Fearless Read online

  Books by Fern Michaels

  Spirit of the Season

  Deep Harbor

  Fate & Fortune

  Sweet Vengeance

  Holly and Ivy

  Fancy Dancer

  No Safe Secret

  Wishes for Christmas

  About Face

  Perfect Match

  A Family Affair

  Forget Me Not

  The Blossom Sisters

  Balancing Act

  Tuesday’s Child

  Betrayal

  Southern Comfort

  To Taste the Wine

  Sins of the Flesh

  Sins of Omission

  Return to Sender

  Mr. and Miss Anonymous

  Up Close and Personal

  Fool Me Once

  Picture Perfect

  The Future Scrolls

  Kentucky Sunrise

  Kentucky Heat

  Kentucky Rich

  Plain Jane

  Charming Lily

  What You Wish For

  The Guest List

  Listen to Your Heart

  Celebration

  Yesterday

  Finders Keepers

  Annie’s Rainbow

  Sara’s Song

  Vegas Sunrise

  Vegas Heat

  Vegas Rich

  Whitefire

  Wish List

  Dear Emily

  Christmas at Timberwoods

  The Sisterhood Novels:

  Cut and Run

  Safe and Sound

  Need to Know

  Crash and Burn

  Point Blank

  In Plain Sight

  Eyes Only

  Kiss and Tell

  Blindsided

  Gotcha!

  Home Free

  Déjà Vu

  Cross Roads

  Game Over

  Deadly Deals

  Vanishing Act

  Razor Sharp

  Under the Radar

  Final Justice

  Collateral Damage

  Fast Track

  Hokus Pokus

  Hide and Seek

  Free Fall

  Lethal Justice

  Sweet Revenge

  The Jury

  Vendetta

  Payback

  Weekend Warriors

  The Men of the Sisterhood Novels:

  Hot Shot

  Truth or Dare

  High Stakes

  Fast and Loose

  Double Down

  The Godmothers Series:

  Far and Away

  Classified

  Breaking News

  Deadline

  Late Edition

  Exclusive

  The Scoop

  E-Book Exclusives:

  Desperate Measures

  Seasons of Her Life

  To Have and To Hold

  Serendipity

  Captive Innocence

  Captive Embraces

  Captive Passions

  Captive Secrets

  Captive Splendors

  Cinders to Satin

  For All Their Lives

  Texas Heat

  Texas Rich

  Texas Fury

  Texas Sunrise

  Anthologies:

  A Snowy Little Christmas

  Coming Home for Christmas

  A Season To Celebrate

  Mistletoe Magic

  Winter Wishes

  The Most Wonderful Time

  When the Snow Falls

  Secret Santa

  A Winter Wonderland

  I’ll Be Home for Christmas

  Making Spirits Bright

  Holiday Magic

  Snow Angels

  Silver Bells

  Comfort and Joy

  Sugar and Spice

  Let It Snow

  A Gift of Joy

  Five Golden Rings

  Deck the Halls

  Jingle All the Way

  FERN MICHAELS

  Fearless

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Part Two

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  ANNA’S RIB RUB

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2020 by Fern Michaels.

  Fern Michaels is a registered trademark of KAP 5, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2019953564

  ISBN: 978-1-4967-1456-5

  First Kensington Hardcover Edition: April 2020

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4967-1457-2 (ebook)

  ISBN-10: 1-4967-1457-1 (ebook)

  Prologue

  Lubbock, Texas

  Now

  Anna Campbell accepted the friend request from Laura Jones, a common enough name. Possibly, she was a friend of a friend, or someone who followed her vlog on YouTube, The Simple Life.

  Accepting the request, she then clicked on the name to see if there were photos to put a face to, possibly reminding her who Laura Jones was.

  She read through the woman’s Facebook bio, then once more. This was a mistake. It had to be. She drew in a deep breath, slowly letting the air of uncertainty pass through her dry lips. Chewing on her bottom lip, she pointed the cursor to the photo tab. Afraid, yet knowing she couldn’t stop now, she double-clicked on the link. Heart racing, she viewed the images. One by one, still shots of the woman’s smiling face grinned back at her. She clicked on one photo, realizing it had been taken just a few hours ago.

  This whole thing was impossible, yet she couldn’t deny what she was seeing.

  She clicked through the pictures, each image tearing apart the life that she was trying to put back together. She stared at the images again.

  No way this could be real. Photoshopped, most likely. Yes, it had to be. Maybe one of her viewers had decided to play a cruel joke on her after all the publicity she had received lately. With over 6 million subscribers, it’s highly likely that some were haters. The vlogging community was like any other in that respect. People disagreed. Respectfully. Or not.

  Clicking the white back arrow, she viewed the pictures a third time. With a few clicks of her mouse, she was able to enlarge the photos.

  No. This was not some crazy subscriber trying to rattle her.

  This was the face of a woman she’d seen on Daniel’s phone. The
photos that were discovered in Renée’s luggage after the fire. Dark brown eyes, thin lips pressed together with deep grooves furrowing above her upper lip. Dull gray short hair, choppy, as if it had been cropped with blunt scissors, the ends uneven. In one of the photos, she smiled, showing protruding teeth yellowed from years of nicotine. Using her thumb and index fingers to enlarge the picture, Anna saw old acne scars and knew this was not Laura Jones. She closed the window, brought up the search engine, typing in her name, then hit PHOTOS. Almost 2 million hits according to the info displayed on her screen. She scrolled through several of the blue hyperlinks and clicked on the first page. Yet none of the Laura Joneses she saw matched the face in the photographs.

  Anna pulled the Facebook pictures back up. In all, there were seven, each a different pose but with the same background, the same pale pink blouse. If this were a joke, someone had gone to great lengths. She recognized the Sun ’N Fun home and garden show, the charity fund-raiser she herself had been at earlier that night. It raised money for Habitat for Humanity, an organization near and dear to her heart. An auction open to the public. Laura Jones had obviously also attended it, given the background in the photos. Anna tried to recall if she’d seen her, or possibly spoken to her. Almost three thousand people had attended, and while she knew it was impossible for her to have spoken with that many people one-on-one, those whom she did speak to usually left an impression on her one way or another.

  Searching her memory, she guessed she’d spoken to thirty or forty people, mostly women, but there had been a few men. She would have remembered if one in particular stood out. If they had, she would have mentioned it to Mandy during the drive on the way home, as they’d had a short chat. They’d gotten into this habit a few weeks after the accident.

  Her days were long and the nights sometimes longer when Christina had one of her rough nights dealing with being cooped up in the den for so long. Though they weren’t as frequent as they’d been after the accident, she still had them once in a while. Long gone were the days when Christina would spend the evenings by herself in her room, reading Harry Potter books and texting with her best friend, Tiffany. It absolutely enraged Anna when she thought about what had happened. She wanted to kill the son of a bitch who had done this to her, but she knew these were idle daydreams and nothing more. Even so, there were many nights when she would lie awake plotting ways to rid the world of the evil it contained.

  The woman in the photographs had not been the topic of any late-night discussion. Only once had her name come up during the time she had a relationship with Ryan, if you wanted to call it that. Anna had expressed sympathy over the tragedy, then moved on. She knew from personal experience that life wasn’t always fair or kind. When life bombarded one with bushels of lemons, Anna knew that with perseverance, often the sweetest of lemonades resulted. Her life was testimony to that.

  Ten years into her first marriage, her husband, Wade, had died in a motorcycle accident on his way home from Woodworks, the furniture store in Corpus Christi where he’d built and sold custom-made furniture for yachts and boats. A lifelong dream, shattered in seconds on a wet, slick road. After months of wallowing in the dark depths of despair, Anna had had no other choice but to pull herself out of her grief-induced depression and find a way to provide for her daughter. Without Wade, there was no furniture store, no income. With a degree in marketing, and little experience, she’d started a vlog about grief, which became an immediate success. When she began vlogging full-time, it had afforded her many sponsors and provided her a decent income. After two years, she’d branched out into cooking, and more lifestyle vlogs, and again, her ideas were so well received, she’d zoomed straight to the top of the vlogging world, her recipes and decorating videos reaching viewers across the globe. She’d been a guest on all the national morning shows, the cooking networks, and a few of the late-night talk shows. And more often than not, she was recognized in public, which to this day still surprised her. Once she became financially successful, she sold the home she and Wade had purchased in Corpus Christi and built a new, modern, upscale home in Lubbock, complete with her own recording studio. She hired a film crew, an editor, and found a manager to direct The Simple Life’s future. After years of long days and late nights, she was pleased with her success, her ability to provide for Christina and give her the best life possible.

  Why now? she thought. How many more lies was she going to uncover?

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Before

  “Mandy, you know I can’t leave Christina. She’s only thirteen,” Anna said to her best friend and assistant.

  “Yes, you can. I’m quite capable of caring for a thirteen-year-old, I’ll have you know. This cruise is just what you need. It’ll be fun. Just because it’s a singles cruise doesn’t mean you’re going to find a significant other just like that.”

  Anna laughed. “I think that’s exactly what it means. You can’t put thousands of single people together, on a singles-only cruise ship, and not have expectations. It sounds fun, but it’s not really my cup of tea.”

  “You’ve never even been on a cruise,” Mandy teased. “You might surprise yourself and actually enjoy being waited on hand and foot. Meeting new friends is simply a bonus.”

  “Then why don’t you go?” Anna asked.

  “Because someone has to keep you organized, and besides, I’m dating Eric exclusively now.”

  “Hmmm, and when did this happen? I thought he was just a guy from the gym.” Mandy Martin was a total babe; she attracted men like bees to honey. At thirty-five, she’d never married and loved the single life. Anna was lucky to have her on her team. Tall, blond, and buxom were three words to describe her. Add in kind, smart, and a huge heart, and this was who Mandy was.

  “He was. At first. That’s what happens, Anna. You date, you find out you’re compatible, then boom, you sort of commit to date one another. Easy peasy.”

  “Does this mean what I think it means, or am I being old-fashioned?”

  “Probably not. It means we’re going to see what happens. When you’re dating five or six guys at once, it’s time-consuming. Not so easy getting to know any of them, you know?” Mandy said.

  “No, I wouldn’t know from personal experience, but I get the picture,” said Anna. “I would feel completely out of place, not knowing anyone.”

  “My point exactly! You’d be in the same boat, literally, as the other guests. You mingle, you see someone who interests you, say hi, ask his name. Say something cutesy, or you could go the traditional route and just introduce yourself. Whatever works. It’s the perfect solution for you.”

  Anna thought her life was as close to perfect as one could get, given her circumstances. Being a single parent had its moments though she’d been lucky so far. Anna adored Christina and knew her daughter felt the same way about her. At thirteen, she was tall, like Wade, who’d been six-four. Christina was five-eight already, but that’s where the similarities ended. Minus her height, she was a carbon copy of Anna. With her reddish brown hair, aqua-blue eyes, full lips, and olive skin, Anna often thought of her as a mini version of herself. They laughed about this, Anna telling her at least she would know what she might look like when she was her age. At forty-one, she hadn’t aged too much; but she knew that in this age of fillers, plumpers, and sunscreen, Christina’s generation would age exceptionally well if they took care of themselves while they were young. Living in Texas, sunscreen was a necessity. She had used it most of her adult life and insisted that her daughter do the same.

  “So, you’ll go?” Mandy interrupted her thoughts.

  Sighing, she knew that if she didn’t give her an answer, Mandy would never let up. And why not? she thought. They were weeks ahead with her filming schedule; school was out for the summer. Christina would be fine without her for a few days. For Christina’s thirteenth birthday, Anna had given her an adorable tabby kitten whom they’d christened Mr. Waffles because of his wafflelike coloring, and now she spen
t most of her free time with him. So she doubted she’d be missed.

  “Give me the details, and I’ll start packing,” Anna said, enjoying the surprised look on Mandy’s face.

  “Seriously?”

  “Yep,” she replied, grinning. “I need a break. After what I’ve been through the past couple of months, it will be a relief.” Anna had been stalked for weeks, probably by a crazy fan. The police had been called in and launched an investigation, but so far, there’d been no arrest. Fear and looking over her shoulder had taken their toll on her. She truly needed a vacation.

  “You’re not joking?”

  “I wouldn’t do that to you. I could use a break. Not sure how this cruising the high seas works, but I’m willing to give it a try. However,” she said, “not a long cruise. One week max. I’m clueless how I’ll react, so that’s all I’ll commit to. And you have to swear on your life that you’ll be extra watchful. Christina still has no clue about all this insanity.”

  “I’ll guard her with my life—you know that. You’ve spent most of your life around water when you lived in Corpus Christi, so you’ll be fine. I’m going to book this cruise before you change your mind. It’s Wednesday, and the Splendor of the Sea departs this Friday. That should be enough time to pack a few things,” Mandy said. “Leave the details to me.”

  If Anna didn’t know better, she would swear Mandy had an ulterior motive, but she’d always been up-front with her since day one, so she pushed the thought aside. She needed to rest and recharge, and this was as good an opportunity as any. She would relax and try to catch up on all the books piled up by her bedside. “I would say thanks, but I’ll wait until I’m back.”

  “Anna, you don’t have to go,” Mandy said. “You work so hard, and we’re way ahead of schedule. Though I kind of promised Christina I’d take her to SeaWorld.”