by Kira Blakely
What? “Of course I am.” As soon as the words are out of my mouth, it dawns on me that he had no idea the nature of our relationship was even sexual. Until just now. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Sofia Marshall.”
He knows about her little sex name?
“How did you…?”
“It was on the local news, remember? I tried to tell you—I mentioned it when I first met her. Sofia Marshall.”
Oh, fuck. I do remember him saying something, asking her if they were related, and Maggie said she’d never heard of the girl. But why would she want to be called Sofia otherwise?
With a crawling, heavy sensation in the pit of my stomach, I have to ask, “Who is Sofia Marshall?”
James spreads his arms, frustrated and surprised that I don’t already know this. “There’s a warrant out for her arrest,” he says, enunciating sharply. “She’s wanted for fraud. She wrecked her car not far from here.”
All the pieces fall together at once. Rachel never had anyone on the schedule after Fig. That was why she wanted to stay inside the house. That was what happened to her car, the car she has done nothing to reclaim. Why she requested cash payments over direct deposit. Why she couldn’t “remember” what I did for a living.
“But her background check was clean,” I breathe, unable to understand. “Her references. They were for Maggie Marshall. One of the references physically described her exactly. There can’t be two of them. Not like her.”
The kitchen twirls around me. This can’t be happening. There’s a woman sleeping in my house who lied her way through the front door. She’s with my kids right now. Wanted for fraud.
I sit down at the table and breathe through this. Minutes pass, and I can’t keep track of the time. James clears his throat. I’m taking too long to give him and answer here, but thoughts and questions run through my mind, blur my surrounds.
It’s fraud, not murder, but have I endangered my kids?
I get up walk to the sink, lean on it and remember the first time I fucked Maggie senseless. Right here, right on this table.
Fuck it, I’m the worst father in the god damn world. How did I not see this coming?
The front door blows open and Madison and Charlie rush inside, pink-cheeked and giddy from whatever they were just doing. They run upstairs, and Maggie—I mean, Sofia—hobbles after them, still only crossing the porch. She’s weighed down by what appears to be an old sled, which she drops gratefully. Huffing for breath, she strides across the threshold, closing the door behind her. Her cheeks are pink, like the kids’, and it makes her look fantastically innocent, as well as beautiful. Her curls are wild and airy when she steps in from the cold. She slides off her boots and is only in stocking feet again. Damn her cuteness.
“I hope this is OK,” she explains, heading straight for the kitchen. My jaw squares and I seethe. “They found this sled by the shed, and it’s supposed to snow tomorrow.” Her brow knits as she finally gets close enough to really see the look on my face. She looks to James and finds the same look there. She looks back to me. “What is it?” Her voice is barely a breath now.
“You know what it is,” I tell her, my voice deadly calm.
Chapter 17
Sofia
His words change my blood to ice water in an instant. He knows.
“I can explain,” I say in a hush, moving deeper into the kitchen. I don’t want the kids to hear. Their footsteps thunder across the upstairs hallway and disappear into one of the carpeted bedrooms, but I’m sure they’ll be back down any second. They wanted to raid the downstairs game room and find something to play with me. “I know that it sounds bad, but I did what I had to do. I was only trying to save my sister. Either of you would have done the same for each other.”
Lucas scoffs. “James,” he says, nodding toward his brother. “Why don’t you go watch the kids?”
“Because they’re ten and five,” James replies flatly. “They don’t need me to, and more importantly, I don’t want to.”
“Then just get the hell out of here,” Lucas growls at his brother. But his eyes never leave me. “I need to talk to Maggie in private.”
I gulp and almost plead with James to stay. He pushes up from his stool and marches out of the kitchen, glowering down at me as he passes.
My eyes twist back to Lucas. Now it’s just me and him in the kitchen.
I’ve never seen his gaze like this before. It’s dark, angry.
“Come on,” he commands, thrusting open the door to the finished basement and nodding down the carpeted steps. “I don’t want the kids to hear.”
I pull a deep, cleansing breath through my lungs and follow him downstairs. We reach the basement, with a circular couch and a flat screen TV that is still playing Netflix. Annoyed, Lucas snatches up a remote and turns the thing off.
I purse my lips and bind my hands together, not wanting to cry, knowing this was too good to be true. I knew this would happen, didn’t I? So, I can’t be sad. I knew this was coming all along.
“Are you going to turn me in?” I ask, voice trembling. “Or just kick me out?” There’s no way he’ll let me stay. Not under the same roof as his children. I’m hopeful, but not stupid.
Lucas whirls on me and swallows, eyes hard. Unforgiving. “I don’t fucking know, Mag—Sofia,” he hisses. “I don’t fucking know what I’m going to do. How dare you put me in this kind of position?”
I open my mouth to defend myself, and it takes a while for words to start coming out. “I—It—I’m sorry,” I breathe. “I didn’t realize what I was doing. I just saw Fig leaving, and she left the door open. There was an investigator looking for me. I didn’t expect you to really hire me. I wanted to be out of sight for as long as possible. The luck of it all was so incredible.”
“Yeah, the luck of it all for you,” Lucas snaps. “You being here isn’t so lucky for me.”
I purse my lips together and ignore the way my heart aches. “Sure,” I breathe, thinking of the stolen glances, thinking of him buried deep inside me only last night. But I was bad luck. He wishes he’d never met me at all. “I’m sorry. I should have just left, but the background check cleared. And you were offering me cash and a place to stay. It was never supposed to go on this long. I just kept faking it for one more day.” My heart squeezes hard in my chest. “I didn’t expect you. I didn’t expect us.”
“There can be no ‘us’ if I never even knew you,” Lucas seethes. “Who the hell are you? Who is Sofia Marshall?”
“Nobody,” I promise him, meaning it. “I’m a girl with a twin sister.”
“Did you really get your degree in child psychology?”
“No,” I say.
“Did you ever work as a babysitter for either of those references?”
“That was Maggie, too,” I whisper. “I never got my degree. I went backpacking through Europe and India, and I wrote a travel blog. I came back here and I,” I wince, because I don’t have anything better to tell him. He’s the president of a company, and here I am, with my backpacking blog and my stupid old retail job. “I came back here to America and I started managing a store in the mall. I applied to colleges, but I never ended up registering for anything. We found out Maggie had this tumor in her hand, but she didn’t have any insurance. She was still in school. No job. No way to pay for it.”
Lucas nods, and some empathy finally filters into his eyes. “So, you had to do it. You had to do it for her treatments.”
I nod, and my heart aches to even talk about her. I miss her so much, and the next time I see her, it’ll probably be through Plexiglas. “That’s why we get away with so much,” I whisper. “Because we look exactly alike. Except Maggie has cancer. That’s the main difference.” I shake my head.
In spite of everything that has happened to me as a result of the fraud, my eyes cloud with tears at the memory of Maggie’s struggle. I still have no regrets, even if he kicks me out, right now, even if he calls the cops. I don’t care. Maggie rece
ived her chemotherapy treatments and her follow-ups for over a year before I was caught. She’s better now because of me. So, it was all worth it. She’s cancer-free.
“I don’t know how I got caught,” I go on. “But they put a fraud investigator on my account and he figured it out pretty quickly, once he knew that we were twins. She must’ve filled out a form wrong or something. One slip. That’s all it takes sometimes.”
Lucas swallows and settles down onto the basement couch, looking less certain of all his anger and accusations. “I didn’t know that,” he says. “James just told me that you were wanted for fraud. But I didn’t know it was so your sister could get chemo.”
I shrug. “Does it matter? Laws are laws. I committed hard fraud. Healthcare fraud, for fuck’s sake. I broke federal law, and that means I’ll wind up in jail for this.”
Lucas’ rich brown eyes pan up to me. “It matters,” he assures me. “It matters to me.” His chest rises and falls with a deep breath. “But I don’t know what we’re going to do about it.”
What we’re going to do?
“You can’t let me stay,” I say.
It’s true. Didn’t he just finish an ugly custody battle with Astrid? If she were to find out my true identity, she could use that to take him back to court and try to get the kids again. “I have enough cash to get by for a while. Just let me go. That’s all I ask. Just don’t call anybody.”
Lucas stands and drives a hand through his dark hair, marching back and forth. “You don’t have a car,” he reminds me, as if I don’t remember that. “You barely have any money. You don’t know anyone in Fallaway Peak, and that investigator is looking for you.”
“The investigator assigned to my case has been here already,” I say. “Twice. I never answered the door. It’s already over, Lucas.”
Lucas freezes in his pacing. His eyes flick to me from over his broad shoulder. “They know you’re here?”
“I don’t think so,” I rush. “If they knew that I was here, Callahan could’ve gotten a warrant. His name is Agent Finn Callahan. I’m from Ohio.” Why not go ahead and untangle the entire ball of yarn for him? Let’s open up the closet. Let all the skeletons out. “Callahan has been following me for weeks. I needed to use credit cards and my bank card to get this far, and before all my accounts got frozen, he could follow the trail. Right to Fallaway Peak. It was rainy, and I went off the road. Went into the woods. And, by some miracle, I found you.”
“Fuuuck.” He laughs unexpectedly and shakes a finger at me, like I’m such a little scamp. “You—damn it. You didn’t know anything about Graytech. You never fucking spoke to Rachel. That is kind of amazing.”
I shake my head and Lucas’s palm massages over his forehead. “I let a complete stranger sleep in my guestroom and take my kids to school,” he mutters. “I gave you cash, gave you gate codes, gave you a key. I went raw and came inside this total stranger.” Each word brings a fresh cold pang to my heart. It’s acoustic and tinny. Empty. “What the hell is going on with me?”
“Stop saying that,” I whisper. “Stop calling me a total stranger, Lucas. I didn’t hurt anyone. I didn’t do anything. I just tricked you. That’s all.”
Lucas grimaces and nods. “We need to do something,” he mutters. “You can’t live under your sister’s name forever. It’s going to ruin both your lives, and you’ll be caught. You’ll get caught someday. This town could fit on the head of a pin. Damn it.” His jaw tightens, and Lucas shakes his head. “Damn it,” he repeats. “There’s no other way. You have to deal with this. You can’t keep running.”
I know that’s true. I’ve only been delaying the inevitable. Lucas is going to turn me in. It’s the right thing to do. It’s the only way he can protect the kids. It’s the only way he can protect himself. And it’s my destiny. I deserve it. I conned Priority Platinum out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. I am a fraud. I close my eyes and swallow. “All right,” I breathe. “Do whatever you think is right, Lucas. I won’t stop you.”
Chapter 18
Lucas
My eyes light over Sofia, full of remorse that things had to go this way. Of course, I don’t want to turn her in.
“Stop,” I whisper, and I take a step closer to her, even though it’s a bad idea. If I get close to her, she’s going to start breaking through. What will happen if I touch her now? Nothing good. Nothing smart. I need to control myself now more than ever.
But my hands come up and skate along her arms, rubbing them to comfort her. She pins her lips together and those catlike gray eyes gaze up at me. Tears make her eyes shimmer.
“God, I’m so tired of doing the right thing,” I mutter. “I’m always thinking of everyone else first. But what about me, Sofia? What about you?”
“I don’t know about me,” she whispers. “I hadn’t even thought that far ahead yet.”
“I don’t want to turn you in.” My finger, possessed with a mind of its own, twirls around one of her gold curls. “I want to be selfish.” The longer I gaze down at her beautiful face, the harder it is to collect all the logical reasons that she needs to be turned over to that agent. Who is that guy, anyway? He doesn’t know her. He doesn’t care that she only committed the fraud to save her sister’s life. He’s never looked into her eyes and felt this way.
Sofia blinks up at me and her tears spill, so fat from being held at bay that they slice down her cheeks and tumble off her jaw. They’re barely even there and then they’re gone, leaving nothing but two subtle trails. “Are you serious?” Her lips tremble and she drags in a trembling breath. “You’re going to let me go?”
“No,” I decide, sudden but firm. “No, I’m not going to let you go, Sofia.”
I clutch her arms and pull her up to meet my lips. Our mouths open and meld together like magnets, struggling to get closer, deeper. Her breasts press tight against my chest and my hands slither down from her arms, clutching her hips and planting them against mine.
Mine.
“Don’t,” Sofia rasps, surprising me by wrenching away. She only struggles a few inches of space between us, but it’s enough to be too much. My cock throbs and I gaze down at her and know that she isn’t going anywhere. She can’t. It’s never been like this before, and I have a terrible certainty that it never will be again. “We can’t.”
I nuzzle into her coconut-scented hair, and my lips brush over her tender earlobe as I speak. “Yes, we can,” I promise her. “We can.”
My mouth moves down her throat and she goes silent, with the exception of her ragged breath. I kiss down to her collarbone until it’s too much stooping for me, and I scoop her up into my arms. Her legs wind automatically around me and I carry her back to the guestroom where my brother slept last night. I toss her flat on her back and climb on top of her, starting right where I left off: her collarbone. Her lace sweater stretches against my chin as I work her shirt to the side and expose her lacy white bra.
“We’re going too fast,” Sofia whispers, even though that breathing lets me know that she’s along for the ride.
“And we can’t stop,” I reply, folding down her bra and taking her nipple quickly in my mouth. She grinds against my erection as I suck at her. He pounds in my pants, insistent even though he came out of nowhere.
I felt her drifting away from me, and I couldn’t allow that. She’s mine. I have to keep her. And I can’t think of a more physical, tangible way to express that than by sliding my stiff, naked cock into her one more time.
Fuck, I can’t wait.
I jam my hand up her skirt, shove her wet panties to the side, and feel her pussy. More blood fills my cock. My eyes roll and I groan against my own clenched teeth. She’s soaking wet and burning hot. She even whimpers when my fingers skate over her sensitive strip. She wants it, too. Hell, we both need this. It’s been a hard morning for everyone, and a hard, deep orgasm could emotionally reset us both.
My other hand peels down my zipper, and Sofia stiffens when she hears it. Her hands scramble to shove her skir
t off, but I catch them. “Leave it on,” I breathe, loving the stockings and the skirt. I fish my pulsing unit from these jeans. I guide the tip of my head over her and squeeze into the tight little hole, still no condom. Never a condom with her. I don’t know what she does to me that makes me so mindless. I want to pump seed into her so deeply that she has to spit some out.
“God, you’re tight,” I rasp, seeing stars. I thrust again. More stars. Shit, I’m going to come immediately if she doesn’t loosen up a little for me. “I could fill you up for the rest of my life.”
“You’re crazy,” Sofia pants, writhing under me in overwhelmed pleasure herself.
“You make me that way.” I pin her wrists into the pillows and sink into her to the hilt. “Could you do something with your pussy? Relax it a little?” I ask, unable to stop thrusting. It’s so good. My entire body bubbles with heat, with heaviness, with the storm literally coming from inside me. God, I’m going to blow so hard. “It’s so tight—I can’t—I have to come, baby. Oh, fuck.”
But Sofia doesn’t loosen up. My words only make her walls suck harder at my cock, sapping me of any willpower that I have left.
“Come in me,” she commands me, throaty and raw.
I drive deeper and feel a heavy load tingling right at the tip of my head. It’s so big. I can’t hold it back. It’s a goddamn ocean of cum for her.
Sudden little footsteps drum through the ceiling overhead. Madison and Charlie must be up there.
Then the basement door swings open.
“Helloooo?” Madison calls in a light, happy voice. My orgasm fizzles into oblivion, even though my rock-hard dick is still planted deep in Sofia. We freeze, wrapped around each other, her skirt up to her hips, my pants on, like a couple of desperately horny teenagers. “We want to find games, but Uncle James says nooo, someone is down heeeere. Is anybody down heeeere?”
Chapter 19
Sofia
Lucas and I freeze, him buried deep inside me, dick still pulsing. My pussy squeezes responsively around him, and I command her to stop milking him, but she can’t.
