This Heiress Doesn't Fight Anymore novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Take Him
Charlie wakes in the sea on the day she lived before, lets the deckhand pull her out, puts her fiance's ring on her sister's finger in front of the party and leaves in the tender, which pulls into the boatyard she once signed the order to bulldoze.
The second time my sister pulled me off the back of a yacht, I didn't scream.
I just floated.
The water off Fort Adams was cold enough to stop my heart, and for a second I hoped it would.
Ten feet away, Arabella was thrashing in her white linen dress.
"Help! Hugo! Archer! I'm scared!"
Three men went over the rail after her, one after another.
My father, in his blazer.
My brother, Hugo.
And my fiancé, Archer Ellwood, who kicked off his loafers first.
All three of them swam straight to Arabella.
Not one of them looked my way.
I knew this day.
I had lived it once already.
Last time, I'd screamed Archer's name until my throat tore.
He'd turned in the water and given me a look.
"Charlie, you're a strong swimmer. Why are you making a fuss? Arabella needs me."
Then he swam away.
After that day I swore I'd beat her.
I ran the build sheds at Wakefield Marine ninety hours a week for two years.
I fixed every mistake Arabella made, and she took a bow for every fix.
At twenty-eight I put my head down on my desk at two in the morning and didn't lift it again.
The last voice I heard was Hugo, on speakerphone.
"What is wrong with you, Charlie? How did this family raise someone like you?"
Then I opened my eyes, and I was here.
Same day. Same ocean. Same three backs swimming away from me.
I was so tired.
So I closed my eyes and let the swell rock me.
An engine growled close by.
A hand closed on the back of my dress and hauled me up over a rubber side.
I landed on the floor of the yacht's tender.
A man leaned over me, blocking the sun.
He was big and brown from it, with a short beard and a pencil behind his ear.
"Miss? Hey. Are you okay?"
"I'm fine."
"You weren't swimming."
"I was resting."
He looked at me for a long second.
Then he took off his own sweatshirt and dropped it on my chest.
He drove me back to the stern platform and helped me up the ladder.
The whole party was crowded along the rail of the Sea Sovereign.
Two hundred people in summer whites, holding champagne, watching me drip.
I walked past all of them, lay down on the teak deck by the hot tub and closed my eyes.
"Is she drunk?" somebody whispered.
"She's always like that. She can't be bothered with anything."
The sun was warm on my face.
I could have slept for a year.
Then the shrieking came up the ladder.
Arabella, wrapped in three towels, held up between Archer and Hugo.
Her mascara ran in perfect lines.
She saw me and stopped.
"Why would you do that to me?" she sobbed. "I only wanted to hug you."
The deck went silent.
"She grabbed my arm and pushed me," Arabella told everyone. "In front of all of you."
My mother put a hand to her mouth.
Hugo turned on me, dripping.
"Get up, Charlie."
I didn't get up.
"You couldn't let her have one nice day," Archer said. "You're jealous of her. You always have been."
The deckhand was standing at the top of the ladder with a coil of rope in his hands.
He was looking at Arabella with no expression at all.
I sat up.
I was soaked, and wearing a stranger's sweatshirt that said TISDALE'S in cracked red letters.
"Archer," I said. "Come here."
He came, because he thought I was going to apologize.
Everybody thought so.
I twisted the ring off my finger.
Three carats, oval, his grandmother's.
It came off easier than it ever had in my last life, when I wore it until the day I died.
I stood up, walked to Arabella and took her cold little hand.
I slid the ring onto her finger.
It fit her perfectly.
"Take him," I said.
Somebody dropped a glass.
Arabella stared at the diamond.
For one second she forgot to cry.
"Charlie," my father said. "That is enough."
"It really is," I said.
Archer laughed, the way he did when he didn't know what else to do.
"You're not serious."
"I'm going home, Archer. You're a strong swimmer. You'll be fine."
I walked back to the ladder.
The deckhand stepped aside for me.
"Is that boat going to shore?" I asked him.
"It is now."
He climbed down first and held up a hand.
I took it.
Behind me, Hugo shouted my name the way he always did.
I didn't turn around.
The tender bounced across the harbor.
The deckhand drove with one hand on the tiller and didn't say a word.
I liked him for it.
After ten minutes I realized we weren't heading for the yacht club.
"This isn't the club dock."
"No," he said. "That's a twenty-minute wait for a car, and you're shaking."
"Where are we going?"
"Mine. There's coffee and dry clothes. Then you can go wherever you want."
"I don't know your name."
"Seth." He almost smiled. "My grandmother's going to try to feed you. Let her."
He swung us around a point of rocks into a little cove on the Middletown side.
There was a big gray shed, a marine railway running down into the water, and a rope swing hanging off an old oak.
A hammock sagged between two pilings.
Over the shed doors was a sign, hand-lettered in red.
TISDALE'S BOATYARD. EST. 1931.
I stopped shaking all at once.
I knew that sign.
I had seen it on the cover of a file, in my office, at the end of July in my last life.
I had signed the order to buy this yard and knock it down for a parking lot.
Seth cut the engine, and the tender drifted to the dock under it.
I hadn't even read the name.
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