The Truth About Tara. Darlene Gardner

      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.

      The Truth About Tara

      Darlene Gardner

       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