Janice Johnson - Open Secret

Days later, Carrie was still asking herself. Why did she feel this wave of anxiety every time she thought about the phone number she carried in her wallet? Was she afraid her sister would be cheap and loud and uncultured, so she’d be ashamed of her heritage? But Mark had said she was nice. Carrie trusted him.

So, okay, maybe that wasn’t the problem. Maybe she was worried about whether her sister would like her. That somehow she’d be a disappointment.

Or maybe…maybe what really scared her was the possibility that she wouldn’t feel any connection at all to this sister. Maybe she’d look at photographs of her birth parents and not see herself in them either. And then she’d realize that there was no niche anywhere that she was designed to fit. She’d be like a puzzle piece that ended up in the wrong box and was left over when the picture was complete.

Dear Reader,

Growing up, I had a good friend who had been adopted as a baby. Thinking back, I’m amazed at how completely lacking in curiosity I was. I never wondered whether she imagined someday finding her birth mother, whether she lived with any sense of “not belonging,” even what she knew about her birth parents. So she was adopted. Who cared?

In some ways, this was undoubtedly a healthy attitude. Imagine what fun sleepovers we could have had, with me grilling her! On the other hand—why didn’t her unusual (to me) beginning in life stir my imagination?

Of course, it did, many years after the last time I saw her. Because babies in the womb hear their mothers’ voices for nine months, they feel a bond with her from the moment they’re born. If a child’s adopted out too young to remember her birth parents, does she nonetheless know, somewhere deep inside, that she’s not where she belongs?

If you’ve read many of my books, you’ll know how interested I am in the long-term impact of trauma. I tend not to write about the traumatic event itself; that’s way less interesting than the ripples that spread out from it!

But I am, after all, a romance reader and writer, which means I have enormous faith in the healing power of love. Don’t we all need that faith?

Best,

Janice Kay Johnson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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

HIRING A PRIVATE investigator took more courage than Suzanne Chauvin had known she possessed. The whole idea was utterly foreign to her. P.I.s snapped photos of half-naked husbands straying from their marriage vows in sleazy hotels, the kind with mirrors on the ceiling. They did stakeouts where they slumped low in their cars for hour upon hour. They wore trenchcoats and carried firearms.

She knew the images were silly and outdated, if ever accurate. Sam Spade. Still, consulting a P.I. felt…sleazy.

But the truth was, she’d tried everything she could do on her own. She would never find Lucien and Linette without help. She’d asked around, and this Kincaid Investigations was recommended over and over. They specialized in finding people, Suzanne had been told.

Even so, she hesitated. Bringing a stranger into her private life made her uncomfortable. And it was more than that! She’d be handing the whole task over to the investigator. Trusting him. She wasn’t very good at trusting people anymore.

She kept debating, putting off the decision. Maybe Lucien or Linette would come looking for her. She’d made sure that, if they did, she would be easy to find.

The only thing was, she’d been hunting for three years now. And they hadn’t come looking for her.

Another week went by, a month. Two months. Three.

It was a really lousy morning that provided the final push. Dumb little things added up. She’d taken a personal day from her job, with the intention of working around the house. She’d mow, put some bedding plants in, reorganize her kitchen cupboards. Positive stuff.

Instead she came out early to find garbage from the can she’d set out by the street last night strewn across her driveway by some wretched dog. Her bathroom trash, including some really, really personal items, was scattered over the next-door neighbor’s impeccably kept lawn. She pounced and managed to pick the embarrassing stuff up just before his garage door rose and he backed out in his gleaming, black pickup truck. There she stood in her oldest jeans, surrounded by garbage.

His window glided down. Tom Stefanec was already the bane of her existence. His lawn could have doubled for a putting green at Pebble Beach. His perennial bed was the envy of the neighborhood from spring through fall as wave after orchestrated wave of perfectly tended plants came into bloom. He jogged most mornings barely waiting for sunup. He kept his hair military short. Worst of all, this model of discipline and fitness had to have heard Suzanne’s awful, screaming fights with Josh, her now ex-husband.

She hadn’t been able to look her neighbor in the eye in years.

And, of course, his garbage can sat untouched, a bungee cord stretched over the lid to keep its contents safe. The dog knew better than to try to get at Tom Stefanec’s trash.

“You need a hand?”

Smiling weakly and probably unconvincingly, she said, “No, no, I’m fine. It’s my own fault for not making sure that miserable dog couldn’t get into my can.”

“If you’re sure…”

“I’m sure.”

With a whir, the window rolled up and the truck continued to back into the street. Once he was gone, she fetched gloves and picked up the rest of the litter, then wheeled her mower out. Pressed the button a couple of times to prime it and then yanked the cord. Nada. Again, and again. Prime. Pull. Prime. Pull.

Finally, exhausted, Suzanne had to concede that the piece of junk wasn’t going to start. Once again, she would have to remember how to fold the handle and then heave the monster into the trunk of her car. Being as this was the beginning of April, she would be told that they’d get to it when they got to it. In other words, several weeks would pass before she’d get the damn thing back.

Suzanne took a look at her patchy, scruffy, hummocky, dandelion-infested lawn and started to cry. She was completely, one hundred percent incompetent. A failure at everything that had ever mattered.

And getting the damn mower fixed and the lawn mowed wouldn’t help.

If she was ever going to turn her life around and regain a semblance of self-esteem, she had to succeed at something a heck of a lot more important than yardwork.

She had to keep the promise she’d made herself when she was a child.

Abandoning the mower on the lawn, she marched into the house, found the phone number she’d tucked away three months ago and called.

“I’d like to make an appointment.”

WHEN THE RECEPTIONIST informed him via intercom that his new client had arrived, Mark Kincaid closed the database of bankruptcies he’d been searching on his computer, glanced at his calendar to recall her name and rose to meet her.

Suzanne Chauvin. He had a quick picture of a petite, fiery Frenchwoman in a chic suit and heels, her sleek dark hair in a twist, her brown eyes magnificent, her lips painted scarlet.

He shook his head at his brief foray into fantasy. Of course, she’d be a dumpy dishwater blonde in snagged polyester pants.