Prologue
Tampa Florida, eleven years earlier
Her heart was breaking.
Gwenyth Jones had been in love with Sam Tremont for as long as she could remember. And now he was getting married.
At the tender age of five, little Gwen’s heart had been lassoed and claimed by her elder brother Harry’s best boyhood friend, the then nine-year-old Sam. A double-decker scoop of strawberry and banana flavored ice cream from Mrs. Hampton’s Frozen Haven was all it had taken. Heedless of the creamy confection dripping from its cone and making a mess of her tiny fingers and starched pinafore dress, Gwenyth had gazed up into Sam’s bright blue eyes and given her love to him then and there. He had given her a napkin in return.
At the age of eleven, Gwenyth cheered from the bleachers with all of her girlish enthusiasm as she witnessed Sam slam home the run that would take him and his high school baseball team to the state finals. After the game, Sam had thrown her his #33 jersey with a wink and a grin. Before going to bed that night, Gwenyth had dreamily inhaled his sweaty scent, closing her eyes and wishing the wishes of an enamored eleven-year-old girl. She had kept the shirt.
On her fifteenth birthday, Gwenyth watched breathlessly as Sam swung his bat with all he had in him and hit the ball clear out of the park. The bases had been loaded. Two strikes and two balls had been called against him. Sam soared to the heights of fame that day. It was the same dramatic homerun that made a boy into a man and a man into a sports legend. It brought him a multi-million dollar contract with the New England Crusaders, prestige and commercial endorsements, and more women than any one man had a right to lay claim to.
Sam didn’t throw his #15 jersey to Gwenyth that day. He threw that one to Wendy Patterson, his then girlfriend. Yet Gwenyth still loved him.
Gwenyth saw little of Sam after that. He moved to Boston and embarked on his new, fast-paced career as baseball hero and his new, heady status as every woman’s fantasy come true. Men wanted to be in his confidence. Women wanted to be in his bed. Everyone wanted to be his friend. And through it all, Gwenyth still loved him.
On her sixteenth birthday, Gwenyth was overcome with excitement when Sam pulled up in his bright red Ferrari and flashed her the winsome, million-dollar grin that endorsers couldn’t get enough of. His pearly white smile highlighted his tanned skin, dark hair, and true blue eyes. The fact that Sam showed up at the family house with a gallon of strawberry and banana flavored ice cream in tow only added to the exuberance of the occasion. “Happy birthday, Cupcake.” He smiled as he alighted from a sports car. “How’ve you been?”
Gwenyth gazed up and smiled nervously. “F-fine, Sam. I’m sixteen now, you know.”
He grinned. “Uh huh. And as purdy as a picture you are, Cupcake.”
Gwenyth’s heart raced. She knew she wasn’t pretty. She was too pudgy to be pretty. But it was the sweetest moment of her young life, hearing Sam say those words. She smiled tremulously up at him as he reeled her in for a hug. At five-feet-and-six-inches, the top of Gwenyth’s head barely met the shoulders of Sam’s six-foot-three-inch frame. She breathed in the scent of him and basked in the feel of his muscled body enveloping hers.
This was better than winning the photography contest she’d entered in at school. Better even than strawberry and banana ice cream. This was Sam.
“Sam, darling, who is that delightful little cherub you’re hugging?”
Startled, Gwenyth dropped her arms from around Sam’s waist and watched as a drop-dead gorgeous blonde with small, pert breasts and an aerobicized figure sauntered from the Ferrari and into her worst nightmare. Gwenyth’s dreamy lassitude gave way to embarrassment as she remembered that the beautiful woman had called her a cherub. A nice way of saying she was fat. Her cheeks flooded scarlet as she pulled away from Sam and cast her eyes to the ground.
Sam glared at Stacy from over Gwenyth’s head. Stacy gave him a negligent shrug and continued her promenade towards them. A superficial smile plastered on, the bombshell held out her hand and offered it to Gwenyth. “Hi there. I’m Stacy, Sam’s fiancée. You must be Gwenyth.”
Gwenyth swallowed painfully. Fiancée? Sam was getting married?
Her heart breaking, she somehow found the strength to whip up a superficial smile of her own. Gwenyth accepted Stacy’s hand and shook it, the knot in her belly twisting as painfully as the knife in her heart was wrenching. She wanted to scratch the beautiful woman’s eyes out. She wanted to call her names. But in the end, she said, “Yes, I’m Gwenyth. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Stacy smiled knowingly. As if she not only understood her anguish, but also welcomed it—a fact that confused Gwenyth mightily. “Sam has told me so much about you. May I call you Gwen?”
Gwenyth’s eyes narrowed. Only family and close friends called her by the shortened “Gwen” rather than by “Gwenyth”. She decided things should stay that way. Valor only cut so deep after all. “No,” she said pointedly, “I prefer foryouto call me Gwenyth.”
Blushing, Stacy dropped Gwenyth’s hand and turned to Sam. He cleared his throat and grinned. “Why don’t you show us inside, Cupcake.” He held up the gallon of strawberry and banana ice cream, shaking the bag it was contained in as if he expected her to start panting like a puppy that had just been tossed a bone from the dinner table. “Wouldn’t want this to melt.”
Gwenyth looked at the bag with the ice cream inside of it and then at her thighs. Stacy’s thighs were infinitely smaller. She stared at the paper bag container again, then glanced down at her breasts. Stacy’s were smaller and perkier. Hers were big and bouncy. Gwenyth turned to Sam and glowered at him. “I’m on a diet,” she sniffed.
Before he could respond to that assertion, Gwenyth announced that Harry was inside waiting for him. “It was nice to see you again, Sam,” she said as she began to back away. “And it was nice to meet you, Stacy. If you’ll excuse me, I was on my way to the bay to take some pictures for photography class.” She whirled on her heel and ran all the way to the one place where she was consistently able to find comfort.
Gwenyth cried inconsolably for the better part of two hours, her teardrops falling from her eyes and becoming one with the soothing, glistening waters of the bay. Every dream that Sam would one day notice her came crashing down to reality. Every fantasy that Sam would one day fall in love with her and marry her died along with Stacy’s announcement that she was his fiancée.
Harry later found Gwenyth that way, crying and broken, but spoke not a word. He knew. He understood. And terrific brother that he was, he said nothing that would make it seem as though her adolescent heartbreak was a childish, trivial matter. He rubbed her shoulders and sighed instead, waiting for her to finish with her cry. And when she did, she rose to her feet and threw herself into her brother’s outstretched arms.
During the walk back home that night, Gwenyth arrived at a conclusion that would unconsciously guide her for many years to come. She would no longer place her hopes and dreams in someone else’s hands just to have them snatched back again. She would no longer waste precious years or even hours of her life dreaming about what could never be. Instead, Gwenyth would concentrate on what she could have. She would carve out a formidable destiny for herself.
And she’d never, ever dream about Sam Tremont again.
Chapter 1
Riverview Florida, Present Day
