In Keeper’s Reach, Emma Sharpe is planning her wedding to Colin Donovan, but life is never calm for long for these two FBI agents. An elusive art thief gets in touch with her, swearing another FBI agent is following him. A British mythologist with a tragic past, Oliver is impossible to prosecute, and he won’t admit to anything—but the art he stole is reappearing, intact. Emma doesn’t want anything—or anyone—to interfere with that process. So, who is this FBI agent? What’s he up to? And what do he and Oliver have to do with the private security contractors who want to meet with Colin’s ex-military brother, Mike?
In this excerpt, we see Emma having a moment to herself, just as she’s about to face her greatest danger yet. I hope you enjoy it!
Emma Sharpe was in love with her wedding gown. Totally, ab¬solutely in love. It was silky, simple, flattering and exactly what she had envisioned. She took a selfie in the fitting room of the Newbury Street shop and texted it to her mother in London, who responded immediately.
It’s perfect. I’m sorry I’m not there.
Emma didn’t mind. Her father was recovering from his latest procedure to help ease his chronic back pain due to a long-ago fall on the ice, and her mother was at his side. For most of the past year, they had been living and working abroad, away from reminders of the past, and of the future they had once envisioned for themselves. Their hometown of Heron’s Cove, Maine, had become a trigger for emotional and physical pain.
Her parents had promised to return for Emma’s spring wed¬ding. That was enough, she thought as she eased out of the dress. It was pinned for alterations. She smiled at her reflection, her fair hair a bit flyaway from the dress and the dry winter air. From her late teens into her early twenties, she had believed she would never marry. She had been Sister Brigid then.
She thought of Colin, a hardheaded Maine Donovan, an FBI undercover agent and her fiancé since he had proposed on bended knee in early November in a Dublin pub.
She was Sister Brigid no more.
She slipped back into her jeans, sweater and boots and grabbed her three-quarter-length wool coat, hat and gloves as she ex¬ited the dressing room. She’d left work early for the fitting but had stopped at her Boston waterfront apartment to change out of her work clothes. Around the same time her parents had left for London, she had moved to Boston to join HIT, a small FBI team started and led by the senior agent who had recruited her out of the convent. Matt Yankowski had never doubted his con¬viction that Emma wasn’t meant to profess her final vows and become a full-fledged member of the Sisters of the Joyful Heart.
We can use your expertise in art and art crimes, Yank had told her when he had visited her at her Maine convent four years ago. Give it some thought, Emma.
He hadn’t called her Sister Brigid.
Her early expertise in art crimes hadn’t come from her time at the convent. She was the granddaughter of Wendell Sharpe, founder of Sharpe Fine Art Recovery and one of the foremost private art detectives in the world.
As she ducked out onto the Back Bay street, her phone dinged with another text. Although it was from London, it wasn’t from her mother. It was from Oliver York, aka Oliver Fairbairn, a British aristocrat, self-educated mythologist and international serial art thief.
Who is the FBI agent following me?
Emma stared at the screen. There was no FBI agent following Oliver. She would know if there were. She typed a quick response.
I’ll call you in an hour.