by Pam Richter
"Thank you, senator," Julia said, blinking tears out of her eyes.
"My name is Alan, Julia." He was smiling down at her with perfect acceptance and Julia suddenly understood why everyone loved him so much. "My wife is Rose."
Rose hugged Julia next and said, "Welcome to the family, Julia. I always wanted a daughter."
"Lets take a ride," Robin said, grinning. He ran around the truck and leaped into the drivers seat.
Rose Chavier had to be helped up into the gigantic truck and she sat next to Robin. Then Alan Chavier got in and held out his hand to Julia.
"It doesn't look like there's enough room," Julia said hesitantly. She really wanted to go with them. The front was a two-seater. It was already crowded with three people. There was no back seat in the old fashioned vehicle.
"My knees are bony, but they'll have to do, Julia. Robin invited you along on this ride."
Damn, Julia thought. She was going to be sitting in the senator's lap. She climbed in and sat down, trying not to put too much weight on the famous person.
Tony was standing at the passenger door and asked if everyone was set before he gently closed it, wishing them a good trip.
"You're master of ceremonies till we get back," Robin shouted to Tony.
Robin took off smoothly and they could hear cheers behind them as the enormous truck went down the driveway, through the front gates and slowly down the road.
Robin started telling his parents about how he had found the truck in the impound lot, where he had first seen Julia. The story took a while and he turned right, on Sunset Boulevard, traveling west toward the beach.
"Julia wasn't having any of me, I can tell you that," Robin went on adamantly, describing how he had dressed so he could negotiate for the truck. "She really believed I was a mechanic."
"I believed you were some sort of dangerous degenerate," Julia said, smiling. "He wasn't even wearing a shirt. I was appalled when he came to my rescue. Couldn't wait for him to leave, after he took me to Cedars Sinai Hospital."
"I can see how this truck could have sentimental value, Robin," Rose said, laughing.
"Yes it does," Robin said. "I'm very fond of it."
Julia started describing how the truck looked when she first saw it. One side appeared like it had been crushed by a bulldozer. It was dirty, rusted and dented. The interior was upholstered in some kind of mottled brown material.
"Looks like you put in a lot of work in on Alan's present," Rose commented.
"Yeah. I got carried away," Robin admitted. "I was planning to give it to Dad all dented. But I really liked it and one thing led to another. Still, I know it's kind of a monstrosity and that Dad won't really get any use out of it. So I'd like to ask for it back. I have a different, much more special present for the two of you."
Oh, no, Julia thought with foreboding. Robin couldn't possibly be thinking of telling his parents right now.
"You see, Julia," Robin went on, glancing around his mother at her, "There's one thing that was instilled into my head from the time I was a little boy. In this family, between the three of us, and now there are more, we always tell the truth. And we never keep secrets."
"That's right," Alan Chavier said. "So I will very reluctantly give this wonderful present back to you, Robin. I can see how it will inspire nostalgic and romantic memories for the two of you. But I want a couple of joy rides myself, first."
"Done, Dad. Now I want to tell you about your real special present," Robin said.
"Julia will be our new daughter," Rose said firmly. "We don't want any more presents, Robin. That's special enough." She turned to Julia and said, "Robin's always trying to give us presents. And he can get very imaginative."
Julia laughed. If the truck was any indication of Robin's creativity, she could envision a future of very rare surprises.
"This is a present that Julia is giving to me, but it belongs to the whole family," Robin said.
"Do you think this is the right time, Robin?" Julia asked, really upset. Robin's parents were so traditional she didn't want to shock them. They had welcomed her into their family with such warmth she didn't want them to think badly of her behavior with their only son. She herself was not in the least bit ashamed because she had been in love with Robin. But she thought they might not understand.
"No secrets. Remember?" Robin said, turning a smile her way from his preoccupation with handling the mammoth truck on the curves of Sunset Boulevard. "I know you trust me to do the right thing, Julia."
Julia took a deep breath and nodded at him. "Yes. Of course I do."
"Then why don't you tell them, Julia," Robin said. "Tell them about the present that my Dad doesn't even know he's holding right now."
"Shall I tell them how I was going to keep it all to myself, when we were separated?" Julia asked. If they were going to do this now, she wanted to give Robin's parents a super surprise.
"Yeah," Robin said smiling. "Tell them how you were so selfish that you wanted to keep it all for yourself."
"I really was so thrilled," Julia began. "Well, I better begin at the beginning. I went back to Boston when I found out that Robin wasn't a mechanic. By some inadvertent eavesdropping, I learned that he was a prominent attorney in Los Angeles. To top it all, he had a famous senator for a father. I was actually disappointed. I was so much in love with him I wanted him to be a simple mechanic who loved me. I let my pride get in the way, and ran away, believing he was playing a cruel game with me, acting like a mechanic to amuse himself. We were separated for a couple of months. I didn't know how Robin really felt, and even though I was sad and miserable, I planned never to see him again. But he had already given me a wonderful present."
"It's what you want more than anything in the world," Robin broke in.
"When I found out, just a couple of days ago, as a matter of fact, I wasn't going to tell anyone about this special gift. But now it's probably doing tiny somersaults in my tummy," Julia said with a smile. "With happiness about the wonderful grandparents it will have."
Rose let out a little shocked, "Oh." Julia could feel the senator's arm, which had been around her shoulders give her a warm squeeze.
There wasn't a dry eye in the truck. For several minutes. Alan whispered to her, "I'm so happy about this. Thanks for telling us now. We'll have wonderful months of anticipation."
Rose handed out tissues from her purse. She was dabbing at her cheeks and smiling. "It's so silly. But when I'm really happy, I always end up making a fool of myself. I never thought it would happen. Robin didn't seem to want to settle down. I was so afraid that Alan and I would never get to enjoy grandchildren."
"How's that for a birthday present?" Robin asked his father.
"This time I'm stunned."
"There will be other tiny surprises," Julia said, wiping her own tears away.
The big truck was now bumping over the pier in Santa Monica. It was night time over the water and they could see the black surface of the ocean on both sides of them. It reminded Julia of the night Robin had called her from under the pier. "Let's tell them about your other disguise," Julia said, smiling mischievously at Robin.
"Besides being a mechanic?" Alan asked.
Julia nodded. "When I met Robin I hired him to do investigative work for me. About Aaron Quijada."
"You have to understand, Dad," Robin explained. "It was love at first sight for me. I just wanted to get Julia out of the situation fast when I figured out that Aaron Quijada might be a dangerous drug kingpin, importing illegal stuff from Mexico.
Especially when I began to believe he had something to do with the death of Julia's brother. I had to get information about him. Very quickly. So I set up a narcotics buy."
"I didn't know he was planning to do it," Julia said. "Actually, he had mentioned it, and I told him, very clearly, not to. It scared me to death, just thinking about it."
"It was one of our first really bad fights," Robin said. "Julia was extremely upset when I proposed my plan. She thoug
ht stealing the records from a locked safe inside Quijada's home would be easier."
"I'm glad I'm hearing all this after-the-fact," Alan said with an alarmed look.
"I came over to Santa Monica and picked Robin up afterward," Julia said. She started describing the fat, hulking, brown eyed, bald man with rotten teeth who was lurching after her under the pier at three o'clock in the morning. She described how frightened she had been and how Robin had taken off the hat, padding and popped out brown contact lenses to show her who it really was.
"I'm shocked at your behavior, son. Those drug people might have hurt you." It was the first time Julia had seen Alan Chavier seriously upset.
"Julia was too. Boy was she angry," Robin said, shaking his head at the memory.
"I hope you gave him hell," Alan Chavier said to Julia.
Julia nodded, indignantly. "I fired him. The very next day."
That set everyone to laughing again.
"You see why I have to love her, Dad," Robin said, glancing sideways at Julia and winking.
Julia sat on the senator's lap as Robin talked on, but she was only half listening. Here she was, with her wonderful new family and a whole lifetime ahead of her. There would be children and puppies, laughter and fun in her future. She would be a part of something big and glorious, the love she would give and receive and be a part of for the rest of her life.
The enormous truck turned around to take them home.
THE END
Book Description: The Living Image
Sabrina Miller, a fashion designer in Los Angeles, is stunned when she meets her own double. Her shock turns to terror when she learns that her duplicate is the result of a scientific experiment and that there are people intent on killing her to protect their new secret creation.
Sabrina flees with the woman, whom she names Eve, as the news about a potential new secret weapon for the Defense Department is leaked. An international race ensues to acquire Eve, a molecular clone of Sabrina's brain and body, but dramatically changed through advanced computer engineering.
Although Sabrina and Eve look alike, there are enormous differences the people hunting them will do anything to possess.
CHAPTER 1
Sabrina’s eyelids fluttered in the midst of a dream in which a tiny maniacal form was torturing her, fiendishly stabbing her about the head with needles. It was so vivid and frightening she tried to awaken, like you can sometimes do in a shocking nightmare, but her body was paralyzed. She was blind and she couldn't move.
"Rest, dear. You're fine. Just relax. That's good, Sabrina." The calm, gentle voice went on and on, soothing her, and she slept on.
Hours later, Sabrina's eyes opened. Dizzy and confused, almost stupefied with sleep, her hand touched her head, checking for the sharp protuberances from her intense nightmare. Dazzling lights from above stabbed her eyes like the tormenting needles in the dream. Was it an operating room? The beach? The light was blinding and she was so frightened.
She turned her head, squinting away from the brilliant lights, and caught herself reflected in a mirror. Then the image startled her, moving an arm slowly, independently, throwing it sideways. Sabrina realized that the body she had recognized as her own was someone else entirely. Now that she finally remembered where she was, Ferd's Tanning Salon, she smiled at her silly panic.
The woman on the tanning bed next to hers was in the exact same position, which contributed to the perception that Sabrina was looking at her reflection. But the body was totally nude.
Sabrina wondered why the same woman who would go to a tanning salon, a rather frivolous and unhealthy compliance to a glamorous image, didn't bother to comb her hair.
A bell went off to remind Sabrina to turn over and she picked up the double spoon-like device to protect her eyes and sat up, pushing down the top of her bathing suit, peering at her chest. There was a tan line already. Maybe the woman next to her had the right idea, getting a tan without wearing anything, but Sabrina thought it looked more sexy to have a contrast between the parts that were usually covered and those that were usually uncovered.
There were only two couches in the tiny room and Sabrina felt uncomfortable about lying so close to another person. Especially since that person was nude and a female. There had been some experience lying next to nude men.
She sneaked another swift glance at the body next to hers. The proportions were really remarkably like her own. The woman had long ectomorphic limbs and a very small waist. Not many people were as tall or as thin as she and this other woman. The woman's hair was a shocking white, like Sabrina's own natural color. It was snarled as though it had not been combed in at least a week. But this was L.A. Probably a new look.
The woman's hair brought back unpleasant memories of her own nick-name as an adolescent. She had been dubbed 'Mop-Head' because of her long, string-bean body and stark-white hair. When she had shorn her hair to escape the nickname, the only thing that changed was the moniker, which became 'Q-Tip Head.' Things had changed in the intervening years, but she never forgot the pain.
Sabrina had come to the tanning salon because she had a modeling interview. It was a California Beach Toothpaste Commercial. She wanted the look that said, 'I know how unhealthy a tan is, but really, Darling, can I help it if my West Coast Lifestyle of surfing, tennis, swimming and skating in my tiny bikini on the Santa Monica Pier gives me a Glow?' An impossible image for a person so pale she almost appeared albino, saved only by dark brows and lashes, and the fact that her eyes were blue, not bunny pink.
Exposure as a model gave her fashion design business authenticity as a real influence in woman's fashions in Los Angeles. If her face was tan, her teeth would look whiter, which was why she had gone to Ferd's Tanning Salon that morning and was assured by Ferd himself, a little gnome of a man whom she towered over by a least a foot, that there were absolutely no UV rays in his new filtered tanning devices. She had studied the top of his pink bald head, listened to his patter of safe tanning with UV filtering, looked into simple honest blue eyes, and believed him. Sabrina had been surprised when Ferd led her to the actual salon. It was a small, claustrophobic room, rescued only by several posters on each wall of beautiful ocean vistas with white sand and palms. Mostly she had been surprised that there were only two tanning beds in the entire place.
Sabrina sighed and closed her eyes, trying to forget that another person was in the room. Even lying on her stomach the rays were bright and she closed her eyes. As she drifted near sleep again she thought of Mark. He said she looked anemic. Maybe a tan would take away that pale bloodless look. Sabrina wondered just what he really wanted, or what any man wanted. After three years it was still a mystery. She wanted to marry Mark and have a baby. Soon. She would never tell him, of course.
Mark said he liked her thin. He admired her for starting her own business and for being so bright and independent, but Sabrina knew he had been attracted to pretty and vapid air-heads in the past. Mark grandly proclaimed that Sabrina was all any man could wish for, but he dated other women. He didn't say so, but she knew. So Sabrina dated other men and didn't keep it a secret.
She heard the bell but didn't feel like moving. Just thinking about Mark made her heart pound. She loved Mark's thickness and substantiality. Even his hands were thick. He was her physical opposite, dark and massive.
She heard the bell again, louder this time. How could the couch know she hadn't turned over? Springs or something? Ferd had assured her of complete privacy, saying he would be in his apartment upstairs. No one was watching to see if she flipped. There were no windows. Anyway, Sabrina thought irritably, how could she feel complete privacy with another person, nude at that, in same the room. Privacy was not being stuck with another person on a couch less than five feet away. She thought she would wait and see if the ping came again, but decided she was being silly and turned over.
Sabrina felt herself falling asleep and tried to fight it but the bodily compulsion to sleep was overpowering.
That bel
l is annoying, Sabrina thought groggily, a while later. Now she knew what narcolepsy felt like. She was too lethargic to move and so thirsty her tongue felt attached to the roof of her mouth.
The tanning light was out. She was actually a little chilled and she had the uncomfortable prickly sensation that someone was watching her. She turned over and felt a thrill of electricity zip through her as she glanced at the other couch. The woman was there, sitting on the edge of her tanning bed, staring at Sabrina.
She had Sabrina's face.
Sabrina assured herself that she was still asleep, having an odd dream triggered by the fact that the other woman's body appeared so similar to her own. She closed her eyes, shook her head and opened them again. She watched the woman shake her head.
The woman's eyes grew large and round. The brows went up and the mouth opened slightly, stretching back, revealing her teeth, transforming her countenance into one of extreme terror. Seeing her own fear reflected by the other woman petrified Sabrina for an instant. Then she threw her legs over the edge of the couch, preparing to run out of the room, when her body collapsed.
Sabrina folded up on the floor between the two couches, landing painfully on her tailbone. She felt enmeshed in a horrible nightmare, like a paralyzed somnambulist, as she struggled to rise. Her muscles were like jelly and the pain in her tailbone excruciating.
Sabrina laboriously pulled herself up on the edge of the tanning couch, wondering what had happened. Something was horribly wrong with the whole situation; her abnormal sleepiness, the strange duplicate woman, and worst of all, her body not functioning normally. She was trembling with the effort to make her muscles respond to simple commands such as, Get up and get the hell out of here. That was impossible, so she concentrated on taking some deep shaky breaths. She kept her eyes lowered. Finally she looked up.
