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,