Shadow Lover

Shadow Lover
Book Jacket

Rating:

Alexander MacDowell, morally bankrupt, degenerate and beautiful, has returned home after eighteen years to reclaim his place in the bosom of his spiteful, sniping family. Or has he come after the sizable fortune he will inherit from his terminally ill mother? Or will he instead claim Carolyn, the MacDowell family's own Cinderella? Would you recognize your first love were he to return to you after almost twenty years? Carolyn believes she would. And this Alex is not the boy who tormented her as an adolescent and who torments her now as a charming and all too sexy man. While falling under his spell once more, she nonetheless tries to unmask him as a fraud. And while she longs for this man to be Alex, she knows he can't be. Because Carolyn saw Alex murdered as she hid behind an abandoned boat the night he was shot to death at the family's beach house. Yet this impostor knows family secrets so private that he must be the resurrected Alex. Could some miracle have spared his life, or is someone in the family plotting with him in order to gain a share of the inheritance? Surprising, sexy and suspenseful, this novel is another in a long line of winners from Anne Stuart. You won't want this great read to end, but you'll be compelled to race through it to discover the truth of Alex's identity. If you enjoy this novel, try Stuart's other more recent novels of the same vein, MOONRISE, NIGHTFALL, or RITUAL SINS. You won't be disappointed.

SHADOW LOVER

by

Anne Stuart

Contents
:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24

Chapter 1

^
»

T
he blinding white light of a late-spring snowstorm woke her. Carolyn rolled onto her back with a muffled groan, but the glare speared through a narrow crack in her heavy drapes and forced its way beneath her eyelids. There was no way she could ignore it.

She let out a deep, long-suffering sigh. She slept alone, always had, probably always would, and she could sigh to her heart's content. "I hate
Vermont
," she muttered, her voice low and bitter.

Snow in April was obscene. So was snow in September, and she'd had to suffer through that as well. Eight months ago she hadn't minded. Some naive part of her had reveled in the flurries melting against the brightly colored leaves. Eight months ago she hadn't known just how long and deadly a
Vermont
winter could really be.

The house was very quiet.
Which was only to be expected—the
MacDowell
family compound was maintained by the best-trained servants money could buy, and nothing, not a speck of dust, not an untoward noise, ever disturbed the surface tranquility.

There were times, even now, when Carolyn wanted to race down the oak-floored hallways barefoot, singing at the top of her lungs. There were times when she wanted to laugh out loud, to scream in anger, to weep in loneliness. Those times came less often nowadays. She was a sensible woman, one who accepted the good and the bad in life. She muttered the serenity prayer under her breath at all hours, and most of the time she felt as calm and accepting as she appeared. Good, sweet, Carolyn. Loyal, faithful Carolyn, always there when she was needed.

Heavy snow was one of those things she couldn't change. She climbed out of bed and pulled the curtain, letting in the blinding glare. It was still and cold out there—the night had dropped more than a foot of snow on southern
Vermont
, but the maintenance people were already clearing it away with their usual silent efficiency. Carolyn leaned her forehead against the frosted glass, breathing deeply. Maybe she'd feel better if she got outside in the fresh, cold air. Even if she desperately needed the sun to warm her bones, not ice them.

She could always climb back into bed, pulling the duvet up around her ears, but for some reason that had never been an option, not since she'd moved into Alex's old room last fall when she'd come back home to be with Sally. Sally had removed all of his belongings and put them in storage more than a decade ago, and Carolyn had bought new furniture, new curtains and rugs, and a big, old-fashioned bed in a vain effort to make it seem like home. But it never was.

Alex had been gone a long time—if she were naïve she'd think they'd forgotten about him. But no one forgot about lost children, not even the powerful, unsentimental
MacDowells
.

She sighed. Maybe she should just reclaim her small, utilitarian bedroom in the east wing where she'd usually slept during her visits. At least there she'd felt a sense of belonging, not the odd feeling that she was an imposter, that she'd usurped the best room in the place.

She was being ridiculous and she knew it. But she felt oddly unsettled, and had felt that way for weeks. As if something monumental was about to happen.

She started to push away from the window, and then froze. Someone had parked at the head of the circular driveway, smack in front of the deceptively simple entrance to the main house. An ancient, rusty black Jeep stood up to its hubcaps in snow, and the inches that topped it told her it had to have been there for hours. It wasn't there when she went to bed last night, some time around eleven. She'd slept later than usual, but even so, it was still only a little past eight. Who in God's name could have showed up in the middle of the night? Had something happened to Aunt Sally while Carolyn had been lying in bed bitching about the weather?

She had a
closetful
of silk nightgowns, presents from the various unimaginative members of the
MacDowell
family. Carolyn slept in oversized T-shirts, and she ran into the hallway, barefoot, not bothering with a bathrobe.

The main house in the
MacDowell
compound consisted of a huge center building and two wings off either side. Carolyn's room was on the second floor; Aunt Sally's sprawling apartment took up the first floor of the west wing. The house was silent as she raced down the stairs, arriving at the open door of Sally's rooms breathless, panicky.

The old woman lay in the hospital bed in the inner room, still, silent, her eyes closed. The curtains were drawn, and only a dim light penetrated the artificial gloom. For more than a year Aunt Sally had been bedridden, hovering closer and closer to death, but there should have been more warning.

"Aunt Sally!" Carolyn's voice was a broken whisper as she started forward into the shadows, ready to fling herself on the bed and weep.