Darlene Gardner - The Truth About Tara

Brought together by a secret

Tara Greer’s world is fine the way it is—even if some details of her childhood simply don’t add up. Life on the beautiful Virginia coast with her mother and young foster brother are all she needs. What she doesn’t need is gorgeous stranger Jack DiMarco’s suspicion that she was stolen as a child. Because if he’s right, the truth would devastate her family.

Steering clear of Jack is the easy answer, right? Wrong! The sexy, compassionate on-the-mend baseball player is everywhere she turns...exactly where her heart wants him. But their future seems unlikely when being with Jack means facing a reality that could cost Tara everything.

“According to Mr. Snyder’s buddy, I’m your old man.”

Tara scoffed at Jack’s words. “You’re not my man at all.” She caught the gleam in his eyes and frowned at him. “You’re teasing me.”

“Guilty,” he said. “But I am at your disposal for the next few weeks. You can do what you want with me.”

“I’m not going to ask you to have sex with me, if that’s what you mean.”

“It wasn’t,” he said, his grin spreading. “I was talking about helping you refinish that piece of furniture.”

“Sorry.”

“No apology necessary.” He brushed a strand of hair from her face. “I’m flattered that you look at me and think about sex.”

She wondered how this conversation had spiraled out of control so quickly. So what if Jack was handsome and charming and likable? She should have acknowledged the growing attraction between them and taken better steps to prevent it. “You weren’t listening. I said no sex.”

“It’s okay with me if we start out slow.”

Dear Reader,

Websites of missing persons are filled with images of people who have disappeared, never to be seen again by their loved ones. Way too many of these missing persons are children.

The Truth About Tara grew out of a what-if. As in, what if a woman looked eerily like an age progression photo of a missing child, but didn’t want to know if she’d been abducted? What if she was desperate not to be the face on the milk carton?

Out of those questions, the character of Tara Greer was born. Milk cartons don’t typically depict the photos of the missing anymore, so Jack DiMarco comes to the Eastern Shore of Virginia to check out a tip for his private investigator sister.

I took a research trip to the Eastern Shore to check out the setting for this book. It’s lovely and serene, a peninusla of land surrounded by salt marshes, the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. It makes perfect sense that Tara would love her life there. I hope you enjoy “visiting” the Eastern Shore as much as I did.

So is Tara a missing person? You’ll have to read the book to find out!

Until next time,

Darlene Gardner

P.S. Visit me on the web at www.darlenegardner.com.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

While working as a newspaper sportswriter, Darlene Gardner realized she’d rather make up quotes than rely on an athlete to say something interesting. So she quit her job and concentrated on a fiction career that landed her at Harlequin/Silhouette Books, where she wrote for the Temptation, Duets and Intimate Moments lines before finding a home at Superromance. Please visit Darlene on the web at www.darlenegardner.com.

To my nieces Marlee and Reva

for helping me with the scenes where the

Down Syndrome children appear.

They’re both longtime volunteers at a camp

for children with mental disabilities.

And to the families of the missing.

May the lost be found.

Contents

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

EPILOGUE

EXCERPT

CHAPTER ONE

THAT WHITE PICKUP WAS as conspicuous as the evening sunset over the Chesapeake Bay.

It took its time in coming, too. For the past block, since Tara Greer had crossed the empty street to walk along the sidewalk, the pickup had rolled along at a speed roughly equivalent to her pace.

In ten or fifteen more minutes, children who walked to school from the bordering neighborhood would start appearing. So would the school buses that transported students from the rural areas of the Eastern Shore that fed into the elementary school.

For now, however, Tara was virtually alone.

Tara glanced back over her shoulder, hearing the slow thud of her heartbeat over the rumble of the truck engine. She couldn’t tell much about the driver except that he was male and had thick dark hair. The pickup didn’t have a front license plate, so it wasn’t registered in Virginia.

Even though it was early June, when tourists seeking peace and quiet were starting to show up in the area, something about the pickup seemed off. The Eastern Shore was geographically removed from the rest of Virginia, sandwiched by the Chesapeake and the Atlantic Ocean, seventy miles north to south but only fifteen miles at its widest point. Wawpaney was about three or four miles inland from the bay, a community of a few hundred without even a bed-and-breakfast. Strangers stuck out.

The school was in sight. Tara walked faster down the uneven sidewalk shaded by leafy oak trees and tall pines. It was barely past eight in the morning, but there would be people, safety if the guy tried anything.

The truck drew even with her, slowing down for the space of a few heartbeats before continuing past her. Tara chided herself for being silly. This was Wawpaney, not the mean streets of a big city. The town’s Native American name meant daybreak, the most peaceful time of day. Nothing bad happened here.

No sooner did she have the thought than the driver swung the pickup over to the curb and shut off the ignition. The sigh of relief caught in Tara’s throat.

The man who hopped out of the truck was tall, lean and probably in his early thirties. He looked normal enough, but so did lots of prison inmates.

Through an opening between the trees, the man was momentarily bathed in sunlight that magnified his appearance. He had a square jaw and a nose that was on the long side, a combination that lent him an air of gravity. Or maybe he looked serious because he wasn’t smiling.

If he smiled, he’d be handsome. But if he smiled, she’d be even more freaked out.

She veered off the sidewalk, intending to run to the other side of the street. She gave silent thanks that as a physical education teacher she wore tennis shoes to school.

“Wait! Please!” The man’s voice was low pitched and pleasing to the ear. “I just need to ask you something.”

Tara froze on the dew-damp grass of the swell between the sidewalk and the street, considering once again that she might have overreacted. She drew in a deep breath of bay-scented air, reminding herself it wasn’t like her to be skittish.

The man was walking toward her, getting closer with every step. He wore jeans and a light-colored shirt with the sleeves rolled up, projecting a casual coolness instead of sinister purpose. Probably a tourist who’d lost his way. He got to within a body’s length of her.

“Do you need directions somewhere?” she asked.

“No,” he replied.

She retreated a step closer to the curb, then stopped and squared her shoulders. She wasn’t sure how, but now that she could see the man up close she knew he meant her no harm. Stepping onto the sidewalk, she crossed her arms over her chest. “Then you were following me.”