Save Me, page 1
Praise for New York Times bestselling author Sharon Sala
“In short, this is the perfect entertainment for those looking for a suspense novel with emotional intensity.”
—Publishers Weekly on Out of the Dark
“Sala’s spellbinding narrative follows the reunited Denver couple as they repair their marriage and try to understand what happened to Frankie. Through vague flashes and unsettling nightmares, Frankie slowly begins to remember the missing years and a powerful man from her childhood who is intent, even now, on possessing her at any cost. Veteran romance writer Sala lives up to her reputation with this well-crafted thriller.”
—Publishers Weekly on Remember Me
“Romantic suspense queen Sala (Blood Trails) launches a series with this enticing and exciting contemporary.... Skillfully balancing suspense and romance, Sala gives readers a nonstop breath-holding adventure.”
——Publishers Weekly on Going Once
“No one writes small-town communities better than Ms. Sala. The plot is so well crafted that it gets its teeth into you and doesn’t let go until the happily ever after. An absolute winner that I thoroughly enjoyed.”
—The Good, the Bad and the Unread on Last Rites
“Emotionally wrenching, sensually appealing, edgy and suspenseful, and hopeful and endearing.”
—USA TODAY on Going Gone
“Vivid, gripping... This thriller keeps the pages turning.”
—Library Journal on Torn Apart
Dear Reader,
Part of the delight I take in participating in the Harlequin 75th Anniversary program is sharing my story Save Me with you, but it is also an honor to have been asked to participate.
My writing journey with Harlequin began over thirty-two years ago, and it has been a long and vital part of my career. All of the wonderful editors I got to work with. All of the stories I was allowed to tell. And the readers, like you, some who have been reading me from the beginning of my career, have been a vital part of that world.
I will be celebrating long-distance with everyone at Harlequin on their very special day. I shall lift a glass to the past seventy-five years with thanks and to the excitement of the next seventy-five story-filled years to come.
With so much appreciation,
Sharon Sala
Save Me
New York Times Bestselling Author
Sharon Sala
Free Story by
K.D. Richards
Table of Contents
Save Me by Sharon Sala
Silenced Witness by K.D. Richards
Excerpt from Rancher’s Law by Diana Palmer
Save Me
Sharon Sala
New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Sharon Sala has 135+ books in print, published in six different genres—romance, young adult, Western, general fiction, women’s fiction and nonfiction. She was first published in 1991, and her industry awards include the Janet Dailey Award, five Career Achievement Awards, five National Readers’ Choice Awards, five Colorado Romance Writers’ Awards of Excellence, the Heart of Excellence Award, the Booksellers’ Best Award, the Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award and the Centennial Award in recognition of her one hundredth published novel. She lives in Oklahoma, the state where she was born. Visit her at sharonsalaauthor.com and Facebook.com/sharonsala.
Also by Sharon Sala
Harlequin Intrigue
Save Me
Visit her Author Profile page at Harlequin.com.
Heroes are everywhere.
Love never dies.
I dedicate this book to the brave ones, who keep putting one step in front of another, even though their lives have been shattered, and their hearts have been broken by the actions of others.
Life isn’t fair.
But it’s ours to live for as long as we exist.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
A Q&A with Sharon Sala
Chapter One
July 2011
New Orleans, Louisiana
It was the rain.
It rained a lot in Louisiana at this time of year, but tonight it was nothing short of a deluge—so loud on the roof that it muted the sound of Hunter Gray’s boots as he paced in his room.
He would look back to this evening as the night angels cried, but there was no warning of what was already in motion. For him, it was a night like any other night in his eighteen years of living.
His dad worked on the docks, and always came home from work drunk.
His mother was drawing unemployment, and was already into her third beer of the evening.
Hunt was in his room, thinking about his girl, Lainie Mayes. He lived for the times they were together. They’d had a plan during the entire senior year of high school. All they were waiting for was for her to turn eighteen.
Hunt had a full-ride scholarship to play football at Tulane University, and Lainie would be following in her mother’s footsteps at the same university, pledging her mother’s sorority. As a legacy pledge, she was a shoo-in.
But Hunt and Lainie lived in two different worlds.
Her father didn’t come home drunk. He was a very well-to-do stockbroker. Her mother wore high heels to the supermarket, and had a housekeeper named Millie, who kept order in their world.
Hunt and Lainie were at opposite ends of the socioeconomic scale, but their real burden was the hate their fathers held for each other.
* * *
WHEN CHUCK GRAY and Greg Mayes were thirteen years old, Chuck’s mother married Greg’s father. The boys’ dislike for each other happened at first sight, and being forced to live under the same roof only made it worse. It carried through every aspect of their teenage years, until Chuck’s mother died right after he graduated high school.
Chuck wound up on the street, and Greg was on his way to college, with all the trimmings. Chuck was bitter and homeless, which only added to the hate and resentment between them, until years later, when fate dealt them another low blow. Their children fell in love with each other, and the war between them began anew.
* * *
THE CRACK OF a dish hitting the wall stopped Hunt in his tracks. He shoved his hands through his hair, and dropped down onto the side of his bed, listening to the beginnings of another fight. Curses were flying. More dishes were breaking.
He waited in silence as sweat ran from his hair, beaded across his upper lip and ran in rivulets down the jut of his jaw. He often wondered how he’d even been born into this family. He didn’t look like them, which had been another bone of contention between his parents, to the point of Chuck claiming in one drunken rage that his wife had been unfaithful.
That’s when Brenda pulled out an old family photo of her Cajun grandfather, Antoine Beaujean, and shoved it in her husband’s face.
“Look! This is Papa ’toine, and it’s like looking at Hunter’s face. Our son is just a throwback, and you’re a jackass,” Brenda said, and helped herself to another beer.
After that, the olive cast of Hunt’s skin, his black brows and high cheekbones, the same piercing gaze as the man from the photo, and the distinctive Roman nose, were no longer an issue for Chuck. But Chuck and Brenda were a big issue for Hunt, and 50 percent of the conflict in which he and Lainie were caught.
Tonight, the windows were shut because of the rain, but since their air-conditioning hadn’t worked for months, his shirt was sticking to his body. Finally, he got up and went out onto the back porch. Rain was blowing in under the overhang, but he didn’t care. His clothes were already wet with sweat, and it felt cool on his skin.
He wanted to call Lainie. He just needed to hear her voice, but it was dinnertime at the Mayes house, and nobody was allowed to take their phones to the table. So, he stood in the rain, while the war inside the house waged on without him.
* * *
LAINIE MAYES WAS the epitome of southern charm. Well-groomed, well-dressed, always polite, born blessed with a beautiful oval-shaped face, long auburn hair that lay in waves, eyes as green as her daddy’s money and what Hunt referred to as kissable lips. The top of her head fit exactly beneath the curve of his chin. He was the last piece of her puzzle. That one missing bit that made her whole.
Tonight, she was sitting at the dinner table, quietly and politely awaiting the first course, and listening to her parents, Greg and Tina’s “oh so proper” conversation, but she could tell they didn’t love each other anymore.
She often wondered if they ever had. Mama had just been a sorority girl at Tulane University who scored a rich man’s son. A classic match straight out of the Old South.
But Lainie’s defiant stance regarding Hunter Gray infuriated them. No matter what, she refused to knuckle under to their demands. She and Hunt saw each other and dated each other, and tried to let their fathers’ war roll over their heads. The fact that she and Hunt were now going to be attending the same university made Greg angry, and Tina fret.
On a good day, they offered her bribes to quit him.
On a bad day, they threatened to disinherit her.
But Lainie held a hand they didn’t know about, and one they
In two days, she would turn eighteen, the legal age for marriage without parental consent in Louisiana, and they would already be at college before she began to show. It would afford them the distance they needed to escape the lifelong hate of their fathers’ feud.
He had his scholarship, and she had the trust fund her grandmother Sarah Mayes left her, which would be hers when she turned eighteen. They’d have each other and the rest of their lives.
When she first suspected she was pregnant, she panicked, and put off telling Hunt, because she was afraid of the consequences it would cause in both families. Then a couple of weeks ago she’d begun spotting, and thought she’d lost the baby. But after the spotting stopped, and she missed her third period, she bought another pregnancy test and used it. The baby was still there! She was happy, but time had crept up on her, and Hunt needed to know.
They’d planned to meet tonight, and then the storm came through. So, then her plan was to call him after dinner, but her phone was upstairs in her room. So here she sat, listening to the rain drowning out the drone of her parents’ voices, and speaking only when spoken to, until dinner was over. At that point, she laid down her napkin and looked up from her plate.
“Thank you for dinner. I’m going to my room,” she said, and stood up without waiting to be excused, and left the table.
The moment she closed the door behind her, she went to get her phone. She always tucked it beneath the chocolate brown teddy bear Hunt had given her on Valentine’s Day, but when she thrust her hand beneath the bear, the phone was gone.
Frowning, she began looking around the room, trying to remember if she’d moved it, when the door to her room flew open. Her mother was standing in the doorway with a look on her face Lainie had never seen before, and she was holding Lainie’s phone.
“Are you looking for this?” Tina asked.
Lainie frowned. “Yes. What are you doing with my phone?”
“Making sure you don’t inform that bastard of a boyfriend that you’re pregnant!” Tina said.
Lainie froze. How did she...?
Tina’s voice began to rise. “I found the box of a pregnancy test kit. Would you like to prove to me you’re not pregnant?”
When Lainie stayed silent, Tina started to wail. “Oh, my God! So, it’s true! How far along are you?”
“Three months,” Lainie said.
Tina groaned. “How dare you do this to me? To us? You’ve ruined everything, and we don’t have much time to fix it!”
“There is no WE, here, Mother. You’re not ‘fixing’ anything, because nothing is broken, and all you’ve done is lower yourself to digging through my trash.”
“Somebody has to protect you from yourself!” Tina shrieked. “I’m having your father contact an abortion clinic. We’re driving there tomorrow. You’ll be healed before you have to leave for college.”
The words were a roar in Lainie’s head, and before she knew it, she was screaming.
“You’re out of your mind if you think I’ll just meekly go along with this! This baby does not belong to you and Dad. It belongs to Hunt and me. We choose. And I’m not going anywhere with you two. You’re so full of yourselves and your hate that you’ve forgotten what love even feels like.”
The truth was painful, and without thinking, Tina drew back her hand and slapped her daughter’s face. But the moment blood began seeping from Lainie’s bottom lip, she took a step back in dismay.
“Oh, honey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
Lainie was in shock from the unexpected assault, and reacted in kind by snatching her phone from her mother’s hands, then shouting.
“Get out of my room. Get out! Get out!”
Tina was already in tears when Greg walked in.
“You will do as your mother said, and no more arguing,” Greg said.
The taste of blood was in Lainie’s mouth. The imprint of her mother’s hand was still burning on her face when she turned on her father, her voice shaking with rage.
“If either of you lay a hand on me again, or hurt this baby I’m carrying, I’ll destroy you. I’ll tell the world that you murdered your grandchild. Your reputations won’t be worth shit, and I’ll be gone.”
Greg Mayes grunted like he’d been punched.
Lainie knew he was angry, but when his face twisted into a grotesque mask of pure hate, she turned to run.
He grabbed her by her hair and yanked her around to face him. His breath was hot on her face—his voice little more than a low, angry growl.
“I’d rather you and that abomination in your belly were both dead than have Chuck Gray’s bloodline in my family!”
He was raising his fist when Lainie heard her mother cry out—and then everything went blank.
* * *
SEEING HER DAUGHTER unconscious on the floor, and now bleeding from her nose and her mouth, sent Tina into hysterics. She began hammering her fists on her husband’s back and head.
“What have you done? What’s the matter with you?” Tina screamed.
“I don’t want...”
She slapped him. “If you ever lay a hand on our daughter again, I will kill you myself. I don’t want her to have this baby, but we’re going about this all wrong. She needs time away from Hunter, and time to think about her future. I’m taking her to Mother’s old place outside of Baton Rouge. We’ll tell friends we’re going to Europe. We may be looking at having her take a gap year and give the baby up later for adoption.”
“Dammit it, Tina, you know what—”
“Just shut up, get her off the floor, then go get some ice. We’re leaving now.”
“But the storm—”
“You should have thought of that before you coldcocked your own child,” Tina snapped. “Now go do what I said. I need to pack a few things.”
* * *
LAINIE AWAKENED IN the back seat of her father’s Lexus, with her head in her mother’s lap, and something cold on the side of her face. For a moment she couldn’t figure out what was happening, and then she remembered.
She sat up with a jerk, shoved the cold pack onto the floor and scooted to the other side of the seat. The silence within the car was as horrifying as the situation she was in. She’d been kidnapped by her own parents.
Tina reached for her. “Lainie, honey, I—”
She yanked away from her mother’s grasp. “Don’t talk to me. Don’t touch me. Either of you. I will never forgive you for this.”
Tina started crying. Her father cursed.
She turned her face to the window. There was nothing to see beyond the darkness except the rain hammering on the windows, but she was already thinking about how to escape them.
I will find a way to call Hunt. I will find a way to get away.
* * *
THE THUNDERSTORM DIDN’T let up, and even after Hunt finally sent Lainie a text, she didn’t respond. He didn’t know what that meant. She always answered, so he kept trying. He finally gave up messaging in the wee hours of the morning, and when it was daylight, he got in his old truck and drove straight to her house. Even if he had to fight his way in, he needed to know she was okay.
There were cars in the driveway, but her father’s Lexus was missing, which was a relief. At least he wouldn’t have to face him, Hunt thought, and got out. He rang the doorbell, then waited, and waited, then rang it again. He was about to walk away when the housekeeper opened the door. She was a tiny little sprite of a woman, with a wreath of curls-gone-astray around her face, and she liked Hunter Gray.
“Morning, Miss Millie,” Hunt said. “I know it’s early, but I would like to speak to Lainie. Is she awake?”
“There’s no one here but me,” Millie said. “Apparently, they left last night. I got a call this morning that they won’t be back. They’re taking Lainie to Europe. Some kind of holiday before she goes away to college, they said.”
