For Love and Family

by Victoria Pade

  “That sounds like a recipe for conflict.”

  “What it meant was that he would come into Portland, put some friendly pressure on me, give me a sob-story about a deal that had gone sour for him, or how much in debt he was, try to convince me of all I was missing in the world by being tied to the ranch—that’s how he put it—and why I should sell for both our sakes. I’d refuse, usually give him whatever I could spare to bail him out, and he’d take off again for a year or so before he’d come back and start all over.”

  Since Hunter didn’t seem to mind telling her any of this, Terese prodded, “But the last time…?”

  He shrugged again and the expression on his chiseled face reflected sadness. “It got ugly. He said he was sick of this game, sick of having to come around and beg me for handouts when he had a right to half the place. He said he wanted to wash his hands of the ranch, of me, and that was all there was to it. I knew he was never going to change his mind, never going to want to come back, and I finally just gave in. I had the ranch appraised and bought Sean out.”

  “And you haven’t seen him since,” Terese said.

  “I doubt I’ll ever see or hear from him again.” The sadness was there in his handsome face again. But apparently Hunter didn’t want that to be the tone he set because he tried on a small smile and added, “Unless maybe he ever needs one of my kidneys or something, then he’ll probably look me up.”

  “Families are complicated,” Terese confirmed as their salad plates were removed and the main course arrived.

  As they settled into enjoying their meals he turned the tables on her. “What about your family and that lesser-twin business? That doesn’t sound as if you and your sister are too close.”

  He’d been open and honest with her and she felt she owed him the same thing, so she said, “We aren’t close at all. For twins or even for regular sisters. In fact, it’s not altogether unusual for us to go several months without seeing each other—and we live in the same house. Eve is rarely in town. She’s usually with friends in Gstaad or London or Paris or, if she’s in the country, she’s in New York. Portland is home base for her but that mainly just means pit stops.”

  “I thought all twins were nearly inseparable,” Hunter said.

  “Well, not us. I guess, like you and your brother, Eve and I have always been very different people. We were never interested in the same things. We never liked the same things. There wasn’t a lot we could share. And then my mother died when we were seven—”

  “My mother died when I was seven, too,” Hunter said with surprise at the coincidence. “She was thrown from a horse.”

  “My mother was killed in a car accident,” Terese offered. “But I haven’t heard you mention a stepmother…”

  “No, my father never even looked at another woman.”

  “Well, I can’t say that about mine. He was married again almost a year to the day after my mother’s death. And his new wife was only twenty-three.”

  It was Hunter’s turn to raise his eyebrows. “Wow.”

  “Wow is right. She seemed more like someone he would have hired to baby-sit, but all of a sudden she was our mother. Or at least she was Eve’s mother.”

  “Eve’s mother? But not yours?” Hunter said to encourage her to explain.

  “Ellen—that’s my stepmother’s name—just took one look at Eve and me and seemed to make up her mind that Eve was going to be her darling and that I was in the way.”

  “So she was an evil stepmother?”

  Terese could tell he was joking so she smiled even though she didn’t have a lot of lighthearted feelings about her stepmother.

  “Evil might be a little bit of an exaggeration,” she said. “But I was definitely not her cup of tea.”

  “Why not?” he asked as if that were a concept he couldn’t grasp.

  “In large part it had to do with the fact that Eve was prettier,” Terese said matter-of-factly and without self-pity. “For instance, among the many comments in her repertoire, Ellen would say that there were so many things she could do with Eve’s hair because it was so fine and silky, but that mine was too coarse and thick and ugly. Or that having Eve was just like having a little china doll to dress up, but that I was all knees and elbows and awkwardness, like a donkey we’d seen in a field.”

  “Did this woman actually compare the two of you and let you know she thought your sister was better?” Hunter asked in outrage.

  Terese mimicked Hunter’s earlier shrug. “I don’t think a day went by for years and years without Ellen comparing us. And then, as Eve got older and became as obsessed as Ellen had always been with appearances, Eve would chime in, too, about what was wrong with me. But since I didn’t want to go through a lot of plastic surgery and—”

  “Hold on. The two of them wanted you to have plastic surgery?”

  More disbelief. But Terese wasn’t sure whether he couldn’t fathom that they’d suggested such a thing because it wasn’t something she needed or just because it had been insulting.

  “Actually they called it surgical enhancement,” she amended. “To enhance my looks so I wouldn’t be as plain.”

  “Plain,” he repeated.

  “Plain Jane—that’s what my stepmother has called me almost since we met. And it caught on. Eve likes to call me that, too. It’s almost become my nickname.”

  Hunter shook his head in disgust. “And that’s why you see yourself as the lesser twin.”

  Terese was sorry she’d ever said that because he seemed to have so much trouble getting past it.

  “The Plain Jane thing isn’t as bad as it sounds,” she assured. “I’m used to it.”

  “No one should have to be used to being called Plain Jane instead of her own name. Or thinking of herself as being less than anyone else.”

  “I decided a long time ago to consider the source,” she said. “Think of it like this—your brother did something you would never do and certainly you could never respect him for doing, not to mention that you don’t respect his lifestyle or the person he is, right?”

  “I’d say that’s pretty much on the nose, yes.”

  “Well, I feel the same way about my sister and my stepmother. I wouldn’t want to be like either of them any more than you’d want to be like your brother. I wouldn’t want appearance to be the focal point of my existence and, although I probably shouldn’t say it, it seems shallow to me that that’s the case for them. So I consider the source when they put me down, and I don’t pay much attention to them.”

  “I hope that’s true. But this sounds as if it’s been going on since you were a little girl and I can’t imagine that you were considering the source at nine or ten years old. It had to have hurt you and have an impact on you. On your self-image.”

  “To tell you the truth, the bigger impact came much later and not from my own family,” Terese said.

  Hunter frowned at that, but after she’d made the comment, Terese decided she didn’t want to get into an explanation. So she said, “Let’s just say that when it comes to my stepmother and Eve, I survived their opinions of the way I look.”

  “You survived to call yourself the lesser twin.”

  Clearly she was making no headway convincing him, so she decided to try making light of it instead. “How do you know I didn’t mean that I was the lesser twin because I’m less vain? Or less self-centered? Or less of the things Eve is that I don’t want to be?”

  That made him smile. “I hope that is what you meant. I hate thinking that anyone has convinced you that you’re not as good as they are.”

  “If I guarantee that, will you drop the lesser-twin thing once and for all?” she said more coyly than she’d intended.

  “Convince me,” he said with a smile that shot heat through her veins.

  Terese put her hand to her heart as if she were pledging allegiance and said with flair, “I truly believe I’m the greater twin.”

  Hunter laughed.

  “I’m putting it in my memoirs—under ho
bbies.”

  He chuckled and shook his head but the return of their waiter kept him from saying anything.

  The waiter tried to tempt them with dessert but neither Terese nor Hunter could eat another bite and they ended up with the bill instead. Hunter insisted the meal was his treat, and once he’d paid, they left the restaurant.

  They’d taken Terese’s car because Hunter only owned a truck, but he’d driven the sedan and she was content to have him drive it back to the ranch again.

  He opened the passenger door for her and advised her to buckle her seatbelt before he locked her in and rounded the front end to the driver’s side, slipping behind the wheel.

  As they were headed home, he glanced at her, gave her a mysterious sort of smile, and said, “Can I ask you something else about your sister? With the understanding that if you don’t want to answer, you don’t have to?”

  Terese seized the opportunity to look over at him, trying not to dwell too much on the way even the dashboard lights threw the perfect angles of his face into relief.

  “Okay,” she agreed tentatively.

  “We met Eve in the sixth month of her pregnancy and answered any question she asked, but it seemed…indelicate, I guess, to ask her some of what we were curious about.”

  “Like what?”

  “She just seemed like sort of an unusual unwed mother giving up a baby for adoption—twenty-five, educated, financially able to support a child even without help. It was also hard to believe that she didn’t know who the father was, which was what she told us when we asked her that. After last week I feel I should have that information in case anything else with Johnny’s health crops up.”

  They were all reasonable questions. And Terese knew the answers but she debated about giving them.

  Would she be out of line if she did?

  She wouldn’t be betraying any confidences. Eve had somehow seen herself as a victim in it all and she’d talked freely about the entire situation. In fact, Terese had even overheard her sister telling a manicurist all the sordid details. If Eve’s manicurist could know, couldn’t the man who had ended up as Johnny’s dad?

  It seemed to Terese that he could.

  So she said, “Eve wasn’t being evasive when she told you she didn’t know who Johnny’s father was. She honestly doesn’t know because she’d been sleeping with three different men at about the time she got pregnant. One of them was married and she didn’t want to approach him with paternity tests because his wife is a friend of hers. One man was a stranger she’d met in Monte Carlo and couldn’t track down again. And the third candidate was someone who’d decided he didn’t want anything to do with her before she realized she was going to have a baby.”

  “Oh.”

  It wasn’t a pretty picture and Terese knew it. But she also wasn’t certain, now that she’d come this far, if Hunter still wanted to hear more. So, before she continued, she asked him.

  “I’m sure,” he said.

  “Okay. Well, the pregnancy itself was due to a failure in Eve’s birth control,” Terese explained. “She didn’t realize it had failed because she was using a long-term method—a shot her doctor gave her every few months that was supposed to keep her from cycling. But apparently it’s not the most reliable method of preventing ovulation. When she never cycled, she just thought the shot hadn’t worn off and waited another two months before going in to see the doctor again.”

  “And by then the pregnancy was too far advanced to be terminated,” Hunter concluded.

  “Exactly. And as for keeping Johnny…” Terese had to pause and steel herself. “Eve never wanted kids and that didn’t change just because she was having one. In fact, she had her tubes tied after Johnny was born to make sure this never happened again. And she was adamant about not having Johnny in her life. In any way. It was something I couldn’t grasp, but it was also something I couldn’t do anything about. There was no talking her into keeping him. Or letting anyone else who was anywhere near her keep him, either.”

  Hunter took his eyes off the dark country road to look at her again. “You know,” he mused, “—and again, I’m not complaining—but there was some hurrying up done at the end of the adoption process that was never explained to us. We thought we were a few days away from getting Johnny and then we got a call from the agency telling us that we had to pick him up within an hour. That wouldn’t have had anything to do with you, would it?”

  The man was perceptive along with everything else.

  But Terese didn’t see any reason to lie, so she told him what had gone on immediately after Johnny’s birth, that she’d wanted to keep her nephew herself, but that her sister had made sure that didn’t happen.

  Hunter didn’t respond instantly after she’d told him the end of her story. But when he did, his voice was quiet and sympathetic despite what he said. “I can’t say I’m sorry she didn’t let you have him,” he confessed. “But I am sorry that it was so hard on you.”

  “I’m just glad he got a good home and that I’m getting to know him now,” Terese said as they arrived at the ranch.

  Hunter bypassed the house to park her car near the cabin. It was late, and since he’d anticipated that they might not be back too early, Willy and Carla were spending the night in the guest room and had apparently already gone to bed, because the only light was the small fluorescent fixture over the sink, which was always left on overnight.

  For Terese that meant the evening was coming to an end.

  As Hunter turned off the engine, she reminded herself that she’d just had several hours with him and that she had no business regretting that it was over.

  But it didn’t help.

  Hunter got out from behind the wheel and came around to open her door, returning her keys as they headed for the cabin.

  But once he’d done that he also did something else along the way that rocked her slightly—he put his hand to the small of her back.

  It was probably only a courtesy, she thought, counseling herself not to go to any extremes searching for a reason that that hand was there.

  But no amount of counseling could change how much she liked having it there. How nice it felt. Or the fact that it sent tiny electrical charges from that spot outward like brilliant rays of light.

  When they reached the cabin, he took his hand away and she did what she’d done on the previous nights—she unlocked the door, reached in to switch on the light, then stepped inside and turned around to face Hunter. All as if she hadn’t even noticed that he’d just touched her for the first time.

  “After an evening like this I would ordinarily invite you in for a nightcap or a cup of coffee or something,” she said, working to sound normal. “But I’m afraid I don’t have much to offer in the way of any of that.”

  “I should be gettin’ in anyway,” he said with a slow, lazy smile that was so sexy it nearly made Terese’s heart stop.

  But he didn’t make any move to leave. Instead he leaned one shoulder against the doorjamb just as he had on nights gone by. Only tonight he reached out with his other hand and took one of hers.

  Like the hand at the small of her back, it seemed a natural enough gesture. It was just that Terese was so taken off guard by it—and so flooded with the thrill of having him touch her again—that she wasn’t sure what to do.

  But she didn’t want him to think she was opposed to any of it so she followed her hand and stepped in a little closer to him than she would have otherwise.

  Close enough to smell his aftershave and feel the heat of his big, hard, masculine body…

  “Tomorrow it’s chores as usual,” he said then, apparently unaware that she could barely concentrate on anything except that hand that held hers. “But after dinner tomorrow night I promised Johnny we’d go shoppin’ for his Halloween costume. Are you up for that?”

  “Sure,” she answered feebly.

  “And if I finish work with enough time to spare, maybe I’ll carve the rest of the pumpkins before dinner.”

&n
bsp; “Would it help if I cooked?” she heard herself ask while only a small portion of her mind functioned.

  The smile on that handsome face she was gazing up at broadened. “That’s right,” he said as if she’d reminded him of something amusing. “You said you could cook. Maybe I should make you prove it.”

  “Maybe you should,” Terese countered, surprised that her own voice held the same note of intimate teasing that his had.

  “Okay, then. I’ll carve pumpkins while you cook. But no fair cheatin’,” he warned as if he liked the idea that she might.

  He was dropping more G’s from the ends of his words than he usually did, and it occurred to her that that was part of whatever was going on between them that almost seemed seductive.

  And she liked that a little too much, as well.

  “How would I cheat at making dinner?” she asked.

  “No calls on the sly to the family cook to bring somethin’ out here you can claim to have fixed yourself.”

  “Ah, you just ruined my master plan,” she joked.

  Hunter leaned forward to confide in a deep voice, “If worse comes to worst, Johnny and I are pretty fond of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Terese countered, tilting her face upward in acceptance of the challenge.

  Which left their faces very close together.

  His topaz eyes met hers then and lingered. Just the way he was lingering in the doorway.

  Neither of them said anything. But even without words the air all around them seemed to buzz with a resurgence of that electricity she’d felt when his hand had first settled against the small of her back, electricity that they were somehow generating between them.

  And then he came the rest of the way to her to kiss her.

  Only, unlike the kiss of the night before, this one was more sure of itself right from the start. His lips parted over hers and urged hers to open beneath them. He used the hand that held hers to bring her hand to his hip, depositing it there so he could wrap both of his arms around her and brace her head in the palm of one hand as he deepened the kiss even more.