Confessions of the Heart Read online

  “I can’t seem to stay away from you.”

  The admission stunned her, although Anna wasn’t sure why. She felt the same way, had from the moment she’d first laid eyes on him.

  But things had changed between them now. She could sense it. Ben had risked his life to save her, and Anna knew if the situation were reversed, she would have done the same for him. The bond between them was no longer merely a physical attraction, if it had ever been only that. The connection now was deeper, more spiritual and much more complex.

  Love at first sight? Anna wasn’t convinced she believed in the concept still, but whatever she and Ben had, it wasn’t going away. Not in a day. Not in a year. Maybe not ever.

  Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,

  Happy Valentine’s Day! We are so pleased you’ve come back to Harlequin Intrigue for another exciting month of breathtaking romantic suspense.

  And our February lineup is sure to please, starting with another installment in Debra Webb’s trilogy about the most covert agents around: THE SPECIALISTS. Her Hidden Truth is a truly innovative story about what could happen if an undercover agent had a little help from a memory device to ensure her cover. But what if said implant malfunctioned and past, present and future were all mixed up? Fortunately this lucky lady has a very sexy recovery Specialist to extract her from the clutches of a group of dangerous terrorists.

  Next we have another title in our TOP SECRET BABIES promotion by Mallory Kane, called Heir to Secret Memories. Though a bachelor heir to a family fortune is stricken with amnesia, he can’t forget one very beautiful woman. And when she comes to him in desperation to locate her child, he’s doubly astonished to find out he is the missing girl’s father.

  Julie Miller returns to her ongoing series THE TAYLOR CLAN with The Rookie. If you go for those younger guys, well, hold on to your hats, because Josh Taylor is one dynamite lawman.

  Finally, Amanda Stevens takes up the holiday baton with Confessions of the Heart. In this unique story, a woman receives a heart transplant and is inexorably drawn to the original owner’s husband. Find out why in this exceptional story.

  Enjoy all four!

  Sincerely,

  Denise O’Sullivan

  Associate Senior Editor

  Harlequin Intrigue

  CONFESSIONS OF THE HEART

  AMANDA STEVENS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Born and raised in a small Southern town, Amanda Stevens frequently draws on memories of her birthplace to create atmospheric settings and casts of eccentric characters. She is the author of over twenty-five novels, the recipient of a Career Achievement award for Romantic/Mystery, and a 1999 RITA® award finalist in the Gothic/Romantic Suspense category. She now resides in Texas with her husband, teenage twins and her cat, Jesse, who also makes frequent appearances in her books.

  Books by Amanda Stevens

  HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE

  373—STRANGER IN PARADISE

  388—A BABY’S CRY

  397—A MAN OF SECRETS

  430—THE SECOND MRS. MALONE

  453—THE HERO’S SON*

  458—THE BROTHER’S WIFE*

  462—THE LONG-LOST HEIR*

  489—SOMEBODY’S BABY

  511—LOVER, STRANGER

  549—THE LITTLEST WITNESS**

  553—SECRET ADMIRER**

  557—FORBIDDEN LOVER**

  581—THE BODYGUARD’S ASSIGNMENT

  607—NIGHTTIME GUARDIAN

  622—THE INNOCENT†

  626—THE TEMPTED†

  630—THE FORGIVEN†

  650—SECRET SANCTUARY

  700—CONFESSIONS OF THE HEART

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Anna Sebastian —Lured to San Miguel by someone from her heart donor’s past, Anna finds a new life, a new love…and an evil she could never have imagined.

  Ben Porter —Can he protect the woman he loves from the evil that nearly destroyed him?

  Katherine Sprague —Her heart gave Anna a new life. Will her memory destroy Anna’s happiness?

  Gwen Draven —She had a love/hate relationship with her sister, Katherine.

  Gabriella Sprague —She is the one who found her mother’s body. Is she also the one who lured Anna to San Miguel?

  Acacia Cortina —An exotic beauty who claims to be descended from Mayan royalty.

  Margarete Cortina —An eccentric woman whose strange beliefs have made her an outcast in San Miguel.

  Hays Devereaux —Anna’s ex-husband and a man with a grudge.

  Emily Winsome —Her determination to prove Katherine was murdered could be the death of her.

  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 One

  “Someone knows about me.”

  Dr. English glanced up from Anna Sebastian’s lab reports and gave her a wink. “Not my wife, I hope.”

  “You aren’t married,” she reminded him. And despite what his teasing tone seemed to suggest, Anna was not now, nor would she ever be, involved in a torrid love affair with her doctor.

  Not that he wasn’t torrid love affair material. He was a real heartthrob, in fact, with his dark hair, smoldering eyes and a slow, sexy smile that had sent Anna into a tailspin the first time she’d seen it.

  But that was before he’d reached inside her chest and literally ripped out her heart.

  Since then she’d become immune to that smile. Nowadays she valued Michael English’s expertise as a heart surgeon far more highly than his skills as a lover, although she suspected those skills were considerable.

  “Aren’t you even the least bit curious about what I said?” she persisted.

  “First things first.” He gathered up the lab reports and gave her a look that was now all business. “How’ve you been feeling?”

  “At the moment, like I had a run-in with a vampire.” She put a hand to her neck where a bandage covered the small incision made several hours earlier for her heart biopsy.

  Michael scribbled something in her file. “Have the mood swings improved since we eliminated the prednisone?”

  “What mood swings?”

  “Laurel said—”

  “Laurel is a born worrier,” Anna scoffed. “She thinks if I feel the least bit tired or cranky or if I should—God forbid—cough, I’m experiencing rejection.”

  He gave her a stern appraisal. “Have you experienced any of those symptoms?”

  “No.” Anna shrugged. “I was just trying to make the point that my stepmother worries too much.”

  “Any fever?”

  “No.”

  “Diarrhea?”

  “No.” It seemed a shame to have to discuss something so unpleasant with a man like Michael, but Anna was used to it by now. He’d seen her at her worst and then some.

  “Shortness of breath, dizziness, irregular heartbeat?”

  “No, no and no.” She sighed. “You would think after nearly a year and no major complications, Laurel could relax a bit.” She slanted him a glance. “So could you, for that matter.”

  “Anna.” His voice took on the note she didn’t like, the doctor to patient one that told her she was in for another lecture. “You can’t afford to get complacent just because you’ve only had one mild episode of rejection. It could still happen. You have to check your vitals
on a daily basis. That doesn’t change. That’s forever. So is taking your medication. Non-compliance is the third-leading cause of rejection.”

  “I am taking my meds,” she insisted.

  “You never forget?”

  “Not once.” The various medications had, thankfully, decreased to a more manageable number from the fifteen in the morning and another fifteen at night she’d been prescribed when she first left the hospital. She still sometimes felt as if she were running a pharmacy out of her medicine cabinet, but she took the pills and the liquids like clockwork every single day. No forgetting. No doubling up on the dosage. Even skipping one time could invite rejection.

  Anna knew that only too well. Michael and the rest of her transplant team had hammered it into her head before and after her surgery. She’d had to memorize all her meds, know them by sight and what they were for, before she’d been allowed to leave the hospital.

  “Lean forward.” Michael blew gently on the stethoscope before placing the warmed instrument against her back, and then he moved it around to her chest. Next he took her pulse, his brows drawing together in concentration as he counted.

  He really was a handsome man. It would have been very easy to cross the line from professional to personal, Anna had to admit. He wasn’t just easy on the eyes, but was charming and funny and he loved to tease her. She couldn’t remember being teased that way since her mother had died of heart failure when Anna was thirteen.

  She’d inherited her mother’s bad heart, but not her sense of humor. Always prone to a serious disposition, Anna had become even more intense and driven as a teenager, especially after her father remarried. She’d bitterly rebelled against her stepmother and had cut herself off from her family all through college and law school. Not until Anna learned her father was battling lung cancer had she finally taken the first step toward reconciliation.

  She was grateful they’d made their peace before he died, but she knew she hadn’t given him the one thing he’d wanted most—her acceptance of Laurel. Even in their mutual grief, Anna hadn’t been able to warm up to her stepmother.

  So it was ironic, she supposed, that Laurel was the one who’d talked her into seeing a doctor when she’d started having dizzy spells, Laurel who’d insisted Anna seek a second opinion when her first cardiologist had sent her home after treating her for an irregular heartbeat.

  It was Laurel who moved in and took care of Anna when, several months later, the dizzy spells turned into exhaustion, Laurel who commiserated with her when she had to cut back her caseload at Matthews, Conley and Hart and later, when she had to take an extended leave of absence.

  It was Laurel who’d been by Anna’s side when she got the news that in the year since her first diagnosis, her heart had taken a complete nosedive, and a transplant was her only hope.

  It was Laurel who’d driven her to the hospital when the call had come that a heart had been found for her.

  A new heart. A new life. A new Anna.

  At least, she was trying for the latter. Facing her own mortality had made her take a long hard look at herself, and Anna had been a little shocked by what she’d found. Her whole adult life had been focused on her career to the exclusion of all else, including friendships, relationships and family.

  The decisions she’d made had been brought painfully home to her when Laurel had kept a lonely vigil at the hospital, when only a smattering of cards and letters from well-wishers had been delivered to her apartment. She’d been forced to accept the unpleasant truth that, except for her stepmother—a woman Anna had treated badly for years—no one much cared whether she lived or died.

  Of course, the senior partners at Matthews, Conley and Hart had a financial interest in her survival, but if she’d never made it off the operating table, they wouldn’t have shed any tears. They would have coldly and analytically gone about the business of minimizing the impact of her demise on the firm, perhaps even finding a way to capitalize on it, just as she would have done if she were in their place.

  Her ex-husband had once accused her of being a cold, heartless bitch, and she supposed in a lot of ways she had been.

  Michael was taking a blood pressure reading, and Anna knew better than to say anything until he was through.

  “So,” he said, returning the pressure cuff to the wall over her bed. “What did you do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said someone knows about you. What did you do?”

  “I think someone from the donor’s family knows who I am.”

  He lifted his brows in surprise. “That’s impossible. Both the donor and the recipient’s identification are kept anonymous. The surgeons don’t even know who the donors are. The OPOs are designed that way.”

  “I realize that, but I don’t know how else to explain the weird things that have been happening to me lately.”

  He frowned. “What kind of weird things?”

  Anna lay silent for a moment. “This is going to make me sound completely paranoid, but I’ve been getting these phone calls. They always come at night, after I’ve gone to bed, and they usually wake me up. No one seems to be on the line, but I can hear music playing in the background. You know that tune ‘Heart and soul, da-da, da-da, da-da…’ Okay, I’m way off key, but you know the one I mean?”

  He gave her a strange look. “You say these phone calls always come at night and they wake you up? Are you sure you’re not dreaming? You’ve been through an ordeal, Anna. Both physically and mentally. Your whole life has changed in a matter of months—”

  “I know,” she broke in. “But that’s not it. I’m not dreaming. I think the phone calls have something to do with my transplant.”

  “But even if they do that doesn’t mean they’re coming from the donor’s family,” Michael argued. “It could be someone who knows you. Someone with a grudge who’s trying to get under your skin a little.”

  She’d thought of that. Her aggressive style as a divorce attorney hadn’t exactly endeared her to the spouses of her clients, or to some of her own colleagues, for that matter. Still, there was something deeply disturbing and symbolic about the phone calls.

  “Look,” Michael said. “I don’t want you worrying about this. The last thing you need is added stress.”

  “I’m not stressed. God knows some days I feel as if I’m almost comatose.” Anna didn’t exactly miss the pressure cooker environment at the law firm, but a year post-op, she knew it was time to either go back to work on a limited basis or find something else to occupy her time. She couldn’t exist for the rest of her life in a world of little more than meds, naps and daily walks. She knew of other heart transplant recipients who were climbing mountains. She needed a mountain.

  “You’re right. It’s probably nothing.” She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. “I thought I’d mention it, though, in case you want to report a possible security breach to Gift of Life.”

  He made a final notation in her file. “A security breach is highly unlikely.”

  “Right.” Anna knew of computer experts who could hack into the offshore accounts of major banks to search for hidden assets. In the right hands, she doubted the systems at most organ procurement organizations would present much of a challenge.

  Michael slipped his pen into the pocket of his lab coat and closed her file. “You’re doing great, Anna. Your lab and blood work all look good. You keep this up, and I won’t need to see you again for another three months.”

  He walked to the door, then turned and gave her a stern look. “But I’m serious about the stress. Don’t get all worked up about these calls. Unplug your phone at night if you have to. Give it a few days, and whoever this joker is, he’ll get tired of his little pranks and move on to something else.”

  Move on to something else.

  That was exactly what Anna was afraid of.

  “SORRY YOU HAD TO WAIT so long,” she told Laurel a little while later as her stepmother carefully navigated her Lexus through the massive
Texas Medical Center parking garage.

  Laurel smiled. “Don’t be sorry. I know it sounds strange, but I always enjoy coming to the institute. The place is so amazing. Have you seen the Celebration of Hearts exhibit in the museum?”

  The Denton A. Cooley Building, which housed the Texas Heart Institute, was indeed a marvel of twenty-first century technology, a state-of-the-art research, education and patient care facility named for one of the pioneers in heart transplant surgery. But Anna’s familiarity with the hospital was limited primarily to the eighth floor. “I never made it down to the museum.”

  “Well, you should make a point to. They have a very impressive art collection, and a lot of Dr. Cooley’s personal mementos are on display, as well.” Laurel turned to Anna, her green eyes sparkling with exuberance. “I find something new and fascinating every time I go down there.”

  “I’m glad you weren’t bored.” Her stepmother’s zest for life, for even the mundane, never failed to take Anna by surprise, but she supposed that was one of the things that had attracted her father to the petite blonde in the first place. After all this time, Anna could finally admit that Laurel was a lot like her mother. She wondered how different her life might have been if she’d come to that conclusion years ago.

  She’d cut herself off so needlessly from the people who loved her, and it was only in looking back, only with the angel of death knocking at her door, that Anna had come to realize it was fear that drove her. Not ambition, not greed, not even her dislike and resentment of Laurel. Fear that if she cared too much, she might end up losing someone else.

  Her mother’s death had affected Anna far more than she’d ever been willing to acknowledge, and her father—so much like Anna—had kept his own grief bottled inside. He’d refused to talk about her mother’s death, refused to allow Anna to talk about it. They’d both become very good at pretending and hiding their grief from one another. That was why when he’d brought Laurel home, without any warning, Anna had thought it the worst kind of betrayal.