Page 1 of Tell Me Again
CHAPTER ONE
Turning the key in the lock of her back door, Samantha Carlton let out an exhausted sigh. It was nearly midnight, a good six hours after she’d expected to return home, but her relief at ending a day filled with contractor fights, renovation setbacks, and her bleeding checkbook was short-lived.
The house was quiet. Too quiet.
She lived alone except for Frank, her hundred-pound Alaskan malamute whose personality was more lapdog than protector. Frank, who hadn’t been fed dinner or been let out since she’d left around noon for meetings at the summer camp she owned. Frank, who had a habit of chewing table legs, couch cushions, and occasionally walls when left to his own devices for too long. His greetings were always overexuberant bursts of affection when she came home, as if he’d missed her for weeks instead of hours. But there were no telltale claws clipping on the hardwood floors, no pants of breath and happy woofs as he barreled toward her.
The silence did not bode well for a restful night.
Dropping her purse, keys, and fleece jacket on the kitchen table, Sam peeked her head around the doorway of the family room. If Frank was up to no good, she wanted to catch him in the act. Not that he was trainable, but she kept trying.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, the room lit only by a sliver of moonlight coming through the wood shutters of the large window. Frank was sprawled across the couch, his massive paws draped over the side.
Her breath caught, because Frank wasn’t alone.
He glanced up at her, his tail thumping twice before he lowered his head to the jeans-clad thigh of the girl sleeping next to him. Sam felt like she’d been punched in the gut, all the air leaving her lungs in a whoosh. The girl, who couldn’t have been older than thirteen, was a stranger and yet so familiar, from the golden-blond hair fanned over the throw pillow to the slight slope of her nose.
It was like looking at a ghost.
Fingers trembling and her heart pounding against her ribs so hard it hurt, she flipped on the light but stayed in the doorway. She didn’t trust herself to move closer.
The girl opened her eyes, blinked several times, and glanced around like she wasn’t sure where she was. When her eyes fell on Sam, they widened and she sat up straight, digging her fingers into Frank’s soft fur, as if looking for support.
That wasn’t right, Sam thought. That big oaf of a dog was hers. The house was hers. This life was hers. And the girl...
“Who are you?” Sam hated the thready note of desperation in her voice and cleared her throat. “How did you get into my house?”
“I tried to wait for you to get home, but you never came and it got really dark,” the girl answered, her voice small but sure. She looked nervous but determined. “There was a key under the rock next to the front porch. It’s where my dad hides ours, too. I’m Grace.” She swallowed then added on a rush of breath, “I think you’re my mother.”
Another sharp stab of pain. At once Sam was grateful for her years of pretending in front of the cameras. It enabled her to keep her expression neutral when inside she was in total meltdown mode.
She held up a hand before the girl could say any more. “I’m not,” she whispered then clamped her mouth shut when regret sliced across her chest, reopening long-buried wounds.
An emotion somewhere between hurt and anger flashed in Grace’s eyes. Grace. Her name was Grace. Sam’s middle name. As the unconscionable pieces of this puzzle slowly moved into place, the girl lifted Frank’s head off her lap and stood.
“Fine,” she snapped, crossing her arms over her thin chest. “Pretend like you don’t know anything about me. I thought you might like to meet the daughter you gave up, but that was stupid, right? I mean, you didn’t want anything to do with me when I was born. Why would that change now? I’m sorry I tracked you down in the first place.”
She made to move past Sam toward the back door, and Sam forced herself to reach out a hand. “I’m not your mother,” she said again, but the girl shook her off, kept moving, almost running through the kitchen to escape. “I’m pretty sure I’m your aunt.” The words made her heart squeeze. How many years had Sam wished she wasn’t alone in the world?
Grace stopped with her fingers wrapped around the doorknob. “How is that possible?” She glanced over her shoulder then turned and took a step back toward Sam. “I found this picture in one of my dad’s old storage boxes.” She dug in her backpack and then held out a photo with dog-eared edges. “I look exactly like you.”
Not exactly. There was something about Grace, the set of her jaw... the vivid blue of her eyes. “What’s your last name?” Sam forced herself to ask the question even before she looked down into the faded but smiling face of the girl she used to be. Even though her heart already guessed the answer.
“Kincaid,” the girl answered, and this time Sam couldn’t stop the small cry that bubbled up from a well of feelings she’d buried deep in the past. She sucked in a breath and turned on the kitchen lights, dropping the photo onto the counter as if it were laced with acid.
“Have a seat, Grace Kincaid.” She gestured to the old farmhouse table that dominated the breakfast nook. The only two people she’d been able to call hers—her mother and her twin sister—had been lost to her years before they’d actually died. And now to find out Bryce had a daughter... there was no way she was going to let this girl walk away. “We have a lot to catch up on.”
Trevor Kincaid called his daughter’s cell phone for the umpteenth time since he’d received the frantic call from her best friend’s parents thirty minutes ago. Normally sleepovers were off the table. Trevor liked Grace under his roof, where he knew he could look out for her. But Monica Greene had become her best friend since they’d moved to Colorado a year ago, and being with her friends made Grace smile. He’d do just about anything to keep the smile that had become so rare on his daughter’s face.
He’d trusted Grace to do the right thing. Trusted the Greenes to keep her safe. Trevor should have known he was the only person he could depend on when it came to his thirteen-year-old daughter.
His first instinct after being woken up from a fitful sleep minutes before midnight was to rush over to the Greenes’ to try to shake the truth out of Monica. According to her mother, the girl knew where Grace had gone and believed she was safe but wouldn’t divulge any more details, despite repeated threats from her parents.
But he was afraid to leave the house in case Grace showed up there, in case she called the home phone, in case...
He picked up a book from the table behind the sofa and blindly threw it across the room. It crashed against the wall next to a framed photograph taken several years ago. The picture showed Trevor and Grace posed in front of a waterfall, taken on a spring break vacation to Costa Rica. Back when Grace was a tomboy and loved to go on adventures with her dad. Back when Trevor felt like he knew his daughter.
Now—
