Cara Summers - Led into Temptation

RITA® Award Nominee CARA SUMMERShas written more than thirty books. She has won several awards, including an Award of Excellence, three Golden Quills, and two Golden Leaf Awards. She has also been honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from RT Book Reviews. She loves coming up with stories—from Gothic romance and mystery adventures to romantic comedies. When Cara isn’t creating new stories, she teaches at Syracuse University.

Cara Summers

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To my very newest daughter-in-law,

Nicole Van Markwyk Hanlon, and to my son

Brendan. I hope you bring each other a lifetime

of joy! Welcome to the family, Nicole.

I love you both!!

Dear Reader,

Have you ever had a secret fantasy that you’ve never shared with anyone? Not even your sister or your best friend? I’d forgotten mine until my editor suggested I write a TWICE FORBIDDEN book and she mentioned very casually that no one had ever written one about the ultimate forbidden fantasy—a priest.

Wow! Not only did her suggestion trigger memories of The Thorn Birds and an even earlier movie, The Left Hand of God, but I remembered that long-ago summer when I was thirteen and I too had a secret crush.

When she is dumped by her swindling fiancé and becomes a person of interest to the FBI, Naomi Brightman flees to Haworth House, the hotel she runs with her sisters. But trouble follows hot on her heels in the person of Father Dane MacFarland. While he instantly rekindles memories of the teenage crush she had on a school chaplain, the raw sexual heat she feels from the moment she sees him is very real. And increasingly irresistible.

I hope you enjoy Naomi’s story and my upcoming stories about her sisters, Jillian and Reese, in Taken Beyond Temptation and Twice the Temptation.

Happy reading,

Cara Summers

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication To my very newest daughter-in-law, Nicole Van Markwyk Hanlon, and to my son Brendan. I hope you bring each other a lifetime of joy! Welcome to the family, Nicole. I love you both!!

Prologue

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

Copyright

“To NEW BEGINNINGS.” Naomi Brightman raised her glass of champagne and met her sisters’ eyes over the rim. It was too late for second thoughts. As the oldest sister, the practical one, it had always been her job to have them. Third thoughts, too. But thanks to her, the papers were signed. She’d even drawn them up. With enthusiasm.

From the moment she’d stepped through the front door of Haworth House, it had exerted an odd pull on her. For the life of her she couldn’t figure it out. With its perch on a lofty cliff overlooking the sea and the turreted gray tower that seemed to pierce the sky, it had conjured up images of fantasy and romance, and she’d decided a long time ago that fantasy and reality never mixed.

Even now, standing in the gloomy tower room that the real estate agent had neglected to include on their initial tour, Naomi was still convinced that this was where she and her sisters were meant to be.

“To our first business venture,” Reese said, lifting her champagne. “It’s been a long road getting here.”

Naomi had been seventeen, Jillian sixteen and Reese fifteen when they’d first hatched their plan. They’d known full well that their days together were numbered in the Catholic boarding school in the south of France where they’d been raised. Abandoned there by their father when Reese was an infant, they’d grown up inseparable. The nuns had often referred to them as the Three Musketeers. But as they’d entered their teens, it had become increasingly clear that their future career paths were going to separate them.

Jillian beamed a smile at her sisters. “To our new home.”

As they all sipped their drinks, Naomi thought back to that night so long ago when they’d first toasted their dream of sharing a business venture with champagne—a bottle Jillian had snitched from the nuns’ private wine cellar.

Now that dream was a budding reality. They were going to turn Haworth House, once the summer home of legendary silent film star Hattie Haworth, into a small, exclusive hotel that offered excellent food and fine decor.

Naomi’s contribution had been to provide legal advice and a solid business plan. Reese, who had a growing international reputation as a chef, would handle the culinary details—design the menus and hire the kitchen staff. And Jillian, now a budding antique dealer, was going to oversee the interior design.

“Isn’t it just perfect?” Jillian’s voice bubbled with enthusiasm. She’d been the one who’d found Haworth House on Belle Island off the coast of Maine. It had just the kind of rich history that would appeal to her. According to Jillian, Hattie Haworth’s life had been a mess when she’d retired here to the haven she’d built for herself. When the star had failed to make the transition to the talkies, her studio had dumped her, and her husband had left her for a younger woman with a more promising future.

Reese let her gaze sweep the tower room that had once been Hattie’s private boudoir. “Perfect might be pushing it a little.”

Naomi had to agree. The sunshine battling its way through the grime-coated tower windows illuminated dancing dust motes and not much else—which was probably a blessing considering the state of the faded wallpaper and the crumbling bricks in the fireplace.

Totally unruffled, Jillian said, “This tower will rehab beautifully, and you have to admit, the rest of the place is great.”

“True,” Reese agreed with a smile. “The kitchen has definite possibilities. And you can’t beat the view.” She gestured to one of the windows, where the Atlantic stretched as far as the eye could see. “But this room looks like no one has touched it in years.”

“No one has,” Jillian said. “I did some research in the local paper, and in the beginning—right after Hattie died—there were rumors that she haunted the place. So the new owners boarded up the tower. After that the stories seemed to fade. But none of the subsequent owners ever ventured up here.”

“And you just decided to tear down the boards and barge in on a ghost?” Reese gave Naomi a rolling eye glance that said typical.

Jillian lifted her chin. “I think Hattie’s happy to have us here.”

“You think?” Naomi asked.

Jillian nodded. “The first time I came up here, I sensed her presence. Look.” Setting down her glass, she grabbed her sisters’ hands and drew them toward an old beveled glass mirror. “What do you see?”

“I see the Brightman sisters,” Naomi said. They were so different. Jillian, with her curly blond hair, was the shortest, her style of dress early gypsy. Reese, the tallest and most striking, wore her dark hair pixie short and had on her usual uniform of jeans and T-shirt. Compared to her sisters, Naomi thought of herself as ordinary. Her hair was trapped between blond and red, her eyes a mix of green and gray. The conservative business suits and practical shoes suited her job in the Boston law firm where she worked.