Chapter Eight
* * *
Kiley figured if she was a normal person, she’d be nervous, heading out to meet with a stranger who was reportedly pretty upset with her sister. She should probably be afraid he wouldn’t believe she was Kendra’s twin, or that he’d hurt her or something like that.
She wasn’t afraid, though. She was more nervous around Rob and his family than she would be around some lowlife thug. And he had to be a lowlife thug, if he’d ever been involved with Kendra. She knew his kind. She knew a hundred. She’d grown up around his kind.
She was his kind.
“Not anymore,” she whispered.
She parked at a meter, and dutifully put in a quarter instead of just taking her chances like she normally would. “Let ‘em ticket me. Good luck getting paid.” That’s what she’d have muttered at the parking meter once. Respectable people put the darn quarters in.
She was trying to become a better woman, an honest woman—a confident, capable, respected and respectable woman, like those Brand women were.
Any nerves she might’ve been developing when she reached her destination evaporated as soon as she walked into Maude’s. The coffee house was as warm and welcoming as any place she’d ever been, with little sitting areas situated all around, every one of them unique.
It was the kind of place where conversations broke out between strangers on sugar-highs from the mouthwatering treats behind the glass; cookies, eclairs, doughnuts, danishes, even a couple of pies.
“Welcome to Maude’s,” said a beautiful blonde. “I’m Carly, the owner. And you’re a first timer! You get a free treat.”
Kiley looked at the glass case and her mouth watered. “Can I get it on the way out? I’m meeting someone. A big grouchy mean guy who’s been harassing my sister, and really doesn’t deserve a free treat anywhere near as much as my partner Rob does.”
The woman pulled in her chin and lifted her brows. “You need backup?”
“Nah, I got this.”
“I’ll keep an eye on you just in case. Go on, pick a spot. I’ll bring you something to drink. Coffee?”
Kiley looked around at the frothy, foamy, pricey drinks others were slurping. Not yet, she thought. But one day soon, it wouldn’t be a luxury to order a fancy-assed coffee. “Just a plain coffee, thanks.”
“Iced mocha latte is today’s special. Same price as a regular coffee. You should try it.” Carly’s smile was friendly and infectious.
“Okay, I will, thanks.” As the woman went to make her latte, Kiley headed to the cozy nook near the fireplace, even though it wasn’t burning at the moment. After all, it was July in Oklahoma—no way a fire was going to bring in the customers. More likely to drive them out.
She sat down on a curving leather sofa in front of a glass table and looked around the place. Everyone who caught her eye flashed a warm smile. A little girl waved at her. She’d forgotten how friendly and intimate small-town life could be. Even here in Tucker Lake, which was a much bigger small-town than Big Falls. She remembered her father complaining about everybody knowing everybody’s business, and she’d come back fully prepared to hate that aspect, too.
But it didn’t feel at all hateful to her. It felt kind of good. Kind of comforting, and maybe even a little bit secure.
The door jangled, and Kiley looked up to see a man she recognized, but only from the photo on Rob’s phone. He was even bigger in person, and when he looked her way and scowled, she was happy to see that he was sporting a black eye, bruised chin, and a cut eyebrow.
Go, Robby.
Carly brought a giant mugful of sugar topped in whipped cream trying to pass itself off as coffee, and set it in front of her. Leaning in, she whispered, “That him?”
“Yep.”
“I think you need backup.”
“Nope.”
“I’m calling my dad anyway.” She nodded and walked away as Dax J whatever—who looked like what would happen if John Cena and the The Rock made a test-tube baby—strode toward Kiley
She stood up, not to be polite but because the way he was moving toward her was so aggressive she thought he might try to hit her. She could dodge big meaty fists better standing up. He kept coming, looking angrier and angrier.
Reflexively, she held up both hands. “I’m not Kendra.”
“The hell you aren’t.” But he stopped in his tracks, standing right there beside the table near the teardrop-shaped seat across from hers.
“I’m her twin sister, Kiley.”
He narrowed his eyes, then his brow impersonated an accordion. “You have blue eyes.”
She nodded. “Kendra’s are green.”
He lifted his brows. “Tinted contacts.”
She spread her right eyelid wide and leaned up at him. “You can touch it if you wash your hands first. But I think you can see there’s no lens in my eye.”
He leaned in. His breath smelled of root beer. He wasn’t so scary.
“I’m right handed, she’s left. My eyes are blue, hers are green, and besides all of that, there’s this.” She slapped her proof on the wooden table, a newspaper clipping. She’d made copies in case she ever lost it, but she figured the original would be more impressive in this case.
Woman, 23, Dies in Tragic Fire.
He frowned hard at the story. There was a photo of Kendra, and a block of text beside it. Kiley knew what it said by heart. Kendra Kellogg, who would have been twenty-four years old in September, was killed in a fire that destroyed the house she shared with five other young adults. She is survived by her twin sister, Kiley. The cause of the fire is under investigation.
The reporter had a heart. Didn’t mention the house was a halfway house, or that the five other young adults were five other petty thieves.
She watched him read it. He was a slow reader. Why was she not surprised? Finally he looked up from the clipping and dropped like a boulder into the chair beside her.
Sighing, she said, “Hi, I’m Kiley.”
There were tears pooling in his eyes. “I’m Dax,” he said. “I can’t believe she’s really—” He couldn’t say it.
Kiley tried to distract herself from a groundswell of emotion by taking a giant sip of the icy, chocolatey coffee flavored drink. She gave herself a cold-headache, closed one eye and rubbed her temple.
Emotion avoided.
“So why are you running around Big Falls flashing a photo of my sister?” She asked. “What did she do to you?”
He opened his mouth, closed it again, shook his head.
Kiley realized he felt ashamed, stupid, because her sister had played him so thoroughly. It was just like Rob said he’d felt over a woman. Kiley was seeing it firsthand, for the first time. “It’s what she does, Dax. She’s really good at it. One of the best.”
“Best at what?”
“At the con. The grift. The game. She took a bunch of money from you, didn’t she?”
“No,” he said. “I gave it to her.”
“Honey, they all give it to her. What did she do? Say she needed surgery?”
His eyes snapped to hers. “A kidney transplant.”
“The Slice & Dice with a Side of Beans.”
“The what now?”
“Slice & Dice,” she made a cutting motion with a butter knife from the table. “As in surgery. Side of beans, as in kidney.” He blinked at her. “Kidney? Beans? Kidney beans?”
He shook his head. “You’re not pretending. You’re nothing like her. Last week when I saw her, she said—”
“Wait, what?”
“When I saw her–“
“Last week?” Kiley interrupted. “Did you say last week?”
“Yeah, last week. When I gave her the money and took her to the airport.”
The sound of her own heartbeat thrummed in Kiley’s ears. “That’s not possible, Dax. Look at the date on that newspaper clipping.”
He leaned over the table, then sat up again. “But I’ve seen her since then. Look, look at the date on this
.” He took out his cell phone, tapped, scrolled and handed it to her.
Kiley looked at the photo. Her beautiful sister smiled back at her. She was wearing her hair dead straight, and her freckles were covered with enough makeup to choke a bear. Looked like a mortician had done her face, which was fitting, since she was supposed to be dead. “When…when was this taken?”
“At the airport. Newark.”
“And where was she heading?”
“That’s the thing,” Dax said, leaning back in his chair. “She said she had to go to Chicago for her transplant. But she didn’t go to that gate. I thought I saw her boarding a flight to Oklahoma City. I remembered her mentioning her hometown of Big Falls, once. That’s why I came here.”
She tapped the photos icon on his phone and scrolled. He had plenty of other shots of her Kendra. And the dates went well past the date of her death.
And suddenly, she got it. It was a con. Kendra’s death was nothing but one more great big con.
“That bitch,” she whispered. But she had to force herself not to smile. Her sister was alive!
She was going to kill her.
Belatedly remembering the man across from her, she said, “Tell me about you and Kendra. Start at the beginning.”
He looked momentarily blissful. “She waited tables at the café where I had lunch every day. I um, work for my father’s company.”
“Doing what?” she asked.
He looked surprised that she was interested. She was frankly kind of surprised herself. “My father owns lots of businesses. I worked for one of the racetracks.”
“Like NASCAR?”
“Horse racing. I manage his track in Saratoga Springs.”
She smiled. “You like it?”
“Love the horses. Hate the business. But I get to spend time with trainers and breeders and the horses themselves.” He said it all in a rush, maybe before he’d thought it through. Then he said, “I have to spend a couple months a year in Jersey at corporate. Kendra waited on me every day at lunch. I don’t know, we flirted a little I guess, and pretty soon I asked her out and we started…you know…being together. A couple. She told me she was gonna die without a kidney transplant….”
“And you gave her money.”
“I gave her a lot of money.” He sighed. “And then she got a call. Said it was a miracle. They found a match. She had to fly to Chicago right then, have a transplant. I drove her to the airport. And then….”
Kiley gave him a second to breathe. She said, “How do you know she didn’t go to the right gate? They wouldn’t have let you in without—”
“I bought a ticket.”
“Oh, hell.” She closed her eyes, her heart breaking for the guy.
“I couldn’t let her go through the surgery alone. I left her at the security checkpoint, walked back to the concourse, and bought a ticket for the same flight. But when I got to the gate, she wasn’t there. I waited till they boarded the plane. She didn’t get on. I stood there like an idiot with a ticket in my hand, and the flight attendant trying to get me to board.”
“You had it pretty bad for her, huh?”
He sighed, nodded. “As I was walking back up the concourse, I saw her out of the corner of my eye, just stepping out of sight as another flight boarded. I couldn’t get in without causing a scene, and you’d have to be suicidal to cause a scene at an airport these days.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I hear you.”
“It was a flight to Oklahoma City. And that’s when I realized there was no kidney. She’d conned me. I knew it right then. And I’ve been looking for her ever since.”
The story made perfect sense. Her sister was alive.
But she’d faked her death. She’d done that on purpose, and while Kiley wanted to kick her ass for putting her through what she had, she also wondered if maybe Kendra had a good reason for such drastic measures. What if she was looking at prison time, or if she’d conned the wrong mark? Maybe someone dangerous who was out for revenge?
Her first priority was to protect her sister.
She lifted her head and looked Dax Russell in the eye. “I don’t know who scammed you. But this—” she set the leather pouch on the table between them. “—is all that’s left of my sister. I’ve been carrying her ashes around with me for the past month and a half, waiting to spread them where she’d want them.”
He didn’t believe her. “What are you doing, Kiley? Look at her,” he said, flashing the phone in her face. “She’s your twin.”
“Kendra was my twin. That chick on your phone isn’t Kendra. If you were female, you’d realize that hair and makeup can pretty much make you look like anybody you want. A con like the one who got you—she’d know that. She probably knew Kendra from back in the day, and knew she’d died, so her name was safe to use.”
“Are you conning me, too, now? Is that what this is?”
“I know you don’t want to believe it, Dax, but Kendra’s dead. Hell, if your chick was the real Kendra, she’d have called herself Shirley or something.” She pushed his phone away from her face. “That isn’t my sister. And I’m really sorry about the money.”
“I borrowed it from my father’s company,” he said.
“I’m really sorry, Dax.”
“I didn’t ask first.”
“Oh, hell,” she whispered.
“Kendra—or whoever she was—said the insurance would pay out within a week or two and she’d reimburse me. I figured I’d put it back and no one would ever know. She said if they waited for all the bullshit red tape, she’d be dead.”
Kiley lowered her head.
“I believed her,” he said. “I loved her.”
“I’m really sorry, Dax.” She reached across the table, put a hand on his big forearm. “If it helps, try to realize that you fell in love with the person you thought she was. She’s smart enough to figure out what your ideal woman would be, all those lunches she served you, all the small talk you shared. She figured out exactly what you wanted, and then morphed into it, knowing she’d found herself a golden goose. She wasn’t really who you thought she was.”
“She pretended really well.”
“That person, the one she was pretending to be—maybe there’s a real version of her out there somewhere. And someday, you’re gonna find her.”
She got up, picked up her drink, and said, “Thanks for being so…honest. I’m real sorry for your losses, Dax.”
He nodded. “Guess this is one of those life lesson deals, right?”
“I guess so.” She waved, he nodded, and Kiley went to the register.
He called after her, “It’s on me, Kiley.”
“And me,” the owner said, handing her a bag. “I put a couple of my favorites in there. And if it’s okay with you, I’m gonna give Sad-Sack over there his freebie, too.”
“Yeah,” Kiley said. “Turns out he’s a really sweet guy.” And she’d just lied to him, and probably broken his heart.
She’d find him and tell him the truth someday, when she knew it would be safe for Kendra.
Kendra.
Her heart swelled up in her chest. God, it was wonderful! Kendra was alive.
Chapter Nine
* * *
Rob finished putting in the stained glass window, glanced at his watch and got a little more worried about Kiley. And then he spotted her headlights. For just a split second, they ignited the stained glass and painted the attic in jewels, ruby and emerald and sapphire.
He was unreasonably glad she was home. That was probably a warning sign. He needed to rein it in before he did something stupid, like falling for her. Smiling, he picked up his tools and heard the front door open. He hurried downstairs to greet her, and was surprised by how dark it was. All the lights were still off. He’d spent more time in the attic than he’d realized. He wondered if Kiley would tell him what she’d been up to today. Probably not.
She walked into the living room, looked at him and froze, like she was surprised to see him there. An
d then she shifted instantly, ran to him, and said, “Oh thank God, thank God, I’ve finally found someone who can help me.”
She pressed her hands to his chest and said, “I need a man. A big, strong man like you. I need a hero. I need—”
“You need to get your hands off him, Kendra, and you need to do it now.”
Kiley’s voice came from the kitchen door, and then she hit the light switch, and Rob stood there blinking at her. There were tears in her eyes, anger in her frown, and a smile trying to tug her lips upward.
Then he looked at the woman front of him, so similar to Kiley, and yet so different. And he couldn’t even pinpoint how. She seemed older. There was a meanness to her. And her eyes were brilliant emerald green.
Kendra smiled a big innocent smile. It startled him so much he took a step backward. “You’re not Kiley,” he said. He couldn’t stop looking back and forth between them.
“No, but I bet you’d like me better,” Kendra said, and then she turned, looked at her sister. “Hi, Kiley.”
Kiley glared, then melted into tears, ran across the room and wrapped her sister in her arms, sobbing, “You’re alive, oh my God you’re really alive, ohmygod you’re alive.”
Kendra hugged back. They stood there, wrapped around each other like a pair of spider monkeys. Kiley lifted her head from her sister’s shoulder and looked his way. Her eyes were very wet and she was kind of smiling in a wobbly way.
He smiled back, getting it. This was the sister she’d thought was dead. He was witnessing a miracle, and he knew he ought to go outside or upstairs or something and let them have some privacy, and he was trying to, he really was. But his feet seemed to have melded with the floor.
And then it was like a switch flipped. Kiley’s face went stormy, she pushed Kendra back and slapped her right across the face.
Her head snapped, but she stood steady, taking it like a champ.
“You let me think you were dead!” Kiley shouted. “How could you do that to me? You let me think you were dead, Kendra. That you burned in a freaking fire.”
Oklahoma Moonshine (The McIntyre Men #1) Page 10
