First Impressions Read online

  Books by Jude Deveraux

  The Velvet Promise

  Highland Velvet

  Velvet Song

  Velvet Angel

  Sweetbriar

  Counterfeit Lady

  Lost Lady

  River Lady

  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

  Holly

  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

  The Mulberry Tree

  Forever…

  Wild Orchids

  Forever and Always

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  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.

  Copyright © 2005 by Deveraux, Inc.

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

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Deveraux, Jude.

  First impressions / Jude Deveraux.—1st Atria Books hardcover ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Government investigators—Fiction. 2. North Carolina—Fiction. 3. Single mothers—Fiction. 4. Rape victims—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3554.E9273F57 2005

  813’.54—dc22 2005052417

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-0008-7

  ISBN-10: 1-4165-0008-1

  Designed by Lauren Simonetti

  ATRIABOOKS is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Visit us on the World Wide Web:

  http://www.SimonSays.com

  This book is for Brenda and Judith. “I want her to be my age,” Brenda said. “And I want her to find a fabulous man and to have an adventure.” “And funny,” Judith said. “I want the book to have a lot of laughter in it.” Hope you guys like it.

  Prologue

  THE moment he saw the smirk on Bill’s face, Jared knew he was going to be given a job he wouldn’t like. So what did a man have to do to finally be able to choose his own assignments? he thought for the thousandth time. Get shot? Naw, he’d done that three times. How about getting kidnapped? That had happened twice. Hey! How about being home so seldom that his wife leaves him for some other guy, a used car salesman who is now the father of their three kids? Nope. That had happened too. So how about getting too old for the field? Too late. At forty-nine, Jared felt that he’d reached that age about six years ago.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Bill said, holding his office door open for Jared to enter.

  Groaning, Jared put on a pronounced limp as he hobbled toward the chair opposite Bill’s overloaded desk, WILLIAM TEASDALE on a plaque in front. Sticking his leg out stiffly in front of him, he ostentatiously rubbed his knee, as though he were in great pain.

  “You can cut it out,” Bill said as he sat down behind his desk. “I have no sympathy for you, and even if I did, I couldn’t let you out of this one.” He picked up a folder, then looked across the top of it at Jared. “Most agents are glad to get out in the field. Why not you?”

  Jared leaned back in his chair. “Where should I begin? With pain? I was in the hospital for three weeks after the last job. And life. I like living. And then there’s—”

  “Got a new girlfriend?” Bill asked, his eyes narrowed.

  Jared gave a bit of a grin. “Yeah. Nice girl. I’d like to see her sometimes.”

  “She’s a reformed what?”

  “Stripper,” Jared mumbled, giving Bill a sheepish grin. “So sue me. After a wife like Patsy—”

  “Spare me,” Bill said, and once again he was the boss. “We need somebody to find out something, and you can do it. Remember that agent we found out had been a spy for the last fifteen years?”

  “Yeah,” Jared said, bitterness in his voice. He’d worked with the man about ten years ago, and had filed a report saying that something wasn’t right about the guy, but he didn’t know what. No one paid any attention. A few months ago, they’d found out that the agent was a spy and that he’d been feeding information to his mother country for years. “So what did you find out from him?”

  “Nothing. Suicide before we could get to him.”

  “Please tell me that you don’t want me to travel to wherever he was from, go undercover, and find out—”

  “No,” Bill said, waving his hand. “Nothing like that. The truth is that we can’t figure out what his last big project was. He knew we were coming about ten minutes before we got there, so he had time to destroy a lot of evidence. But we found disks hidden under the floors, and a list of names inside a lightbulb. He had time to get rid of it all, so why didn’t he destroy it?”

  “But he didn’t,” Jared said, feeling the old wave of curiosity well up inside of him and trying hard to suppress it. Why? was the question that had caused most of the problems in his life. Even after a case was considered cold, Jared’s “why” often made him continue. “What did he do?”

  “He wadded up several pieces of paper into tiny balls and swallowed them.”

  “I bet somebody had fun retrieving them.”

  “Yeah,” Bill said with a half smile. “We lost most of what went down him, but forensics managed to get a name and part of a Social Security number.” He pushed a clear plastic folder across the desk, and Jared picked it up. Inside was a small piece of paper that seemed to have some writing on it, but Jared couldn’t make it out.

  “Eden Palmer,” Bill said. “That name and a few numbers were the only things the crime lab could recover.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Her. As far as we can figure out, she’s nobody.” He pulled a piece of paper from the folder in front of him. “She’s forty-five, had a baby when she was eighteen, no husband then and not one since. She worked at one low-level job after another until her kid started college, then she went back to school and got a degree.” He looked at the paper. “A couple of years after she graduated, Eden Palmer moved to New York, where she worked in a publishing house. When we first heard about her, she didn’t know it, but an old woman she knew had died and left her a house in eastern North Carolina. The lawyer taking care of the case was looking for her, but we fixed it so he was delayed in finding her. We wanted to find out about her first.” Putting the papers down, he stared at Jared.

  “So how did she get connected to somebody who’s been spying on the U.S. for umpteen years?”

  “We have no idea.” He was still looking at Jared, as though he expected him to figure out something.

  “Maybe it was personal,” Jared said. “Maybe the guy was in love with her. Or is she too ugly for that?”

  Bill unclipped a photo from the file and pushed it across the desk.

  “Not bad,” Jared said, looking at the photo. It was her driver’s license picture, so Jared figured she was actually three times that good looking. He studied the picture and the information. She was short, only five three, her eyesight was good, and she was an organ donor. Limp, blondish hair with a bit of curl in it surrounded blue eyes, a small nose, and a