4ec0-9abb-5f36-b061-c24eff4264f1">
WHEN A MOTHER’S LOVE MEETS A FATHER’S INSTINCT…
Ex-marine Adam Dalton once dreamed of a life with Hadley O’Sullivan, but war and a near-fatal injury cost him dearly. Now he returns to Dallas to discover the unthinkable—Hadley is the prime suspect in the disappearance of her twin baby girls…the daughters he never knew he had.
Beyond Hadley’s terror of having her children kidnapped is the shock of seeing Adam. Yes, she had kept him from his daughters, but now, when he insists they work together as a united front, she knows she is still in love with him. Despite their past, finding their children is their only hope to finally becoming a family—if time doesn’t run out first.
“Lila and Lacy are your daughters. I conceived before you shipped out.”
Adam heard the words, but it took all his powers of concentration to make them sink in. “Are you sure?”
“I’m positive. They couldn’t be anyone else’s. I hadn’t slept with anyone but you for over eighteen months before I conceived. I haven’t been with another man since you.”
“But the marriage…?”
“Was a sham.” She made a statement of his question. “It was never consummated.”
All the months he’d lain in that hospital, agonizing over her making love to another man, all the long nights when he’d survived on bitterness that she could forget him so easily.
Had she been clinging to the love they’d shared, resenting him, feeling betrayed as he had? But he could have never married someone else.
“Why didn’t you tell me I was going to be a father? Why didn’t you give me a chance to do right by you?”
Trumped Up Charges
Joanna Wayne
JOANNA WAYNE was born and raised in Shreveport, Louisiana, and received her undergraduate and graduate degrees from LSU Shreveport. She moved to New Orleans in 1984, and it was there that she attended her first writing class and joined her first professional writing organization. Her debut novel, Deep in the Bayou, was published in 1994.
Now, dozens of published books later, Joanna has made a name for herself as being on the cutting edge of romantic suspense in both series and single-title novels. She has been on the Waldenbooks bestseller list for romance and has won many industry awards. She is also a popular speaker at writing organizations and local community functions and has taught creative writing at the University of New Orleans Metropolitan College.
Joanna currently resides in a small community forty miles north of Houston, Texas, with her husband. Though she still has many family and emotional ties to Louisiana, she loves living in the Lone Star State. You may write Joanna at P.O. Box 852, Montgomery, Texas 77356.
Hadley O’Sullivan—When her twin daughters go missing, her secrets might be her worst enemy.
Adam Dalton—Hadley’s former fiancé, who shows up at her door when her girls go missing.
Lacy and Lila O’Sullivan—Hadley’s precocious twins.
RJ Dalton—Adam’s father and the owner of Dry Gulch Ranch.
Matilda Bastion—Hadley’s mother’s longtime housekeeper.
Quinton Larson—Matilda’s brother.
Alana and Sam Bastion—Matilda’s sixteen-year-old daughter and eighteen-year-old son.
Kala—An accomplice in the kidnapping.
Janice O’Sullivan—Hadley’s mother.
Detective Shelton Lane—The head detective on the kidnapping case.
Fred Casey—Professional hostage negotiator.
Durk and Meghan Lambert—RJ’s neighbors.
To my good friends Jean and John, who shared a wonderful week at the beach with my patient husband and me and put up with my preoccupation with writing this book.
Contents
