His Brother's Bride

  Welcome to Twin Oaks—the new B and B in Cooper’s Corner. Some come for pleasure, others for passion—and one to set things straight…

  Check-in: TV news reporter Laurel London has booked a room at the new Twin Oaks B and B, and so has noted travel writer William Byrd. Owners Clint and Maureen Cooper are hoping for a great review!

  Checkout: Then suddenly, William Byrd vanishes. Policeman Scott Hunter is on the case—and Laurel is determined to be in on the action. But Scott and Laurel share a painful history. His brother—her fiancé—died tragically. Can cop and reporter mend their heartbreak, join their hearts…and get to the bottom of Byrd’s disappearance?

  Dear Reader,

  Welcome to Cooper’s Corner. Once you meet the people here, stay at the new Twin Oaks Bed and Breakfast, taste Clint’s griddle cakes, play with Maureen’s three-year-old twin girls and sit down to have a man-to-man talk with twelve-year-old Keegan, you’re going to understand why I left part of my heart here.

  Cooper’s Corner is a blend of New England class, breathtaking Berkshire beauty and small-town charm. It’s the kind of place I think of when I’m feeling overwhelmed by life and have to believe there really is a world where people love and care for each other above all else, where the pace is slow and where values matter more than advancement.

  And one of the great things about Twin Oaks is that it’s specifically designed for people like us who don’t live in Cooper’s Corner but want to be a member of the family anyway. It’s for city folks who need to be reminded what matters, a place where busy people can find moments of peace and warmth and love. A place where families go to spend time together, play parlor games or take long hikes. You’ll see as you spend the year with us that Twin Oaks is for everyone, no matter what age, gender or stage in life. It’s all here.

  So sit back, allow the peace to wash over you and…

  Get ready to fall in love.

  Tara Taylor Quinn

  I love to hear from readers:

  1924 Leisure World

  Mesa, AZ 85206

  www.tarataylorquinn.com

  Tara Taylor Quinn is acknowledged as the author of this work.

  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 ONE

  “I HAVE HAD ENOUGH of New York, thank you very much.” Bonnie had had enough of everything at this point. She stood and picked up her purse—which had been searched earlier. “Goodbye.”

  As she walked toward the door, she half expected Jaron or Quigg to stop her, but they didn’t.

  That could have been because the door was locked. “The door is locked,” she said without turning around.

  “She’s from very far out of town,” Jaron said.

  Bonnie marched back to the table. “Why are we being treated like prisoners? We have cooperated fully. You have everything you need to know, and I want to go home—or back to my aunt’s apartment, then home. And I want to go now.”

  “No can do.” Quigg didn’t look sorry, either.

  What was it with men ignoring her requests all of a sudden?

  “You’re going to be guests of the city of New York tonight. Maybe several nights.”

  Oh, no, she wasn’t. “Nice try, but just call me a cab and I’ll consider us even.”

  Quigg laughed.

  Jaron looked at her pityingly.

  The door opened and one of the detective duo stuck his head in. “One bed or two?”

  Quigg glanced at them. “Two. Did you really have to ask?”

  The detective held up two fingers to someone, then nodded at the captain. “All set.”

  “Good work.” Quigg was once more all business. “Okay, listen up.”

  Bonnie listened, but she didn’t like what she heard. “You’ve got to be kidding.” She’d said it before and she’d probably say it again. Captain Quigg actually wanted to keep them in protective custody.

  “For how long?” she asked. “I’ve got a renovation I’m due to start on Monday.”

  “As long as it takes.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “No, Bonnie, he’s not kidding, so you can stop saying that.”

  Bonnie ignored Jaron. He’d done nothing but glare at her, and make derisive remarks for hours. Well, she was glad she’d seen this side of him. Yes, Jaron had now revealed himself in all his sarcastic glory. Her first impression of him had been right on the money. Oh, for a time there during dinner she’d thought he wasn’t so bad. Rub away that cool exterior and there was a gleam of an attractive man beneath. Actually, the man on the outside wasn’t too bad, but she was going to ignore that. She would even have been willing to tolerate another date if Aunt Cokie had insisted on it, but not now. Uh-uh. No way. The sooner she got away from him, the better.

  And then the Cooper’s Corner Blind Date Queen was going to turn in her crown.

  “So, how long do you think it’ll be until we’re free to go?” Jaron asked.

  “We’ll need a positive ID on Sonny O’Brien. But first we’ve got to find him. And until then, we’re going to keep you two under lock and key.”

  “We are not the criminals here!” Bonnie couldn’t believe this was happening. “You can’t do that.”

  “I can and I will.” Quigg laced his fingers together and leaned forward, looking up from under those bushy brows. His voice was deadly earnest. “We have been after McDormand for years—even before we knew who he was. Before we knew he existed. You’ve seen our only picture. The man is like a ghost. And now he’s slipped up, and you two are the best chance we’ve ever had of getting to the guy. If you think I will jeopardize that chance, then you are very much mistaken.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  MASSACHUSETTS STATE TROOPER Scott Hunter was just toasting a bagel for breakfast when the phone rang. He’d worked late the night before with all the heavy weekend traffic and was having a slow start this morning.

  “Scott Hunter.” He answered the ring, a cup of coffee poised at his lips. If he got through this day, then he could quit pushing for a while. His two-week vacation, the first full vacation he’d taken in three and a half years, started tomorrow.

  The adrenaline that had been absent that morning surged when Scott recognized his captain’s voice on the line.

  There was a report of a missing person at the new bed-and-breakfast that had opened in Cooper’s Corner a couple of days before. Although the police didn’t under ordinary circumstances get involved with missing adults since they usually had gone of their own free will, Maureen Cooper, the B and B’s co-owner, had requested the favor of a visit from Scott.

  Grabbing his bagel, Scott buckled on his holster over his work blues and was out the door.

  * * *

  THOUGH HE’D LIVED in Cooper’s Corner most of his life, Scott had not yet been inside Twin Oaks Bed & Breakfast. He’d driven by it many times when it was still a private residence owned by bachelor Warren Cooper, and later, while the remodeling was going on.


  The Cooper family history was legend around these parts, and Warren had added his own chapter.

  Though he’d never married, Warren had a shocking secret in his past. A brief affair with the woman he had loved his entire life had resulted in the birth of twin girls, but Warren and his lover, Helen Webb, could never acknowledge he was the babies’ father. They had turned to each other when news came that Helen’s husband had been killed in the war—news that had later proved to be a mistake.

  Helen bore Warren’s children as her husband’s. One of the babies had died as an infant in her crib, and the other grew up to have three children of her own before she died, too, never knowing that Warren was her father.

  Only on his deathbed, a few months after Helen’s death, did Warren confess his secret. All three of his grandchildren were notified, and they’d all come to visit in Cooper’s Corner that past year.

  Yes, Scott knew the history of Twin Oaks, he thought as he drove up the tree-lined drive. Warren had left the family homestead to his brother’s children, Clint and Maureen, and Scott was only sorry his first visit had to do with work.

  The minute he stepped inside the front door, Maureen and Clint both started talking about William Byrd, describing a sophisticated older gentleman who had seemed to be enjoying his stay.

  “Byrd didn’t show up for breakfast this morning,” Clint was saying.

  “Which was a bit odd,” Maureen explained, “since he enjoyed Clint’s walnut griddle cakes so much yesterday and mentioned that he was looking forward to having them again.”

  “But it wasn’t until he didn’t show up for checkout time that we knew he was missing,” her brother continued.

  “Have you checked Byrd’s room?” Scott asked, frowning.

  “Only to make certain that he wasn’t there,” Maureen said, her lips pinched. “The lock was stuck so we had to use a crowbar to pull the door away from the jamb.”

  Scott stiffened. “It had been tampered with?”

  “No.” The pair shook their heads as Maureen explained. “It’s been sticking. We just didn’t know it had gotten that bad. It was scheduled for maintenance tomorrow.”

  “What about a car? I’m assuming he drove himself here.”

  Clint nodded. “A rental,” he said. “Black BMW. It’s not here.”

  Could mean that the man left of his own free will and met up with trouble somewhere else. Somewhere completely unrelated to Twin Oaks. Or maybe he wasn’t in trouble at all.

  He could also just have partied a little too hard the night before and hadn’t made it home yet. Though that didn’t sound like the fastidious older man the Coopers had described.

  “When was the last time Byrd was seen?”

  “Breakfast yesterday morning,” Maureen and Clint said in unison.

  Brother and sister stood together in the gathering room at Twin Oaks, forming a solid wall against whatever came their way. A pain, sharp and unsuspecting, knifed through Scott as he witnessed their solidarity, followed by a longing he couldn’t deny.

  And a guilt that ate insidiously at his insides. A guilt he couldn’t escape.

  But he could push it away. He’d become quite adept at pushing it away. After all, he’d had three and a half years of practice. And a job that was all consuming when he let it be.

  A job he was going to do. Now.

  “Who else is here?” he asked, his full concentration back on the case.

  All but one of the guests had checked out, and Clint’s son, Keegan, was watching Maureen’s children in the kitchen.

  “Laurel, our fourth guest, decided to stay on for a couple more days,” Maureen confided. “She’s upstairs, I believe.”

  Scott looked down at the notepad he’d pulled from his pocket and jotted aimlessly.

  Laurel. A name he hadn’t heard in a long time. And one with which he tortured himself far too often.

  For a fleeting second he wondered what “his” Laurel was doing at that moment. Working on some big news story, no doubt. Last he’d heard she’d become a hotshot reporter in New York.

  And he was a hotshot detective with the Massachusetts state police. He looked up from the pad, away from the name he’d scrawled.

  “Did anyone notice anything suspicious about Byrd at breakfast yesterday?” he asked.

  “To the contrary.” Clint shook his head. “He was in a good mood and enjoyed talking to the other guests. In fact,” he added, “we’d been feeling very hopeful since he seemed so pleased with everything. A good review from him would pretty much guarantee our success.”

  Having the travel writer mysteriously disappear from Twin Oaks on their opening weekend was going to do exactly the opposite, Scott reckoned.

  Determined to get to the bottom of the man’s disappearance as quickly as possible, he asked, “Do either of you have any reason to suspect that someone might be out to sabotage your efforts here?”

  Clint and Maureen exchanged a long glance, then Clint shrugged. Maureen turned to Scott.

  “Clint doesn’t think so.” She glanced at her brother apologetically. “It’s just...”

  “Just?”

  She sighed. “Until almost a year ago, I was a detective with the New York Police Department.”

  Scott whistled. The Cooper’s Corner grapevine had missed that one. But then—considering Warren’s amazing story—secrets weren’t uncommon with the Cooper clan.

  “You retired awfully young,” Scott said.

  Maureen shrugged, her long brown hair falling around her shoulders. “Yeah, well, it wasn’t quite the way I’d envisioned,” she said, her New York accent more evident now. After being assured what she was telling him would go no further, she told him about Carl Nevil, the murderer she’d put away well over a year ago. “He swore he’d get his revenge,” she said, her voice steady, though Scott saw her barely perceptible shiver.

  “That’s not all that uncommon,” Scott said. “Empty threats made in the heat of the moment.”

  Maureen shook her head. “Carl’s brother, Owen, was in prison at the time of Carl’s conviction, doing time for conspiracy to commit murder. He’s been up on drug charges, too, but is out on parole now. A week after Owen was released, the man I’d talked into turning state’s evidence for Carl’s case was killed by a hit-and-run driver outside his own apartment.

  “That’s when I determined that I had to get out of New York for good,” Maureen explained. “If it were just me, I’d have stayed and gotten the bastard, but I had the twins to think about. I couldn’t take a chance on leaving them motherless, or worse, on Owen Nevil using them to get at me.”

  “The twins are what, three?” Scott asked, still writing in his book. He had a razor-sharp mind and rarely referred to the notes he took while working on a case. But he took them, anyway, for form’s sake.

  “Just.”

  He nodded.

  “My records at the department have been sealed and I’m using my maiden name—on the force I was known by my married name, Maguire.”

  Scott’s brows rose. “You’re still married?”

  “Divorced.”

  “How long?”

  “A little over three years.”

  “Right after your daughters were born?” By the sounds of things, this woman had not had an easy life.

  “Before,” she said. “I was two months pregnant when Chance, my ex-husband, walked out.”

  Great guy.

  “Have you considered the fact that Owen Nevil might have arranged to have Byrd disappear as some kind of warning, telling you that while you’d run from the city, changed your name and had your records sealed, you’ve still been found?”

  “Yes.” The former NYPD detective spoke volumes with the single word.

  Clint nodded as well, his chestnut hair—a shade dark
er than his sister’s—falling over his forehead. “We talked about the possibility, but it’s not likely, is it?”

  Shrugging, Scott said, “I sure don’t think so. There’s no telling what the criminal mind will find satisfying, but at this point, we’ll assume your secret is still safe from the Nevils.”

  Still, just because he liked all of his bases covered, Scott asked Maureen for contact information for Frank Quigg, her old boss in New York. He’d follow up on the hoodlum and his convict brother as soon as he finished at Twin Oaks.

  “Shall we go up and take a look at the room?” he asked.

  “I’d rather stay down here if you don’t mind,” Maureen surprised him by saying.

  “I’ll take you up,” Clint added, pulling a big brass key from the pocket of his slacks.

  With a raised brow, Scott glanced at Maureen. The woman was as qualified as he was to do this job—maybe more so.

  “Chances are this whole thing has nothing to do with the Nevils, and I don’t want to do anything to tip anyone off about my previous life,” she explained without his asking. “My suddenly exhibiting detective skills could certainly start people wondering—and talking.”

  She made good sense, though Scott didn’t think he could have made the same decision. He’d have needed to take control. “Could you see if you can find the one guest you said was still here? I’d like to question her as soon as Clint and I finish upstairs,” he asked before turning to follow her brother.

  Maureen nodded. Her livelihood—perhaps her life itself—was on the line and she appeared amazingly composed.

  Scott had a feeling NYPD had lost one hell of a detective when she’d retired.

  * * *

  BYRD’S ROOM WAS at the far end of the corridor. Though there were some personal effects lying around, the room had a deserted air. The colorful handmade quilt spread neatly across the top of the pine four-poster bed was evidence of the fact that the bed had not been slept in. The plate of cookies on the nightstand hadn’t been touched.

  “When were those left there?” Scott asked.

  “Yesterday afternoon.”