Janice Carter - Summer Of Joanna

“Joanna Barnes was married to my father.”

Matt Sinclair folded his arms and stared across the parking lot. “They were married for two years. I was only seventeen at the time. Pretty much out of the picture, thank God.”

“Obviously you didn’t care for her,” Kate said.

“Frankly, no. Sorry if that offends you.”

Kate inhaled deeply. She hadn’t come to Joanna’s funeral for any kind of confrontation. All she’d wanted to do was pay her last respects to the woman who’d once saved her life.

“I do—did—care for Joanna,” she said, “and I don’t believe in speaking ill of the dead. Especially at a funeral.” She brushed past him to head for her car.

“Those are fine sentiments,” he replied, raising his voice as she kept walking. “And you’re welcome to them. But Joanna Barnes ruined my father. I’ll never forgive her for that.”

Matt watched her car zip out of the parking lot and disappear down the quiet, tree-lined road. He didn’t like the uneasy feeling in his gut when he recalled the hurt in her eyes. As if she couldn’t comprehend why he was attacking somebody she cared about.

But that somebody was Joanna, he reminded himself. The last person on earth to deserve such fierce loyalty.

Reading and writing have been lifetime passions for Janice Carter. She wrote her first novel at age twelve in school notebooks. As a teenager, she wrote daily serializations of romance novellas for her classmates. “Publishing a novel was always a dream,” she recalls. “But for a long time, the business of living got in the way of writing. I traveled around the world and saw many exotic sights. I married and had two amazing daughters. There was little opportunity or inclination on my part to write until one autumn I impulsively decided to take a romance writing workshop at a local college. I was hooked! That year I began to write my first romance novel and sold it two years later to Harlequin Intrigue.”

Janice lives with her husband and two daughters in Toronto, Ontario, where—during the year—she works as a teacher-librarian in an elementary school. Her summers are spent on a small island on Lake Ontario where she has her morning coffee and watches great blue herons fish off the rocks. Then she adjourns to her “writing room” and indulges in her favorite occupation.

HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE

593—GHOST TIGER

671—A CHRISTMAS BABY

779—THE MAN SHE LEFT BEHIND

887—THE INHERITANCE

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my beautiful daughters, as always

With much appreciation to my editor of many years, Zilla Soriano, for her intuitive good sense and gracious guidance.

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 SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

SHE COULDN’T TAKE her eyes off the coffin.

It sat, resplendent beneath a spray of leaves and white lilies, in the very middle of the raised dais in front of the altar. Kate closed her eyes, fighting the pain that swelled up from the pit of her stomach. Just get through this, she reminded herself. Then give in to grieving for Joanna when all the questions have been answered, especially those beginning with why. Until then, stay calm, in control and, most of all, stay angry.

The organist segued into another interlude as mourners continued to slide into the pews. Kate raised her head, glancing left to the center aisle. The church was filling up. Joanna would be pleased. Or so Kate imagined. For how much could she say about someone she hadn’t seen for nineteen years? Kate lowered her head again and squeezed her eyes shut, bringing back that sultry July day at Camp Limberlost. The day she’d met Joanna Barnes.

THE RAFT WAS TOO FAR AWAY. Kate knew that from the start, but it almost seemed to beckon to her, a refuge from the gang of kids lying in wait down by the canoes. If she turned around to confront them, she’d probably get into another fight and she’d already had her last warning. One more and she’d be put on a bus and sent back to the city. Which wasn’t such a bad thing, she figured, since she hated the place, anyway. But there was only her foster mother and little kids, including a new baby, at home. The rest of the summer was already booked for baby-sitting.

So the raft it would be, she decided, wading into the shallow water of Whitefish Lake. But distances were deceiving in the midday glare, and Kate wasn’t an experienced swimmer. Less than a yard away from the raft, she could barely keep her head above the water. Her legs seemed like lead weights, pulling her down, as her arms flailed the surface.

“For heaven’s sake, take my hand so I won’t have to come in after you.”

The command—really a peeved drawl—came from the raft, and Kate barely caught a glimpse of a bronzed arm reaching toward her as she went down for the second time. Her own arms kept thrashing but contact was made. A strong grip pulled her to the raft’s edge where a beautiful face, framed by an ear-length swoop of jet-black hair, loomed over her.

An angel’s face, Kate was thinking as she clung to the ladder at the side of the raft, and was suddenly glad she’d gone to confession before leaving for Limberlost.

“Catch your breath before you climb up,” the woman said. “I’ve just slathered myself with sunscreen, and I don’t want it to come off if I try to haul you out.” Then she disappeared from the edge and shifted toward the center of the raft.

Kate waited until she knew she could pull herself up on her own. When she finally rolled onto the warm, dry surface, she lay on her back, her chest heaving.

After a moment, the woman raised her head from the paperback she’d been reading and said, “I’m Joanna Barnes and you must be one of the Bronx kids.”

Kate shot up. “My name is Kate Reilly and I’m not one of the Bronx kids. I live in Queens.”

Joanna Barnes shrugged, turning her attention back to her novel. “Whatever,” she said.

THE ORGAN SWELLED to a crescendo as the minister walked toward a podium a short distance from Joanna’s casket. Kate rose with the others, reaching automatically for a hymn book and the page the minister directed the congregation to. But she could still see Joanna sprawling on a beach towel, apparently oblivious to the eleven-year-old kid gawking at her.

“ARE YOU RELATED to the people who run this place?” Kate asked when she’d caught her breath.

“My parents,” Joanna mumbled from behind her book.

Kate tried to connect the white-haired plumpish couple she’d met her first day with the beautiful woman in the bikini, but couldn’t quite do it. She swiped at a drop of water hanging from the tip of her nose. “So do you work here, then?”

The novel came down. “Hardly.” There was the faintest of smiles.

“I haven’t seen you before and I’ve been here a week.”

The crimson smile widened. “I don’t exactly hang out with the campers. But I used to work here when I was a kid. My parents have owned Limberlost for twenty years.”

“Did you like coming here when you were a kid?”