she hurried to the window.
Patrick had worried about her since the moment her mother had pulled him closer to her hospital bed and begged him to look after her daughter. It was good to see those lines ease.
Nevertheless, he had to make sure she understood he wasn’t part of her relationship with Daphne, whatever it turned out to be.
“You’re too late,” he said as Raina’s forehead bumped the window. “She was speed walking last time I saw her.” He’d probably lit the fire—hanging on to her as if she were a rope at the edge of quicksand.
“I didn’t know what to say.” Raina pressed fingertips to her head. “She looks like me, but she…she seems so different.”
Raina was right. Daphne was different. She was strong, independent and, most telling, she wasn’t afraid to let her feelings be known.
At twenty-eight, Raina remained, improbably, the princess under glass in one of Will’s Disney movies.
“You know where she’s staying?”
“She sent me the address.” Raina dug in her purse. “Even after your secretary told her to get in touch with you if she wanted to meet today.”
“She doesn’t take orders well.”
“You admire her, Patrick?”
Admire her? He shrugged. “She’s got courage. She’s had a harder life than you.”
He needn’t have been so blunt. Daphne had rattled him, resurrected feelings he’d thought had gone forever. He’d deliberately kept his emotions on ice after what had happened to his son last year. Staying detached from everyone except Raina and Will had become his special skill.
“How do you go to someone you’ve never met and tell her you’re her twin? And how do you anticipate being welcomed?” Raina found what she was looking for, a crumpled envelope. “I admire her courage, but I don’t have it in me to love a sister who’s a stranger.”
“I’ll repeat what I said to her. Give her a chance.”
“You asked her to give me a chance?” Raina looked affronted at the idea that she had done something that required being given a second chance.
Which was Patrick’s last straw. He should have walked when Raina had first called him about her twin-out-of-nowhere. Untouched by life except in her own extraordinary home, she might be out of her depth with a woman like Daphne.
Patrick began to gather the papers around his folder, still open on the table. “Raina, I’ve paved the way for you. The rest is up to you.”
Raina waved off his impatience. “I know. I get upset about the wrong things, and I always look to you to help me make a decision, but my mother’s not here, and I can’t ask her why she didn’t tell me I was adopted. She should have warned me. She had to know Daphne or my birth parents might show up.”
“No one came in all these years. Hannah probably thought her secret was safe.”
“Okay, okay.” Raina gripped the envelope so hard it crinkled in the silent room. “Why do you suppose they didn’t adopt Daphne, too?”
“I don’t know. You were infants. Maybe your parents didn’t know about Daphne.”
“Does that seem likely?”
“I’d think the agency would have wanted sisters to go together.”
“Just when I need my memories most, I feel as if I didn’t know my parents, either.” Raina straightened the envelope and pulled out the letter. “I’ll call Daphne’s hotel.” She scanned the writing. “Good Lord, it’s one of those cheap ones out on Helier Drive.”
Patrick had noticed the frayed cuffs of Daphne’s long-sleeved T-shirt and the worn spots on her jeans. Those shiny white patches, forming the seat of her pants, would stay on his mind a while, but he couldn’t attribute them to her sense of style.
“That hotel is probably all she can afford.” He wasn’t any happier than Raina at the thought of Daphne in an area where most of Honesty’s criminal activities occurred.
“I wonder if she’d meet me for coffee?”
“Ask her.” He glanced at his watch. “I have some meetings.”
“Why are you so eager to rush off? We didn’t intend to hurt her feelings.”
“It got out of hand fast. We should have been more tactful.” Accusing Daphne right at the start of wanting money had been unfair. “She wants to get to know you. You’re interested in finding out about her. If you talk, things will work out.”
Raina took out her cell phone. “Mind if I use this room a second longer?”
“Fine. Will’s waiting for me.” His mother looked after Will, and Patrick was already late to pick up his son. He shoved the last of the loose pages inside the folder he’d made on Daphne. Sports clippings from the Internet, bank statements, her initial letter to Raina, hope written between every line. “Take your time and try to keep the games to a minimum, Raina.”
“Games?”
“You know what I mean. This morning was a game. You tried to make Daphne angry enough to admit she’d come to take advantage of you. But maybe she didn’t.”
She stopped in the middle of punching in Daphne’s number on her phone. “What happened downstairs?”
“Nothing happened,” he said. Nothing would. Will was his priority.
But from the second he’d read hurt in Daphne’s eyes, from the moment he’d held her hand too long, he’d wanted her, pure and—not in any way—simple.
How, out of the blue, could he desire a stranger when he’d sworn off any attachment except to Will until they had their life under control again?
“Patrick?” Raina dropped the phone to her side. “You look funny. Are you okay?” She put her hand on the table, leaning toward him. “Is Will all right?”
He turned the legal pad and folder as if aligning their edges were a priority. Raina knew he still felt guilty that his son had almost died because he’d been blind to his ex-wife’s addiction. If he’d known how much Lisa had craved the drugs that had become her crutch, he’d never have left Will alone with her. And his son would have been safely at home that snowy day, rather than nearly dying of hypothermia in the backseat of the car while his mother lay unconscious in a dressing room less than a block from Patrick’s office.
“Will’s fine.” Raina had witnessed the rapid divorce that left him with custody of his son. She might be focused on her own grief, but she could step outside it long enough to care about his family. That was why he went out of his way for her.
“Daphne didn’t come for money.” He hoped he wasn’t mistaking his own lust for good judgment. “I believe her.”
“Why?”
“She wouldn’t have walked
