Sweet Liar Read online

  Critical acclaim for the marvelous romances of

  Jude Deveraux

  THE SUMMERHOUSE

  “Deveraux is at the top of her game here as she uses the time-travel motif that was so popular in A Knight in Shining Armor, successfully updating it with a female buddy twist that will make fans smile.”

  —Booklist

  “Entertaining summer reading.”

  —The Port St. Lucie News (FL)

  “Leslie, Madison, and Ellie wiggle quickly into readers’ hearts as their tales are unfolded…. [A] wonderful, heartwarming tale of friendship and love.”

  —America Online Romance Fiction Forum

  TEMPTATION

  “Deveraux[’s] lively pace and happy endings…will keep readers turning pages.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  HIGH TIDE

  A Romantic Times Top Pick

  “High Tide is packed full of warmth, humor, sensual tension, and exciting adventure. What more could you ask of a book?”

  —Romantic Times

  Books by Jude Deveraux

  The Velvet Promise

  Highland Velvet

  Velvet Song

  Velvet Angel

  Sweetbriar

  Counterfeit Lady

  Lost Lady

  Riverlady

  Twin of Fire

  Twin of Ice

  The Temptress

  The Raider

  The Princess

  The Awakening

  The Maiden

  The Taming

  The Conquest

  A Knight in Shining Armor

  Wishes

  Mountain Laurel

  The Duchess

  Eternity

  Sweet Liar

  The Invitation

  Remembrance

  The Heiress

  Legend

  An Angel for Emily

  The Blessing

  High Tide

  Temptation

  The Summerhouse

  Forever…A Novel of Good and Evil, Love and Hope

  Published by POCKET BOOKS

  Contents

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  Epilogue

  Thank You

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents 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.

  “Lady Luck Blues.” Words and music by Clarence Williams and W. Weber. Copyright 1924 by MCA Music Publishing, a Division of MCA Inc., New York, NY 10019, and Great Standards Music Publishing Company. Copyright renewed. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  Copyright © 1992 by Deveraux Inc.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7434-5922-8

  ISBN-10: 0-7434-5922-9

  POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Visit us on the World Wide Web:

  http://www.SimonSays.com

  Prologue

  Louisville, Kentucky

  January 1991

  “Why would my father do something like this to me? I thought he loved me,” Samantha Elliot said to the man who had been her father’s lawyer and friend for as long as she could remember. That this soft-spoken man had colluded with her father intensified the hurt and the sense of abandonment that she was feeling.

  Not that she needed anything to intensify the pain she already felt. Three hours ago she had stood by the grave of her father and watched with hot, dry eyes as they lowered his coffin into the ground. She was only twenty-eight years old, yet she had already seen more death than most people experience in a lifetime. She was the only one left now. Her parents were gone; her grandparents were gone; and Richard, her husband, might as well be dead, for she’d received the final divorce papers on the day her father died.

  “Samantha,” the attorney said, his voice soft and pleading. “Your father did love you. He loved you very, very much, and it’s because he loved you that he made this request of you.” He was watching her closely; his wife had said she was worried that Samantha had not shed a tear since her father had died. “Good,” the attorney had said. “She has her father’s strength.”

  “But her father wasn’t strong, was he?” his wife had snapped in return. “It was always Samantha who had the strength. And now she’s stood by and watched her father shrivel and die before her eyes, yet she’s taken it all without a tear.”

  “Dave always said Samantha was his rock.” The lawyer closed his briefcase and left the house before his wife could say anything more, for he was dreading what she was going to say when the contents of David Elliot’s will became public knowledge.

  Now, watching Samantha as she stood in her father’s library, he could feel sweat trickling down his neck as he remembered trying to talk Dave Elliot out of this will, but he’d not been able to persuade him. By the time Dave had made this last will, he weighed ninety-two pounds and could barely speak. “I owe her a chance,” Dave had whispered. “I took her life away from her and now I’m going to give it back. I owe her.”

  “Samantha is a young woman. An adult woman who has to make her own decisions,” the lawyer had answered, but he might as well not have said anything for all the attention Dave paid him; his mind was set.

  “It’s just for one year. That’s all I ask of her. One year. She’ll love New York.”

  She’ll hate New York, the attorney thought but didn’t voice his opinion. He had known Samantha all her twenty-eight years. He’d given her piggyback rides when she was a child, and he’d seen her laugh and play like other children. He’d seen her run races and play tricks on her parents, and he’d seen her pleased with a good grade on a test and crying when she’d not done as well. He’d seen Samantha argue with her mother over the color of a dress or whether she could wear lipstick or not. Until she was twelve years old, she’d been a normal child in every way.

  But looking at her now, just a few hours after Dave’s funeral, he could see what she had become: She was an old woman in a young woman’s body, hiding her beauty under a proper little dark suit that would have suited a woman three times her age. In fact, it seemed that she did everything she could to hide her femininity: She pulled her pretty hair back, she wore little to no cosmetics, her clothes were shapeless, too long, and nondescript. But worse than her outward appearance was the inner Samantha; for many years now Samantha had rarely smiled, and he couldn’t remember when he’d last seen her laugh.

  When she did smile, he thought, she was very, very pretty. His mind slid backward, remembering a time a few years ago, before Samantha married, before she left Louisville, when she had come home after a visit to the gym. Dave was in the den on the telephone, and she hadn’t known anyone else was in the h