Anna DeStefano - The Unknown Daughter

At his shout, the figure scrambled to the ground, rolling and preparing to run.

Eric stepped closer and pinned the suspect with the flashlight beam.

Then the summer night, the achingly familiar sights and sounds pressing in around him and a vision from his past seized him in a moment of déjà vu that rooted him to the spot. Carrinne Wilmington, seventeen years older but somehow exactly the same, dressed from head to toe in burglar black, stared at him, her face a mask of fear and shock.

Eric instinctively adjusted the flashlight’s glare out of her eyes.

“Eric?” Carrinne squinted. “What are you doing here?”

Dear Reader,

I’ve been asked repeatedly where I find the ideas for my stories. And as many writers have said before me, it’s not so much that I find my stories and characters, as they find me.

My young family has changed a great deal over the past decade, as my husband and I established our careers and my son raced through preschool and kindergarten. Looking back, it’s important to remember the heartache and struggles we’ve endured. The mistakes and the false starts that showed us what was truly important, and what was best left behind. The decisions that helped us grow into the happy family we are today.

Decisions are powerful things. That’s the theme woven into The Unknown Daughter. It’s through our most difficult choices that we discover who we are and what we believe. I find the process of making life-changing decisions fascinating. Sometimes you succeed. Sometimes you fail. But facing the next challenge, when everything within is screaming at you to run the other way, is the very essence of living.

I wish for you the courage and the determination you need to grow into all that you dream you’ll be. And I’d love to hear your thoughts on Carrinne and Eric’s story. Visit me at my author Web site, www.annawrites.com, and register for one of my contests.

Sincerely,

Anna DeStefano

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my father, Walton, whose passing taught me to cherish all of life, both the ups and the downs.

To my mother, Jane, and her love for the written word, who never doubted that my name would one day share space with the countless others on her bookshelves.

To my son, Jimmy, who is a daily reminder of the perfection of God’s miracles.

To my husband, Andrew, who has always wanted for me every dream I could possibly dream.

And to my critique partners, Tanya, Rachelle, Dorene, Anna A. and Missy and the countless friends I’ve made along my writing journey.

All that’s true in this story, all that comes from my heart wouldn’t have been possible without the blessing of your love.

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

EPILOGUE

CARRINNE WILMINGTON glared through the windshield of her rented Dodge at the stately south Georgia mansion that had been her family’s home for as long as they’d kept records in these parts. Ancient oak trees flanked the house, their tops dancing in the balmy July breeze. The moon skimmed a cloud-churned sky, creating midnight shadows that shifted in the changing light.

She fought the urge to peel away from the curb, to keep driving until she reached the airstrip just outside of Oakwood and caught the next flight back to New York. Turning off the ignition, she glanced down at herself, then dropped her head to the steering wheel.

She was a B-movie cliché.

Her city clothes, black on black on black, had seemed a logical choice when she’d left the roadside motel on the outskirts of town. She was sneaking back in the dead of night, for heaven’s sake. She needed invisibility, anonymity.

With a groan, she sat back. What she needed was to have her head examined. Who cared what she was wearing, when she was about to walk back into the world that had nearly destroyed her?

Her eyes traveled to the dormer windows her grandfather slept behind. Controlling yet distant, Oliver Wilmington had been the only family she’d ever known after her mother had died giving her life, and he’d let her down when she’d needed him the most. Now, seventeen years later, he couldn’t know she was back. No one could. If she was lucky and found what she’d come for, she’d be out of here and back in New York by tomorrow afternoon.

Get on with it, Carrinne.

She pushed open the door and slid out, gritting her teeth against the sick taste of fear.

“Get in, find Mom’s diary, then get out,” she whispered, creeping through the dimness toward the gray brick house. The diary had to be in the attic, inside the trunk that held her mother’s things. “Forget about everything else.”

But the past shimmered in every shadow as she skirted landscaped shrubs and flowerbeds that were exactly where they had always been. She turned the corner toward the back terrace and stumbled to a halt at the base of an enormous cypress tree, her childhood refuge where she’d read fairy tales and dreamed girlish dreams.

Her old friend welcomed her home, its phantomlike branches rustling in the night. She turned her back on the memories, on the dreams she’d finally wised up and stopped dreaming years ago.

The solarium’s angles came into view. The sight of its glass-and-wooden frame kicked the butterflies in her stomach into a frenzied tap dance. Nostalgia she hadn’t expected tugged her lips into a smile even as she panted for breath, winded by the short walk from the car. She struggled against the light-headed, ear-ringing haze, bending at the waist, hands on her knees.

Not now. She straightened and waited for her vision to clear, her lungs to work. This isn’t happening, not now that I’m this close.

Her equilibrium returning, she took in the sight of the one place in her grandfather’s ordered world that had truly belonged to her. Inside the solarium’s sanctuary, she’d nurtured tiny buds and seedlings, watching them burst to life year after year. Oliver had called her obsession folly, but the plants had needed her when no one else had. And the solarium had meant freedom in ways her grandfather had never imagined.

She approached the corner windows, willing strength into her legs. Ivy cascaded like a waterfall from a nearby oak, obscuring all but a few inches of the long, opaque panes of glass. She reached for the screwdriver in her back pocket, but a whisper from the past stopped her. The stone was still there, directly beneath the last window, mostly buried now. She knelt and pulled until the rock shifted and she could feel beneath. When her fingers closed around cold steel, her heart nearly beat its way out of her chest.

Pulling the encrusted screwdriver free, she wiped until streaks of metal gleamed in the pale moonlight. How many nights had she done this, popping the loose latch she’d discovered on the last window and sneaking into a cold, silent house long after curfew? Only, back then she hadn’t been alone. Back then there’d been one last kiss to keep her warm until she could escape and once more find heaven in the arms of the boy she’d thought she’d love forever. Her hand clenched around the tool. An overpowering urge to hurl it into the window brought her to her senses.