Vicki L. Kidwell

Dark Secrets: a Romance Set in Post-civil War Fredericksburg Vicki L. Kidwell

What would you do if you were a seventeen year old boy, on the eve of graduation, when you're told that wealthy 'uncle' who placed you in boarding schools since the age of five is actually your father? Finding out that you're a bastard is something so shameful that you can't even tell your best friend and room mate. And worst of all, that your father now wants to get to know you as an adult. This is the turmoil that Alexander Chase Kingsley must deal with. On arriving in Fredericksburg, Virginia, hoping to help his mother, whom he's only seen a handful of times with her saloon business, he finds out that she actually runs a whorehouse. And there's still the nagging problem of his father. He inherits the brothel, but closes it, to open a grand hotel, and enlisting his best friend Jem to help manage it. He finds a woman . . . a preening peacock . . . . that coldly and calculatingly snares Alex into marriage. In time he finds out that she used to be a river boat harlot, she's pregnant with his child. What to do? Kick her out, pregnancy and all? No, Alex wants a child to make up for the unconventional childhood that he himself had endured. So he comes up with a plan . . . After his divorce, Alex is very bitter and cold, even taking to carrying a side arm, which later saves his son, Joshua, who is his entire life and the only person besides Jem that keeps him sane, not realizing that the love he needs is right under his nose. Dark Secrets is filled with every emotion within the realm of human life. It has loyalty, love, confrontation and many cliff-hangers. Thank you for reading, and I always welcome feedback.