Marie Ferrarella - A Widow's Guilty Secret

Taking a deep breath to steady her nerves, Suzy pulled the door open, braced herself and then walked in.

The smell of dust and mold assaulted her nose the second she entered. She let the door close behind her as she looked around.

“Hello? Is anyone here?” Suzy called out.

Only the echo of her own voice answered her.

Had she gotten the address wrong? Was the kidnapper jerking her around, sending her to the wrong place to show her that he was holding all the cards and that she had none?

But she did hold a card, Suzy silently insisted. She dug in, holding her ground and giving it one more try.

“Look, I came here just like you told me to. Now stop playing games and show yourself, damn it!” she demanded.

There was still no answer, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched. What was this creep’s game?

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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MARIE FERRARELLA, a USA TODAY bestselling and RITA ®Award-winning author, has written more than two hundred books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.

To Patience Bloom,

For constantly making this fun, not work.

Mabel Smith knew something was wrong the moment she walked into the house.

She could feel it.

Feel it despite the fact that there were no signs of a struggle and nothing out of place.

The longer she stayed, the more convinced she became that she was right.

As was her custom, the petite, pleasantly plump housekeeper had let herself into Professor Melinda Grayson’s modern, two-story house with her own key. It was a copy of the master key, awarded to her amid much fanfare. She viewed the key as a status symbol, a testimony to her character.

Her employer, Melinda Grayson, did not trust easily, holding the people she dealt with suspect until they proved themselves worthy in her eyes. As someone who cleaned the woman’s house and perforce was given access to every corner of it, she’d been watched with an eagle eye for the better part of two years.

At the beginning of Mabel’s third year of service, the renowned, somewhat controversial and eccentric sociology professor dramatically bestowed her with a copy of the house key, making Mabel literally swear that she would never allow anyone else even to hold it, much less use it. It was a well-known fact that Professor Grayson guarded her own privacy as zealously as she delved into everyone else’s when she was doing research for one of her highly contentious books.

Entering the house that she’d cleaned from top to bottom once a week, Mabel had expected to find the professor somewhere on the premises. The woman’s car, a sky-blue vintage 1957 Chevy Impala, one of her few extravagances, was parked in the driveway. Since that was her only mode of transportation to and from Darby, the college where Dr. Grayson taught, Mabel had assumed that the woman was in the house somewhere, possibly working on a paper or getting lectures ready for the new, upcoming academic year.

But when she called out her greeting, the housekeeper received no answer.

That in itself was no cause for concern. More often than not, the professor was either lost in thought or uncommunicative. However, she always made an appearance within a few minutes of Mabel’s entry, just to make certain that the woman had come alone and hadn’t brought someone with her to help with the work.

Not that she ever did. Dr. Grayson had made it abundantly clear that she did not care to have any uninvited strangers walking across her floors, nor would she tolerate it.

“Something is wrong,” Mabel said to herself, speaking loudly enough for someone else to hear—had there been someone else in the room to hear, which apparently there was not.

Feeling progressively ill at ease with the situation and possessing an extremely healthy and active imagination, Mabel still forced herself to clean the house, hoping she was just being unduly concerned.

When there still appeared to be no sign of the professor, she felt she had no choice but to place a call to the local police.

Private creature or not, she knew the professor would have wanted her to call them.

He didn’t hear the phone ring at first.

Didn’t realize the next few minutes would upend his life.

Oil baron Gabe Dawson was in Malaysia on important business, far away from Vengeance, Texas. He finally picked up the hotel phone.

“Gabe. You need to come home. Now. It’s Melinda,” his assistant said.

It was only when he heard his ex’s name that he froze. Gabe stopped and sat on the bed, braced for the news.

“She was kidnapped.” His assistant gave him some details, but there was little information. Just that someone had made her disappear.

Along with the shock, a wave of nostalgia came over him and he allowed himself to drift back and remember. Remember how things used to be with Melinda. In the beginning. Back when they had been just two overachieving graduate students, wildly in love and bound and determined to leave their marks on the world.

Melinda had been even more focused on that than he’d been. She’d been resolute about making a name for herself—her own name—as if she wanted everyone she had ever known from birth to know that this was what Melinda Grayson had become. It was important to her, to the exclusion of everything else.

Eventually, even he had found himself excluded, standing on the outside of her world.

In hindsight, he supposed they began growing apart almost from the very moment they took their vows before a justice of the peace ten years ago. Melinda started pointing her finger at what she perceived were social injustices, while he, with his well-honed business acumen, became a recognized leader in his field, and exceedingly wealthy to boot.

With his bank accounts totaling in the billions, he, in effect, found himself becoming the enemy against whom Melinda was so profoundly railing.

Looking back, he accepted that their divorce was inevitable.

But in the beginning, ah, the beginning, there had been some really good times. Excellent times.

“What else can you tell me?” Gabe asked.

“It is suspected that the professor was kidnapped from her home. You’re the closest to immediate family that can be located. The Dean of Darby College has put in a plea that the kidnappers get in contact with him and make their demands known.”

“Get me on the next flight,” Gabe said. “I’m her family,” he emphasized. He was aware that Melinda had siblings, but she never talked about them and he never prodded her. The estrangement, he’d gathered, went way back.

Melinda had been his first love. Though they became as different as fire and ice, he’d never loved anyone as much as he had loved her. Most likely, he never would.