and didn’t do much for Sydney. Still, he would never think about doing anything scandalous and that’s what she told herself she needed. Today would forever close the door on her past. She would step through a new one that led to her future.
Even if Sydney wasn’t remotely attracted to her groom.
CHAPTER 1
Now . . .
Sydney brushed her teeth with one hand as she scrolled through her phone with the other. A deposition at eleven. Lunch with a new client at one. Two meetings this afternoon, one with her boss. Her day stacked up as it usually did.
Then it hit her.
The sameness of every day made her want to scream. One blended into the next and blurred until she didn’t know what day it was. Or month. Or season. She didn’t take vacations. She didn’t have friends.
She worked. Period. That was her life.
And she was tired of it. Tired of trying to be dull Sydney Brown. She’d done it for the last dozen years. Attempted to be perfect. Stuck to a routine. Was an average, tax-paying American who kept her head down and flew under the radar and would never be caught dead on the news—or the front page of The National Enquirer.
Sydney set her phone down. She spit the toothpaste into the sink.
“I want to be me again. Sydney Revere.”
Saying it felt right.
She carefully applied her favorite shade of lip gloss and took a deep breath. She’d pretended for years but the time for pretending was over. She wanted to go home. To California.
To Hollywood.
She missed her dad. She missed the terrific weather. She missed driving a car. She missed writing.
Sydney had always scribbled in notebooks. Her mother had told her she would be a novelist or screenwriter someday. They would go to the park, her mother wearing dark glasses, a wig, and a scarf to hide her identity. They’d sit on a bench and make up stories about the people that passed by. Sydney still did it. Waiting to give the barista her order, she’d pick out people standing in line and give them names and back stories. She’d even let her mind wander in meetings, creating stories for the people that passed in the hallway.
Why had she denied for so long who she was?
“I’m done,” she declared to the image in the mirror.
She went to her closet and pulled out a suitcase and placed it on her bed. She packed her favorite pair of jeans. Her Yale hoodie. A few shirts. Some clean underwear and bras. Black pants. Two pairs of shoes. An extra purse. She’d leave the rest behind. What she didn’t have, she could buy. The last thing she slipped in was a three-ring binder with all her legal documents. She’d be needing those in order to become Sydney Revere again.
Sydney brought the suitcase into her living room and stared at where she’d lived for the last eighteen months. Though she could have afforded to buy anything she wanted, she’d rented this apartment and the furnishings that came with it. She only bought e-books so she wouldn’t be leaving any treasured hardbacks behind. She hadn’t taken any pictures with her when she left home as a teenager. She had no pictures from her drive-through Vegas wedding to Craig.
She’d burned the pictures from her second wedding.
Bastard.
Sydney pushed thoughts of her second husband aside. She no longer dignified him with a name. The lying, cheating creep didn’t deserve one.
She had on her good navy suit and Manolos that she wouldn’t dare leave behind. She always wore the same watch and the diamond stud earrings that were her mother’s. No other jewelry to scoop up. In a way, it was sad she had so little to take with her but it made it easier to leave the physical and emotional baggage behind. She’d wasted her entire twenties. No, not wasted. She’d gotten her degrees. Been gainfully employed. Now that thirty loomed on the horizon, she wouldn’t lie to herself any longer.
She was Sydney Revere. And she liked her.
Her keys sat next to her purse. She’d leave them on the table. She wouldn’t need them anymore. She slung her purse over her shoulder and slipped her phone in the side pocket, then rolled her suitcase out the door and down the hall to the elevator. She had it to herself. Sydney swore she was going to give up living a solitary life. Alone could be good. It was good for her after her divorce. She was young, though, and