Paradise Bay: Resort 1 (Surrender Isle #1)

by Havana Scott

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 by Havana Scott. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

  ALIENHEAD PRESS, LLC

  8851 SW 142nd Avenue, Suite 15-17

  Miami, FL 33186

  Havana Scott Books is an imprint of Alienhead Press, LLC.

  Visit our website at www.HavanaScottBooks.com.

  Edited by Gaby Triana

  Cover design by Curtis Sponsler

  Interior design by Curtis Sponsler

  ASIN B01F1GDAKE

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition June 2016

  1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Alienhead Press

  Paradise Bay – Resort 1

  by Havana Scott

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Copyright

  Title Page

  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

  Acknowledgements

  Author Links

  Coming Soon

  Love

  Chapter 1

  Because of him, I almost didn’t write the essay that changed everything.

  Because of him, I was still stuck in Dayton, Ohio. Don’t get me wrong—I loved my hometown and Birthplace of Aviation, but it was hard to break free and become a full-time author when my ex-husband was still in town making things difficult. Eighteen months after our divorce, he was still jobless, still binge-watching The Flash on Netflix, still falling asleep on the couch with one hand on the remote and the other down his pants.

  Benjamin Walker, ladies and gentleman—the charmer.

  I knew all this, because I kept checking in on him.

  Like today—I was packing my lunch and only my lunch, with Cujo sticking his cat butt in my face on the counter, when I noticed I was doing it again. Staring at leftover soup and crackers, contemplating how Ben might starve if he didn’t eat. It was 99% his fault he was in this situation. Two years of secret messages from ex-girlfriends, accounts on websites of ill-repute, calls from creditors, mail I wasn’t supposed to see, and more married-to-Ben fun, but I still felt sorry for him. Yes, eighteen months after we signed quitting papers, I still cared about my damned ex.

  You’re co-dependent, my mother would tell me.

  He can make his own soup, Grace would say.

  He’s a fucking loser, my brother articulated.

  What they didn’t understand was that Ben had been there for me when I needed him most. When my ex-boyfriend, Carson, had turned verbally abusive about my body, my job, my choice of clothes—pretty much everything—Ben had picked me up and dusted me off, told me I was worth everything to him. He wanted to be more than friends, said he would change his ways for me. Too bad old habits died hard. I’d believed in him more than he believed in himself. In the end, it was his fault he was in a downward spiral.

  I stared at the leftover soup. Don’t do it…don’t do it. Images of Ben rotting on the couch from depression assaulted me. I remembered all those nights before we started dating, when he came over to cheer me up with Heath Bar Blizzards, and before I knew it, I was transferring the rest of the soup into another container and sliding both servings into my lunch bag. I kissed Cujo’s nose and locked up the house, pausing on the sidewalk.

  I could still change my mind if I wanted to.

  Turn left toward Ben’s house, the house we shared for two years? Or turn right and straight to work. I’d already taken the soup with me. May as well go. Fuck it—I turned left. You suck, Paris. He’s a big boy. He can feed himself.

  Slogging through streams of melted slush, I thought about what I’d find when I got there. He’d be asleep in the den, beer cans on the floor, TV still on. When I reached the house four blocks later, I stopped myself from using the key. For a change, I knocked. Knocked again. I was about to leave when I heard the slow drag of feet. The door unlocked and opened a crack. A single one of Ben’s brown eyes peered through the slit. “Why you knocking? Use your key.”

  “I took it off my key chain. Here’s some soup if you’re hungry. Gotta go…” Get me out of here.

  He opened the door a little wider. In boxers and no shirt, he still looked as tall and sexy as ever, but I couldn’t think of him that way anymore after all that went down between us. I could not be weak anymore. “Wait. Why do you always leave so fast, Sugar Bear? Come in and hang with me.”

  “Ben, I have to get to work. It’s what grown-ups do.”

  He ran a hand through his messy brown hair and scrubbed at his stubble. “Don’t tell me what grown-ups do. I’m no stranger to work. I always took care of you, Paris. You make me out to be this bum. Just because I’m out of work now doesn’t mean I—”

  “Always took care of me?” A forced laugh burst from my throat. “You know what? I’m not having this argument again. I don’t even know why I came. I have to go. Just…” I pointed to the soup in his hands. “I brought you that in case you were hungry.” I hated to see him so slouchy and pathetic. Worst of all, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was my fault he was like this, for refusing therapy when he’d offered to go.

  “Sugar Bear, come on, dude…”

  “Bye, Ben. Eat something. Get out of the house. Walk around the block. Anything.” When I turned the corner and finally headed to work, I inhaled a huge breath of air. Putting distance between me and Ben always made me feel less claustrophobic, but I never had the heart, or maybe the balls, to perform a once-and-for-all cutoff.

  Some days, I just reminded myself of the bullet I’d dodged. I’d always wanted to have kids and couldn’t imagine having brought a child into this world with such a hot mess for a father. Maybe if he ever acted his age, got his shit together, stopped hurting his women, he might be a parent one day too.

  Harsh, I know, but true.

  At Gem City Travel ten minutes later, I strolled past the dusty fake orchids hanging in the window and headed for the break room. Mrs. Porter wasn’t here yet, but Grace was making coffee with reused coffee grounds for the third day in a row. “That’s disgusting by any standard, Grace.” I opened the fridge and placed my lunch inside.

  Older than me by eleven years and somehow my soul sister, Grace eyed me with a smirk. “Don’t judge. I haven’t had the chance to go to the store yet. Besides, I can guess why you’re late. When are you going to stop catering to Ben like a little boy in need of his mommy?”

  I ghosted past her, jaw clenched. “You know he doesn’t have anyone else in town. I was his only family.”

  “And why is that your problem? He’s only playing the victim, so you’ll keep coming by to check on him, Paris.” I simultaneously hated and adored Grace’s motherly tone. I could always count on her to tell me when I was being a dumbass.

  “Look, there’s no going cold
turkey with him. I’m weaning him off me. This is only the second time this week I’ve brought him food.”

  “It’s only Tuesday, Paris.”

  “He’ll eat Cheerios for dinner if I don’t bring him a warm meal.”

  “When he’s hungry, he’ll learn to make a sandwich or fish crackers out of the sofa.”

  “Ugh.” It was all so easy for everybody to judge. Nobody had been in my shoes before. As irresponsible as he was, Ben had always given me the encouragement I craved to start writing professionally and believed in my talents. Yes, his endless stream of offenses had led to our divorce, but they were nothing compared to the way he used to be. Because of our friendship first, because of my positive influence, I’d talked him into changing. He’d actually matured. Because of me, he’d actually improved.

  The change just hadn’t come quickly enough, and old habits died hard.

  I’ll never forget the night I walked by him carrying a laundry basket after an argument about finances. He’d been drinking and reached out to grab my arm. Those puppy dog brown eyes tried to overpower me. “You wouldn’t trade me for an easier life, would you, Sugar Bear?”

  Shit.

  I was working harder than ever with two jobs, we were getting nowhere, and resentment had begun building a wall around me. Not one of those short walls your little brother can clear like a gazelle. No—a giant iron monster like when Katniss is leaving District 12. I loved him. I did. Nobody had put me on a pedestal like Ben had. But I was the only person on it, and I wanted a partner on the pedestal too—someone I could look up to as well.

  “Of course not.” I gave him a small smile then headed upstairs to fold the laundry… alone. It was one of the hardest lies I’d ever told. Of course not, I’d said. Of course I wouldn’t leave him. But then I did. A year later.

  “Paris?” Grace’s hand waved in front of me.

  “Hmm?”

  “I said, at least you’re not Paris Walker anymore. That name made me think of you as a cheap French prostitute. Paris Jones is way more you. Hey, want some coffee?”

  “No, thanks. I have to start on the article Mrs. Porter wants.” I prepared for another day using my writing skills to pen about exotic places I’d never get to see in real life. I’d come to accept that my job entailed helping other people reach the kind of beauty I’d never experience myself. Not on my paycheck.

  What I truly wanted to write was my crime novel I’d started a year ago and had only gotten five chapters in, but life had a way of interrupting and bursting my bubble. Like when I was a kid and asked my mother why she’d named me after a gorgeous city in Europe. I thought I must’ve been the light in her life, the pomme of her yeux, but all she said was that she’d named me after the dusty Texas town where she and my father had met.

  Fucking thanks, Mom.

  “Good morning, Grace. Paris, I need that copy ASAP. It’s not going to write itself.” Mrs. Porter blazed a trail into her office and closed the door. The poster for Germany detached and hung askew from one push pin.

  “I’m on it.” I pretended to be speedy about it. The truth was, this office got zero action, considering her main account was the Shady Oaks Retirement Home down the street. Old folks booking cruises didn’t make for much excitement. Otherwise, nobody walked in here. Nobody called. The pace was perfectly slow for me—I could work on my novel when Mrs. Porter wasn’t looking.

  I got to work describing a Celtic dream vacation—exploring 5,000 years of Ireland’s Ancient East. At the desk opposite mine, Grace pulled out an emery board and started filing her nails between sips of flavorless coffee. “Oh, my God.” Grace clicked her mouse a few times. “Oh, my God.”

  “What? What is it?” I yanked my ear buds out.

  Suddenly, the phone rang—an actual call! Even Mrs. Porter looked surprised through her office window. “I’ll send it to you. It’s a link I just saw.” Grace answered the phone. “Good morning, Gem City Travel. No, we don’t beat Expedia’s prices, sorry. We have actual people working here who need to get paid. That’s where the extra cost comes from, and—hello? Oh. They hung up.”

  A message dinged on my computer. I clicked on it to see what Grace found so amazing. A page opened up showing white sandy beaches, thin palms stretching into the sun, lush waterfalls, and a young couple cavorting in the water. The headline read: Sorendi Isle, the Hottest New Caribbean Resort, To Hold Essay Contest.

  “‘Hottest new?’” Who wrote this crap? Couldn’t Sorendi Isle afford a real marketing team?

  “It’s only twenty-five dollars to enter.” Grace peered over her monitor. “And if you win, you get to stay in one of their resorts for a whole month. A whole month! Paris, you could so easily do that.”

  I scoffed. “Why would they allow some random person to stay four weeks at their resort? What do they get out of it?”

  “Babe, a lot of these new places are taking to social media to create intrigue,” Grace said. “They do these contests, people share them because they sound too good to be true, they go viral, then boom—everyone is learning about Sorendi Isle, the newest upscale luxury resort in a primitive setting. You have nothing to lose.”

  “Except twenty-five dollars.” I sighed and skimmed over the article. Participants must submit an original essay no longer than 300 words describing their ideal vacation experience at Sorendi Isle if chosen as the winner. Blah, blah. I had work to finish if I wanted a paycheck this Friday. As it was, I had $50 left in my bank account, and it was only, as Grace had pointed out, Tuesday.

  “I’ll lend you the cash.” Grace had that dead-serious thing going on that emphasized her pencil thin eyebrows. “Paris, you write travel copy for a living, you’re working on your own novel, you’re good at what you do…and…you need to get away. Like, you need to get away. You can do this.”

  “I am pretty good at what I do, aren’t I?” Hey, if I didn’t believe it myself, who would?

  She beamed. “That’s my girl.”

  “What if I win? I can’t leave for a whole month. What about Cujo? What about my job?” I fought the panic rising in my voice. What about Ben? I kept that one to myself.

  “I’ll hold the fort down for you.”

  “But they choose winners with real sob stories, people with terminal cancer who need a few days of happiness before they croak, people whose kids have peanut allergies, people who make real life sacrifices. I’m not one of them.”

  “Paris…” Grace’s fingers drummed the desktop. “You’re making excuses. Do you hear yourself? You’re afraid of succeeding.”

  “I hate you.”

  “Just enter the contest. Tell them how you work hard every day of your life, struggle to make it as a freelance writer, and have recently gone through a nasty divorce.”

  “It wasn’t nasty. It was pretty amicable, though it left Ben in a funk, and—”

  Grace smacked the table. “They don’t have to know that! Just lie, Paris. It’s what writers do—they lie.”

  Actually, we tell the truth. We get into the hearts and psyches of our characters, we make people believe things, feel love and pain. Problem was, I’d lost faith in my own abilities lately. I’d hurt someone I loved, someone I’d believed in, though he let me down in the end, and I just couldn’t hang on any longer.

  Mrs. Porter peered through the window. “I need that copy by ten, Paris.”

  “I’m working on it!” I called back.

  Grace hushed down. “Write that essay, Paris.”

  What if I won? I didn’t deserve a month-long vacation in the Caribbean. I deserved a swift kick in the pants for declining my husband’s promise to change. Three hundred words would never be enough to explain that to anyone.

  Grace’s eyes dazzled with light I couldn’t feel. “If you win, you’d have a month to work on your book. You might even be able to finish it.”

  Sshhffftttt…a match lit the darkness of my brain, burning away stray cobwebs.

  “What did you say?” I swiveled my chair to stare at her.r />
  “You could work…on…your…book. Maybe even finish it.”

  “That’s what I thought you said.”

  Fuckmonkeys. A whole month of novel writing?

  Outside of the country, sitting on a lounge chair on the beach, drinking piña coladas, and tapping away at the old MacBook Pro. Literally old, like with a cracked screen in the corner and everything. If I finished my novel, I could finally shop it, and if I shopped it, I might be able to get an agent and sell it. And if I sold it, I might finally be a novelist.

  A real novelist, Gepetto!

  Yes, the thought of winning did scare me. Because there was no such thing as paradise on Earth. Because happily ever afters dissolved soon after they began. Because real people didn’t vacation on exotic islands. They stayed stuck at their dead-end jobs. Real people brought leftover soup for lunch. Real people drank reused coffee grinds.

  I stared hard at the photo depicting diamond-studded turquoise waters surrounding Sorendi Isle. I imagined myself there and thought I even felt a breeze blow across my freckled cheeks. Best of all, I imagined coming home with a completed novel under my belt and learning that Ben had moved back to Pittsburgh.

  Grace was right—I had nothing to lose. It was just money.

  “Fine,” I grunted, “but I’ll pay for it. I have some money left.” I would have to eat ramen noodles the rest of the week, but it wouldn’t be the first time.

  I closed my eyes. What would I write? A regular description of the kind of day I would like to have on Sorendi Isle would never do. They would receive hundreds—if not, thousands—of boring entries all saying the same thing. If I was going to do this, my essay had to be different somehow, but still me. Staring at the blinking cursor of the entry field, I began to type:

  I proofed it several times trying not to overanalyze what I’d written. If it happened, it happened, but I wasn’t going to lose sleep over this. Official winners wouldn’t be announced until May anyway, and it was only March. Hopefully, someone halfway down the world would have a sense of humor. I double-checked the balance in my checking account then held my finger over the submit button. “Cross your fingers, Grace.”