Sisters by Choice Read online

  Cousins by chance, sisters by choice...

  After her cat toy empire goes up in flames, Sophie Lane returns to Blackberry Island, determined to rebuild. Until small-town life reveals a big problem: she can’t grow unless she learns to let go. If Sophie relaxes her grip even a little, she might lose everything. Or she might finally be free to reach for the happiness and love that have eluded her for so long.

  Kristine has become defined by her relationship to others. She’s a wife, a mom. As much as she adores her husband and sons, she wants something for herself—a sweet little bakery just off the waterfront. She knew changing the rules wouldn’t be easy, but she never imagined she might have to choose between her marriage and her dreams.

  Like the mainland on the horizon, Heather’s goals seem beyond her grasp. Every time she manages to save for college, her mother has another crisis. Can she break free, or will she be trapped in this tiny life forever?

  Told with Mallery’s trademark humor and charm, Sisters by Choice is a heartfelt tale of love, family and the friendships that see us through.

  Select praise for the novels of Susan Mallery

  “Mallery brings her signature humor and style to this moving story of strong women who help each other deal with realistic challenges, a tale as appealing as the fiction of Debbie Macomber and Anne Tyler.”

  —Booklist on California Girls

  “Susan Mallery never disappoints and with Daughters of the Bride she is at her storytelling best.”

  —Debbie Macomber, #1 New York Times bestselling author

  “Mallery’s latest novel is a breath of fresh air for romantics, a sweet reminder that falling in love is never how you plan it and always a pleasant surprise.”

  —Library Journal on The Summer of Sunshine & Margot, starred review

  “The characters will have you crying, laughing, and falling in love.... Another brilliantly well-written story.”

  —San Francisco Book Review on The Friends We Keep, 5 Stars

  “Heartfelt, funny, and utterly charming all the way through!”

  —Susan Elizabeth Phillips, New York Times bestselling author,

  on Daughters of the Bride

  “Mallery blends the friend-and-family relationships common to women’s fiction with the love scenes and happy ending of a contemporary romance, making this an excellent summer read for fans of both genres.”

  —Booklist on Secrets of the Tulip Sisters

  “Heartwarming... This book is sweet and will appeal to readers who enjoy the intricacies of family drama.”

  —Publishers Weekly on When We Found Home

  “It’s not just a tale of how true friendship can lift you up, but

  also how change is an integral part of life.... Fans of Jodi Picoult, Debbie Macomber, and Elin Hilderbrand will assuredly fall for The Girls of Mischief Bay.”

  —Bookreporter

  “Mallery combines heat and sweet in a delicious tale destined for beach blankets... [She] skillfully weaves in tantalizing details from the sisters’ pasts—romantic hurts, the emotional devastation of being abandoned by their mother when they were children—to make the heart-tugging happily-ever-after all the sweeter.”

  —Publishers Weekly on The Summer of Sunshine & Margot

  Also by Susan Mallery

  The Summer of Sunshine & Margot

  California Girls

  When We Found Home

  Secrets of the Tulip Sisters

  Daughters of the Bride

  Happily Inc

  Meant to Be Yours

  Not Quite Over You

  Why Not Tonight

  Second Chance Girl

  You Say It First

  Mischief Bay

  Sisters Like Us

  A Million Little Things

  The Friends We Keep

  The Girls of Mischief Bay

  Blackberry Island

  Evening Stars

  Three Sisters

  Barefoot Season

  ...and the beloved Fool’s Gold series.

  For a complete list of titles available from Susan Mallery,

  please visit www.SusanMallery.com.

  SUSAN MALLERY

  Sisters by Choice

  For Tarryn—I know you love my Blackberry Island books

  so I’m thrilled to be able to dedicate this one to you.

  I think you’re going to enjoy meeting Sophie

  and Kristine and Heather. And, okay, even Amber.

  I hope you have as much fun reading this book as I had writing it!

  Contents

  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

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Reader’s Guide

  Sisters by Choice Reader Discussion Guide

  Questions for Discussion

  Excerpt from The Friendship List by Susan Mallery

  Chapter One

  Eight years after her divorce, Sophie Lane still wasn’t very good at dating. She supposed she only had herself to blame—if she really “put herself out there,” as her cousin Kristine was always saying, she could find someone.

  From Sophie’s point of view, there were multiple problems with that statement. First, Kristine had married her high school sweetheart after graduation and had been happily married for the past sixteen years. She wasn’t exactly someone who should be giving dating advice. Second, Sophie didn’t have a lot of time to “put herself out there.” She was busy—she owned a company and she loved her company and all the hard work that went into keeping it successful. To be honest, her business was way more interesting than any man, which might be a big part of the dating problem. That and, well, the actual dating.

  Getting dressed up, meeting for dinner, listening to a man talk about himself for three hours wasn’t exactly how she wanted to spend a lone evening when she wasn’t dealing with some crisis at the office. Plus, she never quite understood all the rules.

  She was pretty sure it was supposed to be sex after three dates, but that didn’t work for her. If she liked a guy and wanted to have sex with him, why did she have to wait? She was busy. If she had the interest and the time on the first date, then her feeling was, why not just do it, clear her head, so to speak, and happily get on with her life? Because if she didn’t want to do it on date one, there was no way she was interested on date three. By then the guy had probably annoyed her fifty-seven ways to Bakersfield.

  Which explained why, on date two with Bradley Kaspersky, she was 100 percent convinced saying yes had been a massive mistake. Not that his sixty-minute explanation of how laser sightings worked hadn’t been fascinating th
eir first evening together. Under normal circumstances she would have ended things when the check—split at her request—came, explaining he wasn’t for her, and while she appreciated meeting him, there was no moving forward. And no, he shouldn’t bother calling, texting or emailing.

  She would have except... She was lonely. CK was gone, and she still couldn’t believe it. Going home to her empty condo was physically painful. She’d taken to sleeping on the sofa in her office to avoid all the memories, but then she had to go home to shower and the second she walked in the door, she wanted to cry.

  Because of all that, she hadn’t given Bradley the brush-off and now here she was, at dinner two, listening to the practical applications for calibrated laser sighting. Or was it sightings? Regardless, she was stuck and to be honest, maybe she should just suck it up and go back to her place and let the pain wash over her. Because CK deserved to be mourned and she had a feeling her therapist would tell her she’d been putting off those feelings for a little too long. Assuming she had a therapist. Which she didn’t. Although more than one person had told her she needed one. Usually an employee she’d fired, or who had quit. As they walked out, the parting shot, often yelled across the company’s open foyer, was something along the lines of, “You’re impossible. You think you can do everything. Well, you can’t. You’re not superhuman. You only think you’re better than everyone else. You have a serious problem, Sophie, and you should get help.” About half the time, the B word was tossed around.

  “Sophie?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Your phone is ringing.”

  “Oh. Sorry. I forgot to turn off the sound.”

  She looked down at the phone she’d placed next to her wineglass and realized it was indeed ringing and buzzing and dancing on the table. She was about to send the call to her voice mail when she read the caller ID info.

  “It’s my alarm company,” she said. “I just need to take this.”

  She grabbed her phone and her handbag and started for the front of the restaurant.

  “Sophie Lane,” she said crisply. “Do you need my authentication code?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She gave the code, then asked, “What’s the problem?”

  “We have notified the local fire department that several fire alarms have gone off at the location. Our sensors indicated that there is a fire, Ms. Lane. This is not a false alarm. CK Industries is on fire.”

  Twenty minutes later, while waiting impatiently at a stupid light that wouldn’t ever turn green, Sophie remembered that she’d been on a date when she’d bolted for her car. She activated her hands-free calling and said, “Call Bradley Kaspersky.”

  “Bradley Kaspersky. Cell phone. Dialing.”

  Seconds later she heard ringing, followed by, “You left.”

  “Bradley, I’m sorry. My office building is on fire. I’m driving there right now to meet the fire department.”

  “How do I know that’s true? How do I know you didn’t just run out on me?”

  “Because I didn’t. Because... I don’t know, Bradley. If that’s what you really think then this isn’t going to work. I have to go.”

  She disconnected the call and tried to ignore the sense of fear and dread growing in her chest. If there was a fire, she could lose everything. Her inventory, her records, her pictures of CK that she kept on her desk.

  Maybe it wasn’t so bad, she thought. Maybe it was—

  She nearly rear-ended the car in front of her. Sophie jumped on the brakes at the last second and stopped inches from the pickup’s rear bumper. Up ahead, on her right, dark smoke rose in the sky. No—rose was the wrong word. It shot up, like out of a cannon, spreading maliciously, portending disaster.

  She turned at the corner, made a left and three more rights before being forced to a stop by a barricade manned by two members of the Santa Clarita Police Department. She pulled over and jumped out of her car, grabbing her company ID and showing it to the officers.

  “That’s my company,” she said. “I own it. What happened? Was anyone inside? Oh, God, the cleaners. Did they get out?”

  The officers waved her past the barricade and pointed toward one of the firefighters. He looked more management and less like a climb-a-ladder-to-make-a-hole-in-the-roof guy.

  At first she couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but stare at what had once been a large warehouse with offices. Now there was only fire and smoke and heat.

  Go, she told herself. She had to get going!

  She rushed to the guy and identified herself again.

  He nodded. “From what we can tell, the cleaning team discovered the fire. They all got out safely. We did a search, as best we could, and didn’t find anyone else. Do you know of any employees who work late?”

  Sophie tried to focus on what he was saying, but it was impossible. She’d never seen a real fire before—not outside of the movies or TV. There was no way that two-dimensional image had prepared her for the real thing. The heat was incredible. Even from a hundred feet away, she wanted to step back, to get away from the climbing temperature.

  Even more stunning was the sound. Fire really was alive. It breathed and roared and screamed. Her building put up a fight, but it was no match for the beast that consumed it. As she watched, the fire cried out in victory as a wall collapsed.

  “Ma’am, is anyone working late?”

  The question was screamed in her face. She tore her attention away from the flames.

  “No. No one works late. Only me. I don’t like anyone in my building when I’m not there.” The cleaners were the exception. She trusted them. Plus, anything important was locked up.

  The man’s expression turned sympathetic. “I’m sorry. The building is going to be a total loss.”

  She nodded because speaking was impossible. Her throat hurt, and not just from the smoke and ash in the air. Her throat hurt because she was doing her best to keep it all inside.

  Everything she’d worked for, everything she’d dreamed of, built, sweated over and fought for was gone. Just gone. Her mom had always warned her that if she wasn’t careful, people would break her heart, but no one had warned her that a building could do the same.

  She turned away and started for her car. The left side of her brain said she needed to call her insurance agent, and maybe some of her employees. Thank God her accounting records and orders were all backed up externally, but CK Industries wasn’t going to open its doors anytime soon.

  That was the left side. The right side of her brain only felt pain. First CK and now this. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t lose them both.

  She fumbled with her phone and scrolled through her contacts until she found a familiar number. She pushed it.

  “Hey, you,” her cousin Kristine said. “This is a surprise. I thought you had a date. Oh, Sophie, it’s barely eight. You didn’t dump him already, did you? I swear, you’re impossible. What was wrong with this guy? Too tall? Not tall enough? Did he breathe funny? Hang on a sec—”

  Kristine’s voice became muffled. “Yes, JJ, you really do have to do your European history homework. The First World War isn’t stupid or boring and you will need the information later in life.”

  Kristine’s voice normalized. “You know he’s going to come back to me when he’s thirty and tell me I was completely wrong about the everyday relevance of World War I.”

  Sophie managed to find her voice. “Kristine, it’s gone.”

  “What? Sophie, what happened? Where are you? Are you okay? Did your date do something? Do you need me to call the police?”

  “No. It’s not me.” At first Sophie thought she was shaking, but then she realized she was crying so hard she could barely stand or breathe.

  “There’s a fire. Right now the whole place is on fire. There’s not going to be anything left. It’s gone, Kristine. It’s just gone.”

 
; “Are you okay? Was anyone hurt?”

  “No one works late and the cleaning crew found the fire, so they’re all okay. I don’t know what to do. I can’t handle this.”

  “Of course you can. If anyone can, it’s you, sweetie. We both know that. You’re in shock. Look, I’m going to get myself on the first flight out in the morning. I’ll text you the information. We’ll figure it out. We can do this together.”

  Sophie stared at the hungry flames and knew she’d been bested. She’d been prepared for a hostile buyout or an all-employee mutiny, but not total annihilation.

  “This is all I have and now there’s nothing,” she whispered.

  “That’s not true. You have your family and, knowing you the way I do, you have more insurance than you need. This could actually work out for the best. You’ve been talking about moving your business back to the island for years. Now you can. It’ll be like it was back in high school. You’ll see.”

  “I hate it when you’re perky.”

  “I know. That’s mostly why I act that way. I’ll be there tomorrow.”

  Sophie nodded and hung up, then she opened the driver’s door of her car and sank onto the seat. There were a thousand things she should be doing but right now all she could do was watch her entire world literally go up in flames.

  * * *

  The distance between Valencia, California, and Blackberry Island, Washington, was about 1,130 miles, give or take, and Sophie could make the drive in two days.

  She filled her car with clothes, her laptop, two boxes of records she would need as she continued to deal with the aftermath of the fire, along with a large tote bag overflowing with pictures, blankets, a pet bed and a few treasured catnip mice and toys. The movers would pack up everything else and deliver it in a week or so. She’d sold her condo furnished, so she would only have to deal with twenty or thirty boxes of personal things. In the meantime, she would get by with what she had. It was, in fact, her new mantra.

  Temporarily shutting down CK Industries had been unexpectedly easy. She’d hired an order fulfillment company to manage customer notification. Those who wanted to wait for replacement orders could do so, those who wanted their money back received a prompt refund. She’d offered to move key personnel with her to Blackberry Island and had received exactly zero takers. Still too numb to be hurt by that, she’d written letters of recommendation and offered generous severance packages, all the while prepaying four months of health insurance for everyone.