Verwandte Artikel zu Haunting Rachel

Haunting Rachel - Softcover

Hooper, Kay

 
9780553571837: Haunting Rachel
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0553571834 ISBN 13: 9780553571837
Verlag: Bantam, 1999

Inhaltsangabe

Danger wears many faces....

Ten years ago Rachel Grant's fiancé, Thomas, disappeared. His body was never found. Now there's a stranger in town, a man who could be Thomas's twin--or his ghost.

His name is Adam Delafield. He's been watching Rachel for days. He has the locket she gave Thomas before he vanished. And he says he owed her father three million dollars.

But there's no record of the loan—or a shred of proof that Adam is who he claims to be. And he's always nearby as accidents begin to threaten Rachel's life.

Is he an innocent man who only wants to repay a debt? Or a figure from the past with a score to settle? Rachel must expose lies and unravel stories, find out who wants her dead and why...before the next attempt to kill her succeeds.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Kay Hooper, who has more than six million copies of her books in print worldwide, has won numerous awards and high praise for her novels. Kay lives in North Carolina, where she is currently working on her next novel.

Aus dem Klappentext

many faces....

Ten years ago Rachel Grant's fiancé, Thomas, disappeared. His body was never found. Now there's a stranger in town, a man who could be Thomas's twin--or his ghost.

His name is Adam Delafield. He's been watching Rachel for days. He has the locket she gave Thomas before he vanished. And he says he owed her father three million dollars.

But there's no record of the loan--or a shred of proof that Adam is who he claims to be. And he's always nearby as accidents begin to threaten Rachel's life.

Is he an innocent man who only wants to repay a debt? Or a figure from the past with a score to settle? Rachel must expose lies and unravel stories, find out who wants her dead and why...before the next attempt to kill her succeeds.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

It was no more than a glimpse of movement on a street corner that caught Rachel's attention. She turned her head more or less automatically, drawn as always by the glint of sunlight off silvery blond hair. She expected to see, as she always had, a stranger. Just one more blond man who would, of course, not be who she wanted him to be.

Except that it was Thomas.

She stood frozen, with four lanes of cars filling the space between her corner and his, and when their eyes met, she almost cried out. Then the light changed, and traffic began moving briskly, and a noisy semi blocked her view of the corner. When the truck had passed, Thomas was gone.

Rachel stood there until the light changed again, but when she rushed across the street, there was no sign of him.

No. No, of course there wasn't.

Because it hadn't been him.

Realizing that her legs were actually shaking, she found a table at a nearby sidewalk café where she could keep an eye on that corner, and ordered a cup of hot tea.

It hadn't been him, of course.

It was never him.

"Are you all right, miss?" the waitress asked when she returned with the steaming cup. "You look sort of upset."

"I'm fine." Rachel managed a smile she doubted was very reassuring, but it was enough to satisfy the young waitress. Left alone again, she dumped sugar into the tea and fixed her gaze once more on the corner.

Of course it hadn't been Thomas. Her mind knew that. It had been only a stranger with a chance resemblance that had seemed stronger because distance had helped it seem that way. And perhaps a trick of the light had helped, as well as her own wishful thinking. But it couldn't have been Thomas. Thomas had been dead nearly ten years. No, they had never found a body, or even the wreckage of the plane, but Thomas's life had certainly ended somewhere in the impenetrable depths of a South American jungle.

Even though he had promised to come back to her.

Her knees were steady once more when Rachel finally got up nearly an hour later and left the café. And she didn't let herself stop or even pause when she passed the corner where a memory had so fleetingly stood. Knowing that she was late helped her to walk briskly, and common sense pushed the memory back into its quiet room in her heart.

It was after three o'clock on this warm and sunny Tuesday when she went into a building in downtown Richmond. She went up to the fourth floor, entered the law offices of Meredith and Becket, and was immediately shown in to see Graham Becket.

"Sorry I'm late," she said at once.

"Rachel, you didn't have to come down here at all," Graham reminded her as he moved around the desk to take her hand and kiss her lightly on the cheek. "I told you I'd come to the house."

"I needed to get out." She shrugged, then gently reclaimed her hand and sat down in his visitor's chair.

He stood looking down at her for a moment, a somewhat rueful expression on his face, then went back around the desk to his own chair. A tall, dark, good-looking man of thirty-eight, and a highly successful attorney, he was accustomed to female interest.

Except from Rachel. He knew Rachel fairly well. He had been her father's attorney for nearly ten years and one of the executors of the estate after Duncan Grant and his wife had been killed eight months ago. But knowledge didn't stop Graham from hoping that one day she would notice he was a man who was closer to being one of her contemporaries than her father's.

And a man, moreover, who had been half in love with her for years.

Today, she hadn't noticed.

"More papers to sign?" she asked, her slight smile transforming her serene and merely pretty face into something haunting.

Graham had tried to figure out what it was about that smile that made Rachel instantly unforgettable, but to date had been unable to. Her features, taken one by one, were agreeable but not spectacular. Her pale gray eyes were certainly lovely, but the dark lashes surrounding them were more adequate than dramatic, and her nose might have been a trifle large for her heart-shaped face.

Gleaming auburn hair framed that face nicely, but it was unlikely that fashion mavens would copy the simple shoulder-length style. Her mouth was well-shaped and her teeth even and white, but there was nothing especially memorable about either.

Despite all that, Rachel had only to smile that slow smile of hers to become a stunningly beautiful woman. It wasn't only Graham who saw the transformation; he had heard more than one man and a number of women comment on it over the years.

And even then, her smile was only a shadow of what it had once been. Before Thomas Sheridan's death. Until the loss of her fiancé had changed Rachel so fundamentally, she had smiled often, her face so alive that strangers had stared at her on the streets. Afterward . . .

"Graham?"

He recalled his wandering thoughts and opened a file folder on his desk. "Yes, more papers to sign. Sorry, Rachel. But I did warn you that Duncan's estate was complex."

"It's all right. I'm just wondering when it'll all be over."

He looked at her across the desk. "If you intend to keep a hand in the business, it'll never be over. But if you mean to accept Nicholas Ross's offer to buy you out . . ."

"I'm still thinking about that. Do you think Dad would have wanted me to sell out, Graham?"

"I think he expected you to. The past few years, your life hasn't been in Richmond except for holiday and vacation visits home, and those were brief. Ever since you moved to New York, I think he realized it wasn't likely you'd come back here to live."

"Yes--but I don't have to live here to keep the business. I could hire a manager to run my half, you know that. Between you, Nicholas, and a manager taking care of things day to day, I'd have to show up only periodically for board meetings."

He nodded. "True enough."

"I don't know beans about investment banking, so I could hardly be a hands-on boss anyway. And all those investments Dad had personally, they're so diverse, there's no way I could keep track of them on my own." She seemed to be arguing with herself, frowning a little. "At the same time, several of the companies Dad invested in aren't in a position to buy out his interest right now, so I'd have to find other investors if I wanted out--that, or take a loss. Either way, it means time and trouble."

Graham looked at her searchingly. "In a hurry to get back to New York? I thought you said you'd taken a leave of absence and didn't mean to go back until summer."

"That's what I said, and what I meant. But . . . I don't know, I'm getting restless, I guess." She shrugged. "I'm not used to being idle, Graham."

After a moment, he said, "But it's more than that, isn't it? It's memories. The house is getting to you."

Rachel got up and went to stand before a window that offered a view of the busy street below. Graham remained in his chair, but turned it to keep watching her, and when she remained silent, he went on quietly.

"After Thomas was killed, you couldn't wait to get out of that house. Went back to college first and then to New York. And your visits home even then were always brief, because you were always busy."

"Trying to make me feel guilty for neglecting my parents?" Her voice was a little tight.

"No. They didn't feel neglected, if that's been worrying you. They understood, Rachel."

"Understood what?"

"How much of...

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Verlag
Bantam
Erscheinungsdatum
1999
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0553571834
ISBN 13 
9780553571837
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
368
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