and pleasing him was impossible.

  The cruelest part was that he wasn’t even supposed to be here.

  The summer months were their oasis of time away from him. Time spent with her siblings, her mother and her grandmother while her father stayed in the city and took his anger to work every day.

  She’d grown to love those precious weeks when sunlight burst
through the darkness and all she trailed into the house was sand and laughter. They stayed up late and woke in the mornings feeling lighter and happier. Some days they carried their breakfast to the beach and ate it there right by the ocean. This morning’s choice, her birthday breakfast, had been a basket of ripe peaches. She’d been wiping the juice from her chin when she’d heard the wheels of her father’s car crunch on the gravel of the beach house.

  Her twin sister had turned pale. Her peach had slid slowly from her fingers and thudded onto the sand, the fruit instantly transformed from smooth to gritty. Like life, Fliss had thought, hiding her dismay.

  Her mother had panicked, thrusting her feet into her shoes while trying to tame wind-blown hair with a hand that shook like the branch of a tree in a storm. During the summer she was a different woman. An outsider might have thought the changes were a result of the relaxed pace of beach life, but Fliss knew it was due to being away from their father.

  And now he was here. Intruding on their blissful beach idyll.

  Her brother, calm as always, had taken control. It was probably just a delivery, he’d said. A neighbor.

  But they all knew it wasn’t a delivery or a neighbor. Their father drove the same way he did everything, angrily, revving the engine and sending small stones flying. Angry was his calling card.

  Fliss knew it was him, and the sweet-tasting peach turned bitter in her mouth. She was used to her father ruining every part of her life, but now he was ruining summer, too?

  The cloudless blue sky seemed hazed with gloom, and she knew that until he left again she was going to be dragging her bad mood around like a ball and chain.

  She was determined to see him as little as possible, which was why she’d chosen the beach over her bedroom.

  Her flip-flops hampered her pace, so she slowed and kicked them off. This time when she ran her feet were silent, the sand cool and smooth under her soles. In the distance she could see the white mist of surf erupting over rock, and she could hear the crash and hiss of waves advancing and retreating.

  Somewhere in the far distance someone called her name, and she quickened her pace.

  She didn’t want to see anyone. Not like this, when she was raw and vulnerable. She always kept her feelings inside, but right now there didn’t seem to be room for them all. They filled the space around her heart, made her head ache and her eyes sting. She wasn’t going to cry. She never cried. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. If her eyes were watering, it was because of the wind.

  “Fliss!”

  She heard her name again and almost missed her stride because this time she recognized the voice. Seth Carlyle. Oldest son of Matthew and Catherine Carlyle. Old money. Wealthy, successful, smart and decent. Classy. No skeletons in that family. No raised voices or kids quivering in fear. She was willing to bet Catherine Carlyle didn’t virtually crawl around the walls in order to prevent herself drawing the attention of her husband, and she could never in a million years imagine Matthew Carlyle raising his voice. In the Carlyle house, plates would be a vessel for food, not a weapon for throwing. And she was sure Seth had never made his father feel ashamed or disgusted. He was the golden boy.

  He was also her brother’s friend. If he knew she was upset, he’d tell her brother and Daniel would once again step between her and their father. His protective instincts had put him in the firing line on more occasions than Fliss wanted to count. She didn’t mind him doing it for her twin because when Harriet was stressed her stammer got so bad she couldn’t always speak for herself, but Fliss didn’t want him to do it for her. She could fight her own battles, and right now she felt like fighting to the death.

  Ignoring Seth’s voice, she kept running. He wouldn’t follow her. He’d return to the group and join them in a game of beach volleyball, or maybe they’d surf or swim. Things she’d planned to do today, before her father had arrived unexpectedly for the weekend and ruined it all.

  She ran until she reached the rocks. She clambered over jagged edges without pausing, ignored the sharp sting in the palm of her hand and landed on the smooth sand on the other side.

  She’d been visiting this part of the Hamptons since she was born, and the summers that she, her twin and her brother had spent with their grandmother had given her the only happy memories of her childhood.

  “Fliss?” It was Seth again, and this time his voice was deeper, lower, closer.

  Damn. “Leave me alone, Seth.”

  He didn’t. Instead, he vaulted down from the rocks, lithe and athletic, his shoulders blocking out the sun. He was wearing nothing but board shorts. His chest was bare and glistened with droplets of water. He was on the swim team at college, and the four summers he’d spent as a lifeguard had given him muscles in all the right places. Everyone on the island knew about the time Seth Carlyle had risked his own life to save two young kids who had ignored the warnings and stupidly taken an inflatable out onto the ocean. That was the kind of guy Seth was. He did the right thing.

  She only ever did the wrong thing.

  Fliss had spent the summer listening to the other girls lusting after Seth, and it wasn’t hard to understand what they saw in him. He was smart and good-humored, self-assured without being cocky. And sexy. Insanely sexy, with that lean, powerful body and skin that turned golden at the first touch of the sun. His hair and his eyes were dark as jet, a legacy from his grandfather’s side of the family, who were Italian. He was the same age as her brother, which made him too old for her. Her father would freak at the five-year age gap. Girls your age should date boys, not men.

  As she watched Seth stroll toward her, she felt her muscles clench. Clearly her libido hadn’t gotten the memo. Either that, or sexual attraction was no respecter of ages.

  Or maybe she wanted him because she knew her father would freak.

  He planted himself in front of her. “What’s wrong?”

  How could he tell that something was wrong? She’d had years of practice at hiding her feelings, but Seth always seemed to see through the layers of protection that blinded everyone else to the truth.

  She’d joked to Harriet that he was like an X-ray machine, or an MRI scanner, but the truth was he was just scarily perceptive. Or perhaps what she should really say was that he was perceptive, and she was scared.

  If she’d wanted people to know how bad she felt most of the time, she would have told them.

  “Nothing is wrong.” She didn’t mention the fight with her father. She never talked about it with anyone. She didn’t want people to know. She didn’t want sympathy. She didn’t want pity. Most of all she didn’t want people knowing how bad those fights with her father made her feel, not just because she’d learned to hide her feelings, but because part of her was afraid that saying the words aloud might give them credence. She didn’t want to give voice to the niggling thought that maybe her father was right. That she might actually be as worthless and useless as he believed her to be.

  But Seth wasn’t so easily deflected. “Are you sure? Because you don’t look like a woman celebrating her eighteenth birthday.”

  Woman.

  He’d called her a woman.

  It made her giddy. Right there and then, she felt the age gap evaporate. Poise and power replaced doubt and insecurity. “I wanted time to myself.”

  “On your birthday? That doesn’t sound right to me. No one should spend their birthday alone, especially not an eighteenth birthday.”

  She’d known Seth for years, but they’d grown closer than ever this summer. Unlike her father, Seth never seemed outraged by her antics. When she’d gone skinny-dipping in the ocean late at night, her twin, Harriet, had begged her not to go, but Seth had simply laughed. He hadn’t joined her, but he’d waited on the rocks until she returned safely. Because Seth Carlyle always does the right thing.

  Still, he hadn’t judged or lectured, simply handed her a towel and sprang down onto the sand as if his job was done. He never touched her, and she’d wished a million times that he would, ev
en though she knew he was watching over her because he was Daniel’s friend and a responsible person.

  She found herself wishing it again now. Which proved she was anything but a responsible person.

  To be sure she didn’t give in to temptation and fling her arms around him, she wrapped them around herself.

  His gaze dropped. “You’ve cut your hand. You should be more careful on these rocks. Does it hurt?”

  “No.” She snatched her hands behind her back, one half of her hoping he’d leave while the other half hoped he’d stay.

  “If it doesn’t hurt, why are you crying?”

  Was she crying? She brushed her cheek with the heel of her hand and discovered that they were wet. “I kicked sand in my eyes when I was running.”

  He thought she was upset because of the wounds he could see.

  He had no idea about the wounds she kept hidden.

  “Why were you running?” He closed his hands over her arms and drew them gently in front of her. Then he turned her hands over so he could examine them. His fingers were broad and strong, and her hand looked small in his. Delicate.

  She didn’t ever want to be delicate. Her mother was delicate. Watching her navigate her stormy marriage was like watching a single daisy struggling to stay upright in a hurricane. Fliss wanted to be hardy, like a thornbush. The sort of plant people treated with respect and care. And she was fiercely determined to earn a good living so that she would never, ever find herself trapped in the situation her mother had found herself in.

  If I leave your father, I’ll lose you. He’d make sure I don’t get custody, and I don’t have the money or influence to fight that.

  Seth bent his head, and she watched as strands of dark hair flopped over his forehead. She itched to touch it, to slide her fingers through it, to feel its softness under her hands. And she wanted to touch the thick muscles of his shoulders, even though she already knew they wouldn’t be soft. They were everything hard and powerful. She knew that for sure because last summer someone had tossed her in the water and it had been Seth who had hauled her out. Being held by him was something that no woman would forget in a hurry.