A Bride In Waiting

Sara walked over and picked up the eight-by-ten color portrait. At first she was disappointed. From all the confusion of identity, she’d expected to feel as though she were looking into a mirror. “I can see a resemblance,” she murmured, “but...I don’t know. She’s different. Prettier.” However, the more she stared at the picture, the more she saw of herself—her eyes, her mouth, her nose.

Her sister?

Her twin sister?

Lucas came up behind her, his breath, warm on her neck, and took it from her. “Resemblance, hell. She’s not any prettier than you are. The same hairstyle, a little makeup, a big smile and it’s you.”

Sara moved a step away from Lucas’s compelling nearness and picked up another picture, this one of Clare, Ralph and Analise, obviously taken a few years earlier. “Analise looks so happy.”

“She is happy. Nothing’s ever happened to make her sad.”

The tone of Lucas’s voice drew Sara’s attention. She looked at him closely, beneath the polish, the perfect haircut and expensive clothes, to the pain tucked away at the very back of his eyes. She could see it as clearly as she saw his face. Maybe it wasn’t that obvious to everyone, but she knew what to look for. To her chagrin, the added dimension made him even more attractive, tugged at her more surely than his hand on her arm in the church.

She had to get out of this house and away from these people before she lost complete control of her senses.

“Analise, why aren’t you in bed?”

Sara whirled to see Clare standing in the doorway holding a tray with a bowl of steaming potato soup. In spite of everything, the smell made her mouth water and her soul relax. Her favorite comfort food as well as Analise’s.

Another similarity.

Clare handed her tray to Lucas. “You can’t wear that dress,” she said as she crossed the room to the bed. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance you’ll put on that nice robe your aunt Wilma sent you.” She turned down the bed and plumped the pillows then looked at Sara. “Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. Just go in the bathroom and change into something.”

Sara spotted a door at one end of the room and bolted toward it. With any sort of luck, it would lead not to the bathroom but to another dimension.

The door revealed a huge walk-in closet crammed full of brightly colored clothes. Clare was going to think her daughter was really sick if she didn’t even remember which door led to the bathroom.

Sara looked around desperately and finally spotted a pale pink quilted object that might be a robe dangling from a shelf in the back. She retrieved it, took a deep breath and returned to Lucas and Clare.

Clare smiled. “Why, thank you for humoring me, dear. Now I can tell your aunt Wilma you wore the robe.”

Sara stole a glance at Lucas. He smiled, his eyes twinkling, and tilted his head toward a door at the other end of the room.

Analise’s bathroom looked as though it had come straight out of the pages of a magazine. A huge gray marble Jacuzzi with shiny brass hardware dominated one side of the room with a matching vanity across the other. Someone had apparently cleaned this room as nothing but soft mauve towels and perfume bottles were in evidence.

A pale, frightened face stared back at Sara from the well-lighted mirror, a face that bore little resemblance to the vibrant, beautiful Analise in the picture Sara had seen. For a fleeting moment, she thought how lucky Analise was to have all these material things as well as two loving parents and an attractive, caring fiancé whose touch could create tantalizing tingles.

She shoved those thoughts aside. Envy never helped anyone. Certainly not envy of someone else’s fiancé.

She peeled off her clothes and put on the pink robe. No wonder Analise didn’t want to wear it. The fabric was scratchy and much too warm for this time of the year, plus the garment was large and bulky. But she wouldn’t have to wear it for long, just long enough to eat some soup and get out of there.

As she turned to go, she saw hanging on the door a brightly patterned silk robe of red swirled with green and purple. She couldn’t resist smiling. Even from what little she knew of Analise, this robe seemed perfect for her. She touched the soft fabric, letting it slide through her fingers, and felt a curious connection with the missing Analise.

Lucas had promised that she could meet his fiancée if she did this favor for him, and they’d gone way beyond “favor” at this point. However, she was no longer sure she wanted to meet her look-alike. She was intimidated by everything to do with this woman she’d never met, this woman who might be her sister.

She looked at herself again in the mirror. There were differences, but she looked more like Analise than Analise looked like Clare and Ralph. Ralph had dark brown, almost black, hair and hazel eyes, and Clare had blond hair, blue eyes and a small, uptilted nose. No red hair and green eyes or strong, straight nose.

Analise could very well be adopted, too.

Analise could very well be her twin.

Sara straightened her shoulders. Whatever the cost, she had to meet Analise, had to know if they were related.

She left the bathroom, closing the door behind her, and went to sit on the bed.

“Omigosh!” She shot up, then reached behind her and pushed experimentally. “It’s a water bed!”

“Analise, will you stop being silly and sit down,” Clare demanded.

Sara lowered herself uneasily onto the unreliable surface, and Clare handed her the tray.

Sara took a tentative taste of the soup. “It’s wonderful!”

“Good,” Clare approved. “As soon as you finish eating, you take a nap. I’ll come wake you in plenty of time to get ready for the rehearsal dinner.”

“I’ll stay with her for a while longer,” Lucas said, coming to sit on the side of the bed.

Clare leaned over and brushed the wisps of hair back from Analise’s face then kissed her forehead. Sara closed her eyes and tried not to enjoy the maternal gesture that belonged to Analise, not to her. But again, as at the wedding rehearsal, it was hard to keep in mind that this was all make-believe.

“Very well, Lucas,” Clare said. “You can stay with her, but don’t keep her awake.”

The older woman bustled to the door, and Sara realized for the first time that Analise’s parents seemed to have no problem with leaving her alone in her room with Lucas. Did that mean they knew and approved of Lucas and Analise...well, of their doing things married people did?

Lucas and Analise were engaged, and in this day and age, that sort of thing was accepted. There was no reason for her to feel that swift surge of...what? Pain? Envy?

Whatever it was, she refused to acknowledge or indulge it.

Clare paused at the door, looked back and sighed. “This will probably be the last time I get to take care of you,” she said wistfully. “I don’t suppose you want me to tuck Sara in with you this one last time?”

Sara’s fingers clutched the tray in her lap convulsively. She heard Lucas gasp. What on earth was Analise’s mother saying?

“Oh, don’t give me that look. I know you’re all grown-up and too old for dolls, but I saw you cuddling Sara and talking to her just last week. Lucas, don’t you dare make fun of Analise. Of course she’ll want to take that old doll with her when you get married. She’s an only child, and that doll’s been her pretend sister since she was just a little thing.”

Chapter Four

The door closed behind Clare, and Lucas turned to Sara. Her gaze was still riveted on the door and she looked as confused as he felt.

“What’s going on here?” he asked. “Who are you? Why does Analise have a doll with your name and you have a doll with her name?”

She shook her head slowly. As if in a daze, she stood and set the lap tray on the nightstand. Managing somehow to look graceful and regal even in that ridiculous robe, she crossed the room and picked up Analise’s picture again.

“Is Analise adopted?” she asked.

“No, of course not. Well, I don’t think so.” He shifted from one foot to the other. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “It’s never come up.”

“She doesn’t look like either Clare or Ralph.”

“I hadn’t thought about it, but you’re right. She doesn’t.”

Sara set the picture back on the shelf and shifted her gaze to him, her eyes alight with sudden hope. “I need to find out if it’s possible she’s my twin.”

“Your twin?” He scowled. From the time this woman had kneed him in the groin, crushed his shin and held him at bay with pepper spray, this situation had become more and more bizarre. “Analise is an only child. She doesn’t have any sisters, certainly not a twin.”

Sara darted back to sit beside him, her cheeks flushed with becoming color, and he could feel the charge of energy surrounding her. “But what if she’s not an only child? What if she was adopted? What if she has a twin sister?”

Sara’s animation made her more delectable than ever. He wanted to agree with her just to please her, to let her maintain that glow. But he couldn’t. She was getting a little far-out.

“Are you saying your mother might have had twins and given up your sister for adoption? Sara, you’re not making sense.”

“Yes, I am. I was adopted.” Her voice softened, sadness spreading a cloud over her enthusiasm. “I just found out a year ago when my mother had kidney failure and I offered to donate a kidney. The tests showed I couldn’t be her daughter, and she finally admitted the truth to me. So maybe I had a twin sister, and we were both adopted.”

Adopted That explained a few things, like her response to Clare’s kindness and her need to prove Analise was her sister. With the only mother she’d ever known dead and not her biological mother after all, Sara must feel very alone in the world. She was probably desperate to find a family. Nevertheless, he had to shatter her ill-founded hopes about Analise. “Twins adopted by different people? That’s impossible.”

“Why is it impossible? Analise and I look so much alike her own mother couldn’t tell the difference. And look at the other evidence. Even twins separated at birth always seem to have some sort of a connection. I studied about it in school. They wear the same kind of clothes, marry people with the same names, go into the same professions.”

“But you and Analise dress completely differently.” This whole thing was so crazy, he didn’t dare tell Sara that Analise, unable to find employment in her chosen field in Briar Creek and forbidden by her parents to move to a larger city, did volunteer work at the library.

“We do dress differently, that’s true. But she wanted to be an entomologist, and so did I. I studied library science only because my mother insisted.” She rose and moved around the room again. “How do you explain the coincidence of the dolls? And look at all the music boxes Analise has.” She picked up one he’d given Analise for her birthday a couple of years ago, a crystal unicorn on a base of mirrors. Carefully she turned it over, wound the key and listened to the strains of “Born Free” as they tinkled into the room.

“What about the music boxes?” he asked.

“I’ve always loved them. Every time we’d go into a store, I’d search for the music boxes, then I’d choose one and wind it up and listen until my mother found me.” She looked at him, her chin tilted defiantly. “I’ve lived my whole life with lies. Now I’m going to find the truth.”

“In Briar Creek? Why here? Did your mother tell you that your birth mother came from here?”

The tilt to her chin drooped slightly, and Lucas felt a momentary pang that he’d been the one to dampen her enthusiasm.

“Not exactly,” she said. “After she died, I found a crumpled pay stub that had fallen through a hole in the pocket of her coat and lodged in the lining. The coat had been cleaned several times and only the name of the bank survived. The First National Bank of Briar Creek, Texas. That’s why I came here. It’s the only clue I have.”

Lucas flinched at the mention of the bank where his father had worked, the bank that had sent his father to prison, but Sara’s expression was guileless.

“That bank was bought out several years ago,” he said, watching her closely for any reaction.

“I know. I tried to call them. I found out some big banking company from Dallas took them over, and they wouldn’t tell me anything. So I had to come here. It’s a small town. Surely someone here knew my mother. My adoptive mother. Maybe somebody will even know who my real mother is.”

“What about your father? The one who raised you, I mean. Your mother’s husband. You haven’t mentioned him. Where is he? What does he think about all this?”

She held the music box up to the sunshine coming through the windows and watched the play of rainbow colors as the light refracted through the crystal onto the mirrored surface. “I don’t have a father,” she said, the words matter-of-fact, detached, though he suspected the feelings associated with her statement weren’t nearly so unemotional. “My mother never married. She always told me he deserted us when he found out she was pregnant with me. But, of course, that part wasn’t true.”

He rose slowly and crossed the room to her. Cupping her face in his hands, he forced her to look at him. “Sara, you’re a beautiful young woman with your life ahead of you. Forget the past. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is what you do from now on.”

“What would you do if you didn’t know who your parents were, what they looked like, what kind of lives they’d led, whether you had brothers and sisters, if your father was a rocket scientist or in prison?”

Lucas dropped his hands. “What if you do find out he’s in prison?”

She winced at the harshness in his voice, turned away and busied herself with repositioning the music box on the shelf.

“Maybe you’re better off not knowing,” he said softly. “Having a family isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.”

“Neither is ignorance,” she said firmly.

Lucas smiled. “Touché. Okay, Sara Martin from Deauxville, Missouri. I’ll give you credit for another likeness to Analise. You’re both stubborn. So, what can I do to help? That was our agreement. You help me, and I’ll help you.”

He looked into her eyes which were the color of the magnolia leaves outside the window. That was strange. They were the same shade of green as Analise’s, but he’d never thought of Analise’s eyes as being like the magnolia leaves. Maybe it was because the scent of magnolias seemed to surround Sara, soft and sweet with an underlying, tangy hint of lemon. Her skin reminded him of magnolia flowers—creamy and velvety and fragile.

Helping Sara, spending any more time around her, might not be such a good idea. He enjoyed it entirely too much for an engaged man.

“Thanks, but other than introducing me to Analise when she returns, I can manage on my own.”

Good. That let him off the hook.

“Absolutely not,” he heard someone say. “A deal’s a deal.” He had to be the one who’d said it. He was the only person in the room with his lips moving.

What the heck. He might as well deal with and get over this strange fascination he had for Sara. If by some fluke she did prove to be a distant relative of Analise, he could be seeing her every Christmas, Thanksgiving and birthday. Drooling over the in-law would most certainly not come under the heading of proper etiquette.

“You can do one thing for me,” she said firmly. “Tell me where Analise gets her hair cut.”

“What...? Why do you want to know that?”

“So I can get my hair cut like hers and see how much I really look like her.”

“You can’t do that!”

“Why not?”

Good question. Because he was enthralled with the luxurious length of her hair? Because he liked her just the way she was?

“Because it’s Saturday, and you’ll never be able to get an appointment. They’re always booked solid on Saturdays.”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.