Her Secret Life

By Tara Taylor Quinn

It takes courage to choose love… 

Internet security expert Michael Valentine knows his place in Kacey Hamilton's life. The soap opera star lives in two worlds: glamorous Hollywood and small town Santa Raquel, where she volunteers with him at The Lemonade Stand women's shelter. The key to their friendship is maintaining boundaries. And after an accident years ago left him badly scarred, he won't expect anything more.

But when threats against Kacey escalate, Michael will stop at nothing to protect her. Even if his investigation means confronting more than just her attacker as Kacey's interest in him starts to go deeper than friendship…

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Mar 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781489233912

Tara Taylor Quinn

A USA Today bestselling author of 100 novels in twenty languages, Tara Taylor Quinn has sold more than seven million copies. Known for her intense emotional fiction, Ms. Quinn's novels have received critical acclaim in the UK and most recently from Harvard. She is the recipient of the Reader's Choice Award, and has appeared often on local and national TV, including CBS Sunday Morning. For TTQ offers, news, and contests, visit http://www.tarataylorquinn.com!

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

UH-HUH. YES.

Mike Valentine listened unabashedly to the half he could hear of his lunch companion’s phone conversation the first Monday in March.

I know. Mmm-hmm. Her tone was more flirty than not. Glancing at Mike, Kacey rolled her eyes. And then mouthed, Bo.

A guy she’d been talking to in LA for the past several months. She said she wasn’t in love with him, but she liked him a lot. He fit her life in the city. She’d never, ever bring Bo to Santa Raquel, which was where Mike lived, and where he and Kacey volunteered at a local domestic violence shelter, the Lemonade Stand. Bo was part of her Beverly Hills life. And, Mike assumed, her sexual partner.

A subject that had nothing to do with Mike.

Okay, tomorrow night. But only if it’s just a few of us. I meant it when I told you I don’t want to go clubbing.

While she listened, she ate a French fry. Or as much of one as she’d allow herself. Just the tip. Off Mike’s plate.

She fell for the wrong guys. It didn’t take a genius to figure that one out. Besides, she’d told him so herself.

No, I’m not going to change my mind... Her tone of voice changed from playful to deadly serious.

While she couldn’t seem to control her propensity to date the wrong types, she was determined to make serious changes to her life and had already.

Like the drinking. She still did it. Socially. She might have been teetering on being a drunk, but she wasn’t an alcoholic. Her body didn’t have a chemical dependency on the stuff. And she hadn’t been drunk in ten months, not since she’d made up her mind to change her life. He knew...because she’d told him.

I do want to be with you! It’s the clubbing I don’t want. She was smiling now—not at Mike. She’d never smiled at Mike that way.

For which he was utterly thankful. That smile...it was the one reserved for the disposable men in Kacey’s life. The ones who were part of the soap opera star’s Hollywood life.

He’d take friendship with her any day. Getting her inside scoop was a whole different kind of intimacy. A more lasting one.

No, I can’t do Thursday night. I have a class to teach Friday in Santa Raquel...

At the Lemonade Stand.

She frowned. Of course I can. I just don’t want to. The class is important to me, Bo. Her lower lip got that pouty look—the one that had made her famous on The Rich and Loyal. You know that.

Mike lowered his gaze and ran straight into the ample cleavage showing above her skintight cotton top. It wasn’t that she was an exhibitionist, she’d just spent her life in front of a camera and was used to making the most of her assets.

That cleavage made him uncomfortable. He might value the friendship between them—and know that he wouldn’t change things for anything—but he was still a guy. A healthy guy.

In the prime of life.

Feeling like a creep when his body reacted to the eyeful he’d helped himself to, Mike glanced out the window. There wasn’t much to see. A bit of cracked asphalt, two commercial-size Dumpsters, one brown and one blue, side by side, and the chipping brick of the building next door. The old diner was...off the beaten path.

The owner was a decent chef, and left them alone—which was why Little’s Diner had become Mike and Kacey’s hangout, if you could call it that. Partway between LA and Santa Raquel—in a small inland town that had seen better days—Little’s had become the place they met when she was in LA and needed a friend fix.

He was the one who’d suggested the place. He’d found it by accident several years before when he’d needed to get out of the house but had had enough compassion for other diners not to expose them to his grotesque face. He’d been driving aimlessly on roads less traveled, and the diner’s half-broken sign had caught his attention, along with the Open sign and the lack of cars in the lot. He soon learned that the diner packed in folks during shift changes at a local manufacturing plant. After a Wow, you look gross, man, Lou Fancy, Little’s owner, had shrugged and shown Mike to a seat in a narrow alcove, facing away from the room.

He’d been coming back ever since.

Of course you matter. And I want to meet your family. It’s just...

She’d turned away from the table, but not before he’d seen her stricken expression.

I know, you’re right, she said next. And then, Yes, of course. I’ll be there.

Mike could hear the other man’s voice but couldn’t make out the words as Kacey sat forward in her seat again. She was smiling. And hung up shortly afterward.

He raised an eyebrow at her. She could talk. Or not.

He was good either way.

His parents and little brother are in town Thursday night, just for the night. He wants me to meet them.

He’d known that she couldn’t continue living two lives. They’d talked about it. If she wanted to work in LA and have a room in her sister’s home in Santa Raquel, she could probably pull it off. But this living two parallel lives—work, friends, social life—in both places just wasn’t healthy.

Or natural.

You’re a volunteer at the Stand, Kace, he reminded her. Not because he wanted her to choose LA, but because he believed that enough of her heart was there that she should pursue what a Beverly Hills life without the drinking would be like. You don’t have to be there every week...

The women she helped—all victims of domestic violence—benefited from the gentle way she showed them how to enhance their outer beauty with fashion and makeup advice, makeovers and impromptu fashion shows. But they’d been surviving and healing for years without her.

And there were others who knew about fashion. And makeup. Maybe none as famous as Kacey, but he’d learned one thing a long time ago—life went on.

Of course I’m going to be there, she said, frowning at him as she took another bite of her cranberry-something salad. I’m helping. I’m just going to have to get up early Friday morning and drive up. It means I won’t get to spend the night with Lacey and Jem, get my Levi fix, or my walk on the beach...

Because she had a thing to attend in Beverly Hills Friday night—something for the show, something to which Bo would be escorting her—and would have to drive back to the city after her class at the Lemonade Stand. She’d already told him as much.

You coming back Saturday? he asked her now, more for reference than anything else. He didn’t expect to see her.

I hope so.

With such an innocuous response, he didn’t think so. It wasn’t like she spent every weekend in Santa Raquel. But more often than not she stayed from Thursday night until at least Saturday. Sometimes she even made it through Sunday.

You said you had a favor to ask, he reminded her. It wasn’t all that unusual for them to meet like this, but when she’d called that morning, just three days since he’d seen her at the Lemonade Stand, she’d said that she wanted to talk to him in person.

She’d sounded...wary.

So unlike the Kacey who charged into life with a smile on her face and all lights blazing. Full of energy and ready to spend it.

He’d been much the same back when he’d taken life—and everything he had—for granted.

Someone’s posting stuff about me on the internet, she said, leaning forward. I need you to help me figure out who it is.

Right up his alley. He sat forward, too, his hands resting on the table beside a half plate of French fries. The Philly steak sandwich he’d ordered was long gone. When he visited the place alone—for old times’ sake—he finished the fries. But when Kacey was there...

She picked one up. Put it to her lips. Took the tiniest bite. And dropped it on top of what was left of her salad. She had to work that afternoon, her call was at two, she’d said, and she was a bit fanatic about not having a potbelly show on camera.

Her words.

She’d have to have one to have it show.

Even if the camera did add pounds. She’d still have to have one to have it show...

While Mike was busy trying not to think of the numerous glimpses he’d had of Kacey’s tanned, completely flat stomach over the year he’d known her—a result of the short shirts she wore with low-waisted jeans and shorts—she was busy flipping through something on her phone.

Here, she said, handing it to him. My agency sent this over this morning.

Her sudden frown got his complete attention. He’d thought they were dealing with a minor issue—an excuse for them to have lunch together since she had a late-call day.

As owner of MV Cyber Solutions, a successful-beyond-his-imaginings private IT investigative firm with clients in law enforcement—meaning they offered investigative work involving computers and the internet to law enforcement and lawyers—Mike was his own boss with trusted employees. And he could pretty much always squeeze an hour out of his day for Kacey.

He read the email warning her of something that had popped up on the internet over the weekend.

The agency has someone who watches over us, Kacey was saying. Part of her job is to search the internet on a daily basis for any media hits, good or bad, on their clients. And they had us all set up Google Alerts, as well. I just don’t generally pay attention to mine.

He looked over at her. Didn’t like that she was still frowning. Kacey’s smile lit up the world. Not his world specifically—but whatever space she occupied. He’d been around her enough to be ample witness to that fact. It didn’t matter who she was with, from women with damaged spirits to her five-year-old step-nephew—people gravitated to her. Responded to her...

I didn’t know talent agencies did that, he said, scrolling slowly down to see whatever had Kacey concerned.

Maybe most don’t. She shrugged. I’m just glad mine does.

The photo wasn’t sexy in nature, which was what he’d feared. It was more of a head shot. She looked...questionable. Her eyes were shadowed, half-shut. Her mouth was hanging open.

When was this taken? He wasn’t relaxed anymore.

I’m not even sure, she said. It doesn’t show what I’m wearing. Could have been anywhere. But I know it was after Christmas.

He looked at the photo again. You’re wearing the earrings Lacey got you. They were a set of three diamond studs for her three ear piercings. Her identical twin shared the same physical traits with Kacey, but Lacey didn’t effervesce like her sister did. Kacey had been feeling guilty about the fact that her sister had suffered for being in her shadow. Lacey wanted her to know that shining was her gift.

Yeah, Kacey said now, watching him. He didn’t see the long golden curls. Or the kissable, full lips that the world associated with her. He saw the almost hunted look in her big blue eyes.

He read the caption. ‘America’s daytime sweetheart knows how to tie one on at night.’

Studying Kacey kept his emotions in check. Focus came naturally to him. He’d spent years training himself not to react to stimulus in front of him. Have you been drunk, or otherwise under the influence, at any time since Christmas?

The unmistakably hurt look in her eyes nicked his barriers. I can’t believe you just asked me that.

He was her...sponsor...albeit secretly, unofficially and probably unnecessarily, too. But she’d wanted someone she’d have to be accountable to if she ever felt like slipping back into her old ways. Someone without undue investment in the outcome.

So, no? He forced himself to remain completely noncommittal. She needed help, not judgment. He had to know whatever she could give him before he started building his investigation.

No.

Okay, good.

Why is that good? she asked him. Beyond the obvious of me not being drunk.

I now know this was Photoshopped, he said. It wasn’t much, but it was somewhere to begin. I’m assuming you want to know who took the picture.

I want to know who posted it, she said. And why.

It says right here, posted by K&Ltoget... It was just a screen name.

K&Ltoget didn’t post that, she said. It’s on some rag fan site...

He saw that now. Recognized the name of a public blog where pretty much anyone could post anything they considered newsworthy. Didn’t have to be true. Or really even news...

She’d said K&Ltoget didn’t post it. As if she knew...

Who’s K&Ltoget? he asked, in spite of a strong suspicion he’d figured it out. His fingers itched for his keyboard.

Kacey and Lacey together forever, she said. We never used it as a screen name, but what are the chances of someone coming up with the same exact configuration? It was our first email address. K&Ltoget. At the time, that’s as long as the address could be.

Her chin was firm, like she was holding emotions in check. He wanted her smiling. Always.

Do either of you still use the address?

There’s no way Lacey would post something like this...

I’m not saying she did. I’m not even thinking she could have. I want to know if either of you still use it.

Only when we’re writing to each other.

When was the last time either of you sent something from that account?

She motioned her head toward the phone he still held. Look at my email, she told him. You’ll see.

He hit the back button. Scrolled through her inbox, careful to ignore anything that didn’t pertain to the business at hand.

But he noticed that she’d saved his last several emails to her. She’d saved others, too.

That was Kacey. All inclusive. One of the things he liked about her...

Last Wednesday, he said, finding what he was looking for. You sent each other a string of messages last Wednesday.

She nodded. Sounds right.

That’s five days ago.

She nodded and he asked, Mind if I send this to myself?

Of course not...

He did so. Quickly. Efficiently. Handed her back her phone. He needed to get back to the office.

Michael? That was our private email when we were kids. We never used it for business. No one ever knew it.

He nodded, tapped his finger on the table. Then patted a soft rhythm on his thigh.

You think someone hacked into our computers or phones?

He shrugged. I’m not sure what’s going on. Which was why he had to get going. If your email was hacked, you would probably know it. You aren’t getting any new influx of spam, are you? Anything unusual coming through?

She shook her head but didn’t seem ready to take off, like she needed to sit with a friend she could trust for a second.

Part of him wanted to give her that. So he stayed. This wasn’t the first time someone had posted something derogatory about her. That came with the territory. They weren’t dealing with life and death.

So why did it feel like they were?

CHAPTER TWO

WE MAKE QUITE a pair...

Walking beside Michael toward their cars in the run-down parking lot, Kacey wished they had just a little more time together. He was so easy to be with. The only one in her life who never seemed to want anything from her.

Or need anything. Not that she had a problem with being needed. She didn’t. At all. She’d hate it if her loved ones didn’t need her. Still, it was nice to just be...

Stopping between his blue SUV and her Mustang convertible, a thank-you gift to her and Lacey for a commercial they’d done and which Lacey hadn’t wanted, she looked up at him—a good five inches up—into his shaded brown eyes.

Why do you say that? she asked, not sure she liked the slightly derogatory tone that had accompanied his pairing them together. Leaning back against her car, she crossed her arms to keep from reaching up to brush his longish blond hair back from the side of his face. The hair wasn’t really long enough to cover what was left of his scars, but the way he held his head, cocked to the side with the damaged side down, looked as though he was used to doing so.

You’re the most vivacious, beautiful, outgoing and social creature, and me... If I didn’t have a family that I needed to keep off my ass—and work to do at the Lemonade Stand—I’d happily be a recluse.

He didn’t talk about whatever had blown apart his left lower jaw. Or what she assumed had to have been years of surgeries to repair his face. She’d asked him about it once. He’d told her there’d been an accident during his senior year of college. And then abruptly changed the subject.

But she’d be a ready and willing listener if he ever chose to confide in her.

You’re an absolutely beautiful creature, too. The words were drawn from someplace deep inside her. Completely authentic—and a tad embarrassing out in the open.

He kind of smiled at her, and she figured he thought she was humoring him. She considered pressing the matter but figured it was wiser to let it go. Used to pushing forward, to going for whatever she thought should be, Kacey held back with Michael Valentine. She didn’t want to lose him.

And anyway, there you go, mentioning your family again, and them being on your ass. Her tone was lighthearted, setting them back into their peaceful place. Yet, here I am, still not meeting them.

As soon as the words came out of her mouth, she regretted them. She’d just told herself not to push him.

Forget I said that. She reached out to touch his forearm. I don’t know what’s wrong with me today.

He grinned, not seeming the least bit bothered, making her feel instantly better. Which was halfway nuts, too, because Michael never seemed bothered by anything.

I’ll get some answers for you, Kace, he said, his tone as even, as soothing, as always. How late are you working tonight?

I’m only in two scenes this afternoon, so I’m thinking no later than seven. With all of the changes in recent years, they didn’t film by scene sequence anymore. Everything was shot by set, not in time sequence, in four long days so the actors had three days off and the daytime viewers still had five episodes to watch every week. If she didn’t have a scene on a particular set, like that morning, she didn’t have to be there.

He nodded.

I’ll call you when I get out, she said—more because of this curious urge to keep talking to him than because she thought he’d have any answers for her that soon.

He grinned at her. You’d best get your butt into town, he said, chucking her on the arm like a brother might do. You’d really give them something to gossip about if you showed up on set like that.

She wore a wig on the show and looked completely different without her stage makeup. For the first time, she wondered if he thought the Beverly Hills Kacey looked better than the toned-down version he always saw.

Why it should suddenly matter made no sense.

You know that I know that life is about far more than looks, right? It wasn’t like her to have these retrospective moments. She was facing the sun and had to squint to look up at him.

Squinting caused facial lines.

She wanted to not care, but turned so that neither of them was facing the sun.

What’s going on? His question was as pointed as he’d ever been with her.

I don’t know. She heard the brush-off in her words. I really don’t, Michael. I just... I am who I am, you know?

Of course I do. You have no problem here, Kace, if that’s what you’re thinking...

No. She shook her head. It’s just, I hear myself sometimes, you know, like the first time we met...

She cringed even bringing up that horrid afternoon. Her second class at the Lemonade Stand. Standing at the front of the room, telling nine battered women that their looks did matter. That if they did what they could to make themselves look their best, they’d feel better about themselves, which would breed confidence, which then bred strength. If they felt good about themselves, they’d be more apt to really believe in their own worth and then stand up for themselves until they were treated respectfully.

It was all true. All valid and important. She was helping women she’d come to care about a great deal. In a little less than a year, she’d seen two of those women get jobs, places of their own, and stand up in court and win.

I was the one in the wrong that day. Hands in his pockets, he shrugged, as if there was nothing to talk about.

He’d interrupted her at the beginning of her lecture when she’d still been talking about how much it mattered to take time to do your hair and makeup. To choose clothes purposefully for your body size and style. He’d suggested, quietly, in a completely Michael way, that she might want to consider where she was and whom she was dealing with before she started in on her beauty-pageant rhetoric.

She’d had no idea he was a volunteer at the Lemonade Stand—one who had financed the computer repair shop that now helped support the shelter and who’d started and still oversaw computer-skill training classes there for the residents.

No, that’s just it. She touched his chest, fiddled with the button on his black button-down shirt. She was naturally a toucher. With everyone. She stopped, concerned she’d offended him again. Her hands hung suspended in midair. I mean, yes, you were wrong, but so was I. I’d seen you come in and it didn’t even occur to me to change my rhetoric.

She’d been talking about the value of beauty, knowing that a man with a markedly scarred face was in her small audience. She should have shown more sensitivity.

She’d later found out that he’d shown up at her class on behalf of a group of residents who’d asked him if their reasons for not wanting to come to her class were valid. They didn’t think a woman should put so much value on her looks.

And you were right, too, she quickly continued, letting one hand land on his chest—as some kind of weird compromise she was making between life as she’d known it and life as it was. "We can’t help what we’re born with or what happens to us, and there are a lot of victims of domestic violence who have had what beauty they were born with permanently altered...which doesn’t in any way diminish their worth. Their rights."

It felt good to speak with passion in real life, rather than just on camera. And odd and somewhat threatening, too. So many changes in the past year...

I was completely insensitive to the fact that the idea of judging one’s self-worth based on beauty, or by making it about external looks, is as detrimental to some as a little makeup and hairstyling is good for others, she admitted.

But you were completely right, too, as I’d have known if I’d listened a little longer before jumping on my soapbox. His grin settled her.

And got her going again, too, in a way she was much more comfortable with.

No matter what we’re born with or, as you say, what happens to us, we still feel better about ourselves when we give attention to our bodies. When we do all we can with what we have, she said, happy that her rhetoric had value.

She wanted to touch his face. Had wanted to so many times over the months she’d known him, but never so much as she did in that moment. Wanted him to know he didn’t have to tilt his head slightly to the side to hide himself from her view.

I really do find you beautiful, Michael. The words were all wrong. She knew it as soon as they spilled out.

He didn’t push her away. He’d