Kate Fortuneâs Journal Entry
My whole world is falling apart! Just when I thought things were going to settle down, the unraveling scandal has never been more destructive. Our whole life is an open book for the public to scrutinize. All our deep, dark secrets we thought long buried are coming out one by one.
Iâve just found out the most shocking news about my dearly departed husband, Ben. Apparently, he had an affair that produced an illegitimate heir! I have to believe he had a good reason for what he did. After all, Iâve done a few dishonest things out of desperation myselfâ¦.
Dear Reader,
Writing about an extended family like the Fortunes makes me think of my own family, which is scattered from Illinois and Northern Kentucky to Florida, where I, my spouse and stepmother live.
Needless to say, we keep the phone company and the airlines busy, visiting back and forth and exchanging information across the miles as we continue to weave new strands in the rich web of our connectedness. Often our talk (both earthshaking and otherwise) is phrased in a kind of shorthand because we share the same history, the same context. In my opinion, itâs one of the ways families most help us find our place in the world.
In the story youâre about to read, the heroine, Jessica Holmes, arrives from England in the hope her long-lost relatives, the Fortunes, will be able to provide a bone-marrow transplant for her ailing daughter. Though the Fortunes are quite wealthy, she claims thatâs all she wants from them.
Yet she clearly wants moreânot money, as she insists, but rather her share of the common history and web of connectedness Iâve been talking about. To me, the way she goes about getting it, and fitting in, is as interesting as her struggle to save her daughterâs life and her romance with the handsome but troubled physician she learns to love.
Iâd like to dedicate this book to my former editor at Silhouette Books, Lucia Macro, who has unfailingly offered warmth, creative latitude and good judgment for the many years weâve worked together.
A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Lake Forest College, Lake Forest, Illinois, and a former reporter who covered politics and criminal courts as well as undertaking investigative assignments for several newspapers, Suzanne Carey has been writing novels for Silhouette Books since the early 1980s. Though she was born in Illinois, she has been a resident of Florida for many years. She and the man in her life, a clinical psychologist who is now a university professor, currently reside in Sarasota, on Floridaâs Gulf Coast.
Meet the Fortunesâthree generations of a family with a legacy of wealth, influence and power. As they unite to face an unknown enemy, shocking family secrets are revealedâ¦and passionate new romances are ignited.
JESSICA HOLMES: The search for a donor to save her daughterâs life and the discovery of her true heritage led Jessica to the Fortune familyâ¦and into the comforting arms of a man who can help her child.
STEPHEN HUNTER: Compassionate doctor. His strong shoulders are perfect for Jessica to lean on. But can he put aside the pain of his past to begin a new life with Jessica and her daughter, Annie?
MONICA MALONE: She was on the verge of achieving her lifelong dream of destroying the Fortune familyâ¦until she was mysteriously murdered. Is it too late for the Fortunes to stop the wheels of revenge Monica already put in motion?
GRANT MCCLURE: Love doesnât come easy to a lonely cowboy who prefers his Wyoming ranch to the big city. Will he ever find a woman cut out for country livingâand his special brand of loving?
LIZ JONESâCELEBRITY GOSSIP
Illegitimate! Well, well, well. What do we have here? It seems that Jake is not the legitimate son of Ben Fortune after all! Apparently, the prim-and-proper matriarch of the family, Kate, wasnât a virgin bride! She was sleeping with another man and then tried to pass off to the world her unborn child as Benâs.
And one of the few people who knew the truth was Monica Malone. My sources tell me that Monica had been blackmailing Jake for quite some time, threatening to reveal the scandalous secret if he didnât sell her large shares of Fortune stock. If that isnât a motive for murder, I donât know what is! And if Jake isnât guilty, then why did he skip bail?
The Fortunes are on a sinking ship. And I for one donât see any chance of them staying afloat!
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
To some, he supposed, it must be an ideal summer day, bright and breezy if decidedly cool for the twenty-fifth of Julyâperfect for kicking over the traces and taking your kid to visit the lions, chimpanzees and zebras. But that wasnât how it felt to him. A pensive, solitary figure as he strolled the curving blacktopped paths of Como Park Zoo in St. Paul, Minnesota, thirty-six-year-old Stephen Hunter had no kid to delight with his undivided attention, no inquisitive, heartbreakingly courageous scrapegrace eight-year-old boy to whom he could explain that giraffes ate treetops for lunch and were strictly vegetarian.