Choices

by Tessa Vidal

  Table of Contents

  Choices: A Second Chance Lesbian Romance

  Copyright Note

  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

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Choices

  A Second Chance Lesbian Romance

  by

  Tessa Vidal

  A SECOND CHANCE FOR their first love...

  Small-town sweethearts Caro and Shell were torn apart eleven years ago.

  Movie star Caro has reinvented herself as Hollywood royalty. Every inch a polished princess, she keeps her humble past a deep, dark secret.

  Down-to-earth Shell refuses to hide who she is or where she came from. Her practical approach makes her the most in-demand dog behaviorist in Los Angeles.

  When a fluffy rescue dog pulls them back together, sparks fly. But they were once two of a kind, and now they're complete opposites. Is it really possible for an A-list movie star to share more than a few nights with a regular girl from back home?

  Copyright Note

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to anyone, any time, or any place is not intended and is merely coincidental. Cover models appear for illustration purposes only and have no relationship to any events in this story. Brief mentions of real persons, places, events, or products are used fictitiously and in accordance with fair use. All trademarks remain the properties of their owners. Some locations have been fictionalized for dramatic purposes.

  Text ©2019 Tessa Vidal & Lovebird Press

  Cover Design ©2019 Lovebird Press

  Please respect the hard work of the author, and don't post this book to free, sharing, or pirate sites.

  Prologue

  Eleven Years Earlier

  Rayna

  Caroline had a new pink flip phone. “There's a camera in it that knows how to take night pictures,” she said, lifting it high and overhead, an angle rumored to make you look thinner. As if Caroline needed to look thinner. Her slender body was a warm reed where I crowded up close to her on the right side.

  Pinky-gold glitter flickered in the hint of cleavage exposed by her pink blouse. Was it real silk? It was soft enough to make me think so. As always, her blonde hair smelled of something expensive I couldn't identify. High-end beauty products contained ingredients you seldom encountered in Robinsonville, Mississippi.

  Ryder hunkered awkwardly close and down, his knees bent uneasily to put his tall, wide body on the same level as the two of us girls. My fraternal twin was twice my size, something I was still getting used to since he didn't get most of his growth spurt until this past summer. My little brother, born sixteen minutes after me, was no longer my little brother.

  The pink phone flashed. I blinked.

  “Look,” Caroline said, and all three of us looked. There was a thin line of print over the bottom of the photograph.

  September 9, 2008, 10:35 EST.

  Evidently, Caroline hadn't yet figured out how to change the setting to Central Time. Well, nobody's perfect. As for me, I didn't know anything about perfume and glitter, but I was good at noticing little things like the way even a cell phone camera loved Caroline's face. She'd sucked in her cheeks and puffed out her lips at the last minute to make herself look more glamorous. Another trick she didn't need.

  Crap. I'd been caught blinking. My eyes were closed down to slits in the picture, although I would have sworn the light flashed first and then I blinked my eyes.

  Ryder was Ryder. A big guy not used to being so big. He looked embarrassed to be caught on camera.

  The garish lights across the parking lot were mostly blocked by the close focus on our three faces. It was a special moment, our first visit to the casino. Three of them clumped together to make a gambling destination, but everybody knew the biggest and most popular one, the one with the most cash to give away, was the one in the middle.

  “Happy birthday,” Caroline said. “Now we're all eighteen at last.” At last? Her birthday was only three weeks ago. August 16, 2008. Too bad my birthday wasn't the one that fell on Saturday. Well, if you had to turn eighteen on Tuesday, so be it. None of us thought we'd be showing up for our classes on Wednesday morning.

  “Twenty-two,” Ryder said, passing around the fake driver's licenses. Twenty-one was legal, but for some arcane reason of his own, he'd asked for the extra year. Everything else was real or looked real enough anyway. “The magnetic stripe is active.”

  “It better be, or we're not getting through that door,” Caroline said.

  They both glanced at me, and I couldn't stop myself from folding my arms across my chest. We were all the same age, but somehow Ryder and Caroline agreed I was the one who still looked too young. True, my French-cut black tee-shirt (a gift from Caroline) and my thrift store jeans didn't make me look all that sophisticated, but come on. It was Tuesday in Robinsonville, not Friday night in fucking Monaco.

  “I could still put a little glitter on your lids,” Caroline said. “And some dark shadows under your eyes. Add ten years.”

  “They'll be looking at whatever comes up on the scanner, not my fucking eyes.” I hated goop on my face. It looked good on Caroline, better than good on Caroline, but it felt like a mask on me.

  “All right, birthday girl. It's your call.”

  Ryder had money too. I never asked where my brother got money anymore. It was better not to ask where things came from. Pink cell phones and designer cosmetics. Fake licenses and real hundred-dollar bills held together in a loose paper wrapper which suggested there had once been more of them. In the orange-yellow of the parking lot lights, I caught a glimpse of one of the red numerals printed on the beige paper, enough of a hint to know it had once been taped securely around five thousand dollars.

  I gulped. There was no way in hell my brother ever had his hands on five thousand American dollars all in one place. No legal way in hell, anyway.

  “Make it last,” he said. “Twenty-four hundred dollars. That's eight hundred for each of us.”

  Caroline tried to play it cool. “I'll pay you back when I'm rich and famous.”

  “Pay me back by not losing it all in the first hour.”

  Caroline and I exchanged a glance. It was funny, knowing things your own twin didn't know. She wouldn't lose it all in the first hour. She always held something back.

  At this time of night, more people were walking into the casino than walking out. I felt nervous, but I knew I shouldn't. Nobody was looking at the three of us. Besides, Caroline and Ryder never felt nervous a day in their lives. The guard at the door stopped us to scan the licenses, and I held my breath, but Ryder's source was right all along. Whatever the scanner said forced the man to paste a false smile on his face.

  “Happy birthday to the lucky twins.” He took one last look at each license, matching them to our faces, and then handed them back.

  “Can we get wristbands?” Ryder asked. “I don't like it when every dealer keeps asking to see my license again. It interrupts the flow of the game.”

  “Sure, buddy.”

  Tonight's wristbands were an electri
c orange that should have clashed with Caroline's pinky-gold blouse and pinky-gold glitter, but accessories didn't dare to clash on Caroline. As we strolled onto the casino floor, people turned to look at us... not at us. At her. She had a certain presence that made you wonder if you'd seen her on TV.

  A live band played unremarkable country music on a raised platform. The noise of the slots and the hustle-bustle of the crowd pressed back at me like I was walking into water. Ryder, who still moved with the easy grace of a smaller boy, was somehow already half a casino away throwing down money on the green felt of a dice table.

  “He's been here before.” When Caroline leaned close to whisper into my ear, she tickled me there without meaning to. A stolen thrill. Nobody would think anything about two girls whispering close, not in all this racket.

  “So I see.” Giddy with success at mingling with the mostly much older crowd, I dared to whisper back in the same way, the better to make my hot breath tickle down the back of her swanlike neck.

  Caroline was good at giggles, but this one was more of a half-gasp of pleasure. “You're a bad girl.”

  “Not the only one.”

  We wrapped our arms around each other's waists. There was nothing unusual about two young women wanting not to lose each other in the crush of the casino crowd. The more slowly we walked, the more we got jostled by gamblers in a hurry to get their money in play. That was fine, the hurry of the crowd added to the thrill. I had a strategy, and I intended to be choosy about my investment opportunities. My desktop computer might be years old, something my mother bought used in 2004 or so, but it was good enough to run a card-counting practice program.

  The more innocent I looked, the more dazed and uncertain, the better. I was posing as a country girl who'd never been in a casino before― easy to do, since that was exactly who I was. Walking slowly, Caroline's arms warm around my waist, I scanned the cards face-up on each of the blackjack tables within view.

  “That one,” I said.

  Caroline, in no hurry to pull money out of her own pocket, stood behind the seat I picked. The dealer smiled an artificial smile as I held out the hundred-dollar bill.

  “Drop it on the table,” said the old lady to my right. “She can't take it out of your hand.”

  That wasn't something you learned playing cards on the computer. Once she had the bill, the dealer pushed a tray of red chips in my direction. Reds were fives. Should I have asked for a couple of green? But it was too late now. The dealer had already dismissed me as a low-roller. Maybe that was what I wanted anyway. All part of the plan to look like I didn't have a clue about what I was doing.

  Caroline, skeptical, rubbed my shoulders as she stood back to watch.

  The old lady at my right elbow was talkative. Her husband had passed away eight years ago. Her grandchildren had moved to Nashville. In ten minutes, I knew more about this lady than I knew about my own father. I dropped the count and wasn't sure if the game was in my favor or not anymore. Caroline's hands on my neck and shoulders were an additional distraction, although a more delightful one.

  “I didn't know they had massage girls in this clip joint,” said the man to my left. His idea of a joke. He didn't think Caroline was a massage girl, or that the two of us might be girlfriends. All he was thinking about was an excuse to flirt with the young lady with the glitter in her cleavage.

  She faked a blush. How do you fake a blush? But Caroline was good at it. She seemed to know by instinct how to make men think she was paying attention to them. We both knew better.

  I soon doubled my money, a matter of luck more than skill, since my attention was everywhere but on tracking the cards. If I knew anything from my studies, I knew that luck always runs out, so I went ahead and pushed my pile of chips back at the dealer. She counted them and pushed two black chips worth a hundred dollars each back at me. You couldn't get your cash back at the table, so Caroline and I strolled to the cashier's cage. Along the way, I glanced over the crowded dice tables. No Ryder.

  “Where'd my evil twin get to?” I asked.

  Caroline shrugged. “I didn't see where he went.”

  “You want to play something? You haven't placed a bet.”

  She shrugged again, her jaw setting itself harder than before. Which meant she was holding back the entire eight hundred dollars.

  “It's a birthday party,” I said. “You can live a little.”

  “I have a better idea about how to live like the other half,” Caroline said. “Come on, and I'll show you.”

  Still arm-in-arm, I let her guide me through the noisy throng back out the front entrance. The much smaller place next door had a sign claiming there was a hot tub in every room. A couple of the letters were falling off the sign, but all the numbers were still there.

  “Sixty-nine dollars a night. But you need a credit card even if you pay cash.” I'd heard plenty of talk from other kids who'd tried it.

  Caroline smiled. “I have my mom's credit card.” Her mother was also called Carol Bullard, although she wouldn't dream of insisting everyone call her Caroline. Her mother wasn't a princess, just a tired home health aide who spent a lot of time on her feet.

  “Uh oh.” But I was laughing. The scam seemed harmless since we wouldn't actually be charging any money on the card.

  The hotel lobby was almost empty. There was one person behind the desk, a bored blonde texting to somebody on a pink phone like Caroline's. She was ready to be annoyed, but her frown went away when she saw the dimples in Caroline's smile.

  “You have any more of those fancy rooms with the hot tub?” Caroline already had her fake license and the credit card on the reconstituted marble counter. “My friend's boyfriend is being a jerk. I think we need to hide away for a while.”

  “Like the sign says, all our rooms have hot tubs.” Smiling despite herself, the woman tapped something into her computer and then produced two white plastic keycards. “Check out time is eleven. Do you need a wake-up call?”

  “What if we want to sleep in?”

  When Caroline batted those hazel eyes at you, there was no option for saying no. “Ah. I'll go ahead and put you down for late check-out. Two o'clock. No extra charge.”

  The suite had a small white refrigerator that warned you it would charge for the drinks if you moved them around. Caroline pulled out two airplane-sized plastic bottles of wine. “Five dollars apiece.” She shook her head. “A dollar apiece in the package store.”

  “Well,” I said. “This isn't the package store.” And praise the Lord for that. We both had an image in our heads of sitting naked in the hot tub to sip a glass of wine. The cheap plastic bottles weren't quite that image, but they were close enough. Before I'd had so much as a sip, I felt as giggly as Caroline. This was going to be a special night indeed.

  Even with our mothers forever at work, even with Ryder disappearing more and more often on his own, there was never any time or privacy at the trailer park. The nosy old lady who lived next door had a key from my mother that she used to pop in and out at random times― my mom's way of keeping drugs, alcohol, and boys out of the house. She never seemed to guess she didn't have to worry about me and boys. She'd have to be told, she didn't have the ability to figure it out the way Ryder did.

  A worry for another time.

  For now, for this one magical night, I wasn't going to think about anything except Caroline and the easy way her fingers moved down the three buttons of the pink blouse. “Come help me,” she said, turning those dangerous dimples in my direction.

  “All right.” My hands felt large and clumsy, although they weren't any larger than Caroline's. My throat felt like it had a lump caught in it. Were we finally going to do this?

  She dimpled more encouragement at me, and I stroked the silk of her belly. It was softer than the expensive blouse we tugged away to reveal a wisp of French lace that called itself a bra.

  “You look good in that shirt.” Caroline's deft fingers reached for the hem of the shirt in question. “But you look
better without it.”

  I closed my eyes to let her pull it off over my head. Shaking out my short brown hair, I opened them again. This was real, this was happening. My imagination wasn't good enough to dream up the sensation of Caroline unhooking my plain beige bra one-handed so she could bury her face in my small breasts. “You don't need this,” she said. “Mmmm. You're so firm.”

  “I need something to stop my nipples from poking out,” I said.

  “I like your nipples poking out. Other people like it too. I see them looking when you go into a place where there's a lot of air-conditioning.”

  I felt hot all over. Sure, I'd seen people looking at Caroline, hoping to see her erect nipples. I hadn't thought of people looking at me. Who would look at a plain brown wren like me when she was in the room?

  I'm the country mouse.

  An odd thought, considering we both lived in the same trailer park, but it was a thought that often popped into my head. I might belong in Robinsonville, but Caroline was out of place, a baby princess swapped out by mistake at the hospital.

  Did she know how special she was? Sometimes I thought yes, and sometimes I thought no. Right now, I might be losing the ability to think anything at all. She'd figured out how to flick her tongue at my nipples to make them harder than air-conditioning ever could. And the way she followed up those little fluttery flicks by sucking...

  Oh, fuck. My toes were curling. I had to get out of these shoes. But first...

  I leaned in with my own fingers and tongue, working carefully not to put any snags in the expensive flimsy scrap of fabric that so badly needed removing from Caroline's sweet body.

  She shivered to her toes. “Wait. My glitter might taste funny. We should do the hot tub first. Soak a little bit.”

  A tease? Or was the princess finally a little nervous?

  “I don't see any glitter on your nipples.” I flicked my tongue out for a taste. Yes, that was good. Oh, yes.

  This close together, we were all grabby hands and exploring tongues. Getting our clothes off each other took longer than it should have, considering we thought we were trying to hurry. The two airline-sized bottles of wine sat forgotten next to a dish offering two cubes of lavender-scented bath salt. Finally, though, we were completely naked, and I caught a glimpse of our two nude bodies in the mirrored wall opposite the hot tub before it steamed up too much. Caroline was pale and perfect, silk all over. Had she gone to a salon for a wax, or had she done it herself? Her mound was pink, puffy, and utterly smooth.