The Tempted

by Amanda Stevens

  He knows. He’s going to ask me point-blank if Emily is his, and I’m not going to be able to lie…

  “Tess?”

  She turned toward Jared, her hand at her heart. In spite of her trepidation, a secret thrill raced through Tess. She couldn’t deny that she still felt something for Jared Spencer. But there was danger in the temptation he offered her. If she let Jared back into her life, the serpent would be sure to follow.

  He gave her a bemused look. “Why are you staring at me like that?”

  She pushed a lock of hair behind her ear and relaxed. He didn’t know about Emily. He couldn’t. “I’m just surprised to see you, that’s all.”

  He smiled at her, and Tess’s heart began to pound in earnest. She was a grown woman, for goodness’ sake. She shouldn’t be reacting so strongly to a good-looking man.

  But of course, Jared wasn’t just any man. He was her daughter’s father. That alone made him irresistibly sexy.

  Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,

  Welcome again to another action-packed month of exceptional romantic suspense. We are especially pleased to bring you the first of a trilogy of new books from Rebecca York’s 43 LIGHT STREET series. You’ve loved this author and her stories for years…and—you ain’t seen nothin’ yet! The MINE TO KEEP stories kick off this month with The Man from Texas. Danger lurks around every corner for these heroes and heroines, but there’s no threat too great when you have the one you love by your side.

  The EDEN’S CHILDREN miniseries by Amanda Stevens continues with The Tempted. A frantic mother will fight the devil himself to find her little girl, but she’ll have to face a more formidable foe first—the child’s secret father.

  Adrianne Lee contributes a terrific twin tale to the DOUBLE EXPOSURE promotion. Look for His Only Desire and see what happens when a stalker sees double!

  Finally, Harper Allen takes you on a journey of the heart in her powerful two-book miniseries, THE AVENGERS. Guarding Jane Doe is a profound story about a soldier for hire and a woman in desperate need of his services. What they find together is everlasting love the likes of which is rarely—if ever—seen.

  So join us once again for a fantastic reading experience.

  Enjoy!

  Sincerely,

  Denise O’Sullivan

  Associate Senior Editor

  Harlequin Intrigue

  THE TEMPTED

  AMANDA STEVENS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Born and raised in a small, Southern town, Amanda Stevens frequently draws on memories of her birthplace to create atmospheric settings and casts of eccentric characters. She is the author of over twenty-five novels, the recipient of a Career Achievement Award for Romantic/Mystery, and a 1999 RITA finalist in the Gothic/Romantic Suspense category. She now resides in Texas with her husband, teenage twins and her cat, Jesse, who also makes frequent appearances in her books.

  Books by Amanda Stevens

  HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE

  373—STRANGER IN PARADISE

  388—A BABY’S CRY

  397—A MAN OF SECRETS

  430—THE SECOND MRS. MALONE

  453—THE HERO’S SON*

  458—THE BROTHER’S WIFE*

  462—THE LONG-LOST HEIR*

  489—SOMEBODY’S BABY

  511—LOVER, STRANGER

  549—THE LITTLEST WITNESS**

  553—SECRET ADMIRER**

  557—FORBIDDEN LOVER**

  581—THE BODYGUARD’S ASSIGNMENT

  607—NIGHTTIME GUARDIAN

  622—THE INNOCENT†

  626—THE TEMPTED†

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Tess Campbell—Her little girl is missing, and in order to find her, Tess may have to reveal a secret she swore she’d take to her grave.

  Jared Spencer—Six years ago, Tess left town without a backward glance. Now she’s walked back into his life, but before he succumbs to temptation, Jared has to know the truth about that night.

  Royce Spencer—Taught all his life that winning is the only thing that matters, he will do anything to best his older brother, Jared.

  Ariel Spencer—Is she frightened of her husband, or is she a willing accomplice in his dangerous machinations?

  Cressida Spencer—She knows the sort of woman she wants for her son, and Tess Campbell is not the one.

  Melanie Kent—One of the few people who knows Tess’s secret, she paid a huge price six years ago for her involvement with Royce Spencer.

  Willa Banks—A dedicated volunteer or a suspect?

  This book is gratefully dedicated to my editor, Denise O’Sullivan, without whom EDEN’S CHILDREN would not have been possible.

  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

  Chapter Fifteen

  Prologue

  “Mama?” Five-year-old Emily Campbell sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes as she tried to peer through the darkness. Someone was sitting beside her bed.

  “Your mother’s not here. Go back to sleep.”

  “I want my mama.”

  “She’s not here, I said. Now hush.”

  Emily began to cry. “I want to go home. Why can’t I go home?”

  “Because your mother had to go away for a while, so she asked me to look after you. Remember? I told you that.”

  Yes, but Emily still didn’t believe it. Her mama would never go away and leave her for this long. Where was she? Where was Grandma JoJo? Why hadn’t they come for her? A terrifying thought struck Emily. What if something had happened to them?

  “I’m scared,” she whimpered.

  “Why are you scared? You’re not hurt, are you? You’re not sick. I’m taking real good care of you, just like I promised I would. And look at all these pretty dolls…I got them just for you.”

  It was true. Emily hadn’t been hurt. She’d been taken care of, although sometimes she was left alone for long periods of time, locked in this room. And she did have lots of toys to play with. They just weren’t her toys.

  “Can I have Brown Bear?” she asked in a tiny voice.

  A soft, cuddly toy was placed in her arms, but Emily pushed it away. “I want my Brown Bear.”

  A frustrated sigh. “Are we going to have to go through this every night?”

  Emily began to wail. “I want my Brown Bear! I want my mama!”

  “Stop that!”

  A hand touched Emily’s shoulder in the darkness, and she tried to flinch away.

  “I’m not going to hurt you. It’s a picture of your mother. Put it under your pillow and it’ll make you feel all better.”

  The picture was slipped into her hand, but Emily didn’t want it. She didn’t want it anywhere near her. The lady in that photograph wasn’t her mother, no matter how many times she was told differently.

  “Look at your mama. Isn’t she pretty?”

  “That’s not my mama.”

  “Sure it is. It’s just been so long since you saw her, you’ve forgotten what she looks like, that’s all.”

  It had been a long time since Emily had seen her mother. So very long. But she still remembered what her mother looked like. She had long, glorious hair, just like the lady in the fairy tale Emily loved so much, and a smile that made Emily feel all warm inside. The woman in the picture looked nothing like Emily’s mother.

  But she didn’t put up a fuss this time. She took the picture and stuffed it underneath her
pillow without a word because she didn’t want the light to be turned on. In the dark, she could make believe this really was her room, and that her mother was just down the hallway.

  Sniffing back her tears, Emily lay down and curled up beneath the covers, closing her eyes and pretending to fall back asleep. She tried to imagine her mama sitting beside her on the bed, reading to her from the book that had been Emily’s favorite since she was little. “Good night, Mama,” she whispered, so softly no one in the darkness could hear her.

  Chapter One

  Eden, Mississippi

  Tess Campbell sat in the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office and tried very hard not to scream. Her nails dug into her palms as she listened in despair to the explanation of why the search for her five-year-old daughter, who had been missing for almost three weeks, was being scaled back.

  The small office was crowded with law enforcement personnel and others involved in the search, but the only one who seemed capable of making eye contact with Tess at the moment was Naomi Cross, who worked for the Children’s Rescue Network, an organization founded to help parents of missing and exploited children.

  Of all the people in the room, Naomi was the only one who truly understood Tess’s agony because Naomi’s own daughter had vanished ten years ago, the victim of an abduction with bizarre similarities to Emily’s.

  Naomi had been a lifeline to Tess during the days following Emily’s disappearance. She’d provided the kind of emotional support and common-sense advice that only someone who had been through the same kind of hell could offer. But there was nothing Naomi could say or do now to ease Tess’s torment. Her only child was still missing, and the police were giving up. They’d written her off. Emily would now become another statistic.

  Tess’s stomach knotted with tension. Each step of the investigation had brought its own special agony—the terror and panic during the initial, frenzied canvassing of the area around the school when her daughter had first gone missing, the pity Tess had seen in the eyes of the other parents as they’d try to reassure her that Emily would be found, safe and sound.

  The second day had brought another parade of horrors as the ground search had been widened into the countryside. Bloodhounds had been brought in and divers had gone into the lake while Tess had waited helplessly by the phone.

  But, then, the next step had brought renewed hope. Volunteers from all over the state began pouring in to help in the search, and a command center was set up to process incoming and outgoing information. The National Crime Information Center was alerted so that every law enforcement body in the country would have an accurate description of Emily in the event that someone might spot her.

  Then came more waiting. More praying.

  The national registries for missing and exploited children were notified.

  And as the search progressed, a new reality had slowly settled over Tess. The terror and panic of those first few hours, the disbelief and lingering hope of the next several days eventually metastasized into a deep, seeping dread. Emily might not be coming back. Ever.

  Tess had once heard someone on TV, another grieving mother, describe the disappearance of her child as a slow, torturous death. But it was worse than death to Tess because there was no finality, no acceptance. No goodbye. Just a nagging hole inside her heart that grew larger and larger with each passing day.

  And now the next step had arrived. The search and investigation were being cut back.

  “Don’t misunderstand me, Tess,” Sheriff Mooney was saying. “There’s not a man or woman in this department who won’t remain dedicated to finding Emily. But we have to be realistic. The volunteers have families and jobs they have to get back to, and we have other cases. We just don’t have the manpower or the resources to continue an all-out search.”

  Tess closed her eyes, mustering her courage, clinging with every ounce of her strength to the belief that her daughter was still alive. “You can’t give up,” she said hoarsely. “She’s still alive! I know she is. I can feel it.” Her gaze shot to the photographs of Sheriff Mooney’s grandchildren mounted on the wall behind his desk. “What if it was one of them? Would you give up then?”

  The sheriff flinched, as if her words cut a little too close to the quick. “We’re not giving up, Tess. That’s not what I’m saying.”

  “It sure sounds like it to me,” she said bitterly. “What about the FBI?”

  “They’ll continue to advise and offer technical support on the case, just as they have been. That won’t change.”

  “But they won’t be a presence in the investigation, will they? They won’t leave an agent in Eden, because they’re giving up, too.” Tess leaned forward, her fists clenched so tightly her nails cut into her skin. But she welcomed the pain. It kept her focused. It kept her angry, and that was exactly what she needed at the moment.

  She couldn’t afford to give in to her grief, to the bone-chilling terror that had racked her since Emily disappeared from that playground ten years to the day Naomi Cross’s child had gone missing from the same schoolyard.

  No trace of Sadie Cross had ever been found, and the date of the abductions, along with the physical resemblance of the two girls and the similarities in their backgrounds, had prompted the police to theorize that the same kidnapper had taken both children.

  But then two days after Tess’s daughter disappeared, Sara Beth Brodie, one of Emily’s kindergarten classmates, had been abducted from a nearby drugstore. She’d been found safe and sound a few days later, and as it turned out, her kidnapping was unrelated to the other two. But her rescue had buoyed Tess’s hopes just the same. Didn’t the police understand that Sara Beth’s safe return meant that Emily could still be found, too?

  Or were they more convinced than ever that Emily had met the same fate as Sadie Cross? That ten years from now, no trace of Tess’s daughter would have turned up, either?

  But there was a difference in the two cases. A week after Emily’s disappearance, a note had been discovered on the windshield of a vehicle parked in Tess’s driveway. The message, apparently written by a child, read: I come home soon mama.

  Those words tore at Tess’s heart, gave her yet another faint ray of hope to cling to. Emily was still alive. She was still out there somewhere. The police couldn’t stop looking for her now. They couldn’t.

  “What about the note?” She forced herself to speak in a rational tone, even though her mind raged against the terrible images of her daughter, alone and hurt, crying out for her mother. “It has to mean something.”

  Lieutenant Dave Conyers, the lead detective on Emily’s case had been standing across the room staring out the window ever since Tess arrived. He was a tall man, thin, good-looking, with dark hair and piercing blue eyes. He turned now and faced her.

  Like everyone else present, he looked exhausted, haggard and guilt-ridden, his face revealing all too plainly that he wished he were anywhere in the world but here in the same room with Tess. “I told you what the results were from the crime lab. They ran all kinds of tests on the paper, including electrostatic detection. A partial fingerprint was detected under ultraviolet, but when we scanned the print and ran it through the database, we didn’t get a hit. Nor was it Emily’s.”

  Emily had been fingerprinted and issued a photo ID containing all her vital statistics her first year in pre-school. The program had been conducted by Naomi Cross’s group, the Children’s Rescue Network, to aid the police in just such a contingency. Tess had readily agreed to participate in the effort, but she’d never thought she would actually need the card. No parent did.

  “We also had a handwriting expert compare the note with some of Emily’s school papers,” Lieutenant Conyers continued. “But his analysis was inconclusive. I hate like hell to say this, but the note could be a hoax.”

  “No!” Tess said stubbornly. “I don’t believe that. It was from Emily. I know it was.”

  “That’s what you want to believe. That’s what we all want to believe, but the expe
rt couldn’t make that determination. Evidently, printing, especially by a child as young as Emily, is a lot harder to analyze than cursive writing.” He glanced at Tess. “You’re Emily’s mother, and you weren’t so certain at first the note was from her.”

  “I know, but maybe that’s because she had to write it under duress. She was scared. Even an adult’s handwriting would be affected under similar circumstances.”

  “That’s true enough,” Conyers agreed. “But the note itself doesn’t make much sense when you think about it. A message from a kidnapper is usually either a ransom demand or a taunt to the police or to the child’s parents. Why would the kidnapper allow Emily to write such a note, and then risk being caught by delivering it?”

  “I don’t know,” Tess said numbly. “To let me know that she’s alive?”

  No one said anything, but Tess could sense their doubt. And on some level, she knew Lieutenant Conyers was right. The note didn’t make sense. For one thing, it had been placed on the windshield of Naomi Cross’s Jeep Cherokee instead of Tess’s Ford Explorer. Naomi had been to see Tess that day, and her vehicle had been the only one in the driveway because Tess’s was parked in the garage. The SUVs were so similar in color that the initial assumption was that the kidnapper had mistaken Naomi’s vehicle for Tess’s, even though Tess’s was a much older model.

  But maybe that wasn’t the case. Maybe someone had deliberately put the note on Naomi’s car to torment her as well as Tess.

  Could anyone really be that cruel or that sick?

  A day ago, Tess wouldn’t have believed it possible to plunge any deeper into despair. But now that the search for Emily was being scaled down, now that everyone else was going back to their normal lives, she knew what it felt like to be truly alone and helpless. This, the final step, was perhaps the most agonizing of all.

  Something of her anguish must have shown on her face because Sergeant Abby Cross, a detective in the Criminal Investigations Unit and Naomi’s sister, said gently, “I know how all this must sound to you, Tess, but in spite of the setbacks, the search will continue. Calls are still trickling in on the hotline, and we’ll follow them up. We won’t give up on Emily. We won’t forget about her.”