back to four years ago, when her sister had been seeing Peter Mackland. But then Ted had come along, Kristine had fallen madly in love and eloped with him…and afterward Peter had turned to Danni. At first she’d offered him friendship, nothing more. It wasn’t long, however, before she’d convinced herself that she was in love with him.
“What if,” Kristine continued finally, as if Danni hadn’t spoken. “What if you hadn’t snatched Peter away from me? You were always the one he preferred. I could see it. But maybe…maybe if I’d felt that he truly loved me…I wouldn’t have been so susceptible to Ted….”
“Oh, Kris, stop,” Danni said in exasperation. “You always distort the truth. You dumped Peter, remember? I was just the consolation prize. Besides, he turned out to be an ass. You got Ted—definitely the better end of the bargain.”
“I married Ted,” Kristine said in a clipped tone. “That was my first mistake.”
The two of them had once seemed so in love, lost in their own special world. What could have happened to bring the bitterness to Kristine’s voice, the heartache to her eyes? Danni wondered.
“Don’t ask,” Kristine muttered. “Just don’t.”
It wasn’t the first time Kristine had read Danni’s thoughts. They were twins. They were close…no changing that, it seemed.
“Look,” Danni said. “You have a habit of running away from your problems. And this time—this time you’ve really done it, Kris. If I weren’t so damn furious at you—”
“It’s not like you want Bryan McKay,” her sister interrupted. “Or then again…maybe you do, and you just don’t know how to show it.”
“What I feel or don’t feel about Bryan has nothing to do with it.” Danni was making a supreme effort to stay calm and in control. “You’ve done something very wrong, Kris, and you’ve got to stop.”
Kristine swiveled away from her. “Don’t you think I know that? But I need something. I need the way Bryan makes me feel—”
“No. What you need is to work things out with Ted. After you’ve told Bryan the truth.”
“All I want is a few more days,” Kristine said in a low voice. “Only a few. You can’t deny me that much. After Peter…you owe me.”
Danni battled a growing frustration. “No way,” she said. “Forget it. You refuse to see things the way they really are, Kris. You spin fantasies, you cling to half truths—”
Kristine turned back and gave her a hard look. “If you’re so against deception, why didn’t you tell Bryan the truth yourself?”
At first Danni simply couldn’t answer. She stared out at the moonlit night, remembering this afternoon…remembering the way Bryan McKay had taken her into his arms and kissed her. Just thinking about it, her skin tingled with warmth.
“He is rather hard to resist, isn’t he?” Kristine remarked.
“That has nothing to do with it.”
“Sure,” Kristine said. “Nothing.”
Danni curled her fingers against her palms. Why hadn’t she told Bryan the truth, once she’d realized what her sister had done? Instead she’d pulled away from him, mumbled some incoherent excuse, and rushed out the door. It had all been so embarrassing and undignified. Why couldn’t she have handled the matter with some authority?
Maybe her sister was right. Maybe she hadn’t told Bryan the truth because she did find him attractive…very attractive. But slowly another answer came to her. Perhaps deep down she’d known it all along. The main reason she hadn’t enlightened Bryan was because, quite frankly, she’d felt an odd, surprisingly intense disappointment. If a man was going to kiss her the way he’d done, she wished that he could have told her apart from her sister. Kristine and Danni were different. And for once, just once, Danni wanted a man to see without being told.
“What I find most interesting of all,” Kristine said astutely, “is that during your little social tête-á-tête you neglected to tell Bryan you even have a twin.”
“We were just casual acquaintances. The subject of twins never came up. But he needs to know the truth now,” Danni said. “All of it. And if you can’t tell him, I certainly will—”
“No,” Kristine said urgently. “Just give me a few days. I promise I’ll tell Bryan—but just let me do it in my own way, my own time.”
Danni pressed her hand to the window. Waves glided across the sand, surged and fell back.
“Just two days, Danni. That’s all I’m asking.”
Maybe, deep down, Danni was a coward. Because she certainly didn’t want to be the one to tell Bryan he’d been tricked. She didn’t want to see the look on his face when he found out.
“Two days, Kris,” she said at last. “You have forty-eight hours…and not a minute more.”
BRYAN HAD EXPECTED his mother to be taking it real easy. That had been the first thing he’d suggested. It had all happened so quickly. Son gets the midnight call. Son drops everything, flies out to Saint Louis to arrange things. Son transports mother, mother’s belongings and mother’s three cats back to San Diego. Thus son fulfills his dying mother’s plea to live out the last few remaining months of her life in the city of her birth. So what the hell was the old gal doing perched on a high stool, dusting the pantry cabinets?
“I’ve hired a service, Mom. Cleaning’s done three times a week. Meals are Monday through Friday. The weekends we’ll have to fend for ourselves, but that shouldn’t be a problem—”
“I’m not dead yet, Bryan,” his mother said, still chasing phantom cobwebs and imagined dust bunnies with a damp cloth. “I’ve cooked and cleaned and looked after myself since I was ten years old. That’s fifty-seven years of managing things—”
“59 years, Mom. You were sixty-nine last May.”
“I know when my own birthday is,” she muttered. She strained to reach a far corner of the pantry shelves, teetering dangerously on the edge of the stool. Bryan stepped forward, ready to stop her from toppling off. She scowled at him.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Just fine.”
She was anything but fine. She’d lost too damn much weight, seeming to shrink right before his eyes. Her once-thick hair hung listlessly, and new lines had etched into her face. The cancer seemed to be whittling away at her. He’d talked to the doctors in Saint Louis, rounded up the best he could find here in San Diego. They all used the same words, the same phrases. Incurable. Inoperable. We’ll make her as comfortable as we can.
Bryan wasn’t ready to give in just yet. And neither, it seemed, was his mother. She swiped her cloth along another shelf.
“You found me a very nice apartment, Bryan, even if the neighborhood is a bit upscale for my taste.”
The remark was typical of her—paying him a compliment but being sure to throw in a little criticism at the same time. Ever since he was a kid, his mother had operated on the “don’t let your son get a swelled head” theory of parenthood. Namely, she’d
