found that she took to investigative reporting like the proverbial duck to water. Even at her seemingly tender age of twenty-five, she had already broken a number of stories, revealing fraudulent practices at one of the country’s larger life insurance companies, and exposing a doctor who had made a career out of bilking Medicare, submitting charges for the treatment of nonexistent conditions for nonexistent patients in order to collect Medicare’s payments. Both stories had necessitated her going undercover to get the information she needed to substantiate her allegations.
Ramona had followed the same path here, at the Armstrong Fertility Institute. Once revered as a bastion of hope for the terminally infertile, the institute’s outstanding success rate had bred a certain amount of envy, which begged for closer scrutiny. This scrutiny in turn gave birth to ugly rumors, some that were quite possibly well founded, others that almost certainly were not.
That was going to be her job—to separate fact from fiction, no matter how deeply the former appeared to be buried.
But Ramona had a far more personal reason to have gone undercover at the institute. She needed to gain access to the institution’s older records in hopes of saving her mother’s life. Her mother, who had raised Ramona by herself, had been diagnosed with leukemia less than six months ago. The prognosis was not good. If something wasn’t done soon to stem its course, her mother had only a very short time to live.
Katherine Tate desperately needed a bone-marrow transplant. Ramona would have gladly given up hers. She would have given her mother any organ she could to save the woman’s life, but, as happened all too frequently, her marrow wasn’t a match. So the search was on for some miscellaneous stranger whose marrow might provide the cure.
There was, however, a glimmer of hope when Ramona remembered accidentally stumbling over a piece of vital information packed away in a long-forgotten box hidden in the back of her closet.
Katherine Tate was one of those people who never threw anything away, she just moved it around every so often from one pile to another, from one room to another. In one of her many, many boxes throughout the house was a bundle of receipts and bills dating back more than a couple of decades. Including a receipt from the Armstrong Fertility Institute for the purchase of donor eggs.
In between jobs and desperate for money, Katherine had sold a part of herself in order that “some poor childless couple know the kind of joy I do.” At least, those had been her mother’s words when Ramona had finally confronted Katherine with her find.
Now Ramona could only hope that the eggs had been used and that somewhere out there she had a sibling walking around. A sibling whose bone marrow would turn out to be a perfect match for her mother.
Finding this sibling was far more important to Ramona than breaking the story of any ethical wrongdoing on the institute’s part.
But she wouldn’t be able to do either if this bipolar man made good on his threat to terminate her before she even got started in her search. For that to happen, she needed to get entrenched here. She already knew that calling the institute’s administration office with her plight was an exercise in futility. When she had, the woman on the other end of the line had briskly told her that accessing the old records would be a violation of those patients’ right to privacy.
Yeah, right. As if the Armstrongs and their minions actually cared a fig about doing the right thing.
“You were hired,” Paul began slowly, trying to carefully hit all the salient points, “by someone who didn’t have the proper authority to hire anyone by himself.”
Ramona felt her temper shortening.
“I don’t understand,” she said, hoping that the smile on her lips didn’t look as fake as it felt to her.
Paul backtracked in his head, realizing that he’d failed to state the most obvious part, the part that would instantly untangle the rest. Or so he hoped.
“You see, I’m twins.”
She stared at him, her blue eyes widening. “You are?”
That sounded stupid, he upbraided himself. “I mean, I’m one of twins. I have a brother,” he told her. “He looks just like me. His name’s Derek and he’s the one who hired you.”
Her expression never changed, but her tone was slightly incredulous as she asked, “You’re not Derek Armstrong?”
Finally. The light at the end of the tunnel was beginning to materialize, he thought, relieved. “No, I’m Paul.”
Twins. Damn, how had she missed that? She’d been so consumed with getting ammunition against the institute and being angry because they wouldn’t just help her get at the information she needed to, hopefully, find a sibling, she’d completely skimmed over the Armstrongs’ family dynamics.
She needed to be more thorough, Ramona told herself sternly.
Cocking her head, she scrutinized the man in front of her, doing her best to give off an aura of sweetness. She knew that she could be all but irresistible if she wanted to be. She eased her conscience by reminding herself that this was definitely not for personal gain. This was for her mother.
“Now that you mention it, you do look a little more robust and athletic than you—I mean, your brother—did yesterday.” She was five-seven, not exactly a petite flower. But the man before her was taller, way taller. He looked even more so since she was sitting and he was not.
Ramona raised her eyes to his in a studied look of innocent supplication. A look she’d practiced more than once. “So he—your brother—can’t hire me?”
Now she was getting it, Paul thought. “Not by himself, no.”
Again she cocked her head, employing a certain come-hither look as she asked him, “Can he hire me if you hire me?”
Why did he feel as if the ground beneath his feet was turning from shale to sand, leaving him nothing solid to stand on? “Not without Lisa’s okay,” he heard himself say hoarsely.
Another country heard from, Ramona thought impatiently, trying to remember exactly how many Armstrongs worked at the institute. Her smile never wavered as she repeated, “Lisa?”
Paul nodded, trying not to stare. Was it his imagination, or did she somehow suddenly look more beautiful? “My younger sister. She’s the head administrator here at the institute.”
That had to have been the cold voice on the phone, Ramona thought. “Does anyone else have a vote?”
He smiled and she thought he had a rather nice smile. It softened his features and made him appear less distant and forbidding.
“No, that’s it,” he assured her. “Just the three of us.”
She nodded slowly, as if taking it all in and digesting the information. What she was really doing was casting about for a way to appeal to him and make him let her remain.
“Well,” she said slowly with a drop of seduction woven in, “we know that I have your brother’s vote. Do I have yours?”
For one unguarded moment, he could have sworn that he felt some sort of a sharp pull, an attraction to this young woman. But then he told himself it was just that he had always appreciated beauty no matter where he came across it. He certainly couldn’t
