Secrets and Seduction: 5 Romance Novels
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Shay Lacy
Avon, Massachusetts
This edition published by
Crimson Romance
an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.
10151 Carver Road, Suite 200
Blue Ash, Ohio 45242
Copyright © 2012 by Shay Lacy
ISBN 10: 1-4405-5691-1
ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-5691-3
eISBN 10: 1-4405-5692-X
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-5692-0
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
Cover art © 123rf.com
To the ACC ladies who were my first supporters. You can read this one! To the wonderful members of MVRWA, a chapter that knows the true meaning of support. To Jill, who told me she was proud of me for trying through the dark time. To the Panera Prison inmates, who held me accountable. To Connie and Jenna, who held my hands and faced me toward my future. And to my husband, who showed me our country’s beauty and the grandeur of Watkins Glen through a camera lens, and who taught me a new form of composition. He said I should write because it makes me happy.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks to the Watkins Glen Chamber of Commerce for the brochures that kept the information fresh in my mind,
www.watkinsglenchamber.com
.
“I can’t marry you.”
Marisa Avalos felt tasered with stunned disbelief. She’d expected to finally set a date for the wedding and discuss details over lunch, not … this. She felt icy on the warm Indian summer day.
Denial came next. The rumble of an approaching train beyond the restaurant must have garbled Kevin Johansson’s words. He looked the same as he had since high school — serious, chiseled face, short blonde hair, and intelligent brown eyes. He’d matured since then but he hadn’t changed so much that he’d end their three-year engagement.
“Excuse me?” she choked out.
He sighed. “Marisa, don’t make this any harder. I’m moving to California to join a friend’s veterinary practice. I know you won’t leave your mother, so I’m ending things between us.”
Marisa’s eyes burned as she fought tears of hurt and betrayal. Eight years she’d waited for Kevin, through college and veterinary school. And not once in all that time had he mentioned wanting to move to California. By concentrating on the train engine as it rounded the corner into view, she tried to quiet her roiling mind enough to respond coherently. Less than seven feet away on the other side of the restaurant’s deck, the engine looked impossibly huge. The building shook, making the water glasses and silverware clink. The chaos of sound mimicked the chaos in her heart and mind.
As the engine passed, she glanced in the opposite direction, anything not to look at Kevin for a few moments. A hundred yards away where the promenade led up from the docks a group of people waited on the other side of the tracks. Her friend Carolyn Wentworth saw her and waved.
She nodded to her friend and focused on Kevin once more, sure now she could talk without crying. She had to speak loud over the noise. “But you’re taking over old Dr. Handler’s practice.”
He shook his head and nearly yelled. “He likes working part-time. It could be another ten years until he completely retires and sells me the business. I want my own practice now. My friend from college offered me a partnership.”
The shriek of metal on metal pierced the air from down the tracks, a sound that made Marisa’s back teeth ache. The horn blast from this close was nearly deafening. As the engineer applied the brakes, the cars thudding into one another threatened to shake the building to pieces. Marisa feared a derailment. As far as she knew, there had never been a train accident in Watkins Glen. How much damage could a train going thirty miles per hour do?
Kevin must have shared her worries, for he grabbed her arm with bruising force and yanked her away from the edge. Other diners had the same idea, scurrying toward the side of the deck away from the train tracks. The wait staff hovered uncertainly, their eyes fixed on the train. Finally, the crashing and screeching ceased. The cars still swayed on the tracks. Customers murmured nervously. Diners from inside the restaurant spilled out onto the deck rushing for the rail. Marisa and Kevin pressed against the crowd trying to see.
A woman closest to the end of the deck screamed and other women echoed it.
One of the diners leaning far over the railing turned a white face to the rest. “It hit someone!”
A man’s shout rose above the murmurs and gasps. “Call 911!”
“Jesus,” a man swore.
The woman beside Marisa turned her face into the chest of the man with her. His arm circled her and he drew her out of the way. Marisa and Kevin took their places at the rail. Worry for her friend Carolyn’s safety flitted through her mind but Marisa brushed it away. Caro was safe. A siren wailed from the direction of the fire station. Help would arrive soon. A second siren echoed from down the street at the sheriff’s office.
The engine had stopped four cars away from them. The engineer knelt by the third car, where a white arm stuck out. When the man next to him rose, Marisa sucked in her breath in recognition.
No!
Her knees nearly buckled and she gripped the railing for support.
“I couldn’t stop her. I didn’t know she was going to do it!” Scott Wentworth’s voice carried clearly. He wrung his hands in distress.
“Caro,” Marisa moaned. No, it couldn’t be! But she had to know for sure. She grabbed Kevin’s arm. “That’s Carolyn’s husband. I need to get down there.”
Kevin gripped her forearms and gently shook her. “Marisa, listen to me. If it’s Carolyn, you don’t want to see her.”
“Yes, I do!”
She ripped herself from his grasp. Spinning around, she darted across the deck with Kevin shouting after her. A man reached for her as she passed a table, but she dodged his arm. Pushing her way past a knot of servers, she ran through the restaurant and down the sidewalk to the promenade. The train blocked the usual sight of boats floating at their docks on Seneca Lake. The autumn sun failed to warm the cold dread inside her.
Marisa paid little attention to the gawkers hanging over the deck rail as she darted down the lawn that skirted the train tracks. Some curious tourists had moved close enough to see the body, but she ignored them.
The gray-haired engineer turned at her approach and held up his hands to stop her. “You don’t want to see this, miss.”
She cut her gaze to Scott Wentworth. “Is it Carolyn?” She wanted him to deny it.
Scott looked pale under his tan. His immaculately cut brown hair was ruffled by a morning probably spent sailing on the lake. “I know she’s been depressed over the miscarriage.” His voice shook. “But I didn’t think she’d do anything like this.”
Marisa hadn’t liked Scott, and she liked him even less for trashing Carolyn in public. If she killed herself … Marisa couldn’t finish the thought because she couldn’t believe Carolyn would ever do such a thing. It had been a horrible accident. It had to be.
“I want to see her,” she told the engineer. He’d moved to block the body from view. “Carolyn was my best friend. We grew up together.”
The engineer’s face softened in sympathy. “You don’t want to remember her like this.”
“My fiancé … ” Or was that ex-fiancé? She plunged onward. “He’s a veterinarian. I’ve gone with him on house calls before.”
He shook his head. “Nothing like this, miss.”
The throb of the engine was a perfect counterpoint to the tension building inside her. Emotions welled up like an ocean breaker preparing to crash against the shore.
“Please.”
She sensed him relenting before he moved slightly to the left. Stepping forward, at first she couldn’t make sense of what she saw. The bloody, mangled mess couldn’t be Caro. Marisa focused on the face. It was the same lean, plain face Marisa had seen all her life. Carolyn had been a gawky stick as a girl. As a woman, she passed for fashionably thin. Blood soaked her short sable hair. Marisa quickly jerked her gaze away, but it caught on Carolyn’s right arm … or what was left of it.
The scene in front of her blurred. Horror threatened to tear its way out of her throat in the form of screams that would never end. But grief trapped them inside, constricting her breath. She wanted to fall on the body and clasp it to her chest, wailing for what she’d lost. She wanted to shout denials until they became truth.
She turned and stumbled away blind. Strong arms caught her.
“Are you going to faint?” a deep voice rumbled.
Words failed her, so she shook her head against a firm chest. Even the heat blasting from the still running locomotive couldn’t warm her. She clasped her arms around her shivering body.
“Get a blanket,” the man shouted off to her left. Then he said, “Where’s the man who was with you?”
Marisa couldn’t remember anything except the severed arm. There were people moving around her, people in uniforms, people with purpose. None of them seemed to be with her.
