only consolation to being the less attractive sister was that everyone said they looked so much alike, she knew she wasn’t exactly an ugly duckling herself.
It also helped that Alandra was as beautiful on the inside as she was on the outside. There was nothing she wouldn’t do for someone, and the more they needed, the more she was willing to give. Personally, financially, it didn’t matter.
She attended four or five fund-raising dinners a week, just like the one she was getting ready for now, and just as many lunches. She belonged to every “good cause” organization in the state, a few across the country, and a few more internationally: battered women and kids, underprivileged children, life-saving medical research, save the whales, save the wild mustangs, save shelter cats and dogs from euthanasia.
Alandra’s greatest talent was in convincing others to give both time and money to her many worthy causes. Just being around her seemed to make everyone else care more—and sometimes feel the slightest bit guilty for not feeling so before she cornered them.
One side of Elena’s mouth curved with pride. Her little sister could charm the scales off a snake and have the naked reptile thanking her afterward.
“This one?” Alandra asked, breaking into Elena’s thoughts and holding up a sleek black tube dress for her perusal. Then she switched hands and held up one in pale pink with black trim, reminiscent of the Jackie O era.
In the black one, Alandra would be a knockout. Men would be drooling and falling at her feet. In the pink one, she’d still get more than her fair share of male attention, but those men would at least stand a chance of paying attention to the dinner speakers and getting interested in the cause.
“The pink one,” Elena said. “Definitely.”
Alandra nodded and stuck the black sheath back in the closet. “That’s what I thought, but I needed a second opinion. I’ll save the black one for next week when I need to raise funds for the no-kill animal shelter.”
She grinned, telling Elena she was well aware of the devastating effect she would have in the other dress.
With a sigh, Elena pushed to her feet, planning to head to her own room while her sister finished getting dressed.
“Elena, wait.”
She turned to find Alandra with her arms in the air, her head only half peeking through the neck of the pink and black dress. The tops of her thighs were visible, showing old-fashioned stockings held up by a sexy black garter belt.
Her sister gave a little shimmy and the dress slipped the rest of the way down. She sauntered over, turned her back to Elena, and held up the long fall of her straight black hair.
“Zip me up, and then we’ll talk about what’s bothering you.”
Elena pulled the zipper up. “Nothing’s bothering me. I’m just tired.”
Alandra shook her head. “Uh-uh. That might work on Pop, but it won’t work on me. I’m your sister; I can read you like a book.”
She spun around and dragged Elena back to the bed, taking a minute to slip her feet into high-heeled black pumps before crossing her legs and perching beside her.
“All right, spill,” Alandra said, sounding entirely too chipper for the headache that was beginning to throb at Elena’s temples.
“Did you do it?” she asked, lowering her voice a fraction. “Did you talk to Chase Ramsey?”
From the moment she’d first thought of going to the CEO of the Ramsey Corporation for help in saving her father’s business, Elena had confided her plan to her sister. They had been best friends and confidantes since childhood, and shared just about everything with each other. Elena trusted Alandra not only to keep her secrets, but to act as a sounding board to let her know if her ideas were logical or bordering on insane.
And while Alandra had agreed that speaking with Chase Ramsey was a good idea, neither of them had breathed a word of their intentions to Victor Sanchez. Their father was a proud man and wouldn’t appreciate anyone—least of all his daughters—interfering in his business or coming to his rescue.
They would only tell him, they decided, if things worked out to their benefit. Otherwise, he need never know what Elena had done.
Elena nodded, her mind flashing back to every tense, intense minute of her meeting with Chase.
Alandra’s eyes glittered with interest. “And how did it go? Is he going to help us?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
Elena met her sister’s gaze and murmured in a voice lacking all emotion, “On whether I sleep with him.”
Her sister’s screech of outrage was comforting, but Elena quickly hushed her for fear their conversation would be overheard. She didn’t think Pop was home yet, but Connie, their longtime housekeeper, could often be found in the hallways dusting or doing other chores.
Once Alandra had calmed down, Elena filled her in on the details of her face-to-face with Chase Ramsey, recounting every word and facial expression from the time she entered his office.
“And then he told me that he’d give Pop extra time to try to save SRS if I agreed to be his mistress. He wants me to meet him at the airport for a trip to Vegas if I’m willing to go through with it.”
From her jacket pocket she pulled the slip of paper Chase had given her, and handed it to her sister. Alandra studied the scrawl before refolding the note and giving it back.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” Elena released a pent-up breath and shook her head, still racked with indecision.
“Do you want me to do it?”
Elena gave a bark of laughter, then caught the flat look in her sister’s eyes.
“Are you serious?” she asked. “You’d do that for me?”
Alandra shrugged. “For you, for Pop, for the family business. It wouldn’t be that much of a hardship. You did say he was cute, right?”
She hadn’t, and “cute” wasn’t even close to the word she would use to describe Chase Ramsey’s strong features, fathomless blue eyes and attractive physique.
“It’s not like I have that much going on in the boudoir these days, anyway,” Alandra continued with a small eye roll when Elena didn’t respond. “And if this guy just wants to get laid, then he probably won’t care which sister he’s with.”
Elena laughed again, this time in amusement. She threw her arms around Alandra and hugged her tight. “Oh, Alandra, I love you.”
“I love you, too. And I’m more than willing to take this bullet for you, if you want me to.”
Elena could just imagine that. The only problem was that when she pictured her sister in bed with Chase instead of herself, she felt a stab of inexplicable jealousy.
How
