A Daughter's Story Read online

  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 [email protected]! And watch for The Truth About Comfort Cove, coming in January 2013.

  Tara Taylor Quinn

  A Daughter’s Story

  Tara Taylor Quinn

  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.

  Books by Tara Taylor Quinn

  HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE

  1309—THE PROMISE OF CHRISTMAS

  1350—A CHILD’S WISH

  1381—MERRY CHRISTMAS, BABIES

  1428—SARA’S SON

  1446—THE BABY GAMBLE

  1465—THE VALENTINE GIFT

  “Valentine’s Daughters”

  1500—TRUSTING RYAN

  1527—THE HOLIDAY VISITOR

  1550—SOPHIE’S SECRET*

  1584—A DAUGHTER’S TRUST

  1656—THE FIRST WIFE**

  1726—FULL CONTACT*

  1793—A SON’S TALE‡

  SINGLE TITLE

  SHELTERED IN HIS ARMS

  MIRA BOOKS

  WHERE THE ROAD ENDS

  STREET SMART

  HIDDEN

  IN PLAIN SIGHT

  BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

  AT CLOSE RANGE

  THE SECOND LIE**

  THE THIRD SECRET**

  THE FOURTH VICTIM**

  *Shelter Valley Stories

  **The Chapman Files

  ‡It Happened in Comfort Cove

  Other titles by this author available in ebook format.

  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 h
er 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.