Plan Overboard (Toronto Series #14)

by Wardell, Heather

  Once again, Scarlett Rugers Design (www.scarlettrugers.com) gave my book a stunning cover. Thanks so much, Scarlett, for your patience and willingness to work with me to get exactly the right look.

  Corinne Cortes was the first one to email and say, "We need a book about Austin", so I named Corinne in her honor. Thanks for the idea, Corinne!

  Huge thanks to Beth MacLeod and Jess Wilkinson for giving me the parental perspective. I appreciate your making sure Jenna wasn't wildly unrealistic!

  Francine LaSala, bless you for writing the back-cover blurb. Funny how much easier I find it to write a full novel than a blurb! I love what you came up with.

  My fantastic beta readers for this book were Amber Powell, Jaime Johnson, Kristen Uebel, Sheyann Sword, and Tanya Sweeney. Thank you all so much for your assistance in making sure "Plan Overboard" was everything it could be. (Any remaining errors, of course, are mine alone!)

  Bev Katz Rosenbaum's editing made all the difference in helping me figure out exactly what Corinne wanted and which characters were really necessary. She's mastered the art of being clear without being cruel, and I'm thrilled to be able to work with her.

  Laura Kat, Lydia Laceby, Romi Moondi, and Samantha Stroh Bailey are my great Toronto writer friends. Meeting with them monthly and chatting with them online gives me strength and support and Bellinis, and I'm so lucky to have found them. Check out their books!

  Holly MacLeod gave more than I should ever have asked and far more than I deserved to this book, and I can't thank her enough for her endless support and encouragement.

  And last, but not least, my husband for the fifteenth book in a row. This time you gave Clay's band "Llama Spit" its name, you gave the book its title, and you gave me the nerve to keep working when I felt like I couldn't. If I wrote everything you do for me into a book, nobody would believe it.

  Thank You For Reading

  I so appreciate your reading "Plan Overboard" and I hope you enjoyed it. Book reviews are crucial, both for me as an author and for your fellow readers, so if you can spare a moment to leave a review at your favorite retailer that would be wonderful.

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  Read on to see a preview of my next book. Thanks again, and happy reading!

  What's Coming Next?

  I do anticipate writing a sequel to this book, as I find the questions of why Celia married Owen and what exactly happened between Linda and her latest husband Raul interesting, but that won't happen until sometime in 2015. If you sign up for my mailing list you will be one of the first to know when this happens and you'll also get a free story and a chance to win a book every month!

  My next book, which is currently codenamed "Mango" and will (I hope) be released in late 2014, is actually a sequel to a much earlier one. Ashley, one of the exes from the 'Survivor meets the Bachelorette' reality show of my third novel "Seven Exes are Eight Too Many", is determined to get revenge against the reality show producers who tricked her and everyone else who's done her wrong. But will her anger tear her apart first?

  Chapter One

  Walking back into the same hotel where everything started only makes me angrier. After everything they'd put us through, after the show ruined all my hopes and plans, to be here again? The rest of Kent's exes look around as if enjoying the luxury after our twenty-one days on our horrible island, but seeing the same plush carpet and fancy wallpaper revives my memories of the moment I learned of the show's betrayal and sends such fury through me I can hardly breathe.

  "So are the boys here?" Lily gives our chaperone her shy smile.

  "Who cares?" Kayla snaps, echoing my own thought. But Lily does, clearly, and so does Summer. MC keeps her usual lack of expression, but I can only assume she cares too. After all, in that last contest she might have won a million dollars.

  A million dollars that should have been mine.

  Mine and Brett's.

  As always, even thinking my cousin's name fills my mind with the image of his face as he died, and I dig my nails hard into my palm to keep from screaming as the chaperone assures us that the 'boys' are at a different hotel and well out of our reach.

  Summer chuckles, no doubt taking this as a challenge, and the chaperone sighs and says, "All right, ladies, let me give you your room keys, and then I'm guessing you'd like to take showers."

  The others chorus their agreement at once. We had been allowed to take the closest thing we'd had to a shower in three weeks earlier that day before we'd left our island, but the water had been lukewarm and there'd hardly been any of it, and though I don't agree out loud I do agree most emphatically in my head.

  Since nothing ever works out for me, when I get off the elevator at my floor the show's psychologist stands fiddling with her bracelet.

  "Haven't talked to me enough today?" I say, hoisting my filthy duffel bag higher on my shoulder and walking past without slowing down.

  "There's a lot to talk about."

  She's keeping pace with me, and that makes me speed up even more. Since my room is way down the long straight hall, we're nearly running by the time we get there.

  "Look," I say, dropping my bag to the carpet and turning on her. "Nothing I say to you is going to make a damn bit of difference. He's gone, life isn't fair, everyone involved with this show can burn in hell for all I care, so why are you insisting on talking to me?"

  She doesn't answer. She doesn't need to. We both know that if I refuse her she can tell the show that I need significant psychiatric care and they can force me to get it. I signed the contract allowing that.

  Of course, back then I thought it'd be me and Brett on a family version of "Stranded!", not me alone with my ex Kent and all his other exes. But apparently that doesn't matter to anyone but me.

  I wait, trying to see if I can make her speak first. She talked to me for an hour on the first day, right after I learned the terrible truth of what they'd done to me, and nearly every day after that, and never once has she broken a silence.

  An old man with a cane hobbles down the hall, and we don't speak the entire time he approaches us. He stares at us with curiosity then goes past and lets himself into a room a few doors down, and I give up. "Fine, Dory. Fine. Whatever."

  Her name is actually Ellen, but I saw that she has a tattoo of Dory the fish from "Finding Nemo" and I've been calling her Dory ever since because when I first did she clearly didn't like it and with the nightmare I've been through making her feel bad makes me feel a little better.

  I open my room door and she follows me in.

  "I don't even get a shower first? Come on, Dory."

  "The executives are worried about you, Ashley, and so am I. We need to talk right now."

  "Nothing's changed since you tried to head-shrink me this morning on the island, so why the urgency?"

  Ellen takes a seat at my desk. "There is urgency."

  "I want to sit there."

  "Why?"

  "Because it's my room."

  We stare each other down for a moment, then she gets up and says, "Since this is the first space you've had to call your own in three weeks, I'll move."

  I don't care why she's moving, as long as she does.

  She settles into the armchair, and I take the desk chair while realizing I have just screwed myself since the armchair looks far more comfortable. I consider insisting on another move but before I can do anything she says, "Now, I assume you'll be checking in with your family and friends, maybe catching up on the news?"

  "Can't check in with the only one I care about," I say, glaring at her like Brett's death is her fault
.

  She nods slowly. "Your grandparents, though. Your aunt Elaine. And Shannon and Becky."

  I hate that she knows who everyone is in my life, and I hate that there are only five people to know. "Probably. Why? What's it to you?"

  My tone, as always, rolls right off her. For the first week on the show that made me try harder to get to her, but it never worked so I gave up and stuck to my usual level of anger.

  "To me? Nothing," she says, surprising me. "But to you... well, there are two things you need to know."

  "Like what? That Brett is gone and I was robbed of the one thing I wanted to do to honor him? That I missed his funeral to go on the show and you guys pulled the rug out from under me?" Brett died on the Tuesday, dropping dead suddenly during our final run before I left on Wednesday, and despite Grandmother's shock and disgust I'd gone to the show anyhow because I'd known Brett would have wanted me to do so. I still know I did the right thing, but not getting to say goodbye with his mom and my grandparents and all Brett's friends has haunted me since the moment I boarded the plane to Vegas.

  "No. Ashley, are you aware that the show, the television show, actually started airing at the start of this week?"

  "How would I be? Not like you let us look at anything but plants and dirt."

  She leans back in her chair. "It's on Mondays and Thursdays, so two episodes have aired now, and..." She licks her lips.

  "Just tell me already. What, did they cut me from the stupid thing?" I'm surprised to almost be disappointed at the thought. I hated every second of my time on the island but if they don't show it it's like I didn't exist.

  "No, you're included. And, well, the public has formed an opinion of you."

  "Like I care."

  She waits, and I have to admit, "Fine, you win, Dory. What do they think?"

  "They're calling you 'AA'."

  "'AA'?" I echo, wondering for a second if people could somehow know how drunk I plan to get tonight then realizing that's not possible. "Why?"

  "Angry Ashley," she says, her eyes and voice soft.

  "More like 'Abused Ashley'," I shoot back, fresh rage flooding me. "I was lied to, cheated, dragged on the show against my will—"

  "As were most of your fellow Ladies-in—"

  "Use that term on me again and it'll be the last thing you ever do!"

  She raises her chin and says, "Don't threaten me, Ashley."

  There's no fire in her voice, just a cool calm authority. I've never been able to achieve that tone, because my rage always takes me over, and I wish I could because it's hugely effective. Though I hate it I find myself blushing and have to say, "I'm sorry. I just..."

  I can't say what I'm feeling because it's all tangled up, but she seems to understand. "Only a few of the exes, on either side, actually applied to Stranded! at all, and certainly nobody knew what they were really getting into. Everyone was, as you say, dragged on the show against their will. The others, though, most of them, managed to make the best of it, and the public has picked up on how you didn't do that."

  "There was nothing for me to make the best of." My voice is getting louder but I don't care. "For a full year Brett and I worked to get ready for the show, the family show, and then he dies of some stupid heart thing he had no idea he had and I'm there all alone."

  "You did know," she says slowly, "that you'd be there without him. Even before you arrived, you knew."

  Yes, because the show had accepted me and not him. When I'd received that call, four weeks before my plane to Vegas, I'd been shocked that I'd been chosen over Brett, but when the reveal of Kent and his exes happened I'd realized why. They'd robbed him, and me, of what should have been so they could make some idiots watch their show. "He should have been there," I say, as I've said nearly every time we spoke. "It's not fair."

  She nods, in that 'I hear you but I'm not agreeing or disagreeing' way that must be a huge part of psychologist school, and says, "So, I wanted you to be aware of how the public is seeing you so you wouldn't be surprised. We've achieved that now. And I also..." She pulls a business card from the pocket of her black dress and holds it out to me. "I want us to keep talking. Weekly. At least."

  "No," I say. "Not a chance."

  "Ashley, I truly feel you need additional sessions. Your anger is—"

  "Reasonable? Understandable? Logical?"

  "Debilitating," she says as if I hadn't interrupted. "I am concerned about your ability to return to your daily life. Your feelings about your parents, and—"

  "My parents?" She keeps bringing them up and I can't understand why. "I've told you, and told you. They left, it's been forever, I don't care."

  She takes a breath to respond and I can't let her. "And as for my daily life, nobody was concerned about ripping me out of that life, were they? So why the concern now?"

  "I wasn't involved in—" She cuts herself off, no doubt not wanting to criticize her bosses. "Your initial psych exam did suggest you had some issues managing your anger, but they were subtle enough not to raise any serious flags with Doctor Lewis. Now, though..." She extends the card again. "I want to speak with you every few days for the next three weeks and then—"

  "No way. Nonononono. Not happening. I'm going home and going back to my life." My same old crappy life, the one Brett and I had planned to escape with our winnings from the show, without Brett. How am I going to survive it? Tears tighten my throat, the first ones I've felt since the doctor at the hospital confirmed Brett was gone, and I force them away by barking out, "I don't need you. At all."

  She's still holding out the card. "Are you going to make me say it? You have no choice here. By the contract you signed, you need to take this, and speak with me when I feel it's necessary, or I will be forced to—"

  I snatch the card from her hand. "You're bad enough, I don't want to start over with another psychologist."

  Incredibly, she smiles like I've given her a compliment. Fury rips through me and I tear the card in half then in half again and throw the pieces to the ground.

  Her smile crumbles, and a blast of satisfaction makes me smile instead. "I can't stop you calling, and I know I have to answer. But I'll be damned if I ever call you. I'm fine. I don't need you."

  "Well, you've got me anyhow. You have a real opportunity to shake things up when you go home, Ashley, not to fall back into your same ruts which I know you were wanting to get out of, and I'm available to help you find the will and the way to make that happen."

  "Don't hold your breath," I say, because I can't think of anything else. "And Brett and I were supposed to get out of the ruts. No amount of will is going to bring him back."

  She nods slowly. "That's true. But it might take will to let him go."

  I feel like she slapped me. "Get out," I say, pushing back my chair so hard it falls over. "Get out and leave me alone. Stop ruining my life!"

  She leaves without a word. As the door closes behind her, I see a drinking glass on the desk and snatch it up, hurrying into the bathroom so I can smash it in the sink while she can still hear me. I want her to know how furious I am.

  There are two more glasses on the bathroom counter and they're soon in pieces too. I hope the show gets in trouble for the damage. Dory and her damned company have shattered my life, so I'll shatter their glasses. Not even close to enough revenge, but a start.

  Also by Heather Wardell

  Toronto Collection

  Life, Love, and a Polar Bear Tattoo (free download!)

  Go Small or Go Home

  Planning to Live

  Stir Until Thoroughly Confused

  A Life That Fits

  Live Out Loud

  Blank Slate Kate

  Finding My Happy Pace

  All at Sea

  Good to Myself

  Pink is a Four-Letter Word

  Everybody's Got a Story

  Fifty Million Reasons

  Toronto Collection Volume One (contains "Go Small or Go Home", "Planning to Live", "Stir Until Thoroughly Confused", and "
A Life That Fits" at one extra-low price!)

  Toronto Collection Volume Two (contains "Live Out Loud", "Blank Slate Kate", "Finding My Happy Pace", and "All at Sea" at one extra-low price!)

  Stand-Alone Books

  Seven Exes Are Eight Too Many