Tell Me Again Read online

  ALSO BY MICHELLE MAJOR

  Still the One

  Her Accidental Engagement

  A Brevia Beginning

  A Kiss on Crimson Ranch

  A Second Chance at Crimson Ranch

  The Taming of Delany Fortune (The Fortunes of Texas: Cowboy Country)

  Kissing Mr. Right

  Recipe for Kisses

  A Baby and a Betrothal

  Fortune’s Special Delivery (The Fortunes of Texas: All Fortune’s Children)

  Always the Best Man

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2016 Michelle Major

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake Romance are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503939400

  ISBN-10: 1503939405

  Cover design by Damonza

  To my mom. For everything.

  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

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  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—

  His phone rang and he grabbed it off the counter, recognizing the Denver area code but not the phone number.

  He hit the Accept button without hesitating. “Grace, baby, is that you?”

  There was a heavy pause on the other end of the line. After a moment a voice whispered, “How could you do this to me, Trevor?” He hadn’t heard that voice, warm and honeyed in its tone, in years. Yet it remained as familiar as his own heartbeat.

  He rocked back on his feet, stumbled against the arm of the sofa like he’d been hit with a bolt of electricity. His mouth went dry, his gut tight, but he forced himself to swallow. “Is she with you, Sam? Is she ok?”

  “She’s tired and emotionally wrung out.” Hearing an angry sigh, he could see Sam’s full lips part in his mind, feel the weight of her breath. “And pissed as hell. Grace and I have that in common.”

  No. His daughter and Sam Carlton had nothing in common. He’d spent the past thirteen years ensuring the poison that had touched the Carlton women couldn’t hurt his daughter. Couldn’t infiltrate its way back into his life. He held on to the belief that he’d done the right thing. The only thing.

  “You have no claim on her.” He made his voice remote, despite the emotions pummeling him from every side. “She isn’t yours—”

  “Don’t you dare,” she said on a hiss of breath, “say that to me. She’s my twin sister’s daughter. She looks just like Bryce. Like me.”

  “No!” He shouted the denial, his control breaking for an instant before he reined it back again. “She’s nothing like Bryce. Grace is a Kincaid and I won’t apologize for the choices I made to protect her.” Before he could stop it, a deeper truth than he wanted to admit slipped out on a ragged breath. “She’s all I have.”

  “I’ll text you my address.” Another pause. “She’s safe here.”

  “Thank you.”

  “This isn’t over, Trevor,” she said softly. “Not by a long shot.” Then the line went dead.

  He squeezed the cell phone with white knuckles as the screen lit up a few seconds later. He recognized the general vicinity of the address—a street in the heart of the popular Washington Park neighborhood near central Denver. It was a forty-five-minute drive from his home off I-70 deep in the foothills. He didn’t even want to think about how Grace had gotten there.

  He didn’t want to think about anything but bringing her home.

  That was difficult in the quiet of the April night, as he followed the red taillights of the few cars out on the highway. A spring storm had hit the Front Range earlier in the week, dumping over ten inches of wet, icy snow in the city and more in the foothills. While the roads were clear, deep banks still lined the shoulder as he merged onto the interstate.

  Despite his best efforts, Trevor had never been able to erase Sam Carlton from his mind. When she’d first left their hometown east of Tulsa, it had been because she’d skyrocketed to the top of the modeling world, gracing magazine covers, fashion spreads, and perfume ads on the shelves in every grocery store he entered. But it wasn’t those images that stayed with him as time passed.

  His memories of Sam as a teenage girl—the first girl he’d loved—had become a lodestone around his neck, drawing him back to a time when he’d believed her to be the answer to all his adolescent prayers. But she’d left and never looked back. A part of him understood why, but that hadn’t stopped his heart from breaking. A heart he’d walled off and only opened enough to let in the innocent light that was his daughter.

  Grace knew her mother had died when she was a baby, and he’d tried to make sure she never had a reason to feel that maternal loss. His grandmother had been a huge part of both their lives until she’d died two years ago. His parents were gone, and he hadn’t expected Grace to find Sam because he’d done his best to erase all traces of the Carlton girls from his life. If only it were that simple to erase her from his heart.

  He pulled up to the three-story Victorian brick house an hour later, took a deep breath, and told himself that Sam no longer had a hold on him. Too much time had passed. His pain had coalesced into a righteous anger that he’d shaped and molded until it was a part of him.

  Sam opened the back door just as he lifted his hand to knock, and his body had trouble holding on to that anger. Something came to life inside him as he recognized her scent and the beauty that was still a shock in person. The shapeless sweatshirt and baggy jeans streaked with mud couldn’t hide the spectacular Amazon queen underneath. With her impossibly long legs and luscious curves it was difficult to believe she was real and not an artist’s creation of the perfect woman.

  Her mane of honey-colored hair was pulled back in a messy bun, but he knew how it would look draped over her shoulders, thick and silken. She wore no makeup, her navy blue eyes clear, and the porch light softening her high cheekbones. The longer he stared at her the less she looked like the former supermodel of a million male fantasies and more like the girl he’d known. The girl he’d wanted to care for and protect like she belonged to him.

  Despite his anger, the pain and vulnerability that flashed in her gaze before she hid it was like a kick to his gut. A part of him, the part that had an emotional death wish, wanted to envelop her in his arms and hold her safe, just like he wanted to do for Grace.

  But Trevor wasn’t her safe place. He wasn’t . . . anything.

  She folded her arms over her chest and pinned him with that angry blue gaze.

  “Where is she?” he asked, moving into the kitchen when she stepped away from the door.

  “Asleep in the front room, which is why I had you come to the back. We need to straighten some things out before she wakes up.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “Nothing that supports the pack of lies she’s been fed by you.”

  “I never lied to her.” He spoke with confidence but found his gaze sliding away from her. “Not outright.”

  “You let her believe she had no family on her mother’s side.”

  “Her mother.” He spat out those two words with a bitter laugh. “Should I have broken her heart with the knowledge that her mother stayed straight only long enough to give birth to her? She dumped Grace with me as soon as the hospital released her, signed over custody the very next morning.”

  Sam held up a hand, as if unwilling, even years later, to hear the truth of the kind of person her twin had been. “I would never have abandoned her that way.”

  He arched a brow in response.

  “Screw you,” she whispered.

  He stalked toward her so fast she didn’t have time to back away. “We both know I wasn’t good enough for you. Your sister was the one willing to stoop to my level. It’s how we got in this mess in the first place.”

  The words were meant to make her mad, and by the way her eyes flared he could tell they hit their mark. Good. Anger h
e could take, but the wounded vulnerability that had lit her gaze a moment earlier was too much.

  He was the one who’d ended up hurt, abandoned, and tossed aside, then left to pick up the pieces. He’d survived, cobbling together a life for the daughter now hidden from him in this house.

  And, for Trevor, Grace was all that mattered.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It would have helped if Trevor had gotten fat or gone bald in the years since she’d seen him. Maybe. She wanted to believe her reaction to him, the hot prick of awareness over her skin and the dip and sway of her stomach, was a reaction to the pure physicality of the man before her.

  Trevor had been a boy the last time she’d seen him, all long limbs and innocent good looks. The man standing in front of her was big and broad, with wide shoulders and skin bronzed from the sun. His blond hair had darkened over the years and was cropped short. Rough stubble covered his jaw, softening the angles of his face but not the animosity in his gaze.

  Yes, that was what she needed to focus on. The way he looked at her as if she were evil incarnate come to tempt and terrify his daughter. The niece she never knew. She breathed in the charged air between them and let indignation expand her lungs.

  “How dare you say that to me,” she said. “What would you have had me do, Trevor? Stay in Colby, Oklahoma, to be swallowed by the same demons that killed Bryce?”

  “That wouldn’t have happened, Sam. You were stronger than her.”

  Oh, how Sam wished she believed those words. She knew the demons could find her anywhere. But Trevor . . . “Why would you hide Grace from me?”

  He ran a hand through his hair, looking away as if he couldn’t stand the sight of her. “Bryce made me promise,” he said quietly.

  The impact of his words made Sam wince. “She would never . . .” she began, then stopped. Of course it had been Bryce’s idea. Her sister had never forgiven Sam for leaving and breaking their bond. Even though it had been Bryce’s choice to stay in the small town that threatened to suffocate them both. The town that had eventually closed its insidious grasp around her.