Secrets Of A Good Girl

It doesn’t surprise me to hear that Cassidy Maxwell’s landed in London with the job of her dreams, assistant to the U.S. ambassador. Her old friend Eric Barnes would be so proud of her—if only Cassidy hadn’t severed ties with him and with everyone else at Saunders immediately after graduation.

Eric’s been haunted by his memories of Cassidy for years. After all, his childhood friend was set to become so much more until she vanished from his life without a trace. But it might finally be time to discover the secrets of her past and plunge headlong into the promise of the future….

Dear Reader,

Well, we’re getting into the holiday season full tilt, and what better way to begin the celebrations than with some heartwarming reading? Let’s get started with Gina Wilkins’s The Borrowed Ring, next up in her FAMILY FOUND series. A woman trying to track down her family’s most mysterious and intriguing foster son finds him and a whole lot more—such as a job posing as his wife! A Montana Homecoming, by popular author Allison Leigh, brings home a woman who’s spent her life running from her own secrets. But they’re about to be revealed, courtesy of her childhood crush, now the local sheriff.

This month, our class reunion series, MOST LIKELY TO…, brings us Jen Safrey’s Secrets of a Good Girl, in which we learn that the girl most likely to…do everything disappeared right after college. Perhaps her secret crush, a former professor, can have some luck tracking her down overseas? We’re delighted to have bestselling Blaze author Kristin Hardy visit Special Edition in the first of her HOLIDAY HEARTS books. Where There’s Smoke introduces us to the first of the devastating Trask brothers. The featured brother this month is a handsome firefighter in Boston. And speaking of delighted—we are absolutely thrilled to welcome RITA® Award nominee and Red Dress Ink and Intimate Moments star Karen Templeton to Special Edition. Although this is her first Special Edition contribution, it feels as if she’s coming home. Especially with Marriage, Interrupted, in which a pregnant widow meets up once again with the man who got away—her first husband—at her second husband’s funeral. We know you’re going to enjoy this amazing story as much as we did. And we are so happy to welcome brand-new Golden Heart winner Gail Barrett to Special Edition. Where He Belongs, the story of the bad boy who’s come back to town to the girl he’s never been able to forget, is Gail’s first published book.

So enjoy—and remember, next month we continue our celebration….

Gail Chasan

Senior Editor

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Crystal Hubbard who, every time I send up a signal,

swoops in with her superpowers to save the day.

Thanks, kid.

JEN SAFREY

grew up in Valley Stream, New York, and graduated from Boston University in 1993. She is a nearly ten-year veteran of the news copy desk at the Boston Herald. Past and present, she has been a champion baton twirler, an accomplished flutist, an equestrienne, a student of yoga and a belly dancer. Jen would love to hear from readers at jen02106@lycos.com.

Dear Eric,

I wish I could find the strength to face you. I know you’d be so disappointed if you ever learned the truth about me, about what I did. I never meant to hurt you—I care about you more than I ever thought possible.

I can’t bring myself to see you. I only wish I had it in me to come clean, to send this letter to you—but it would only make it harder to walk away.

Somehow you must know that you’re the only man I could ever love…perhaps someday I’ll be able to tell you that.

Yours always,

Cassidy

Contents

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

Prologue

New Jersey, July 1982

It was the kind of hot Saturday that forced suburban families to temporarily abandon cookout plans and take refuge in their air-conditioned bedrooms. On many picnic tables on many lawns, packages of paper plates and bottles of mustard sat unopened on tablecloths unruffled by an absent breeze.

On one lawn, in that thick, still air, Cassidy Maxwell turned cartwheels.

Well, she turned semi-cartwheels. She wasn’t very good at them yet.

When Eric Barnes brought a bowl of his mother’s potato salad to Cassidy’s mother in anticipation of the afternoon cookout, Mrs. Maxwell told him Cassidy had been tumbling in the backyard for two hours, showing some signs of improvement, but no signs of quitting.

Eric, standing on the Maxwells’ back porch, relinquished the cold casserole dish and turned to watch Cassidy. Unaware of her audience, she raised her hands up in the air with her fingers spread and palms turned out like an Olympian. She nodded her head once at nobody. Then she threw the weight of her tiny body forward onto her hands. Her waist-length auburn hair swept the ground. She lifted her legs up last, but they were bent strangely and she crumpled at the end of the tumble, collapsing to the ground on her knees. When she jumped up again, Eric could see her knees were two dark grass stains.

Cassidy turned her head, saw her friend Eric and smiled a smile that was always changing as teeth fell out and grew in. She raised her arms again, and now that she had the attention of her favorite person, her fingers and elbows were a little stiffer and her nod was a little prouder. She hurled herself upside-down again, though not as crookedly, and crashed down again, though not as hard.

Eric shook his head, but waited until she wasn’t looking to do it. Girls were into weird things. He didn’t think falling down all afternoon could be any fun, unless you were maybe playing a good game of touch football or something.

“Want some Kool-Aid, Eric?” Cassidy’s mother asked, returning to the screen door. Eric nodded. “What color?”

Eric was grateful for the question. At his house, there was no Kool-Aid because his mother only bought—yuck—real juice. At the Maxwells’, a kid not only got Kool-Aid but got a choice of colors. “Purple,” he requested.

Mrs. Maxwell disappeared and Cassidy did three more shaky cartwheels before her mother came back to Eric with two glasses. “Give one to Cassidy, will you? I keep telling her to get in here and drink something because it’s too hot for that nonsense, but she won’t listen. You’re the only one she listens to.”

Even though it sounded like Mrs. Maxwell was complaining, Eric felt good. “Okay,” he said. He took both glasses.

“Cassidy saw another little girl doing cartwheels at the playground this morning when we were on the way to the supermarket,” Mrs. Maxwell explained. “Now she’s dead set on being able to do them herself, as soon as possible. I don’t know whether that kind of ambition is healthy or what.”

Eric had a feeling Mrs. Maxwell was talking more to herself than him, mostly because he didn’t get what she was talking about, but he kept standing there anyway because it would be rude to leave, and you weren’t rude to anyone’s mother.

She gazed over his head at her daughter. “Seven years old,” she continued, “and already she never does anything halfway. God knows what her father and I are in for when she gets older. Oh, sorry, Eric. I’m just babbling. The heat’s frying my brain. Go on.”

Eric followed a path of slate-blue stones to the yard. Cassidy picked herself up from where she’d just landed and bounded over to him, smiling, smiling. She hugged him around the waist, squeezing.

“Look out,” Eric said, “or I’ll spill. Drink this.”

She took a glass and drained the whole thing in one swallow. When she smiled again, her lips and few front teeth were the color of violets.

“I’ll be back later,” Eric said. “I told Sam and Brian I’d play with them before lunch.”

Cassidy’s face fell.

“I’m coming over for lunch,” Eric reminded her. “Me and my mom and dad.”

Cassidy nodded, but slowly, and her shoulders began to droop. Eric could feel her disappointment. She didn’t need to say it. But then, Cassidy never said much, to him or to anyone. Her mother had said she’d grow out of it. Eric hoped so. He’d rather hear her call him a big poopy-head for going off to play without her than to see her look so sad.

“They’re bigger,” he tried to explain. “I have to play with my other friends sometimes or else when I get to seventh grade next year, I’ll have no one to hang around with. You know what I mean?”

Cassidy just stood there, holding her empty glass.

“You wouldn’t like anything we do anyway. What you’re doing now is more fun. Keep practicing, and show me when I come back.”

Seemingly satisfied, Cassidy placed her glass carefully on the ground, pressing it into the dirt so it wouldn’t knock over. Then she ran and leaped into another cartwheel, her worst one yet. She landed on her butt and laughed. Eric laughed, too.

A short time later Eric learned that a bunch of Sam’s younger cousins were visiting, and when they began to organize a mega-hide-and-seek, Eric came back for Cassidy. Her mother waved as they hurried two houses up the street, hand in hand.

Eric would never admit it to his friends, but being with Cassidy was fun. Neither had brothers or sisters, and the summer before, when the Maxwells moved in, their parents had gotten together and instructed their kids to play. Mrs. Maxwell had seemed surprised at how well Eric coaxed shy, serious Cassidy out from her shell, and Eric was kind of surprised himself. Now, he often pretended Cassidy was his younger sister, and he reveled in the way she worshipfully tailed him everywhere he went. It was disloyal, but sometimes hanging out with his “real” friends was too much work—the way he had to act like them, wear the same kinds of clothes, make the same kinds of jokes and be careful not to say or to do anything uncool. He was usually successful, but popularity was difficult. Playing with easily impressed Cassidy was less work, and more fun.

Though he’d never admit it to anyone but Cassidy herself. If the guys asked, he was babysitting. Under duress.

The hide-and-seek game was fast and frenetic, despite the worsening heat of the afternoon. Rules were disputed, elbows were scraped, feelings were trampled upon. When mothers began to shout their lunchtime calls, the game was enthusiastically abandoned.

As the last few children scrambled their way from Sam’s yard, and Sam’s mother began to set their picnic table, Eric turned in a slow circle, searching for Cassidy.

“She’s still hiding,” he said under his breath. “She’s still hiding,” he said, louder. “Cassidy! Cassidy!”

“She must have already run home,” Sam’s mother said, opening hot dog buns.

“No,” Eric said, shaking his head. The game hadn’t officially ended. Cassidy hadn’t been found by the “It” person. And Eric knew Cassidy. He knew she’d stay right where she was until she was found. She’d stay until it was Christmas and it snowed on her head.

“Cassidy!” he called again. “Come on out! Game’s over! Time for lunch!”

No flash of red-brown hair. No breeze rustling the dandelions in the grass. Nothing.

Big-brother concern filled Eric as he continued the game, alone. He peeked around trees, looked in between the house’s corners. “Cassidy! Olly, olly, oxen free! That means come out!”

“She’s still hiding?” Sam asked around a mouth of potato chips. “What a dummy.”

“Shut up,” Eric said. He wandered into the garage, where a car underneath a huge canvas cover was parked among the clutter. Eric kicked and shoved rakes and tool-boxes. Then he looked at the car. He peeled back a corner of the cover. “Cassidy?” He pulled it all the way back to reveal a red sports car. In the back of his head, he knew it would be cool and grown-up to admire the car, but he was concentrating on the lump in the back seat.

The car windows were open, and she must have clambered in through one. Now she was balled up in the corner with her little hands covering her face. Eric opened the back door and slid in next to her. She dropped her hands and looked at him.

There was only a sliver of light coming into the garage from a narrow window near the ceiling, but it was enough to glimmer off the wetness spilling from her eyes onto her cheeks.

“You thought I forgot about you?” Eric asked.

Cassidy nodded mutely.

“See, I didn’t, did I?”

Cassidy snuffled. She wiped her nose with her bare, dirty forearm.

“If you want to be found, you have to not hide so good. You’re the best hider of everyone. I looked all over.”

Cassidy allowed a crack of a smile.

Eric wondered, What would a big brother do?

He grabbed her and tickled her. Cassidy laughed and kicked. He put an arm around her waist and pulled her from the car. He walked them back to her yard, dangling first her head, then her legs, then her head again. Cassidy squirmed and laughed more.

“There you are,” Mrs. Maxwell said. “Cassidy, say hi to Mr. and Mrs. Barnes.”

Cassidy, still upside-down under Eric’s arm, grinned at his parents and they smiled back. “Eric, be careful,” his mother said. “Don’t drop her.”

“Maybe I will,” Eric said, shifting his weight to give Cassidy a dropping feeling. She shrieked with happiness.

“Don’t worry,” Mrs. Maxwell said to his mother. “She’s fallen on her head about fifty-eight times today already.”

Eric set Cassidy down, right side up, on the grass. “From now on,” he said quietly, so only she could hear, “remember that even if it takes a long time, all you have to do is wait. I’ll figure out where you are and I’ll always come to get you.”

Cassidy tugged on his hands until he brought his face near hers. Then she bumped her forehead onto his, once, twice.

Then she leaped away from him, launched herself into the air and turned a perfect cartwheel, her toes pointing straight up to the sky.

Chapter One

October 2005

One of the strangest things about flying, Eric thought as he sipped his complimentary orange juice and stared out the tiny window, was that the sky seemed just as far away as when you were standing on the ground. Clouds were closer, but the blue sky itself still too far away to touch.

Like Cassidy.

He wasn’t used to thinking poetically about anything, really. He’d been like that once. He’d been a young man with his head in the sky, dreaming of his certain romantic future with an auburn-haired woman who’d been destined to be with him as long as he could remember. But when that woman disappeared, that young man then faded away into this older man, an economics expert who thought concretely, who dealt with numbers and facts.

Only a man who’d lost his heart could understand the true concept of risk.

Eric leaned his head back in the uncomfortable coach seat and sighed for the millionth time since takeoff an hour ago. He should have had something stronger than orange juice. Anything to keep him from his own thoughts for the seven hours between Boston and London.

“Are you going to London on business?” he heard a woman ask, and in the split second before he turned his head to the left, he thought, I can’t have a casual chat with someone now. I just can’t. But the person next to him was a snoozing elderly man.

Eric heard a muffled male response and realized the question came from a woman in the seat behind him. “It’s quite a long flight, and I hoped you wouldn’t mind talking awhile,” she said.

The man said yes in a tone that told Eric the woman was attractive and the man was surprised she’d chosen him to converse with. Eric sighed again. The last thing he felt like doing was listening to a cheery get-to-know-you chat.

On the other hand, he’d already seen the in-flight movie a few months ago, and it hadn’t been that great. Maybe eavesdropping would pass the time, help him get away from the musty history museum of his own mind and the full-color portrait of Cassidy Maxwell that was on permanent exhibit there.

“So, are you headed to London on business?” the woman repeated.

Her voice carried over the plane’s engines better than the man’s did, and when Eric didn’t hear his response, he filled in the blank with his own mental answer. Yes, I am, he said silently. I’m going to London on business. Unfinished business.

“A woman, eh?” Eric heard, and gave a start, wondering if she was a mind reader.

“I’m a psychologist,” the woman said to her seat-mate. “I can tell when a man’s crossing an ocean for a woman. Is she your wife or your girlfriend?”

Neither, Eric answered in his head. He sipped his juice.

“Was she your wife or your girlfriend?”

Neither, Eric repeated silently. Cassidy had never been his girlfriend. She was supposed to be, because they’d planned it that way. For years at Saunders University, they’d whispered their plans. Cassidy’s face had shone with anticipation and, every time, he’d felt his own face heating up to match. It was all figured out. Right after her graduation. It was the moment he lived for, drew breath for, waited for…for four long years.

The moment that never came.

“Tell me her name,” the psychologist urged. “Just her first name.”

“Cassidy,” Eric said and, realizing he’d said it out loud, glanced at his neighbor. The man rasped out a snore.

“How long have you known her?”

I met her when she was six and I was eleven.

“And now you’re…?”

Thirty-five. But, he said, and the words were hard to say, even just mentally, I don’t know her anymore.

Cassidy never showed up to her graduation ceremony. Eric never again saw the only girl he’d ever loved. Something had happened. Something to make her run from him and the future they’d planned. Whatever that something was, it was something she never bothered to tell him.

She disappeared ten years ago, he said in his head to the doctor, but I stopped knowing her before that. I just didn’t realize I’d stopped knowing her until she was gone, and then there was nothing I could do.

The doctor nodded in understanding. At least, in Eric’s mind she did. Surprising himself with his candor, he continued his story. She was like my little sister, tagging around after me all the time. When I went off to college in Massachusetts, to Saunders University, I left all my friends in New Jersey. She was just in junior high, just another friend I was leaving behind. She started writing me these letters. The letters were…see, Cassidy never talked much. We hardly ever even talked on the phone the whole time I knew her. She was quiet. Her face did all her talking.

The doctor nodded again, scratching on a pad in Eric’s imagination.

But these letters— Cassidy was smarter than her age, funny, insightful. I read these letters over and over and saw how she was growing up into someone who… I dated plenty of women in college. But what they had to say could never compare to anything Cassidy wrote me.

The plane shuddered, the kind of shake that would rattle a nervous flyer but caused a veteran traveler like Eric to pick up a napkin in case he spilled his drink.

“Did that scare you?” Eric heard the doctor ask.

Sure, it scared me. She was a kid. I was an adult. Finally, I made an effort to distance myself from her. I answered her letters less frequently. I’m sure she noticed, but when I was a senior, she invited me home anyway for her Sweet Sixteen party.

“I see,” the doctor said. She was quite good at her job, Eric thought. She must be expensive. Good thing she wouldn’t be charging him.

I was going to blow off the party, stay at school, but her mother called me and asked me to please come, because it would mean so much to Cassidy. I had a feeling Cassidy had told her mother I was giving her the cold shoulder, and I felt very guilty about it because our parents were close, so I said okay. And I went. And…

“Yes?” the doctor asked behind him. Eric closed his eyes.

Cassidy had opened the door for him that evening. The room behind her was colorful and noisy, filled with friends and fun. She was wearing a tight black shirt and fitted black pants. Eric had glanced over her shoulder, searching for her, before he realized he was looking right at her. Her hair shone around her head and shoulders. He’d never seen her wear black before. He’d never seen her wear makeup before, either, not properly. He’d never seen the delicate skin at her collarbone, sprinkled with freckles, and wondered if the skin below it had the same freckles. She’d stared into his eyes then, and he knew that she knew what she’d become, and what she could do to him.

And later, a few hours later, she’d pulled him into the hall, away from her high school friends, and leaned in, and…

I’m sorry, Doctor, Eric said silently, opening his eyes. There are exactly three moments in my past that I never allow myself to remember. I remember they happened, but I can’t put myself back there again because I can’t live with that intense pain. This is the first of those three moments.

“It’s all right,” the doctor said.

Eric had fled that night, before the party had even ended. Fled straight to the train station, headed back to Saunders, and tried for the rest of that year to forget Cassidy Maxwell.

“Could you?” the doctor asked.

No, I couldn’t.

The next year, Cassidy arrived with her suitcases at Saunders, having just graduated as valedictorian, and signed up as a political science major. Just like Eric. He was now a Saunders grad, but he had an impossible time tearing himself away from the campus now that it had suddenly become more beautiful. He was making political contacts and headway, but found himself visiting Saunders often, dropping in on Professor Gilbert Harrison many times to talk. He didn’t recall what he’d said to tip the professor off, but one day Gilbert tipped him off about an assistant teaching position in the polisci department, and a couple of days later, Eric was standing in front of a lecture hall with Cassidy in the front row.

“That must have been hard,” the doctor said with sympathy.

It was hard, all right. He had been hard, watching Cassidy every day. Cassidy, who’d never verbally strung two sentences together in all the years Eric had known her, would raise her hand and wax brilliantly about any political topic, would debate any controversy with moxie. Young men and women alike were taken with her, and wanted to study with her, have dinner with her, be her friend or more.

But Cassidy’s biggest smiles were reserved for the person she’d been giving them to since she was a child. Eric could read those smiles as well as he always could. She wanted him. She knew he wanted her.

“Then what?” the doctor asked.

Cassidy respected the distance her old friend put between them. Even when that semester ended, he was still a faculty member, and both understood—without speaking to each other about it—that the teacher-student relationship had to be kept that way. But Eric had to be near her, had to be with her. They met off campus many times, and during those times, Cassidy reverted to her wordless ways. They brushed hands in a jazz club. He breathed in the scent of her neck as he pulled out her chair at a coffeehouse. Finally he found himself at four in the morning, sitting with Cassidy under the huge oak on the quad, the entire campus asleep around them.