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Summer Of Joanna
Janice Carter
Who is the real Joanna Barnes?To Matt Sinclair, Joanna Barnes was the woman his father married six months after his mother died. Two years later, his father had been on the verge of divorcing Joanna when he'd suffered a heart attack. Most of his assets were gone–and several important papers were missing.To Kate Reilly, Joanna Barnes was the woman who'd befriended her one summer when she'd been an unhappy 11 year old. The woman who'd sent Kate a birthday card each year with a reminder that the two of them would meet on Kate's 30th birthday. A meeting Joanna doesn't make.Then Kate reads Joanna's obituary in the paper. The police are calling her death a suicide. Kate insists that Joanna would never have broken her promise. Matt's not so sure.But Kate and Matt put aside their differences as they uncover a world of intrigue, betrayal, and danger. Gradually the summer of Joanna becomes the summer of Kate and Matt….
“Joanna Barnes was married to my father.”
Matt Sinclair folded his arms and stared across the parking lot. “They were married for two years. I was only seventeen at the time. Pretty much out of the picture, thank God.”
“Obviously you didn’t care for her,” Kate said.
“Frankly, no. Sorry if that offends you.”
Kate inhaled deeply. She hadn’t come to Joanna’s funeral for any kind of confrontation. All she’d wanted to do was pay her last respects to the woman who’d once saved her life.
“I do—did—care for Joanna,” she said, “and I don’t believe in speaking ill of the dead. Especially at a funeral.” She brushed past him to head for her car.
“Those are fine sentiments,” he replied, raising his voice as she kept walking. “And you’re welcome to them. But Joanna Barnes ruined my father. I’ll never forgive her for that.”
Matt watched her car zip out of the parking lot and disappear down the quiet, tree-lined road. He didn’t like the uneasy feeling in his gut when he recalled the hurt in her eyes. As if she couldn’t comprehend why he was attacking somebody she cared about.
But that somebody was Joanna, he reminded himself. The last person on earth to deserve such fierce loyalty.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Reading and writing have been lifetime passions for Janice Carter. She wrote her first novel at age twelve in school notebooks. As a teenager, she wrote daily serializations of romance novellas for her classmates. “Publishing a novel was always a dream,” she recalls. “But for a long time, the business of living got in the way of writing. I traveled around the world and saw many exotic sights. I married and had two amazing daughters. There was little opportunity or inclination on my part to write until one autumn I impulsively decided to take a romance writing workshop at a local college. I was hooked! That year I began to write my first romance novel and sold it two years later to Harlequin Intrigue.”
Janice lives with her husband and two daughters in Toronto, Ontario, where—during the year—she works as a teacher-librarian in an elementary school. Her summers are spent on a small island on Lake Ontario where she has her morning coffee and watches great blue herons fish off the rocks. Then she adjourns to her “writing room” and indulges in her favorite occupation.
Books by Janice Carter
HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE
593—GHOST TIGER
671—A CHRISTMAS BABY
779—THE MAN SHE LEFT BEHIND
887—THE INHERITANCE
Summer of Joanna
Janice Carter
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For my beautiful daughters, as always
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
With much appreciation to my editor of many years, Zilla Soriano, for her intuitive good sense and gracious guidance.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE (#uea157b13-e813-5490-ba12-abdc5fee8d44)
CHAPTER TWO (#u51d9fcfd-7106-5149-9f29-68b405c2a68b)
CHAPTER THREE (#ub7b30c86-5fe1-5c2b-b4ca-af2ca96a8cce)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u18c108b7-acc7-5560-8bbe-41c8f69935a6)
CHAPTER FIVE (#u65d02481-82e4-5d91-881c-c9e7c819fa8e)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
SHE COULDN’T TAKE her eyes off the coffin.
It sat, resplendent beneath a spray of leaves and white lilies, in the very middle of the raised dais in front of the altar. Kate closed her eyes, fighting the pain that swelled up from the pit of her stomach. Just get through this, she reminded herself. Then give in to grieving for Joanna when all the questions have been answered, especially those beginning with why. Until then, stay calm, in control and, most of all, stay angry.
The organist segued into another interlude as mourners continued to slide into the pews. Kate raised her head, glancing left to the center aisle. The church was filling up. Joanna would be pleased. Or so Kate imagined. For how much could she say about someone she hadn’t seen for nineteen years? Kate lowered her head again and squeezed her eyes shut, bringing back that sultry July day at Camp Limberlost. The day she’d met Joanna Barnes.
THE RAFT WAS TOO FAR AWAY. Kate knew that from the start, but it almost seemed to beckon to her, a refuge from the gang of kids lying in wait down by the canoes. If she turned around to confront them, she’d probably get into another fight and she’d already had her last warning. One more and she’d be put on a bus and sent back to the city. Which wasn’t such a bad thing, she figured, since she hated the place, anyway. But there was only her foster mother and little kids, including a new baby, at home. The rest of the summer was already booked for baby-sitting.
So the raft it would be, she decided, wading into the shallow water of Whitefish Lake. But distances were deceiving in the midday glare, and Kate wasn’t an experienced swimmer. Less than a yard away from the raft, she could barely keep her head above the water. Her legs seemed like lead weights, pulling her down, as her arms flailed the surface.
“For heaven’s sake, take my hand so I won’t have to come in after you.”
The command—really a peeved drawl—came from the raft, and Kate barely caught a glimpse of a bronzed arm reaching toward her as she went down for the second time. Her own arms kept thrashing but contact was made. A strong grip pulled her to the raft’s edge where a beautiful face, framed by an ear-length swoop of jet-black hair, loomed over her.
An angel’s face, Kate was thinking as she clung to the ladder at the side of the raft, and was suddenly glad she’d gone to confession before leaving for Limberlost.
“Catch your breath before you climb up,” the woman said. “I’ve just slathered myself with sunscreen, and I don’t want it to come off if I try to haul you out.” Then she disappeared from the edge and shifted toward the center of the raft.
Kate waited until she knew she could pull herself up on her own. When she finally rolled onto the warm, dry surface, she lay on her back, her chest heaving.
After a moment, the woman raised her head from the paperback she’d been reading and said, “I’m Joanna Barnes and you must be one of the Bronx kids.”
Kate shot up. “My name is Kate Reilly and I’m not one of the Bronx kids. I live in Queens.”
Joanna Barnes shrugged, turning her attention back to her novel. “Whatever,” she said.
THE ORGAN SWELLED to a crescendo as the minister walked toward a podium a short distance from Joanna’s casket. Kate rose with the others, reaching automatically for a hymn book and the page the minister directed the congregation to. But she could still see Joanna sprawling on a beach towel, apparently oblivious to the eleven-year-old kid gawking at her.
“ARE YOU RELATED to the people who run this place?” Kate asked when she’d caught her breath.
“My parents,” Joanna mumbled from behind her book.
Kate tried to connect the white-haired plumpish couple she’d met her first day with the beautiful woman in the bikini, but couldn’t quite do it. She swiped at a drop of water hanging from the tip of her nose. “So do you work here, then?”
The novel came down. “Hardly.” There was the faintest of smiles.
“I haven’t seen you before and I’ve been here a week.”
The crimson smile widened. “I don’t exactly hang out with the campers. But I used to work here when I was a kid. My parents have owned Limberlost for twenty years.”
“Did you like coming here when you were a kid?”
“We lived here year-round in those days.”
“You lived here?”
A peal of laughter burst from Joanna. “For several years—until I finally made my escape.”
“That’s what I’d like to do,” Kate muttered bitterly. “Make my escape.”
“It’s not that bad here…or is it? I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a kid in a godforsaken place like Limberlost.”
“The place itself isn’t that bad,” Kate admitted. “And neither are the counselors, except for Mary Lou Farris—or the ferret, I call her. Your parents seem pretty nice,” she added, not wanting to offend the person who’d saved her life.
“Then it’s the other kids,” Joanna guessed.
Kate nodded. “They all knew one another before they came here. And I’m the only one from Queens.”
Joanna shook her head. “Kids can be mean. Usually Mom and Dad try to get a mix from all over.”
“If I’m lucky, they’ll send me home soon, anyway.”
“You miss home that much?”
Kate pictured her foster mother walking wearily around the cluttered house, rocking the baby and snapping orders left and right. She herself would be chasing the two-year-old away from the family cat. She’d been in that particular foster home almost four months.
“No,” she finally mumbled.
“Maybe even Limberlost can look good compared to other places—and other people.”
Kate gave that some thought before asking, “Are you on a holiday here, too?”
“Not really. More like on leave. At the moment I’m unemployed and between marriages,” she said. “What my dad calls footloose and fancy-free.”
Kate wasn’t certain what the phrase meant, but she thought it a good one for the woman sitting next to her. The painted fingernails and matching toes seemed to go perfectly with the splashes of color on her bikini. Up close, Kate could see that her makeup was also perfect, which made her wonder how she’d made it to the raft without getting wet. Her eyes drifted past Joanna and spotted, for the first time, the tip of a paddleboat tied to the far side of the raft.
They sat in silence for a while. Then Joanna put her book down and, turning to Kate, said, “I’m sorry about lumping you in with those other kids. I can see now that you’re an entirely different type.”
That was when Kate decided Joanna Barnes was an okay person—for an adult.
THE MINISTER’S resonant baritone drew Kate from the past. He’d begun to speak about Joanna, and in spite of herself, Kate’s attention began to wander. Mainly because he wasn’t talking about the woman she’d known briefly for a week when she was eleven years old. He referred to the well-known fashion writer and columnist, world traveler, friend of many and wife. Kate’s ears pricked up at that. Had Joanna married again?
She peered discreetly around, trying to guess which somber-suited man in the congregation had been Joanna’s latest husband. Trouble was, the small church was full of black-suited men. In fact, she just realized, there seemed to be more men than women.
She wondered briefly if any of Joanna’s family were here, then remembered the reference in the obituary to Joanna’s late parents. She frowned, trying to recall their faces. The minister coughed, then, lowering his voice, alluded to the cause of Joanna’s death. He knew every euphemism for suicide, Kate thought. But his oblique references only revived the anger she’d been feeling since she’d read Joanna’s obituary in the New York Times three days before. No way, she’d fumed, would Joanna Barnes commit suicide. Not in a million years. And especially not just before their promised reunion—a promise made nineteen years before at Camp Limberlost.
AFTER THAT FIRST MEETING, Kate found herself swimming out to the raft every afternoon. Those few hours had saved Kate’s summer for her. The remaining week at camp flew by. Joanna talked about growing up in the country, laughing at Kate’s reference to it as “wilderness.” She brought a cooler pack with pop and snacks out to the raft, letting Kate indulge in the junk food forbidden at camp.
“I plan to head for Manhattan soon,” Joanna said, after revealing that she’d had her first lucky break—a fashion article published in a local newspaper. “If I’m ever going to make it in this business, that’s the place to be.”
“Maybe I could visit you,” Kate suggested impulsively.
Joanna smiled and murmured, “Maybe.”
Kate’s excitement fizzled. Joanna’s reply had been the first typical adult comment she’d made all week. Kate figured she might as well have added, “But not likely.”
Then Joanna leaned over and said, “Look, I can’t make promises like that because I’ve no idea where my life is going to go from here. I’m going to be thirty years old this September and you’re…”
Kate’s heart sank as she waited for Joanna to say “just a kid.”
But instead, she’d scrunched up her forehead and said, “What? Twelve?”
“I’ll be twelve on August 15.”
“There you go. I was close enough. Anyway, I guess I don’t have to spell it out for you—the big difference in our ages. You’re on the verge of becoming a teenager…sort of, and I’m on the verge of—”
