A Secret Dare

By Donna McDonald

Their love was no secret, but did he dare tell her the rest of the truth?

Aurora Snow has a secret—one she inherited from her dying mother. Now she has to decide what to do about it. For over forty years, she's never cared about what her mother was hiding about the past. Why should learning her father's identity change anything now? She's happy with herself, her art, and the new man in her life. Jeremiah is everything she ever dreamed of finding in a man. Isn't the perfect lover really all a woman needs to be happy?

Jeremiah Cranston has many secrets. The biggest is that he's fallen crazily in love with the target of his investigation. His boss is already upset that he's sleeping with her. Jeremiah's more upset that he's having to lie to Aurora about his purpose in her life. Finding out the truth would be the worst thing possible for both of them, even if it is his job to do just that.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Donna McDonald
• Release date: Nov 8, 2018
• ISBN: 9781540174031

Donna McDonald

Donna McDonald published her first romance novel in March of 2011. Fifty plus novels later, she admits to living her own happily ever after as a full-time author. Her work spans several genres, such as contemporary romance, paranormal, and science fiction. Humor is the most common element in all her writing. Addicted to making readers laugh, she includes a good dose of romantic comedy in every book.

Book preview

Chapter One

Nigel—darling—I can’t promise glamorous. I can only promise to be nude. Well, mostly nude. I’ll be painting my body for this one. At one point of the performance, I even pour it over my shoulder and down my back. What you’re asking for is not practical. I’ll be covered in blue paint when I’m done.

Aurora—sweetheart—no, no, no. Everyone, absolutely everyone, will want to chat with the brave soul who would dare reveal her still hot, over forty body for the sake of her art. It would be preferable for you to not do your chatting in a shabby robe which will only make us both self-conscious. That would be pushing the starving artist thing a bit too far. No one is going to pay thousands for a painting by a woman in a bathrobe, no matter how well-preserved the package hiding under it is.

Aurora laughed as she pushed one earbud into place and then plugged the headphone’s jack into the end of her phone. When Nigel’s cajoling voice was clear again, she put the other earbud in and dropped the phone into an empty pocket of her painting smock. She hated carrying technology around with her. It gave off such terrible energy.

I will try to keep the paint off my face and out of my hair, Nigel. That’s really the best I can do unless there’s a shower in the gallery you booked.

No dear. There’s a farm sink in the restoration room. It’s nearly the size of a bathtub, but definitely not suitable for bathing. The best I can do is provide everything you need for a sink bath cleanup. If you want, I can even assist to make sure you get paint off all the important and visible parts. Then we can saunter back in to the showing together with you pretending to be unaffected by it all. Wear something black and sassy. Put on gobs of makeup to get that mysterious woman thing going with those luscious chocolate eyes of yours. You’ll look as stunning as always.

Wincing internally at the idea of Nigel—a man she’d known for over a decade—watching her wash performance paint out of her crevices, Aurora lectured herself for hesitating. He had been her agent for years and the man was gay for pity’s sake. As far as she knew, Nigel wasn’t even bi in the least. What in the world was wrong with her lately?

She rolled her eyes as she listened to Nigel’s lectures about the delicate balance to be maintained between eccentric artist and successful marketer. Silently sighing over a lecture he’d given her many times, Aurora stared gathering up her supplies.

Her mood had shifted so much that painting would be a waste of both her energy and time now. She carefully placed each sealed tube of acrylic in the carrier. Stripping a sheet of plastic wrap from a nearby roll, she clear wrapped the paint pallet she’d been using. She’d mixed the perfect cyan blend and hoped it stayed liquid enough overnight to use it as a guide tomorrow.

Aurora Snow? Are you still listening to me? Focus, darling. We only have a few days left to get all the details ironed out.

Yes. I’m still here, Nigel. I was just thinking about how best to get the paint off as quickly as possible. How about I wear a bright blue dress instead of black? The paint would blend in if I happen to miss removing some.

Blue dress? Don’t be gauche. Black, sweetheart. Nothing but black. Blue screams tomboy next door, which is definitely not you. Mystery, Aurora. Your art is all about mystery.

Aurora chuckled. Sorry. I was being practical for once. Whatever was I thinking?

You used to not think about such things at all. That’s what people liked about you, especially the rich men who bought your work.

Nigel’s comment was only half-teasing. Her dating life was disappearing as she aged. She was over forty now and getting picky about who she spent time with. There was so much drama going on in her life that she was lucky her artist’s mojo was functional at all these days.

She hadn’t felt right since her mother’s death from cancer. Nor had she dealt with the bomb her dying parent had dropped on her before departing the world. Her mother’s dying wish had stunned her into an emotional numbness that even after many months still hadn’t gone away.

I’ll work something out and ask if I need help. Thank you, Nigel. I hope we make a lot of money.

Doll, you always make me money. We have more RSVPs than the fire code allows. You pull in a crowd every time you come here, Aurora. I’ll call you back in a couple days and you can tell me your plan to pull it off then. Ciao, Bella.

Ciao, Nigel. Talk to you soon. Aurora ended the phone call before letting herself sigh loudly and long. She hated being in a bad mood.

It was all the secrets—damn, frustrating secrets. Her mother had been a master at keeping them. And now she had inherited the burden of them. What she had learned was severely disrupting her creativity.

For most of her forty-three years on this earth, she’d shoved her mother’s love of secrecy aside and told herself what the woman kept hidden didn’t matter. So what if she never confirmed the identity of the man who provided the other half of her genetic material?

It wasn’t like her mother had told her a story about unrequited love. No. The woman who’d judged her as sinful had confessed on her deathbed to infidelity with a highly public and very married man. Would such an unwanted child be better off to just ignore the information of who her father was? It was bad enough he’d rejected her. Why would her mother want her to let her father’s family reject her too?

As an older woman herself, she had felt sorry for Eliza Snow the woman. There hadn’t been many options back when her mother had conceived her. Saddled with an illegitimate child by a married man, it was no wonder her mother had never married.

But what a terrible, self-esteem destroying situation to have been paid by someone you loved to have to hide his child. The woman who bore her had martyred her life over it.

And for what? To atone her one and only moment of female weakness, and in the process protect the reputation of the worthless male who had seduced her?

God—no one would ever catch her doing such a thing.

No way. No how. She lived above board.

Let people judge her for sleeping around and ruthlessly cutting the men loose afterwards. Aurora didn’t care.

In forty years she’d never let anyone, especially her mother, stop her from living life as she saw fit. She was doubly grateful now to have rebelled. Though in the grand scheme of things, remaining single hadn’t exactly been a deliberate decision on her part.

The hard truth was that she’d never come across a man capable of tolerating her getting naked in front of strangers for the sake of making a social point.

Nor had she met anyone who sincerely believed in her capacity to make a living from her art, even the more benign part of it, like her selling her paintings.

Oh, there’d been a couple who showed promise here and there over the years, but in the end, she’d proved too radical.

In her life, men had mostly served the single purpose of providing orgasms when she felt the need for them. That justification for inviting someone into her bed had never caused her a moment’s loss of sleep.

At least it hadn’t, until she’d had to emotionally deal with hearing how her father had treated her mother just as casually.

The last time she’d questioned her ethics had been in her late twenties. Should she now regret her many relationships after finding out information she had no evidence was even true?

Aurora looked in the hallway mirror and snorted at the guilty woman staring back at her.

You know why you suddenly care? she asked her reflection. It’s because you finally realized you’re truly alone in this cold, uncaring world, Aurora Jean Snow. No mother. No father. No siblings or family. And certainly no caring lover warming your bed every night. Getting old is definitely going to suck for you, lady.

Shaking her head to dispel her depressive funk, she sent her long natural curls falling down her back swinging in time with her denial.

Even if one day she discovered the information her mother has shared was all true, parentage wasn’t everything. There were hundreds of documented studies that proved that.

She had painstakingly made herself into someone she liked and respected. She had honored her creativity and the heart that made it possible.

So her mother would just have to keep wringing her hands and shaking her head from the afterlife. She was not contacting her sperm donor’s family. Finding out the truth was not going to change anything important. She would never let it.

The secret identity of her father could die a cold, bitter death. There was no need to let the man ruin yet another life with his callousness.

Chapter Two

"Tyler, man—are you sure this is the right address? It looks like someone’s house, not any art gallery. I thought you said the woman I was looking for was an affluent artist. The front yard hasn’t been mowed in weeks. The place