Amanda Stevens Bestseller Collection: Stranger In Paradise/A Baby's Cry Read online

  BESTSELLER

  COLLECTION

  popular reprints by bestselling authors

  STRANGER IN PARADISE

  A BABY’S CRY

  Amanda Stevens

  www.millsandboon.com.au

  IMPRINT: Bestseller Collection eBooks

  ISBN: 9781460802403

  TITLE: BESTSELLER COLLECTION: STRANGER IN PARADISE/A BABY’S CRY

  First Australian Publication 2012

  Copyright © 2012 Amanda Stevens

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilisation of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the permission of the publisher, Harlequin Mills & Boon®, Locked Bag 7002, Chatswood D.C. N.S.W., Australia 2067.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

  ® and ™ are trademarks owned by Harlequin Enterprises Limited or its corporate affiliates and used by others under licence. Trademarks marked with an ® are registered in Australia and in other countries. Contact [email protected] for details.

  www.millsandboon.com.au

  STRANGER IN PARADISE

  Amanda Stevens

  About the Author

  AMANDA STEVENS

  is a bestselling author of more than thirty romantic suspense novels. In addition to being a Romance Writers of America RITA® Award finalist, she is also a recipient of awards in Career Achievement in Romantic/Mystery and Career Achievement in Romantic/Suspense from Romantic Times BOOKreviews. Amanda currently resides in Texas. To find out more about past, present and future projects, please visit her Web site at www.amandastevens.com.

  DEDICATION

  For Lucas and Leanne—the closest things to

  perfection I’ve ever created.

  Chapter One

  “Emily! Did you hear what happened? It’s terrible! Just awful!”

  At the sight of her sister-in-law marching up the sidewalk—a stroller preceding her and a four-year-old trailing her—Emily Townsend groaned inwardly. Good grief, she thought. What did I do now?

  She’d been sweeping the leaves from her front porch, but now she stopped and leaned the broom against the wall, taking an extra moment to gather her patience. Then, squaring her shoulders, she turned to face Caroline Townsend, who had come to an abrupt halt at the bottom of the porch steps.

  “What’s wrong?” Emily asked.

  “What’s wrong?” Caroline repeated, adjusting the top of the stroller to shade baby Moira’s face. Sunlight glistened like a halo off Caroline’s long golden hair as she straightened and glared up at Emily. “Then you haven’t heard!”

  Emily was almost afraid to ask what Caroline was talking about, certain that her sister-in-law’s dramatics had something to do with either Emily or the house Emily had just bought, or both. Her purchase of the old Talbot place had caused quite a stir in Paradise. She sighed in resignation. “I haven’t heard anything, so just tell me.”

  “The sign out on the highway has been vandalized,” Caroline said, obviously still shaken by the news.

  Charles, Emily’s nephew, climbed the porch steps and grabbed her hand. “They wrote a bad word,” he said, beaming up at her.

  “A bad word?”

  “Someone painted over Paradise and wrote H-e-l-l in big red letters,” Caroline explained.

  “That spells hell,” Charles offered.

  Caroline glared at her son, aghast. “Charles! Where on earth did you ever hear such a word?”

  “From Daddy,” the four-year-old told his mother proudly. “I heard him on the telephone.”

  Emily grinned, imagining what her staid older brother would think if he could hear his son now. Her grin broadened as she visualized the sign out on the highway proclaiming Welcome to Hell in big red letters. She’d have to make a special trip out there, just to see it. Maybe even take a picture or two.

  But she was smart enough not to say as much to her sister-in-law. Caroline and Stuart Townsend were very prominent and very proud citizens of Paradise. They took Stuart’s position on the town council very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that he’d decided to run for the state legislature this year.

  As if he weren’t stuffy enough, Emily thought.

  She couldn’t resist pointing to the shingle hanging from her porch and asking innocently, “Does this mean I’ll have to change the name of my bed-and-breakfast to the Other Side of Hell Inn?”

  Caroline’s mouth thinned into one long line of disapproval. “This is not a laughing matter, Emily Townsend. You know good and well Paradise depends on its tourism. How’s that sign going to look to folks who’re just driving into town? What kind of impression will it make? They’ll think we’re a bunch of hooligans around here.”

  At twenty-eight, Caroline was only two years older than Emily, but Emily had always thought her sister-in-law dressed and acted much older. Emily supposed Caroline’s manner and appearance were a result of Stuart’s careful tutoring. He was twelve years older, having married Caroline when she was just out of college, then he’d set about molding her into his idea of the perfect wife.

  “I would assume Mayor Henley will have someone out there working on the sign today,” Emily said, although it had taken her nearly two months to get the proper permit from his office to open her bed-and-breakfast. It seemed no one in town approved of her buying the Talbot house.

  Caroline was not mollified. “You know why this happened, don’t you? Stuart says it’s because of that article Mike Durbin wrote about this house.” She waved a scornful hand at Emily’s front porch. “Why you insisted on using the last of your trust fund to buy this…this monstrosity, I’ll never know. Your poor parents would turn over in their graves if they knew about this. You’ve made us all a laughingstock, using such an…unfortunate incident in the town’s past to promote a bed-and-breakfast.”

  Emily raised an incredulous brow. “Unfortunate incident? It was a murder, Caroline. A murder that has gone unsolved for fifteen years.”

  “That’s nonsense. Everyone in town knows that stranger did it. That Wade Somebody-or-Other. He killed that poor girl in cold blood. In your house!”

  “He was never found guilty.”

  “Because he skipped town before he could be arrested. Just up and disappeared. If that didn’t prove his guilt, I don’t know what would. How you could drag up all that old business now, after all these years—”

  Emily folded her arms and rolled her eyes, waiting for Caroline’s tirade to come to a conclusion. Not that Caroline had anything new to offer. Both she and Stuart had made their opinions of Emily’s decision to buy the house perfectly clear from the start.

  Are you crazy? Stuart had shouted. You’ll be throwing good money after bad, trying to fix up that old place. Who’d want to stay there anyway?

  The Talbot house had been vacant off and on, mostly off, ever since Jenny Wilcox had been murdered in one of the upstairs bedrooms, fifteen years ago, and rumors of a haunting still occasionally surfaced, usually around the anniversary of the murder.

  Details of the old tragedy had recently been rehashed in Mike Durbin’s article for the Paradise Herald. T
he article had been picked up by several other papers, and interest in the Other Side of Paradise Inn had skyrocketed, which, of course, was exactly what Emily had intended. She’d gotten calls from as far away as Nashville, and she wasn’t even officially open for business yet.

  And they said she’d never be a businesswoman, she thought with a satisfied smile.

  Caroline saw the look on Emily’s face and shook a thin finger at her. “Don’t look so smug,” she said, assuming the tone Stuart always used with his sister. “This whole venture could still blow up in your face, just like everything else—” Caroline stopped short, as if realizing she might have gone too far, even for her.

  Neither Stuart nor Caroline ever missed an opportunity to remind Emily of what a failure she’d been at most of the career choices she’d made—and she’d made quite a few over the years, she had to admit—or of the mess she’d made of her life.

  After all, it was Stuart who had adamantly opposed Emily’s engagement to Eugene Sprague all those years ago. She’d eloped with Eugene when she was only nineteen years old. Now, seven years and a lot of heartache later, here she was, back in Paradise.

  It was so easy to read Caroline’s mind, Emily thought, giving her sister-in-law a surreptitious glance. You should have stayed in Paradise and married Trey when you had the chance, Emily. Then you’d be living in the Huntington mansion, instead of trying to fix up a broken-down old house with a sordid past.

  But that was one of the reasons Emily liked the Talbot place so much. She felt a certain kinship with the house. They both seemed unable to live down their reputations.

  “Auntie Em?” Charles said, calling her by her nickname.

  Emily looked down into her nephew’s sweet little face and felt a rush of affection. “What’s up, Charley Horse?”

  “Can I see the bloodstains now? You promised.”

  Caroline gasped in outrage. “Charles Townsend, where on earth—”

  “Auntie Em said—”

  Emily quickly clapped a hand over the child’s mouth and smiled. “Kids say the darnedest things, don’t they?”

  “Emily, please don’t be putting ideas into the boy’s head. Children are impressionable enough. It’s certainly a good thing you don’t have little ones of your own,” Caroline said, smoothing a hand down her cotton print skirt. She gazed critically at Emily’s porch, as if seeing the fresh paint job for the first time. “Oh, Emily. Red shutters?”

  “I like red,” Emily said, lifting her chin a notch and trying to smother the flash of pain Caroline’s careless comment about children had caused. “I think it gives the house pizzazz.”

  “Makes it look like a bordello, if you ask me,” Caroline said, wrinkling her nose. “So when exactly is the grand opening?” She bent to pop a pacifier into Moira’s mouth the moment the baby awakened and whimpered. Emily would have liked to pick up the fretting child, but she knew Caroline wouldn’t approve. She said it spoiled a baby to always pick it up the minute it cried.

  Unable to resist, Emily walked down the steps and peered into the stroller. Five-month-old Moira immediately spit out the pacifier and gave her aunt a wide, hopeful grin.

  “I’ll officially open for business two weeks from today, on October twenty-third,” Emily said, tickling Moira’s adorable chin. “The fall leaves should be at their peak by then, and, of course, the Fall Folk Festival starts the week after.”

  “October twenty-third,” Caroline mused. “Why does that date sound familiar to me?” A light dawned, and Caroline’s light blue eyes widened in horror. “Isn’t that the anniversary of the murder? Why, that’s positively ghoulish, Emily!”

  And positively brilliant, Emily thought. With Mike Durbin’s help, the publicity for her opening could be phenomenal.

  As soon as Moira realized her aunt wasn’t going to pick her up, she started to howl. Emily glanced expectantly at Caroline, but she was gazing down the street. “What is that infernal noise?”

  At first, Emily thought Caroline was referring to Moira’s sobs, but then, over the sound of the baby’s cries, came a low thrum that steadily grew louder.

  “I think it’s a motorcycle,” Emily said.

  “A motorcycle? In Paradise?”

  The words were barely out of Caroline’s mouth when a big black Harley came into view. Both Caroline and Emily stood with open mouths as the powerful machine glided to a stop at the curb, the engine was killed and the rider got off.

  And what a rider!

  Dressed in jeans, boots and a black leather jacket, the stranger striding up her walkway had longish dark hair, a tall, athletic build, and—when he took off his mirrored sunglasses—eyes that were the most striking shade of light gray Emily had ever looked into.

  “Oh, my…” she heard someone whisper. Caroline poked her in the ribs, and Emily realized the words had come from her own mouth.

  “I’m looking for a place to stay,” the man said, gazing at her with those beautiful gray eyes. His voice was low and dark, infinitely sexy. Emily felt a delicious shiver along her backbone.

  Caroline, who had been silent for at least one full minute—a record for her—said primly, “Emily isn’t open for business yet.”

  “Oh, yes, I am,” Emily put in, almost before Caroline had stopped speaking. Emily wasn’t about to lose a potential customer, especially when Cora Mae Hicks, who operated the This Side of Paradise Inn across the street, was probably watching out her window at that very moment, ready to pounce on anyone Emily might turn away.

  The bed-and-breakfast business in Paradise was fiercely competitive, and Cora Mae had ruled at the top of the heap for nearly twenty-five years. But Emily planned to change all that.

  “Would you like to see the rooms?” she asked eagerly.

  “I have some business to attend to first,” the stranger said. “But I’ll be back at six.” He turned to leave.

  At the sight of his retreating back, Emily had the almost overpowering urge to somehow make him stay. If he left now, he might never return. She might never see him again, and for some reason she couldn’t have begun to explain, Emily desperately wanted to see this man again.

  “Wait!”

  He turned.

  “What’s your name? I…need it for the register.”

  He paused for a split second, and their gazes collided. Emily felt the impact all the way to her toes. “Just call me John,” he said mysteriously, slipping on his mirrored glasses.

  “John what?”

  “Doe.” Then he mounted his bike, started the engine and roared off.

  They watched him in silence until he was out of sight, until only a faint hum could be heard from a distance, then Caroline turned to Emily and exclaimed in disbelief, “Did he just say his name was John Doe? Isn’t that what they call a corpse?”

  Emily shivered at Caroline’s words. Still, dead or alive, the stranger who’d just ridden away on his motorcycle was the best-looking man she’d seen in years.

  Finally, something interesting had happened in Paradise.

  “TELL ME AGAIN who we’re going to see,” Mike Durbin, a reporter—the only reporter, in fact—for the Paradise Herald, instructed as Emily climbed into his ancient Plymouth. He glanced down at her legs, and Emily blushed, tugging at the hem of her short denim skirt.

  “Her name’s Miss Rosabel Talbot. She owned my house at the time of the murder.” Emily settled back against the shabby upholstery and gazed out the side window at the Talbot house. The Townsend house now, she reminded herself.

  Oh, it did look good, she thought proudly, gazing at the sparkling white paint, the new latticework and, yes, even the red trim.

  Emily loved everything about her new home, including the wide wraparound porch on the first floor and the tree-shaded balcony on the second, the diamond-paned bay window in the dining room and the stained-glass front door, which had cost her a small fortune to have restored. She loved the gardens in back and the maples in front, which were now turning the yard into a cornucopia of fall col
or.

  The house was Emily’s first real home in years. She and Eugene had moved around so much when they were married that no place had ever seemed like home to her. And before that, staying first with her grandmother, then with Stuart after her parents died, Emily had felt more like an unwelcome guest than anything else.

  Now, for the first time since she was eleven years old, Emily finally had a place to call her own.

  “I hope this isn’t going to be a complete waste of time,” Mike said, drawing her attention reluctantly back to him. “Supposing the old girl doesn’t remember anything about the murder? She’s in a nursing home, isn’t she? Mind’s likely not what it used to be.”

  “She sounded sharp enough on the phone when she agreed to see us,” Emily said. “Let’s go. I have to be back by six.”

  Mike lifted his eyebrows. “Hot date tonight?”

  Emily thought about the stranger, quickly conjuring up an image of his dark hair and light gray eyes. Excitement tingled through her. “Something like that,” she murmured.

  “I didn’t know you dated.”

  Emily didn’t like the speculative gleam in his eyes. Mike Durbin was not at all the kind of man she wanted to get mixed up with. For one thing, he had a kind of lean and hungry look about him that Emily didn’t trust. For another, he reminded her too much of her ex-husband, and God knew that was reason enough to stay away from him.

  “I don’t date,” she said impatiently. “My appointment this evening is strictly business. Now, shall we go?”

  “You’re the boss,” Mike said, shifting the car into drive. The Plymouth hesitated, shimmied for a moment, then took off in a cloud of exhaust down the street. Emily would have offered to take her car, but her old VW didn’t run much better, and besides, the heater was on the blink again, and after a sunny morning, the day had suddenly turned cold and drizzly.