As a child, Bailey Browne dreamed of a knight in shining armor swooping in to rescue her and her mother. As she grows older, those dreams transform, becoming ones of a mysterious stranger who will sweep her off her feet and whisk her away from her ordinary existence. Then, suddenly, there he is. Despite the ten year difference in their ages, her working class upbringing and his of privilege, Logan Abbott and Bailey fall deeply in love. Marriage quickly follows.
But when Logan brings her home to his horse farm in Louisiana, a magnificent estate on ninety wooded acres, her dreams of happily-ever-after begin to unravel. A tragic family history she knew nothing about surfaces, plus whisperings about the disappearance of his first wife, True, and rumors about the women from the area who have gone missing-and when another woman disappears, all signs point to her husband's involvement.
At first Bailey ignores the whispers, even as circumstantial evidence against Logan mounts. But finally, Bailey must make a choice: believe what everyone says-or bet her life on the man she loves, but is realizing she hardly knows. From the author of Justice for Sara, Erica Spindler's The First Wife is a thrilling new novel that will have you gasping on every page.
Release date:
August 2, 2016
Publisher:
St. Martin's Publishing Group
Print pages:
352
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"Do you believe in fate, Bailey Browne?" he asked. "That two people can be destined to meet?"
They sat side by side on the beach, she and this handsome stranger she had spent the past eight hours with. The most unexpected, exciting and romantic hours of her entire life.
She turned to meet his dark, intent gaze. She should tell him she thought such notions silly. Play it cool and sophisticated. But cool and sophisticated weren't her style.
"Yes, I believe it," she said, voice husky. "What about you, Logan Abbott?"
He hesitated, a hint of vulnerability coming into his expression. "I didn't. Not until..."
Tonight. Until you.
The words hung unspoken in the air between them. Heady. Tantalizing.
They had been fated to meet.
He found her hand, laced their fingers. "Have you ever seen the sun rise over the Caribbean?"
"Never." She rested her head against his shoulder. "It's beautiful?"
"The most beautiful. You could stay and watch it with me?"
"Okay." Bailey tipped her head so she could see his strong profile. "You've seen a lot of sunrises, haven't you?"
"All over the world."
"Have you ever seen it rise over a Nebraska cornfield?"
He laughed. "As a matter of fact, I haven't."
Bailey liked the sound of his laugh, deep and raspy, like a growl. She snuggled closer to his side. "You might want to put it at the top of your list," she teased. "It's pretty spectacular."
He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her palm. "Only if you promise to watch it with me?"
She could lose herself in this moment, Bailey realized. In the sound of his voice, the feel of his lips against her skin.
Simply slip away. Disappear forever.
"I promise," she whispered, and he drew her with him down to the sand.
* * *
Bailey studied him while he slept. They hadn't made love. They'd watched the sunrise, then come back to her room and slept, wrapped in each other's arms.
He took her breath away, he was so handsome. Dark hair and light green eyes, classically sculpted features, beautifully shaped mouth. Mysterious, she thought. The tortured hero of novels. Wounded deeply by someone special to him. Waiting for just the right woman, the one who could make him whole again.
Were all women as hopelessly romantic as she? Bailey wondered, fighting the urge to trail a finger over his chiseled lips. Drawn to the very thing that would eventually destroy them?
He opened his eyes. His mouth tilted into the small, lazy smile she already loved. "Good morning."
"You were sleeping so peacefully, I didn't want to wake you."
"I wasn't sleeping."
Heat stung her cheeks. "You were!"
"Nope." He laughed. "Playing possum."
She gave in and trailed a finger over his perfect mouth. "So you could tease me?"
His smile faded. "Because I didn't want this moment to end."
Inexplicably, tears stung her eyes. She blinked against them, feeling foolish.
"Don't," he said.
"What?"
"Try to hide from me. I want to know everything about you, Bailey Browne."
"I've already told you everything."
"Hardly." He cupped her face in his hands. "Why the tears?"
"Is this real?" She searched his gaze. "It's as if my dreams have conjured you, our meeting. All of it."
"I promise you, I'm real." He laid her hand over his heart. "Feel it beating."
She did and pressed closer. Thoughts of her mother swamped her. Her hopes and hurts, dreams and disappointments. Many of them for her daughter. Bailey had told him about her mother's illness, her passing. How much it hurt.
Bailey lifted her eyes to his. "I took this trip as a way to celebrate my mother's life. To honor her by ... really living. Does that make sense?"
He combed his fingers through her hair. "It does. Completely."
A smile touched her mouth. "And here you are."
"And so are you."
"It's hard losing someone you love."
"But they're never really gone. Not if you truly loved them. They leave a little piece of themselves. Here."
He laid his hand on her breast. She wondered if he felt her heart leap at his touch.
"And what of you?" she asked thickly. "Who have you loved and lost?"
"Everyone," he said simply.
In that moment, with that one revealing word, she fell completely, irrevocably in love with him.
Before she could respond, he kissed her. She kissed him back and there, with the sun streaming through the blinds, they made love for the first time.
* * *
They sat across from each other at a small table at the thatched-roof cabana bar. A Bob Marley tune playing. Fruity drinks with tiny, paper umbrellas. Women in bikinis and see-through cover-ups. Exotic, beautiful women.
And every one of them had noticed him. Several had openly flirted, as if she weren't even there. As if recognizing, as Bailey did, that he was way out of her league.
Self-doubt swamped her and she leaned toward him. "Why are you with me?"
He looked annoyed. "Why would you ask that?"
"Why do you think? You could have any woman in this room. On this beach, for that matter. Why me?"
"You're the only woman I want."
His words, the way his gaze dropped to her mouth, thrilled. Even as the chill bumps raced up her arms, warning bells sounded in her head.
She silenced them. "You look like that character from the show Mad Men."
He cocked an eyebrow, obviously amused. "Don Draper?"
"That's the one. You've been told that before, haven't you?"
He shrugged. "People see what they want to see."
"And what do you see when you look at me?"
"Not Don Draper."
She laughed, liking his sudden moments of humor. "God, I hope not."
His smile faded. "I see you, Bailey."
She pouted and he frowned. "Don't do that. You don't have to and it's not you. You're not like these other women. Not a Barbie doll. Real, no artifice or games."
He leaned closer. "You still believe anything is possible. You believe in true love, in good triumphing over evil and in happily ever after."
She did, she realized. In her heart of hearts, despite a life that had time and again exhibited the opposite.
How had he learned so much about her in such a short time?
The same way she had learned so much about him.
"What about you?" she asked. "Do you believe in happily ever after?"
Shadows came into his eyes. He gathered her hands in his, leaned toward her. "Could you believe enough for the both of us?"
Her mouth went dry. A lump lodged in her throat. How many times had she told her world-weary, brokenhearted mama just that? "I'll believe enough for us both, Mama. Everything will change for us, you just wait and see."
It'd come too late for her mother. But not for her. "I can," she said softly. "I love you already."
He smiled, slow and satisfied. Like a cat. A big one. Sleek and dangerous.
Bailey's suitcase lay open on the luggage rack. Tomorrow she'd be going home. Her heart was breaking.
Logan sat on the corner of the bed, silently watching her pack. He'd said little in the last few hours and she filled the silence with chatter. "All good things come to an end. That's what Mom used to say." Bailey took a stack of folded shorts and shirts and laid them in the suitcase. "Bailey," she mimicked, "if Christmas came every day, it wouldn't be a special day. Or if you ate chocolate ice cream for every meal, it wouldn't taste so good anymore. That's the nature of-"
"Don't go."
She tried not to look as devastated over this moment as she was. "My flight's tomorrow. I have to."
"No, you don't. Stay. Extend your vacation."
She met his eyes. "Just like that?"
"Yes, just like that."
Her heart began to rap against the wall of her chest. "You're serious, aren't you?"
"Dead serious. Change your flight."
"It's nonrefundable."
"I'll pay for another."
Her thoughts raced. What did she have to go back to? She'd quit her job to care for her mother and the new semester at school had just begun. She had no family and few real friends.
Bailey shook her head. "It'd cost a fortune."
"It doesn't matter. I can afford it."
"But my room-"
"I'll make arrangements with the hotel. Or you can move into my room."
Into his room and into his life, her own disappearing forever.
"Young women go missing in places like this." The words popped out of her mouth; she hadn't even realized they'd been there.
Cold crept into his expression and he stood. "I'm sorry. I didn't know you felt that way."
"I don't. I just ... I'm a single woman. I have to be careful."
"I get that." He started for the door, then stopped and looked over his shoulder at her. "I guess I thought this was as important to you as it is to me."
She'd hurt him. Impossible as that seemed for her, she heard it in his voice and saw it in his eyes.
"Wait!" She held out her hand. "It is, I just-"
"Don't trust me."
"No, I do. But-"
"We've only known each other five days? But you have to be smart or play it safe?" His voice deepened. "You can't have this, us, and play it safe at the same time."
He was right. Physical time didn't matter, her heart had known him forever. He was the one she had always dreamed of finding. This thing exploding between them, the love she had always longed for.
"I'll do it." She nodded her head for emphasis. "But I'm paying for it myself."
A smile tugged at his mouth. "I get you wanting to be self-reliant, but-"
"No. It seems right, spending Mom's life insurance money this way. She always wanted me to find what she never-"
Her throat closed over the last. He took her in his arms, drew her close. She curved hers around him, nestled her head on his shoulder. They stood that way a long time, his heart beating steady and strong against hers.
How could anything that felt so wonderful be anything but right?
Bailey leaned back, tipped her face up so she could meet his eyes. "My dad abandoned us when I was a baby. It broke her heart and she never found love again. But she wanted me to have what she didn't. She wanted me to find you."
"You have, Bailey. And I'm never letting you go."
* * *
The same suitcase lay open on the same bed. The same heavy silence surrounded them. The sense of loss, of her heart breaking.
No, Bailey thought, now the loss cut deeper. If he had meant to snare her in a seductive web, he had succeeded. The thought of living without him was almost more than she could bear.
"But we'll see each other," she said, voice artificially bright. "We've made a plan. It'll work."
He didn't respond and she went on. "You come to Nebraska for the sunrise, then I'll come to Louisiana for the seafood." She collected a stack of shirts from the bureau drawer. "It's not like we live on different planets. It's not-"
"Stop," he said. "Please. There's something I have to tell you."
Bailey's mouth went dry. "What?" she managed.
"I was married once," he said. "She left me."
"Oh." She didn't know what to say. The thought of him married to someone else stole her breath. It shouldn't, they were both old enough to have been married before, and he was older than she. But still, something about it cut her to the quick.
"I came home one day and she was gone. She left with nothing but the clothes on her back and the money she brought into the marriage."
Bailey cleared her throat, feeling like a deer, frozen in the headlights of an oncoming semi. "Why didn't you ... tell me this before?"
He looked down at his hands, then back up at her. "I don't like talking about it."
Which meant he'd been badly hurt. Because of her father, she understood betrayal by the one you loved most. The one you trusted and depended on.
"Who have you loved and lost?"
"Everyone."
She could hardly find her voice. "So ... Why now, Logan?"
"There's more. Ugly gossip. About me and True, my family. I've put up with it most of my life, but I wanted you to know before I ... Marry me, Bailey."
She froze, certain she couldn't have heard him right.
But she had, she realized when she looked at him.
"Marry me," he said again. "I want to spend my life with you."
The strangest sensation moved over her. Like the prickle of static electricity. But from head to toe. With the sensation came elation. And complete terror.
"You're crazy. We've only known each other-"
"Our whole lives."
She laughed nervously. "And here I was going to say twelve days."
He crossed to her, gathered her hands in his and looked deeply into her eyes. "Maybe it is crazy, but it feels as if my heart has known you forever."
God help her, it felt the same way to her. "You're serious about this, aren't you?"
"Dead serious. Listen, Bailey, we could say good-bye with all good intentions of seeing each other again. But let's be honest, we'd drift farther and farther apart. And that would be that."
He tightened his fingers on hers. "But that's not how this story goes, Bailey. It's not how our story goes."
He released her hands and got down on one knee. He took a small, white leather box from his pocket. "I love you, Bailey Ann Browne. Will you marry me?"
He opened the box. The most beautiful diamond ring she'd ever seen winked up at her.
She moved her gaze from the ring to his face. He loved her. She had told him a dozen times already, but he had waited. To make this perfect.
Happily ever after, she thought. That's how their story would go.
She believed in fairy tales. And this was hers.
"Yes, Logan," she said softly. "I love you and I will marry you."
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