You can’t change the past but you can choose the future!

Twenty-five years ago… Emma Sanderson’s life was completely overturned. Her baby sister was kidnapped, right there in Comfort Cove, and her family fell apart.

Now… Emma lives quietly, cautiously. Until suddenly she finds out that the cold case involving her sister’s disappearance has been reopened. Then, she ends her engagement—and meets another man. Chris Talbot shares her intense unexpected attraction, and their hours together mean more than anything she’s ever experienced.

Despite that, she’s uncertain about a relationship with him. He’s a man in a dangerous profession, a man who makes his living from the sea, and there are reasons, good reasons, for Emma to keep her distance. But that night could have lasting consequences….

She tried not to think about Chris

Tried not to let her body remember the sensations he’d evoked.

Finding herself on the couch before bed, irritated with television commercials and no longer distracted by movies, Emma pulled out the journal again. Just to see what she’d written.

1. I want to be loved by a man who loves me so much that my love changes him.

She stared at the words. She’d written them down because, in that moment, she’d felt them so strongly. Now, days later, she still felt the same way.

She grabbed her pen.

2. I want to be brave enough to live my life to the fullest.

She read what she’d written again. And reread it several times. If there was going to be any value in this exercise, she had to be completely honest.

And she realized that, like it or not, her resolutions were about Chris....

“Tara Taylor Quinn writies with wonderful assurance and an effective, unpretentious style perfectly suited to her chosen genre.”—Jennifer Blake, New York Times bestselling author

Dear Reader,

Ever wake up and look at your life and wish some things were different? I have. And sometimes still do. And then what? You shrug and go on with your routine, your day. Most of the time, you’re happy. Or at least content.

But what if…

What if you decided that the things you wished were different were going to be different? What if, instead of shrugging and going on with “normal,” you made changes?

What if gets me every time. Meet Emma Sanderson. She’s a high school teacher with a mortgage and family responsibilities. She can’t just change any of those things in her life. Truth is, she doesn’t really want to. She likes teaching and loves her family. But she wants more.

A Daughter’s Story is about that more. It’s about having the courage to make changes where you can—even in small ways. It’s about daring to want and to reach for what you want within the realm of who and what you are. It’s about taking what you have and doing something to make it even better.

A Daughter’s Story is about finding answers. And…as always with me, it’s about love.

By the way, I’d really like to know what you think happened to Claire. Write to me at staff@tarataylorquinn.com! And watch for The Truth About Comfort Cove, coming in January 2013.

Tara Taylor Quinn

A Daughter’s Story

Tara Taylor Quinn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

With fifty-seven original novels, published in more than twenty languages, Tara Taylor Quinn is a USA TODAY bestselling author. She is a winner of the 2008 National Readers’ Choice Award, four-time finalist for the RWA Rita® Award, a finalist for the Reviewers’ Choice Award, the Booksellers’ Best Award, the Holt Medallion and appears regularly on Amazon bestsellers lists. Tara Taylor Quinn is a past president of the Romance Writers of America and served for eight years on its board of directors. She is in demand as a public speaker and has appeared on television and radio shows across the country, including CBS Sunday Morning. Tara is a spokesperson for the National Domestic Violence Hotline, and she and her husband, Tim, sponsor an annual inline skating race in Phoenix to benefit the fight against domestic violence.

When she’s not at home in Arizona with Tim and their canine owners, Jerry Lee and Taylor Marie, or fulfilling speaking engagements, Tara spends her time traveling and inline skating.

For Rachel

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

Epilogue

Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

SOMETHING WASN’T RIGHT. Something besides the hot chocolate splashed across the cream-colored silk blouse and brown-linen slacks that twenty-nine-year-old Emma Sanderson had come home to change.

Pulling her key from the lock that Friday morning in early September, she stood just inside the open front door of her two-story townhome, allowing the screen door to close behind her. She listened. But heard nothing.

Was Rob home?

She was in a hurry to get back to the high school before study hall ended and twenty-two fifteen-year-olds converged on her American History class. So she’d parked her car in the driveway and come in by way of the front porch, rather than through the garage as usual.

Was someone in the house? Rob Evert, her fiancé of two years, was attending an accounting seminar at a local college that morning. Besides, the sweet citrusy smell in the air wasn’t something she associated with Rob.

With her finger on the pepper-spray tube attached to her key chain, Emma moved forward a couple of steps. She should probably head right back outside. Call the police.

Then she’d be late for class. She had to change.

And what criminal smelled like citrus?

There was no sign of forced entry.

Maybe, in the back of her mind, Emma knew she didn’t need law-enforcement protection. Because if she thought she did, she’d be outside and on the phone. Immediately. She wasn’t a risk-taker.

But then, she wasn’t going to let the past rob her of her present and future, either. Not anymore. Not since the phone calls she’d received over the past month from a Comfort Cove detective, Ramsey Miller.

Miller’s news had upended her world. Frank Whittier, the man she’d spent two years adoring and the next twenty-five years hating, was not guilty of abducting her baby sister. All this time she’d blamed him....

Slipping out of her low-heeled pumps because she had to change her pants, Emma crept up the stairs. Someone could be up there.

Probably not. She was overreacting to the citrusy smell.

It was her house. She wasn’t going to let paranoia run her out of the home she owned, the home shared with her fiancé.

Hugging the fall-foliage wallpaper—everything was fall for Emma, since the fall day Claire had disappeared—she listened as she rose slowly to the second floor.

Definite rustling sounds came from the upper region of her home. As if someone was moving around, but not opening drawers or closets. Or throwing things.

Her mother, who lived nearby, had a key, but Mom wouldn’t stop in without asking permission first. And, as the principal of a local school, Rose Sanderson was at work.

The only other person who had a key, besides Emma, was Rob. And he’d lied to her once before about his attendance at a seminar. He’d sworn he’d never lie to her again. She’d believed him enough to let him move in with her.

But she didn’t fully trust him.

Her issue. One she was working on.

Their bedroom was the first door on the left. It had its own attached bath. The second bedroom and smaller bath were to the right.

She looked that way first. Surely the intruder wasn’t in her room.

At the top of the stairs, Emma paused, flicking her long dark curls back over her shoulder, suddenly questioning the wisdom of her actions. The rustling was louder, but steady. A familiar rhythm. Clearly she hadn’t been discovered yet.

And then she heard the familiar moan. Short, staccato, deep in the throat. Followed by a longer, louder, expression of relief. The moan she’d thought had been particular to her. The one only she could elicit.

He was in their room. For a brief second, as she rounded the corner toward the open door, Emma wondered if he was alone. Hoped he was.

If so, she could slip away, pretend she hadn’t seen, and they could continue to…

The woman was on the bottom, her naked backside sinking into the freshly laundered gold sheets Emma had just put on the queen-size bed that morning. Blond hair splayed across Emma’s pillow.

“Oh, God.”

The other woman was looking at her.

On another day, any day previous to the last phone call from Ramsey Miller, Emma would have turned around and left Rob to get his mess cleaned up and out of their house.

And then, when enough time had passed to take away the sting of his betrayal, she’d have listened patiently while he expressed his self-condemnation and regret. She’d have let him beg. And then she’d have taken him back.

This wasn’t the first time he’d been unfaithful to her. But it was the first in their bed. In her home. The first since he’d put the huge diamond ring on her finger.

At least the first she knew of…

Thoughts sped through Emma’s mind as she stood frozen and watched the slender long legs disentangle themselves from the man and the sheets.

Rob rolled to his side and Emma pulled the ring off her left hand. He noticed her standing there.

The instant consternation on his face couldn’t have been faked. Nor could the sorrow in his eyes.

“Emma, baby, I…”

Ignoring the woman who was in Emma’s peripheral vision pulling on sweatpants and a T-shirt, Emma approached the bed and held out the ring to Rob.

“I see she dressed up for the occasion,” she said calmly, as if they were discussing what color to paint the bedroom walls.

“Emma, please…” Rob, looked at her pleadingly, holding the sheet around his naked midsection despite the fact that both women in the room clearly knew what the covered parts looked like. He didn’t reach for the ring. But he’d expect it back. He was an accountant. Money mattered.

She placed the two-carat promise on the corner of the dresser. Grabbed a hanger out of the closet that held one of her three-piece suits—the tailored black slacks and jacket and red short-sleeved blouse—grabbed her most expensive black pumps and marched toward the door.

“I’m going back to work,” she said, facing the open door, effectively blocking the blond woman’s escape. “I’ll go straight to Mom’s afterward, spend the night there and return here in the morning to meet a locksmith who will be changing the locks.” She owned the place. She could do this. “You have until then to clean out anything of yours you want to keep. The furniture all stays. The payments you helped make are in lieu of rent for the past two years.”

She heard her voice and wondered at the woman speaking. She didn’t recognize a thing about her. But, damn, her words felt good.

“Emma…”

She heard scrambling behind her, a thump as Rob’s feet landed on the floor, and then his footsteps behind her.

“Emma!”

Head high, she just kept walking. Down the stairs. Out the front door. Knowing he couldn’t follow her. He hadn’t had time to pull on his pants.

In a nearby gas-station bathroom, as she changed her clothes, Emma crumpled, half dressed, on the toilet. She started to cry. To panic. To hurt.

But she didn’t go back.

And that afternoon, when she left school, she didn’t back down.

* * *

THE FUNERAL WAS SO CROWDED that early September Friday afternoon that more than half the attendees had to stand. Forty-year-old Chris Talbot was one of those standing, holding his place in a back corner of the big old Comfort Cove church with shoulders grown thick from a lifetime of lobstering. Fishing was a dangerous business. The most dangerous in the world if you believed what you saw on television.

To Chris it was a way of life. The only way of life.

It had been that way for Wayne Ainge, too, though Chris had barely known the young man whose funeral he’d given up a day of work to attend. Wayne was only twenty. He’d arrived in Comfort Cove from Alaska that summer. Had signed on with one of Chris’s competitors. And three days ago he’d gotten his foot tangled up in a trapline and was pulled from his boat to the bottom of the ocean. He’d drowned before anyone could get to him.

The accident had not been the boy’s fault. It hadn’t been anything he could prevent. A wind had come up, a wave, just as he’d been hoisting a trap overboard, forcing him into one small step to keep his balance. The one small step had cost him his life.

His wasn’t the first industry death, by a long shot.

But it was Comfort Cove’s first in more than fifty years. The first in Chris’s lifetime.

Wayne’s father spoke. His brother did, too. A man of the cloth—Chris wasn’t a churchgoing man so he wasn’t sure if the man was a priest or pastor or what—read from the Bible and asked them all to pray.

Chris bowed his head out of respect for Wayne’s family, who’d flown in from Alaska to bury their son where he’d said his heart was—the Atlantic Ocean. And then, as people began to file out, he shook hands with his fellow fishermen and their families.

None of them looked one another in the eye.

Every fisherman knew that any one of them could be in that casket up there. It was only by the grace of God that they made it safely home each day.

CHAPTER TWO

“WHAT’S WRONG?” Fifty-six-year-old Rose Sanderson frowned. The expression did nothing to mar her exquisite beauty. Just as all the years of anguish had never done.

As long as Emma didn’t look in her mother’s eyes. There wasn’t a lot of beauty there anymore. Only worry. Angst. Sadness. And pain.

“Sit down, Mom.” Emma pulled out one of the metal-rimmed Naugahyde chairs in her mother’s kitchen—chairs that matched the metal-rimmed Formica-topped table that had been in that same exact place in the same exact house for the past twenty-five years.

Emma had been able to convince her mother to update the rest of the house over the years. But not that table. It was the last place that Rose had seen her baby girl alive—kneeling on one of those chairs at that table eating her breakfast like a “big people.”

Rose wouldn’t change that table, and she would never move—no matter how much the neighborhood changed. Rose couldn’t leave the only place Claire would know to come back to.

As though she would remember; Claire had been two when she was abducted.

Rose’s crystalline blue eyes were wide and worried as Emma sat and folded her hands at the table. “Tell me.”

She had to tell her mother about Detective Miller’s phone calls. Most particularly the last one.

She’d been deliberating for a couple of days about what she was going to say.

Tonight, with Rob’s infidelity a fresh and burning sting, she couldn’t seem to find the usual decorum, the caution, with which she couched everything she told her mother.

She didn’t recognize herself in the woman who was pushing her to do something more. To be something different.

To change what Rose wouldn’t have changed.

“I’ve spent my entire life playing it safe.” They weren’t the words she’d come to say.

Rose’s frown deepened. “What do you mean?”

“I settle,” Emma said. “Or maybe I don’t, I don’t know.” This was her mother. She could only say so much.

Or stray too far from herself…

She was in no state to tell her mother about Ramsey Miller’s phone call—about the horrible mistake she and Rose had made, believing all these years that Frank Whittier, her mother’s fiancé at the time, had abducted Claire.

“I broke up with Rob today.” And that was not a mistake. No matter how badly Rose took the news.

Rose’s eyes held a spark of…something…as she watched Emma, saying nothing. But the woman wasn’t falling apart so Emma continued.

“I came home and found him with another woman in our bed. I gave him until tomorrow morning to get out.”

Rose nodded.

Her mother’s expression wasn’t crumpling. Or, worse, filling with fear. She almost had a hint of a smile on her face. And she was nodding!

Had the whole world gone mad? Or only Emma’s portion of it?

“What? You knew he was seeing someone?”

“Of course not. I’d have told you if I’d known that. I just knew he wasn’t right for you.”

That almost made her angry. As angry as she could ever get with the woman who’d suffered so horribly. And tried so hard to love Emma enough. “You thought Rob was wrong for me?”

“Yes.” Rose squeezed her hand. “But regardless of what I thought, you loved him and you most definitely didn’t deserve to be cheated on. I know it hurts and I’m so sorry about that.”

Shaking her head, Emma ignored the compassion in her mother’s voice. This was no time to open her heart and give in to the weakness there—a desperate need to be loved, in spite of everything.

She was better off if she kept her walls up.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” She concentrated on the facts that perplexed more than they caused pain.

“Because I knew you’d figure it out on your own and that you would be so much stronger for having done so. Acting on my say-so could have crippled you.”

“I’d have married him, Mom.” If Rob hadn’t kept putting off choosing a date. A location. Colors. Anything at all to do with them actually saying “I do,” rather than just “I’m going to.”

Rose shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“But if I had? You’d have let me?”

Rose studied her and then said, “I’m not sure. There was always the chance that I was wrong.”

“You liked him. From the first time we met him at that fingerprinting clinic, you liked how he took a real interest in our quest.”

“He was a big help. And had good ideas. He was a pleasant conversationalist, but that doesn’t mean I thought he’d make you happy. I did like that he kept you here in the area, close by. I liked that he was willing to spend time with us together. That we could do family things.”

A given. Rose had lost one daughter. And ever since that day, until Emma had met Rob, it had always been just the two of them.

“I’m not going to leave you, Mom, you know that,” Emma said. “Not for anything, or anyone.” But for the first time, the words didn’t flow from her heart as easily as they flowed past her throat.

For the first time, she wished, just for a second, that she could be as free as other women her age.

And then, ashamed of herself, she gave her mother a hug.

Emma missed Claire like she’d miss an arm or a leg. And she’d only been four when her little sister had been taken. Rose, a single mother who’d lost her baby, had suffered so much more.

Emma’s job, as the one left behind, was to be there for Rose. Period.

She wasn’t herself right then. Who knew, maybe she wouldn’t ever be exactly herself again. But her role in her mother’s life would not—could not—change.

“Never say never, Em. You have a life to live,” Rose said, sadness mingling with the compassion in her tone. “You have to go where it takes you.”

“My place is here. With you.”

“I hope it is. But if it’s not, you have to go.”

Her mother was talking crazy. She wasn’t going anywhere.

“You don’t mean that. You need me here.”

“Yes.” Rose’s expression was completely sober. “But my life doesn’t take precedence over yours. Or it shouldn’t. And I’ve begun to see that maybe, in spite of all of my intentions to the contrary, it has.”

Emma didn’t know what to say. Her mother was right about one thing. She did have a life to live. And she hadn’t been living it.

Any other time her mother’s words would have frightened her. Tonight, they seemed to make a confusing kind of sense.

* * *

CHRIS SKIPPED THE CHURCH meal that followed the funeral, though he did keep his head low—in deference to his mother who would be disappointed in his manners if she were still alive—as he made his way back to the new black Ford truck he’d bought the previous spring.

He wasn’t in a hurry to be anywhere. Late-afternoon sunshine usually signaled waiting his turn to meet with Manny, Comfort Cove’s lobster dealer, and exchange the day’s catch for the current pitiful rate of three dollars per pound. And then there were always things to do on board the Son Catcher to occupy his time until dusk—like keeping the aging engine running until the economy recovered enough to shoot lobster prices back up to a price lobstermen could afford to work for.

Today, for the first time in memory, the dock didn’t call to him. His first Friday off in months and, while he missed the water, the exertion, the thrill of the catch, the dock was not a happy place that day. They’d lost one of their own.

It could happen.

Wayne Ainge had been far too young to die. By all accounts he’d worshipped the ocean. And she’d been fickle to him.

He might have been driving aimlessly, but Chris’s new truck already seemed to know Chris. Without any conscious decision making, he ended up at Citadel’s, an upscale lounge and eatery in the middle of Main Street, the part of the tourist district the city council had sunk all the city’s money into.

Fishermen didn’t frequent Main Street.

Chris parked in his usual Friday-night spot—albeit a few hours earlier than normal—and, pausing to check out the thronging visitors on both sides of the street he slowly pocketed his keys, went inside and took a seat at the bar.

He was one of two people there. The other, a woman of indiscriminate age, eyed him up and down as though analyzing how much he’d bring per pound.

“Hey, Chris, what’s up?” Cody, the bartender, distracted him from a mental rundown of random ways to avoid hookers. “I’ve never seen you in here before dark.”

“Day off work,” Chris said, shrugging, and then remembered his attire. He looked just as he always did on Friday nights—like a white-collar business man relaxing after a long week of work. Not like a man from the docks after a long hard day. “Pour me a double,” he said.

A good bartender, Cody reached for the bottle of high-end scotch that Chris favored and poured twice the amount of Chris’s preferred drink without saying another word.

Tipping his glass to the younger man, Chris sipped, in memory of a twenty-year-old kid he’d barely known. And to men that he’d known all his life. Fellow lobstermen, fishermen, who risked their lives every day earning a living in spite of the vagaries of an ocean that was more powerful than all of them.

And halfway through the glass of amber liquid, he drank to her, too. To the mighty Atlantic. The ocean. The reason he would never have a woman in his life.

CHAPTER THREE

“I HAD A CALL, MOM.” Emma was helping her mother make a chicken Caesar salad she didn’t want. Because it was her and Rose’s favorite meal. A feel-good meal. Security food.

“From who?”

She had to start living her own life—and she wasn’t even sure what that meant. To date, her life consisted of responsibilities and “shoulds” and protecting Rose. She had to be free from some of that—free to take a chance or two. To be spontaneous in spite of dangers.

Free to want.

Rob had been naked in their bed, her bed—on sheets she’d purchased and laundered—with another woman.

Because Emma was so lacking? She’d never had an orgasm. Was that her fault? Or his?

“Emma?”

Rose’s brow was wrinkled as she glanced her way. “What?” Thank God Rose couldn’t read her thoughts.

“You said you’d had a call. I asked who from.”

Back on track. Not that the coming conversation was going to be any easier than the silent one she’d been having on and off with herself since noon that day. “From a detective. Here in Comfort Cove. His name’s Ramsey Miller.” None of which mattered. Get to the point.

Was she not woman enough to hold on to a man? Not adventurous enough? Not wild enough?

Rose wasn’t moving. Her hands, holding part of a roasted chicken breast and a knife, were suspended in midair. Midcut. “Tell me.” When she finally spoke, her tone was biting.

Emma knew she shouldn’t have started this. Not tonight. There was no reason to put her mother through more days and weeks of anguish while hope battled with reality. Reality always won. They knew that.

And yet, she really should tell Rose about Miller’s call. At some point, the detective might need to speak with her mother.

“No one knows anything about Claire,” she said quickly.

At the sink, she turned on the cold water to rinse the lettuce.

“What, then?” Fear entered Rose’s tone. Emma had known it would. That happened to a woman when her baby was stolen out of her home in broad daylight.

She thought about the box of forensic evidence that had gone missing from the police station. It was the reason for Miller’s initial call more than a month before. The last time Emma had seen the box containing her and Cal’s and Claire’s belongings, she’d been four years old.

Miller had no idea who’d taken the evidence or why.

But Rose would draw her own conclusions. And she would inevitably get her hopes up. Emma knew how it worked. Not just because she’d lived close to her mother all these years, but because she lived with the same ups and downs.

If someone had stolen the evidence from her sister’s case, could it mean that Claire was still alive? Still out there?

Or, conversely, did it mean that her baby sister was dead and buried and her abductor wanted to make certain she stayed that way?

“Emma, you’re scaring me.” Her mother still held the chicken and the knife.

Emma had moved on to mixing the oil and spices for the dressing, putting them together just the way they liked. Soft scents from the loaf of fresh Italian bread warming in the oven wafted around them.

She wasn’t up to this conversation. As a good daughter, she had to let her mother know what was going on because she couldn’t guarantee that Frank wouldn’t call. She didn’t think he would. But he knew where Rose lived. He could send her a letter.

Emma didn’t want to sit and eat. Didn’t want to do what she always did. She wanted to go somewhere. Do something.

She wanted to escape. From Rose. Claire’s memory. Frank and Cal Whittier. Rob.

She was twenty-nine. If she didn’t start living life now, it could all be over before it even began.

Taking the knife and chicken from her mother’s lifeless hands, Emma started to cut.

“Cal Whittier wrote a book.”

“What?” Rose’s brows drew together and she sank down into the chair at the head of the table—ironically, the one that had been Frank’s during the time he and his son, Cal, had lived with them.

Back when they’d been a real family.

“He published a book?” Rose asked.

“No.” Dropping the knife in the sink, Emma left the salad and went to sit next to her mother. “He gave it to Detective Miller, who works cold cases. Miller read it and noticed a piece of information that Cal had put down that wasn’t in any of the recorded testimony.”

“What information?” Rose’s tone was suspicious. Did she think Cal would lie? He’d only been seven when Claire had gone missing.

Although Emma had only been four at the time, she could still remember the anguish in her almost-brother’s eyes when he realized that, because of him, the police thought his father had done something to Claire.

“Do you remember that meat delivery truck that used to come here?” Emma asked. She’d remembered it, as she’d told Detective Miller when he’d asked her.

“Of course. They stopped three doors down, every Wednesday morning. Delivered to the Bryants. Why?”

“Cal mentioned the truck in his book. He hid behind it the morning that…that morning when he left for school. He sneaked from there to hide behind another car and then made a dash for the backyard so he didn’t have to go to school.”

“He’d thrown up in gym the day before,” Rose said, her tone softer. “He was so embarrassed he begged us to let him stay home. We hated to make him go, but we knew that if we didn’t the problem would only escalate.”

“Like falling off a horse,” Emma said, the words coming to her from long ago. “I remember Frank telling Cal about falling off a horse and getting right back on.”

“I remember that.” Emma couldn’t see Rose’s expression. Her mother’s head was bent.

“Apparently Cal didn’t tell the police that part back then,” Emma said, choosing her words carefully so her mother wouldn’t get her hopes up. “When Detective Miller read about the truck, he remembered another unsolved abduction where there’d been mention of a delivery truck, so he followed up on it.”

Rose’s head shot up, her gaze stark. “He found something? Did…is Claire…”

Shaking her head, Emma squeezed her mother’s hand. “No, Mom. I told you. There’s been no word of Claire.”

“But there might be. That’s what you’re telling me? They have a lead?”

“No,” Emma said emphatically. “It turned out that the other abduction Detective Ramsey remembered reading about was unrelated. Since then he’s found two other abductions in Massachusetts that both took place more than ten years ago, on delivery routes, but they haven’t turned up any connection to us. Or her.”

Swallowing against the tightness in her throat, Emma plowed on. “Detective Miller found the driver of our truck, though. He talked to him, and—”

“He knew something? What did he say? What does he—”

“Mom, please. This is why I didn’t want to tell you.”

“Emma, for God’s sake, she was my daughter. I’m never going to stop caring, or hurting, and so I react strongly, but that’s no reason not to tell me.…”

Emma could have reminded her mother about the times Rose had shut herself away for days, the times her mother had cried for so many hours on end that Emma’d had to fend for herself, about the times she’d had to beg her mother to eat so Rose would have the energy to get out of bed.

“The driver saw Claire in the front yard, Mom. He passed Cal going up the street and he said it looked like Claire was watching him. It bothered him to see such a young child outside alone so he drove by again after making his delivery. That’s when he saw Frank come out of the house with his briefcase, which he put into the empty backseat of the car, and then he got in the car alone and drove away. That was six minutes after he’d seen Claire in the yard alone. And based on the timing, it would’ve been after Cal had seen Claire in Frank’s car.”

Rose’s eyes looked sunken and her mouth hung open as she stared at Emma, at Emma’s lips, as though trying to decipher the words that had just passed through them.

“What are you saying? That Frank didn’t do it?” The words were a whisper, more movement than sound.

Shaking her head, Emma held on to the woman who’d raised her well, in spite of her heartbreak. “The driver’s testimony matched Frank’s testimony from twenty-five years ago word for word. He’s been exonerated.”

Rose’s eyes raised to meet Emma’s gaze. “Frank didn’t do it.”

“No, Mom.”

“I can’t…we…he was persecuted…”

And when investigators had failed to turn up enough proof to charge Frank with the crime for which he’d been arrested, he’d been run out of town like a low-life criminal, Emma silently filled in the blank Rose’s words left hanging.

And worse, they’d kept tabs on him, contacted school officials who might hire the ex-principal and coach, preventing Frank from getting a job in the field he loved so he wouldn’t harm another child. Rose and Emma had spoken openly at conference after conference, educating the public about child-safety issues, raising money for the search for missing children and talking about the man who still walked free.…

They hadn’t named Frank. That would have been illegal. But they’d introduced themselves. They’d talked about Claire by name. And anyone who’d wanted to know more could have found out anything they wanted. Including Frank’s name.

Frank and Cal had been kicked out of town—but first, they’d been kicked out of the family.

Rose processed the news silently. Emma’s heart cried for both of them.

She breathed a sigh of relief when her mother finally spoke. “Have you heard from him?”

“No. I really don’t think they’d contact us, Mom. Not after…”

Beside herself with grief the day Claire had disappeared, Rose had latched on to any hope at all of finding Claire—even if that meant she believed her fiancé was the one who could lead them to Claire. She’d latched on and lashed out. With a vengeance.

“I… Oh, my God…”

“Detective Miller told me they’re living in Tyler, Tennessee,” Emma said slowly. “They know your address. I’d be shocked if we heard from them…but we might. So…”

“They? They…who?”

“Cal and Frank.”

Rose didn’t ask the question Emma read in her mother’s eyes. “Neither of them ever married. They still share a home. Cal’s an English professor at Tyler University, Mom.”

“A professor?” Rose’s lips tilted slightly upward.

Emma smiled. “Yeah.” She’d missed him so much over the years. They’d only lived together a year, but there’d been no doubt in Emma’s mind that Cal was her big brother.

That he’d always be there to look out for her. Protect her.

Minutes passed. “And Frank?”

“He worked as a janitor until just recently.”

“A janitor?”

“In a nursing home.”

“I have to call Cal, Mom.” Emma finally got to the real point of the conversation. “I can’t not call him.” And she couldn’t contact Rose’s ex-fiancé’s son without letting her mother know.

“I accused an innocent man....” Rose’s words trailed off and hung there.

“You were a mother who had to do whatever she could to find her missing child.”

“I threw him out. Threw them out…”

“You were agonized.”

“I sent letters, contacted schools.…”

“You did what you felt you had to do to protect other children.” The crusade to stop Frank Whittier had probably saved Rose’s life. It had certainly given Emma her mother back, as it had provided Rose with an outlet for her anguish.

“You did what any mother would have done, given the evidence.” From his backyard hideout, Cal had seen Claire in his father’s car. When the police had searched the car, they’d found Claire’s favorite teddy bear, the one she’d slept with the night before and brought to breakfast the morning of her disappearance, under the front seat of Frank Whittier’s car.

“Cal was hiding under those bushes that used to be in the backyard. When he first got there, he peeked around the corner to make sure Frank’s car was still there. That’s when he saw Claire. He didn’t look again, but he heard the car drive off. There’s no way he or any of us could’ve known she’d gotten out of the car during those six or so minutes.”

Rose’s eyes were filled with tears as she looked over at Emma. “I loved him. I should at least have given him the benefit of the doubt.”

“At the risk of losing Claire forever?” If Frank had been guilty, and Rose had protected him, stood by him, it could have been too late.

“We did lose her,” Rose said. “And we lost Frank and Cal, too.”

And Emma and Rose owed the Whittiers the respect of an apology, at the very least.

“I have to call him, Mom.” She’d handle this one.

Her mother had forbidden Emma to write to Cal over the years, but she’d wanted to. So badly.

Would her life have been different if she had? Would she have avoided coming home to find another woman in her man’s arms if she’d ever, even once, dared to take a chance? To demand for herself as much as she gave to Rose and Claire?

Looking sick to her stomach, Rose nodded, and retreated to the balcony that looked over the Atlantic Ocean, in the distance.

Putting their untouched dinner in the refrigerator, Emma cleaned up and let herself out.

Life wasn’t easy. Not for Rose. Not for any of them.

Rose couldn’t make things right for her daughters.

Claire was gone.

And Emma just felt dead.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE NUMBER OF TIMES Chris had felt grief were so few and far between he could remember all of them. He relived each and every one as he sat at Citadel’s that Friday night and nursed a second glass of not-cheap whiskey. A single shot this time.

Every hurt, every disappointment, every little insecurity he’d ever felt, came back to him as he sat there alone, trying to hold on to faculties he refused to do without.

There was the time his father had called home and asked him to bring his mother to the phone, and Chris, running into her room to get her, had found her beneath a naked man he’d never met in the bed that his parents shared.

He touched briefly on the night Sara had given him back the diamond engagement ring she’d accepted several months before, but didn’t allow himself to linger. The void that Sara’s leaving him had created was soon filled again—by Sara. She was another man’s wife now, but she was Chris’s best friend.

He thought about calling her, telling her about Ainge, and took another sip of Scotch instead. Part of the reason she’d left him was because she couldn’t live with the constant possibility of his death on the ocean. He didn’t need to bring the possibility any closer to home.

Which left Chris with his morose trip down memory lane.

There was the morning he’d received the call that his parents had been killed in a pileup on the freeway just fifteen minutes from home. That was also when he found out they’d been on their way home from a court hearing because his mother, who’d already broken his father’s heart, had filed for divorce.

The last time had come a couple of days ago, when word had spread that Wayne Ainge had gone overboard, when they’d all waited as rescue crews attempted to get the young man up from the bottom of the ocean in time to save his life, and then heard the news that they’d failed, that the boy was dead.

Oh, and there was Christmas Day. He always had invitations for the day, places he was wanted and welcome. But for some reason that day got to him. Which was why he was usually the lone boat out on the ocean on December 25.

Still, only a handful of sad memories in forty years… He was a lucky guy.

“You playing tonight?” Cody was back, tipping the bottle over the top of Chris’s glass. He might have stopped him. Probably should have. Instead, he allowed the younger man to fill his glass and then raised it to his waiting lips.

The piano up on the dais was the reason he was there.

“Yeah,” he answered after he sipped.

Nodding, Cody headed down the bar. Chris was pretty sure he heard him say “Good,” but he could have just imagined it. No matter. He didn’t play for Cody. Or for anyone.

He played because music was good for the soul.

And because he could.

He played because doing so helped ease the tension that came with lobstering every day of your life.

* * *

SHE’D GIVEN ROB twenty-four hours to get out of the house. She’d told him she was going to stay with her mother. She’d known she could. Truthfully, she hadn’t planned anything. Contrary to her normal way, she’d spoken without first analyzing the various ramifications of her decision.

She didn’t have a house to go home to. She’d left her mother’s and she wasn’t going back that night.

Her attachment to her mother was probably part of the reason Rob had cheated on her. A woman with her mother attached to her hip couldn’t be much of a turn-on.

A woman who couldn’t climax probably wasn’t much of a turn-on, either. Lord knew she tried, but her body didn’t seem to be capable of letting go.

And even if her relationship with Rose had nothing to do with any of her problems, Emma needed to be away from her mother long enough to be able to breathe on her own.

First, she needed a place to spend the night.

She’d walked out without packing so much as a toothbrush.

She kept one at her mom’s. Along with pajamas and changes of clothes. Maybe she should go back. It made sense to go back. What was one more night going to hurt?

She could start her new life tomorrow. Right after she changed the locks on her doors.

And what if Rob was at her townhome tomorrow, waiting for her? What if he tried to change her mind? There she’d be, going straight from her mother’s house back to the secure life Rob offered her—albeit a life spent putting up with Rob’s philandering ways.

No, she couldn’t go to her mother’s. She couldn’t show up at home tomorrow, the same woman she was today—the woman who hadn’t been exciting enough to hold her man’s interest.

She couldn’t go home as the woman who settled for safety and security.

If she was going to change her life, it had to be tonight. She had to take a chance. To do something, anything, that wasn’t her norm. She had to be someone different.

Switching from her MP3 player, which was loaded with classics—soft and soothing music that was there to relax her after a day with rambunctious high schoolers—Emma stopped at the first satellite radio station that was blaring a beat.

The LED dash display broadcast the song title and artist in little green letters. She recognized neither and turned up the volume. She’d drown out her thoughts. And if she ever found a song she knew, she’d scream the words at the top of her lungs and pretend that she was singing along.

* * *

THREE HOURS INTO Friday evening, Chris was on his third drink. He wasn’t drunk, but even the ageless hag at the bar was beginning to look a little better.

Awaiting his turn on the piano, he listened to his competitors pounding the keys of the baby grand on the raised carpeted dais that was the restaurant’s centerpiece. The dais turned; the tables surrounding it did not.

The gleaming black instrument shone under professional spotlights and was the only furniture on the stage.

Chris’s number in the single elimination competition was up soon. He’d won the last draw of the night, which meant that he’d be up against the pianist voted by preselected judges as the best of the bunch. Chris liked the spot because he could stay onstage after he’d finished his set and play for as many hours as it took to wipe away the tension from the past week.

He didn’t need another win. He needed relaxation. He needed peace.

He needed to forget the grieving faces of those who’d loved—and lost—a man of the sea.

* * *

THE PLACE SMELLED as heavenly as she’d remembered—a mixture of spices, freshly baked rolls and prime cuts of steak marinated in Citadel’s secret sauce. Locals didn’t usually patronize the glitzy establishments on the tourist strip in downtown Comfort Cove, but a son of one of the teachers at school had played in a piano competition there a couple of times and Emma had accompanied the divorced mother on both occasions.

Now, sitting alone at the bar—something she’d never have considered doing before—she sipped a glass of white wine and concentrated on convincing herself that she could stay right where she was at least until she finished her drink.

Making deals with herself.

If she stayed fifteen minutes, she could make a trip to the ladies’ room to reassess.

If she stayed half an hour, she could think about getting a table. Maybe even order something to eat. If she made it an hour, she’d have to call someone—her divorced teacher friend, probably—and let her know where she was.

If she had more than two glasses of wine she’d call a cab.…

To take her…where?

Raising the heavy crystal glass to her lips, she gulped. She’d figure that out later. There were plenty of hotels downtown.

And because she paid her credit card off every single month, she had plenty of limit to cover whatever exorbitant fee they’d charge.

She’d show Rob.…

No. She was there to show herself something. To save her life.

She sipped again, raised her gaze and took in the people around her. A couple of men sitting alone at the bar, both dressed in suits with their ties loosened at the collar. A woman who was also alone and probably there on business. Just not the white-collar kind.

There were couples—both at the bar and filling the tables around the center stage—but those she ignored. And there were families, healthy groups of people who laughed and talked and fought and took one another for granted. She’d spent a lot of her youth wondering what it felt like to be one of them.

And then she’d grown up and realized she could make a family of her own. That’s where Rob had come in. They had plans to make a family.

And she’d kicked him out.

She had to phone him. To apologize for her hastiness. He’d be expecting the call. So maybe she should text him instead.

“And I did it my…” She suddenly heard the famous melody and it caught her attention.

Reaching beneath her jacket to make sure that her red silk blouse was still tucked into her black slacks, Emma sat up straighter. The words continued to play in her mind.

But they’d been placed there by the pianist up onstage. The timing seemed odd. Fortuitous. As though this song had been chosen for her. A song about facing the end of one’s life with absolutely no regrets.

And the way to do that?

Live by the dictates of your own heart. And only your heart.

Have I ever done that?

Emma sipped her wine.

She watched the pianist’s strong masculine fingers fly over the keys. She’d seen him play before. He’d won the competition on both the nights she’d been there.

Forgoing her fifteen-minute-mark trip to the ladies’ room, she ordered a second glass of wine and let the music envelop her. The man played with more passion than Emma had ever dared feel in her entire life.

And he did so as though completely unaware of all of the people watching him from the tables below.

If there’d been a competition that evening, it was over.

The man with the weathered face and longish hair had the stage all to himself.

* * *

HE’D WON AGAIN. If Chris were the sort to care about what other people thought, he’d probably be embarrassed. He didn’t care. So he wasn’t.

He also wasn’t stone-cold sober, not that anyone was paying his state of inebriation any mind. His room at the inn across the street would be waiting for him. He rarely used it, but every Friday night he had a free room at his disposal—paid for by Citadel’s owner as part of their business agreement.

Tonight he was going to use that room.

Breaking into one of his own compositions, a piece that flew from his fingers without any conscious thought, he let the music take him on his own private journey. He was a little boy, scared of the waves that crashed against his father’s boat. And he was the waves, with the strength and the will to steal men from their lives, their loved ones. He was the source of all power. Others were afraid; he was invigorated.

He played until he trembled from the inside out, until emotion rose in his chest, and threatened to choke him. And still he played.

With the demons of hell at his back, with the determination to go to his own grave with no regrets, he ran as fast and as far as he could from the sight of a mother’s face who’d buried her son that day, from the memories of the faces of the other women there—those who, except for a fate he’d never understand, could have been the ones grieving. He ran from the expressions on the faces of the men left behind who would not—could not—spare their loved ones the risk of a similar fate.

And maybe, just maybe, he ran from the fact that he was all alone.

* * *

EMMA WASN’T PARTICULARLY hungry. But she ordered food, anyway, so that she had an excuse to stay in her seat at the bar and continue to lose herself in the music emanating from the fingers of a man she’d never met but knew she’d never forget.

He’d changed her life that night. He’d shared his music with her, wrapped her in its graces, holding her there so that she didn’t run back home.

She ordered more wine, too. A third glass.

The pianist pulled things from her raw and gaping heart that were unfamiliar to her. Parts of herself she hadn’t had to face. He held her fast in life’s grip, keeping her rooted in that seat.

She ate a little bit. Pushed the plate away and sipped her wine and listened. It was after midnight. The man had been playing, with only one small break, for more than two hours.

He was bound to stop soon.

She couldn’t bear the thought. Not now. Not yet. She wasn’t ready for him to let her go, to leave her to fend for herself.

She wasn’t changed enough.

She needed more.

She had to meet him.

CHAPTER FIVE

WITH HANDS USED to pulling in heavy lobster traps in rapid succession, Chris communed with the ivories. The music his playing sent out into the night was a byproduct—he felt melodies and harmonies and chords more than he heard them. He didn’t understand how it worked—the music and his inner self healing. He didn’t ask. He just presented himself to the keys and played until he knew he was done.

Until he knew he could sleep.

At least, that was how it had always worked before.

So why wasn’t it working?

When midnight passed and he was still driven to play, when the tunes he produced changed from popular ditties to intense renditions of classical masterpieces with a few of his own compositions mixed in, when his fingertips grew numb with pounding, he ordered a fourth drink to help the peace he was seeking find him more easily. To assist the piano in its work.

“You’re here late tonight,” Cody said as he delivered the drink himself. Other than a waitress on the floor and the checker at the door, Cody was the only employee left for the night. The kitchen had been closed for a couple of hours.

“So are you,” Chris said, tipping his glass to the friendly guy. “I’ll bet your wife has a bit to say about that.” About the long hours. The time away.

“As long as I get home in time to crawl into bed with her, she doesn’t complain,” Cody said. “I’m home with her and the kids during the day and now that they’re in preschool we’ve got lots of time just the two of us. It’s nice.”

Chris nodded, one hand on the keys, trying to imagine what it would be like to be home with a wife and kids even for an hour, and coming up blank.

“Who’s the woman?” He’d noticed the woman in the tailored black suit and red silky-looking top over the past few hours and she was something he could converse about, though why he had a sudden urge to hang out with the bartender was a mystery.

“Not sure,” Cody said. “I don’t know her and she hasn’t said much.”

She’d had plenty of male admirers. Chris would guess just about every adult male in the place had given her the once-over. More than once.

“Someone probably stood her up,” he said, taking another sip. The liquor was warm going down. Felt good. “Can’t imagine why, though. She’s a looker.” In a nontarty sort of way. Long legged, and even in the conservative black slacks and jacket her curves caught his attention.

The woman didn’t need jewelry or makeup to call attention to herself. Hell, he’d bet she’d look good in an old robe and shower cap.

But what a shame it would be to hide that head of hair. He couldn’t seem to push away the image of those long dark curls splayed across a rumpled white pillowcase. He sipped again, enjoying the mental image for another second.

“She’s sure been looking at you, man,” Cody said, turning to eye the woman, who was holding her almost-empty wineglass by the stem with both hands.

Chris had noticed. He’d made eye contact a time or two. Had nodded and received a nod in return.

“She been talking to anybody?”

“Nope.”

“No one?”

“Nope.”

“Not even on a cell phone?”

“Nope. No texting, either.”

“An out-of-towner?”

“Here on business? Knows no one? Most likely,” Cody said.

She glanced their way. Held up her glass with a smile that was more shy than flirtatious.

Chris tapped a chord. And taking one more sip of whiskey, he started to play again.

* * *

SHE WAS THE sixth-to-the-last patron in the bar. Two separate tables, a couple at each, were still occupied. And the leathery-skinned woman who still sat at the other end of the bar. The woman talked to pretty much anyone who sat near her, but so far she was alone.

Maybe she wasn’t a working girl as she’d first assumed. Maybe she was the wife or girlfriend of the piano player? Used to sitting by herself all night while her man worked?

Keeping watch over him?

Like she should have kept watch over Rob?

One o’clock in the morning and Emma still had no place to be. Or desire to go.

She couldn’t drive anywhere. That decision had been made with her last glass of wine.

One of the hotels on the block was going to be her accommodation. Didn’t matter which one. They were all nice. All clean. In a safe area. And, because it was fall and not summer, they’d be sure to have rooms available.

Piano man glanced at her. Again. Emma should have looked away. Any other time she would have.

His glance called to her. She heard him. Those eyes said he found her interesting. She told him his music moved her.

He felt her pain. She was aware of his depths.

They were two intense people meeting on a level that no one else could share.

Or at least that’s how she translated their silent communications.

She’d never been intense before. Never even gave herself a chance to see if she could be.

She was different tonight. Allowing herself to just be. Watching, as if from afar, to see who might emerge. Maybe, just maybe, she was finding the person inside of her that she’d kept locked up tight since the day Claire went missing.

And even if this woman was only allowed out of her cage for this one night, Emma was determined to give her life.

So she sipped her wine. And she participated in nonverbal conversations.

She’d go get her hotel room. As soon as piano man was done for the night. As long as he was going to play for her, she was going to stay and listen.

* * *

CODY WOULDN’T TELL him to leave. Don Carmine, Cody’s boss and owner of Citadel’s, would have his hide if the bartender in any way offended the provider of Citadel’s discounted lobster supply. One of the best deals Chris had ever made—his lobster in exchange for 24/7 use of the baby grand, accomodations across the street when he wanted them, and whatever he wanted to drink. Chris didn’t abuse those privileges.

He didn’t usually stay late, either, but tonight he couldn’t bring himself to leave. Not while the long-legged woman still sat at the bar watching him.

His mystery woman played him just right. She made no demands or requests. Nothing he’d have to reject. She was just there. And she was exquisite.

Chris softened his touch on the keys, caressing them, telling the woman through his playing that she moved him.

He found it curious that she didn’t seem to have much awareness of her effect on other people. He hadn’t seen her so much as make eye contact with a single one of the men who’d been buzzing around her that night.

A woman alone keeping to herself wasn’t so unusual—what struck him was the way her shoulders pulled in slightly instead of squaring off, her air of hesitation, the fact that every time he caught her eye, she always glanced away first.

A glass appeared on the cork-lined black tray sitting on top of the piano, within hands’ reach, as he played. A set of keys followed.

“Lock up when you’re through.” Cody’s words could be heard over the ballad Chris was playing.

He glanced around. The place was empty. The waitress—Beth—and the bouncer at the door must’ve gone home.

His gaze landed back on the woman who was the last remaining customer at the bar.

“She asked if she could stay. I told her it was fine with me as long as it was all right with you.”

Watching the woman, who was watching him, Chris nodded. And as he heard the back door click behind Cody, he started another song.

* * *

SHE COULDN’T SPEND the night in a bar. But what difference would it make if Emma checked into a room, with nothing but her purse, at one-thirty in the morning or three-thirty?

Piano man—Chris, Cody had told her when he’d poured her last glass of wine, on the house—continued to play. But he watched her, not the keys beneath his fingertips.

That was fine. She was watching him, too.

She wondered about Chris’s shoulders, so broad they stretched the long-sleeved white dress shirt he wore. Wondered if playing piano was what he did for a living.

She could have asked Cody.

She hadn’t.

Chris raised an eyebrow to her. She tilted her head.

Her breasts felt twice their size as she sat there, staring at him. Her nipples tingled. She had been freed for the night by wine. And music.

She was dangerous.

In that moment Emma liked the change.

As much as she didn’t want Chris to stop playing, she wanted him to stop even more. He had to at some point.

And when he did, what then?

Would he speak to her?

Or simply motion for her to leave so he could lock up and disappear into the night?

Lifting a hand from the piano keys, continuing his auditory art with one-handed playing, he raised his glass to his lips. Sipped slowly. Her fingers shook on the stem of her wineglass as she also lifted her glass, and folded her lips around the rim.

He put down his glass, and she listened for the message the keys would send out as he returned his hand to them. Soft? Sweet? Intense? Deep, dark chords?

But his right hand didn’t return to the piano. He held it palm up, and folded three of his strong fingers inward. The fourth, his index finger, he crooked, calling to her.

The new Emma, the one who was refusing to go home to her mother’s house, stood. She maintained eye contact. And with desire spiraling in private places, she started toward the piano man with no thoughts of turning back.

CHAPTER SIX

CHRIS HAD NO REAL idea what he was doing. It was late. He had to be on the docks before sunrise—a few short hours away. He’d already missed a day’s catch and couldn’t afford to miss another.

He started to play another song, his fingers moving naturally over the keys, sending a harmonic rendition of “Send in the Clowns” out into the deserted room. With most of the lights off, he could only make out the first circle of tables around the dais. The rest of the space was black.

Except where the track lighting from the bar—lights that were always left on—accentuated the softly sculpted features of the goddess slowly approaching him.

He switched chords and without pause started in on “Seduces Me”—a song written by Dan Hill and made famous by Céline Dion. He’d heard it many times but had never played it before.

The deceptively simple, sexy melody filled the air around them, sending shivers down his spine. The woman faltered a step, but didn’t look away. Neither did he.

When she reached the dais, his gaze landed for an instant on the vee between her thighs, and then immediately rose to meet the questioning but undeniably sultry look in her eye.

His hands slowed and then stilled completely. He moved sideways on the shiny black bench, watching her, waiting to see what she would do. He wasn’t completely sober. He should have stood. Thanked her for her patronage and secured his exit.

But he couldn’t. More important than sleep, more important even than the catch, was knowing what she would do next.

* * *

EMMA TRIED TO think. She stood outside of her body—a spirit in the air above that dais—and she saw someone with a body who looked like hers, wearing her clothes, standing alone with a man she’d never met.

He’d moved over. And was waiting for her.

He was older than she’d first thought—in his late thirties or early forties. His skin was as leathery as the woman’s from the bar earlier that evening. His hands were well worn, too. Rougher than she’d expected for a man who played the piano so beautifully. The dichotomy spoke to her.

Chris was not just a pianist. Emma was not just a safe bet.

She sat down.

* * *

HER BODY WAS warm. Chris’s body buzzed with anticipation.

“What’s your name?” He’d been making eye contact with her all night. Now he looked down at the keys in front of him.

“Emma.”

Her hands appeared on the keys, as well. She had slender fingers. Unadorned, although there was a white band against the tanned skin of her left ring finger.

“I’m Chris.”

“I know.”

He glanced at her. She turned her head. Their gazes were only inches apart now.

“Cody told me,” she explained.

“You hungry?”

She licked her lips. “Not really.”

“Your glass is almost empty, you want more?”

“Okay.”

“The bars are all closed, but I have a room. It’s across the street.”

He didn’t promise to be a gentleman.

“Okay.” Her tongue flicked across her bottom lip. His body thrummed his response.

“You want to join me there?”

He would never, ever force himself on a woman, but he wasn’t about to turn down any opportunities this beauty—Emma—was willing to offer.

“I think I do.”

He had a condom in his wallet. She’d recently had a ring on her finger. Safe enough for him.

“Good,” he said, and lowering the lid to protect the piano keys, he rose, took her hand and led them out the back door.

* * *

EMMA WASN’T STUPID. She knew what she was agreeing to by leaving the bar with Chris. She just couldn’t seem to make herself care.

Because she was numb? Hurt beyond good judgment?

Because she was drunk?

Or because the piano man made her body sing in places a tune had never played?

The warm night air didn’t sober her. Or instill her with any better sense. It caressed her skin, heightening the surreal sense of vibrancy she felt as they walked hand in hand across a quiet street lit with old-fashioned gas lamps.

They reached the other side.

“I don’t…”

“Don’t what?” They were the first words he’d said since he’d locked the door of Citadel’s behind them.

Who was she kidding? This was no love tryst. She didn’t know anything about the man, except that he’d been endowed with a magnificent talent.

“I reserve the right to change my mind.” Emma strove to save herself from the unleashed woman inside of her.

“Of course.”

They stopped on the curb in front of one of the more expensive hotels in the tourist district. The doorman stood alert, in spite of the very early morning hour, appearing eager to be of service to them.

Chris’s eyes were blue. A vivid, bright blue—not the darker hue they’d appeared to be in the shadows of the restaurant. His hair, falling across his forehead, was dark enough to be almost black.

“You want me to walk you to your car?” he asked. His eyes belied the indifference in his voice.

“No!” She was surprised by the vehemence with which she said it. “I just want… I’ve heard stories….”

Words escaped her and she waited for him to get her drift.

He was silent.

“It’s only fair that you know, going in, that I might change my mind. At an inopportune moment.”

He raised one of his strong, gifted hands to her face and ran his fingers through her hair.

“I will stop,” he said, looking her straight in the eye. “If at any time, any time, you change your mind, I will stop.”

She believed him. And hoped, God help her, that she wouldn’t want him to.

* * *

EMMA ALMOST GIGGLED as the elevator opened for them upon approach, as though it had been commanded to do so. Surely Chris didn’t have that much power.

Though, judging by the way he made her feel, she couldn’t be sure.

“Not many people going up and down at this late hour,” he said, stepping inside the car.

“I think I’ve had a lot to drink,” she said, grinning at him.

“Four glasses of wine by my count.”

He was counting? She stared at him. He’d been watching her that closely?

“From the moment you walked in tonight, I didn’t notice anything else.”

It was a good line and she was inebriated enough to like it.

“I’m not kidding,” Chris said, his voice deep, a bit husky, reminding her of a well-aged wine. One out of her price league. “I don’t play games with women.”

“I don’t play at all,” Emma said, her voice sounding tiny in the confines of the elevator. “This is the first time I’ve ever done anything like this.”

A mood-killer if ever there was one. Yes, she’d discovered new things about herself tonight. But she was still Emma and now she was going to blow this whole thing.

If she did, chances were old Emma would win and she’d have to resign herself to a life of safety and security and settling for Robs.

She nearly laughed out loud at that last thought. Robs. Funny word.

But if she succeeded—if she made love with her piano man—she’d be forever changed. She’d no longer be the woman who’d never taken a chance, never faced danger, never had the nerve to do exactly what she felt like doing.

The elevator door slid open and Emma half expected Chris to gracefully bow out of his invitation.

Holding the door open with his body, he lifted her hand until her gaze followed.

“I’m glad you don’t make a habit of this,” he said, the smile in his eyes sending her spiraling as though he’d tipped her over the edge of a cliff. “You want to continue?”

“Yes.”

He guided her through the door, following closely, and when he came up beside her, he wrapped his arm around her waist.

They faced the elegantly appointed room together. And she tingled with anticipation. Not fear.

In that moment, Emma knew that if the night killed her, she’d die having lived.

And she’d prefer that to living her whole life as if she were already dead.

CHAPTER SEVEN

IT WASN’T SUPPOSED to happen this way.

The words repeated themselves in his mind. He wasn’t sure what they meant. But he heard them.

He probably even believed them. There just wasn’t a damn thing he could—or wanted to—do about them.

“I have a dry white or merlot,” he said as he peered into the stocked refrigerator in the living-room section of his hotel room.

The king-size bed was there, too, in plain view, about ten feet of plush beige carpet away.

Emma sat—still fully dressed down to the low-heeled shoes she wore—on the couch, but based on the stiffness of her posture and the way her gaze kept darting to the oversize armchair next to the couch he had the distinct impression that she’d have been more comfortable in the seat made for one.

He quirked his brow at her. “You ready to say stop?”

“Dry white, please.” Her brown gaze swung to him, and stayed there. Steady and strong.

“I’m glad.” Really glad. Abnormally glad—Chris had never been hard up for women.

He opened the small bottle, emptied it into one of two wineglasses on the bar, opened a miniature bottle of Crown for himself and poured it into a highball.

Handing her the glass of wine, he took a sip of his whiskey and sat down beside her.

The night might be late, but he felt like they had all the time in the world. And if they didn’t, he was going to take it, anyway. This woman, this experience, was not to be rushed.

“You want to know anything more about me?” he asked.

“Yes, but not right now.”

Fair enough.

She didn’t offer him the same privilege. She pushed her hair back away from her face and he saw that white band on her finger again. She’d said she’d never done anything like this before.

“I’m okay if tonight is a rebound for you. But I need to know that you aren’t married. I don’t take what belongs to someone else.”

“I’m not married.”

He felt like grinning. And it wasn’t supposed to happen that way, either.

“Have you ever been married?”

“No.” She glanced away, as though ashamed.

Chris lifted her hand that held the wineglass and brought it to her lips. “Sip,” he said softly. “I haven’t ever been married, either.” Almost didn’t count.

His words brought her gaze back to him. “How old are you?” he asked.

She was of age; he knew that. But he was curious.

“Twenty-nine.”

Younger than he’d expected. Younger than Sara by eleven years.

“I’m forty.”

She had a right to know.

“Okay.”

“That doesn’t bother you?”

“That you’re eleven years older than me?”

His age had never been an issue for him before. He simply hadn’t cared to measure life in terms of time. He sipped his drink.

“It doesn’t bother me in the least,” she said, a small smile forming on the lips that had been calling to him all night long. “As a matter of fact, I find forty kind of sexy. You aren’t a kid all filled up with his own sense of importance.”

“I could be an older guy all filled up with my own sense of importance.”

“You could be.” She took a sip of her wine, still smiling. “But I know that you aren’t.”

“How do you know?”

“You’ve asked for my permission every step of the way,” she said simply. “If you thought you were life’s greatest gift, you’d be sure you knew what I wanted—which, by the way would be only what you wanted—and you’d have charged forward with the strength of a bull to get it.”

“Apparently you know someone who’s filled with his own sense of importance.”

“I don’t think a girl can escape puberty without meeting one or two or a dozen of those.”

“I wish I could believe you were wrong about that.”

She shrugged. “It’s not all bad,” she said, her gaze dropping to his shoulders—his chest—and lingering there. “Gives you the chance to discern between the good and the bad.”

Which didn’t mean a woman always was able to discern, he guessed, glancing again at that ring finger.

The guy, whoever he’d been, was a first-class fool. To lose a woman like this?

Chris drew himself up with a gulp of whiskey. Whoa. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. The words came again.

He was not one who entertained thoughts of having a relationship with a woman. His associations with women were just that—associations.

She reached for the top button on his shirt. “Do you mind if I undo this?” she asked, her other hand still holding the glass of wine he’d poured for her.

“No. Not at all.” Chris’s penis forced the words out of his mouth before his brain had a chance to react.

Her hand shook and her fingers caught and pulled a couple of strands of his chest hair as she struggled to open the button. The stiffness in his groin intensified. If she’d been experienced, assured, he might have had a hope.

He could have helped. Could have disrobed completely without a care. The sweet torment of Emma’s soft skin scraping against his chest as she continued to try, one-handed, to get the button free from the hole had control of him.

Her attentions turned him on too much to deny himself. If the exquisite torture felt this good at the top buttons, he could hardly wait for her to tackle the buttons that were currently tucked into the fly of his dress slacks.

The wine sloshed a bit in the glass and she took a sip. The button was almost free and then she fumbled it and lost the ground she’d gained. She didn’t giggle. Or sigh. Slowly, patiently, she tried again. Then finding success, she moved on to the next button.

He felt his underwear getting moist. He was going to have to stop her. Or help her. Or explode before he ever got a chance to show her any pleasure at all.

His shirt parted; she smiled a Mona Lisa smile, and Chris’s body temperature grew.

He hadn’t seen an inch of her flesh. Hadn’t touched any private places. He hadn’t even kissed her yet.

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

* * *

HIS CHEST WAS glorious. She wanted to run her fingers through the abundance of dark crisp hair there—man hair.

Wow.

Chris groaned, and she glanced up. He was looking straight at her with a desperate plea in his gaze.

She jerked back. “What’s wrong?” Had she hurt him? Had he changed his mind? Suddenly remembered a woman who was at home waiting for him? “You have a girlfriend, don’t you?” She’d only asked if he was married. Rob wasn’t married, either.

Dizzy with the effects of too much wine, she suddenly felt kind of sick.

“No, I don’t.”

His unequivocal answer sent a flash of relief through her entire body.

“And the only thing wrong is that I need to have you naked beneath me. I need to sink myself inside you and hear your cries of ecstasy within the next few seconds or I’m going to be in paradise all by myself.”

The wine dancing in her head again, she grinned. Hugely. “I have that effect on you?”

“Hell, yes.”

Irrepressible delight coursed through her.

“I have no problem with your plan, then.”

His eyebrows came together. “You’re sure? I haven’t prepared you.”

She nodded and set her wine down on the table with a small splash, refusing to listen to a faint voice inside of her that wanted her to come to her senses. “I’m pretty sure you have,” she said.

Chris’s hand was at her crotch before Emma had any idea what he was going to do. He rubbed right where she was hottest. And then, without taking his eyes from her face, he had her slacks undone with one quick tug.

He kissed her, attacking her senses on multiple levels. His lips were firm, his tongue urgent as it entered her mouth. Emma grabbed for his neck, holding on tightly while he lifted her, undressed her some and lowered her back to the couch as he partially undressed himself.

“I have to get a condom.” She barely understood the strained words. She saw him reaching back for his wallet and then she let go of him. But only long enough for him to slide the leather bifold from his back pocket, and find the foil packet tucked neatly in one corner.

With him suspended over her, she still had a chance to stop him. Her old self hovered above, watching what she was doing. Emma saw herself. But she didn’t stop. Making love with Chris was the right thing to do. She was sure of it.

She felt no regret. None. At all.

She had to have him and that was all that mattered.

There was no hesitation in her body. No resistance. No discomfort at all. Emma’s hips reached toward the force consuming her, welcoming him, urging him to fill her more deeply, with swifter thrusts. She had no idea who she was, or what she would be after this. She didn’t care.

Driven by something inside of her, Emma gave herself over to the man on top of her. He was taking her away and she went willingly. Climbing higher and higher beneath him, with him. Becoming thinner and thinner until she burst into an explosion of sensation, saw stars and experienced wave after wave of the most incredible pleasure.

She’d had her first orgasm. And she wasn’t the least bit sorry.

* * *

HIS BODY PULSED again and again, until he wasn’t sure he could stand the glory of it. Chris cried out.

Oh, God. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. He was always in control.

And now he wasn’t. He wanted more.

Gasping, sweating, he fell to Emma’s side. He should be exhausted.

“Now, if you will allow me, I’ll show you real pleasure,” he drawled, hardly recognizing his voice. Without waiting for a response, he undid her blouse slowly, pausing after each button to run the backs of his fingers along the skin he was exposing.

She stared up at him, watching. “You want me to stop?” he asked, remembering her earlier warning.

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely.” Her gaze didn’t waver in spite of the tremble in her voice.

She moved her hips against him, sending another surge of blood along his muscle, pulling him in farther, and Chris had no choice but to take her at her word.

The woman wanted his loving and, God help him, he had to give it to her.

CHAPTER EIGHT

EMMA GAVE ROB a couple of extra hours to vacate her house on Saturday. She blamed her inability to get out of bed and leave the hotel room on her late night. It certainly wasn’t a man keeping her there.

Her companion in crime was no more than a vivid memory. Sometime before dawn he’d kissed her one last time, told her to sleep, then, when she was more unconscious than not, he’d dressed and left. She hadn’t even known his intent until she’d heard the latch on the door click behind him.

She’d risen then. In the restroom she’d found the note he’d left for her on the marble sink, telling her to stay as long as she liked. He’d arranged a late check-out. He told her to order breakfast on him.

“I hope that our night together is a memory that will last you a lifetime,” he’d written. “I know that I will never forget you. Chris.”

That was it. Just Chris. No last name. No phone number. No way for her to contact him. No request for a way to contact her.

After reading the note half a dozen times Emma had told herself to dress, find her car and get the hell home.

And then she’d remembered Rob’s deadline, which wasn’t yet past, and had crawled back into bed. What the heck. Chris had presumably paid for the room. She might as well get some rest.

With the help of the wine she’d consumed the night before, she’d slept for several more hours—waking around noon to glasses half filled with stale wine and whiskey, the scent of lovemaking and her clothes in a neat pile on the table in front of the couch.

The note Chris had written was still there, too, crumpled on the bedside table. Right where she’d left it.

* * *

WITH HIS FADED orange coveralls stripped down to his waist, Chris dropped the wrench and swore. He was stranded on his boat about ten miles out. And saw a flash of long legs in his mind’s eye.

At his father’s insistence, he’d learned how to repair a boat engine before he’d pulled up his first trap. But there was only so much a guy could do to an engine with pistons that were done being overhauled. New rings weren’t going to do it this time. He’d had no black smoke warning this time. Only a rough idle when he’d taken the boat out.

Maybe he’d have taken the engine coughs more seriously if he’d had any sleep. If he’d been able to wipe out the image of dark curls spread across his white pillowcase. He couldn’t afford to miss another day’s catch. And engine coughing could be healed after he’d brought in the haul. Usually.

At least he’d brought in a better than average catch. More than seven hundred pounds. At only three dollars a pound—less than half of what he used to sell for—he was going to gross twenty-one hundred. He could get the catch in to Manny. With the cost of running a lobstering operation coupled with his living expenses, he was going to be lucky to make this month’s bills.

Which was another reason he didn’t date. He couldn’t afford to wine and dine a woman. He couldn’t afford the time.

Forgoing the radio—and the coast guard—Chris pulled out his cell phone and dialed.

He couldn’t afford a new engine, either. Or a day off work. He damn well couldn’t afford to be distracted by thoughts of a woman—no matter how good the night before had been.

“Jim, it’s Chris. I need a tow.”

He gave his father’s best friend his coordinates. Jim wasn’t fishing anymore. He’d bought a new boat just before the economy failed and had lost it to bankruptcy a couple of years later. Now the sixty-seven-year-old fisherman drove a towboat for Manny.

If Chris couldn’t find a way to fish and fix his boat at the same time, he could end up just like Jim.

“Be there in twenty,” Jim told him, and hung up.

No questions asked.

* * *

EMMA PUSHED THE button on her car visor, activating the automatic garage-door opener at four o’clock Saturday afternoon and paused in the driveway. Rob’s silver Ranger was still parked inside.

The tall, lanky, boyishly good-looking man came out of the kitchen and into the garage before the outer door was fully raised.

She had a choice. Back up and speed away. Or stay.

Emma pulled into her garage.

“You didn’t change the locks.” Rob was there, opening her door for her. “I spent the night praying that you’d give me another chance, Em. This was the first time since we got engaged,” he said, his tone pleading. “I swear to you, it won’t happen again. Ever.”

She got out of the car, pulling her purse out with her.

“The look on your face, when you came in the bedroom yesterday…”

Emma made her way to the door and into the house.

“I will never forget that look, Em. Or forgive myself for putting it there.”

He hadn’t moved out. Everything was just as she’d left it the day before. Rob’s shot glasses were on the second shelf of the window alcove over the sink. His espresso machine still sat on the counter. And his shoes were underneath the dining-room table—right where he always left them.

Most everything in the townhome—the furniture, the dishes, the mortgage—belonged to her. He’d sold his stuff when he’d moved in because they hadn’t needed two of everything.

“You’re in the same clothes you took with you yesterday.”

She put her purse on the closet shelf. Not far from Rob’s golf clubs. He was that sure of her.

She was that predictable.

“You have clothes at your mother’s house.”

She’d called her mother on her way home, letting Rose know that she’d stayed downtown and had a long rest. She’d assured Rose that she was fine and that she’d call her later. She’d opted out of joining her for dinner and a movie.

Now she wondered if maybe that hadn’t been such a good idea. If she had someplace to be, something she had to do, she could leave without running away.

Chris had had all morning to contact her at his hotel room, but he hadn’t. And he hadn’t returned.

Unlike Rob, she knew when someone was giving her ample time to get out.

“You’ve been out all night.”

Rob’s tone turned accusing as he followed her into the living room, down the hallway and into their shared home office. She had no idea what she was going to do there, but it was a better choice than the bedroom, where she really wanted to be.

Or the shower, where she needed to be.

“Where were you?”

He was standing right behind her. Hounding her. Emma turned and stared him right in the eye. “That is none of your business.”

“You’ve got a hickey on your neck.”

Emma raised a hand to cover the mark. She’d forgotten. Chris had been inside her—for a second time—when she’d admitted that she’d never had a hickey in her life. What had been a hazy recollection crystallized as though a high-powered beam had been pointed at the memory.

“You were with another man!” The astonishment in Rob’s voice riled her. He didn’t have to sound so shocked. Like the idea of another man wanting her was impossible to imagine.

“You’re no better than I am!”

He had that wrong. She’d waited until she was free before she had sex with someone else.

Rob reached out, taking hold of her shoulders, pulling her to him. “I’m sorry, Em. I understand. And I forgive you. I’m actually relieved.” He looked down at her, a sympathetic smile on his lips. “You don’t know how hard it’s been living with someone as perfect as you are. There’s no way I could ever measure up. But now…”

“What do you mean, as perfect as I am?”

“You know!” He gave her shoulders a squeeze. “You live completely on the white side of black and white. You don’t ever mess up. Or do anything unless you know you won’t make a mistake. You have such high standards you make it impossible for a guy to live up to you.”

Emma stepped back forcefully enough to make him let go of her. She’d been crushed that Rob had been unfaithful. He appeared glad that she had been.

“Who was he, Em? Anyone I know?”

More nauseated than ever, Emma walked out of the office. “Get out, Rob. Now. Take your things and get out. The locksmith is on his way.”

“You don’t mean that.” He placed a hand on her arm. Gently. “Please. Let’s talk. We can get through this. I know we can. I know you, Em.”

He did know her. Better than anyone ever had. There was a lot of value in that. A lot of worth.

Chris didn’t know her at all. And didn’t want to.

If she let Rob leave, she’d be alone. Really alone. Did she want that?

“Get out.” The words came from deep within. “The Lock Exchange guy is going to be here soon. Whatever’s still here by the time the locks are changed, you lose.”

“You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“Yes, actually, I do.” Emma shook inside, scared to death but determined.

She’d done the unimaginable the night before. She’d left a bar with a man she didn’t know. She’d shed her clothes for him, spread her legs for him. And then she’d been left to wake up alone.

Somehow she had to make something good come from that. She had to make the night count. She had to become a changed woman.

“I’m warning you, Em. If you do this, if you really force me out of here, I won’t be back.”

She stood still and tried not to cry.

“I mean it.”

He took a step toward her.

“I know you mean it.” Emma could hardly believe the firmness of her tone. “I am changing the locks and anything that’s left behind, you lose. You’ve had twenty-four hours.”

“Fine, then. But mark my words, you’re going to regret this.”

She faced him one last time, aware of how she must look in yesterday’s clothes with last night’s rumpled hair, smeared makeup and unbrushed teeth. “That’s a chance I’m willing to take.”

Emma didn’t take chances.

But apparently the woman she’d unleashed the night before had caught a ride home with her.

CHAPTER NINE

CHRIS TOSSED BACK a few drinks with Jim at his house on Saturday night. The older man had taken a look at his boat and had verified what Chris already knew. He’d shot at least one piston. The Son Catcher wasn’t going anywhere until Chris came up with a thousand bucks and the time to fix her.

And if he kept dipping into his savings, he wasn’t going to have anything left for his retirement.

Not that he had any plans to quit working.

If he couldn’t fish, there wouldn’t be anything left to live for, anyway.

“You don’t come around enough, Chris.” Jim’s wife, Marta, put a plate of fresh crab sandwiches on the table in the enclosed patio and pulled up a stool.

“I don’t want to impose,” Chris said.

“Your folks have been gone almost ten years, and you’ve been here, what, five times since then?”

It sounded so bad when she put it like that.

“I miss our Friday-night dinners.”

Jim had been friends with Chris’s father in high school. When they’d married, their wives had also become close friends. The two couples had shared dinner together every Friday night. And after Chris had been born, the only child among them, he’d become a part of the tradition. One that had continued until his parents’ deaths.

After that, Chris found it easier to be alone.

* * *

EMMA SLEPT ON the couch Saturday night. With the television on.

She wasn’t afraid of burglars. Or of the dark.

She was afraid of herself, that—alone in the queen-size bed, in the room that she’d shared for two years—she’d toss and turn and feel desperate.

She was afraid she’d do something crazy. Like call Rob. He’d be expecting a call. And, in spite of what he said, he’d come back.

She knew him well, too.

Another possibility, a worse one, was that she’d leave the house and go down to Citadel’s. If Chris made his living there, he’d have to be there more than one night a week. Weekends were the biggest draw.

And if he was booked someplace else, Cody would probably know about that, too.

As badly as Emma wanted to see him again, she knew she shouldn’t. So she didn’t sleep much.

But she caught up on I Love Lucy reruns. And when dawn still took too long to arrive, she put in Pillow Talk, one of her favorite movies from her Doris Day collection. Emma owned every single movie Doris Day had ever made.

She loved them all.

Doris always got her guy. But she never lost sight of who she was in the process. Always remained true to herself.

She was an icon in her day, a woman before her time. The characters Doris depicted were strong women. Women who didn’t need men to complete them, who were successful in their own right and found men to complement them.

Men who were so in love with her characters, that love changed them from playboys into faithful partners for life.

At seven in the morning, as the end credits of Pillow Talk played, Emma reached into the side-table drawer, pulled out a journal—an unused gift from one of her students—and opened it to the first page.

She wrote her name in large black print: EMMA SANDERSON.

And then she started a list.

1. I want to be loved by a man who loves me so much that that love changes him.

She waited for more to come to her, and when nothing presented itself, she closed the journal and put it back in the drawer. Then she went to take a shower and begin the rest of her life.

* * *

AT NINE O’CLOCK Sunday morning, Emma picked up the phone.

Ramsey Miller had given her Cal’s number, after obtaining Cal’s permission to do so. She’d programmed it into the contact list on her cell phone.

She’d let it sit there.

With the push of a button, she made another major life decision.

Her heart was pounding as she waited for Cal to pick up.

“Hello?”

His voice was deep. Distinguished.

“Hello?”

She almost hung up. She had no idea what she was getting into. What kind of Pandora’s box she could be opening. What if the Whittiers tried to sue them?

“Hello?” Cal sounded more perplexed than irritated by the silence on the other end. The young boy she remembered had always been so patient with her and Claire. So willing to listen.

“Cal?”

“Yes?”

“It’s Emma. Emma Sanderson. Detective Ramsey Miller told me that you said it was all right to call and…” I’m a new woman now. Or at least I’m trying to be.

“Emma. I wondered if that was you when I saw the area code and didn’t recognize the number.” There was hesitation in his voice. Not that she could blame him.

“I just… I called to apologize, Cal. I know that nothing I can say will ever make up for what happened to you—and to your father.…”

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