Книга - Which Twin?

Which Twin?
Elane Osborn


One minute she was " Secondhand" Rose Delancey, no one special, a woman driven by her dreams to a faraway home…to meet the man of her imaginings. The next, everyone was calling her Anna, as in Anna Benedict, troubled daughter of the political powerhouse Benedicts. A woman who was her spitting image. A woman who had a special relationship with her dream lover….Logan Maguire' s job was to troubleshoot for the Benedicts. But Rose was one fire he didn' t want to extinguish. Though she bore an uncanny resemblance to his missing surrogate sister, Logan' s feelings for Rose were far from brotherly. And now this mystery lady was his only link to finding Anna…and, perhaps, to finding ever-elusive love….









“All right, Anna. What the hell is going on?”


Rose blinked. Anna? Who was Anna? More to the point, who was this man, and why did he look as though he wanted to kill her?

In her dreams this man, or the one who looked so much like him, was always smiling—sometimes widely, revealing strong white teeth, or with his full lips curved into a lopsided grin. Upon awakening from these nighttime visits, Rose was always filled with a languid warmth, prompting her to keep her eyes closed for a few moments so she could hold on to the image of his face, the eyes that teased her and the lips she wanted to kiss.

None of those half-awake feelings warmed her now. She felt as if she were trapped in a nightmare, cold, terrified, desperate to escape—and yet utterly incapable of moving….




Dear Reader,

You’ve loved Beverly Barton’s miniseries THE PROTECTORS since it started, so I know you’ll be thrilled to find another installment leading off this month. Navajo’s Woman features a to-swoon-for Native American hero, a heroine capable of standing up to this tough cop—and enough steam to heat your house. Enjoy!

A YEAR OF LOVING DANGEROUSLY continues with bestselling author Linda Turner’s The Enemy’s Daughter. This story of subterfuge and irresistible passion—not to mention heart-stopping suspense—is set in the Australian outback, and I know you’ll want to go along for the ride. Ruth Langan completes her trilogy with Seducing Celeste, the last of THE SULLIVAN SISTERS. Don’t miss this emotional read. Then check out Karen Templeton’s Runaway Bridesmaid, a reunion romance with a heroine who’s got quite a secret. Elane Osborn’s Which Twin? offers a new twist on the popular twins plotline, while Linda Winstead Jones rounds out the month with Madigan’s Wife, a wonderful tale of an ex-couple who truly belong together.

As always, we’ve got six exciting romances to tempt you—and we’ll be back next month with six more. Enjoy!






Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Senior Editor




Which Twin?

Elane Osborn







www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




ELANE OSBORN


is a daydream believer whose active imagination tends to intrude on her life at the most inopportune moments. Her penchant for slipping into “alternative reality” severely hampered her work life, leading to a gamut of jobs that includes, but is not limited to, airline reservation agent, waitress, salesgirl and seamstress in the wardrobe department of a casino showroom. In writing, she has discovered a career that not only does not punish flights of fancy, it demands them. Drawing on her daydreams, she has published three historical romance novels and is now using the experiences she has collected in her many varied jobs in the “real world” to fuel contemporary stories that blend romance and suspense.




Contents


Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17




Chapter 1


This was it—the place of her dreams. Or her nightmares. She was never sure which.

Rose Delancey drew in a breath of cool, sea-scented air as she peered through the black wrought-iron gate at the three-story gray stone house. A gust of cold air whooshed past her hair, blowing back her dark wavy bangs.

She shook off a sudden chill.

There was no doubt in her mind that this particular house, with its eight-foot brick wall and spear-topped gate, had haunted her dreams for as long as she could remember.

Another chill, one that had nothing to do with the weather, slithered through Rose. There was no point asking herself why gazing upon this scene in the light of day was so important to her. She’d done enough soul-searching before starting out on her quest. Now that she was in this exclusive neighborhood south of San Francisco, staring at the cobblestone driveway leading to three double garage doors made of oak, the question was how she would manage to gain access to the rear of the house and the place from which she could see the vista of her dreams.

The wind rose again to rattle the leaves of a large olive tree growing at the left corner of the garage, drawing Rose’s attention to a set of iron steps behind some low-hanging branches. Her heart began to race. Those stairs most likely led to a deck off the second story of the house. All she had to do was walk up them, and she would reach the spot from her dreams.

Of course, she reminded herself with a wry twist of her lips, that would be after she found some way through or over the black iron gate that barricaded the driveway.

As she frowned at the unfriendly looking spikes running along the top bar, her moment of elation faded. An impatient sigh bloomed in her chest before escaping past her lips. If this were a dream, the gate would magically open right now, allowing her to glide across the driveway and up the stairs. But this was not a dream. This was a windy, about-to-rain, end-of-January morning in real life, where nothing magical was likely to happen.

Or was it?

To Rose’s right, somewhere in the wall, a motor hummed to life. The gate in front of her began to move. Rose barely breathed as the space opened. Then, as calmly as if she were an expected visitor, she stepped onto the driveway and started toward the stairs.

When the garage door closest to the stairway started to rise, it just seemed part of the unreal atmosphere that had impelled Rose down the driveway. Then it struck her that the garage door and the gate were probably activated by a remote-control device, both of which had undoubtedly been activated to admit an approaching vehicle. A vehicle, her thoughts warned, that very likely contained someone who would stop a trespasser, thus bringing her quest to an immediate halt, just short of her goal.

Unless, of course, she was up the staircase, hidden by the canopy of leaves, before the vehicle turned into the driveway.

Rose broke into a half run. Once she started up the steps, her black flats struck a staccato, metallic beat. She slowed her racing feet as she neared the intricate wrought-iron gate at the top of the stairway, a gate that clicked open easily, admitting her to an expansive veranda, tiled in a brown herringbone pattern.

Tingling with anticipation, Rose gazed past the flowers spilling from the low, brick planter at the edge of the veranda some twenty feet away. She could now see the view from her dreams.

Almost.

The angle didn’t quite match the image that had so often appeared to her. She wasn’t standing quite high enough for one thing, and the red-tiled roof she’d gazed over in her dreams was nowhere in sight.

Turning to her right, Rose spied at the far end of the patio a circular staircase leading to a wooden deck above her. Without a second thought she crossed in front of a wide bank of French doors.

A slight drizzle moistened the iron stairs as Rose began to climb again, her footsteps ringing with an odd double echo. She ignored this, focusing on the metal gate at the top of the stairs. It opened easily onto a deck made of wide wooden planks, inviting Rose to step forward.

On her right the red-tiled roof of the house next door came into view as Rose walked slowly to the iron fence at the edge of the balcony. Drawing a slow breath, she placed her hands on the top rail. Cold metal chilled her palms as she gazed at the Golden Gate Bridge, stretching rusty-orange over gray-green water.

The view from her dreams. Finally.

Sometimes in her dreams the bridge gleamed in the brilliant sun. Other times it was a scallop of tiny lights against the black sky. Today gray clouds enshrouded the tops of the bridge’s two towers. Below her the ocean crashed onto a narrow beach at the bottom of a sheer cliff, and tiny drops of rain accompanied the wind and set her long, beaded earrings dancing against her neck.

Rose’s chest expanded with her sense of achievement, only to deflate a second later as the questions began. Why would she dream of this particular view over and over? And why had it seemed so vital that she find this spot so soon after her mother’s death, that she stand here in real life? It wouldn’t change anything. It certainly wouldn’t bring her mother back, nor would it fill that odd, empty, lost place in her soul. It wouldn’t—

“Do you think you’re fooling anyone, sneaking up the back way?” a deep voice demanded.

Rose jumped, then swiveled around. Just inside the gate stood a man wearing a brown leather jacket, a crisp white shirt and faded jeans. Approximately six feet tall with broad shoulders, he had a square face and short brown hair, tattered by the gusting wind. She noted rough-edged features that indicated he was in his mid to late thirties. His eyes were narrowed beneath his furrowed brow, preventing Rose from seeing their color, but she knew they would prove to be a muted blend of green and brown. For, just like the bridge, this man had repeatedly appeared in her dreams.

As the familiar-yet-strange man began to approach, Rose fought a wave of dizziness, and her mind struggled for a foothold in reality. Was any of this—the house on the cliff, the bridge in the distance, the oddly familiar stranger—real? Had she actually gotten out of bed this morning and taken that cab ride to this spot above the sea? Or was it possible that she was still lying on that hard hotel room mattress, sound asleep, lost in yet another dream?

Or nightmare?

This must be real, she decided as the man grasped her upper arms. Never, in any of her dreams, had she felt her flesh being pressed beneath his strong grip, nor had she experienced the dream stranger’s warmth as he drew her toward him.

Looking into his penetrating eyes, she saw they were indeed a warm mixture of brown and green, though perhaps darkened a shade by some emotion she couldn’t discern. Anger, perhaps? Rose opened her mouth to apologize for having trespassed, but the man spoke first, his deep voice harsh with impatience.

“All right, Anna. What the hell is going on?”

Rose blinked. Anna? Who was Anna? More to the point, who was this man, and why did he look as though he wanted to kill her?

In her dreams this man, or the one who looked so much like him, was always smiling—sometimes widely, revealing strong white teeth, or with his full lips twisted into a lopsided grin. Upon awakening from these nighttime visits, Rose was always filled with a languid warmth, prompting her to keep her eyes closed for a few moments so she could hold on to the image of his face, the eyes that teased her and the lips she wanted to kiss.

None of those half-awake feelings warmed her now. She felt as if she were trapped in a nightmare—cold, terrified, desperate to escape and yet utterly incapable of moving other than to pull her gaze from the thin, tight line of this stranger’s mouth to the combination of fury and worry in his eyes.

It was the fury that kept Logan Maguire momentarily silent as the wind whipped dark tendrils around Anna Benedict’s pale face, emphasizing the blank, dazed expression clouding her dark-blue eyes.

Clenching his jaw, he drew in a steadying breath. “What’s going on here, Anna?” he demanded. “You left two messages on my machine saying you were in trouble, that you needed to see me. The next thing I know, there’s a message from your father, worried sick because you’re missing.”

When Anna only blinked at him, Logan went on, “It’s been a long three days, and the flight back from France was no picnic. Do you have any idea what it was like, retrieving those messages from the phone aboard the plane, waiting anxiously for the flight to end?”

Upon landing he’d rushed to his car, then swerved through streets clogged with morning commuters, San Francisco traffic, to the Benedict house. All the while he’d cursed himself for allowing Robert Benedict to bow to his daughter’s refusal of a bodyguard six months ago, when the man had decided to run for the U.S. Senate seat once held by Robert’s father, Charles.

“So,” Logan went on. “I drive like a bat out of hell to get here, hit the remote to open the front gate as I turn onto Sea Cliff Drive, only to see you step calmly through the opening and head for the outside stairs.”

As Logan had raced up the steps, he’d realized that he’d been worrying about her needlessly. And now, slightly out of breath, bone tired from his long flight and completely out of patience, Logan gripped Anna’s arms more tightly.

“Well, what was it that sent you off this time?” he asked. “Another excursion to ‘find yourself’?”

As Logan waited for Anna to reply, he became aware that the soft drizzle had become a steady rain. He watched her half-dazed expression turn to one of utter confusion. She shook her head as if to clear it, and damp curls fell forward to brush her eyebrows and cling to her cheeks. When she started to brush the short tendrils back, Logan grabbed her hand.

“When you said in your first message that you were in trouble,” he said with far more control than he felt, “please don’t tell me you were referring to the fact that you suddenly decided to cut your hair.”

Logan rarely spoke so sharply to Anna. He knew that what might seem like vanity to others was Anna’s desperate attempt to maintain the image her mother was so obsessed with. More than once Anna had threatened to chop off her long hair, only to have Elise convince her that the change would spoil the “classic lines” created when Anna’s slightly wild hair was pulled back tightly.

Releasing her hand, Logan reached toward the damp tangle of curls. His fingers brushed her cheek before they combed through the thick waves at her temples, then encountered the beginning of her familiar waist-length braid.

“Okay,” he said through clenched teeth. “You cut bangs. Elise will probably hate them, but it is your hair. If she really flips, you can use gel or something to slick…them…”

Logan’s words trailed off as he became aware that a strange tingling heat had begun to grow in the palm of the hand cupping Anna’s head. The fingers still gripping her slim arm had developed a similar sensation, which was now racing up through his chest, then down his legs, grounding him to the planks beneath his feet like some capricious electrical current.

Anna’s upturned face registered wonderment blended with confusion. The confusion seemed to be contagious, for Logan suddenly found himself shifting his attention from her shadowed eyes to her lips—noting how full they were, how softly they curved, how the raindrops falling onto their parted surface shimmered in pale pink dots. And for the first time since Logan Maguire had seen Anna Elise Benedict a little over twenty-seven years ago, he found himself wanting to kiss those lips, to pull her slim body into his arms—not as the older brother he’d always considered himself, but as a lover.

Few things frightened Logan. Not taking the curves of Highway 1 at top speed in his ’65 Mustang convertible, nor negotiating a deal that could make or lose millions of dollars for the family he owed so much to. But this—this sudden change in the way he’d always felt about Anna—scared him silly.

Instantly he untangled his fingers from her damp hair and released her. As he took a step back, he forced his attention to Anna’s eyes once again and saw that her confusion had been replaced by a look of terror. Logan’s eyebrows moved together in a tight frown. Never had Anna looked at him this way before—as if she were afraid of being attacked. True, he could never remember being quite as angry with her before, but his role of “big brother” had necessitated a certain amount of discipline, to which Anna normally reacted with stubborn silence. Perhaps she’d felt the same strange tingle of attraction he’d experienced and was just as stunned by it. If this were the case, he decided, the two of them would simply talk it out, then laugh over it and return to treating each other as brother and sister.

But not out here, he realized as the falling raindrops suddenly grew fat and sharp as the wind rushed in from the sea.

Logan shouted against the roar of the sudden downpour, “Let’s get out of this before we’re completely drenched.”

He turned toward the sliding glass door that led to Anna’s room. Her hesitant footsteps on the deck told him that she followed, but as he reached for the door handle, he realized that those footsteps sounded more rapid and increasingly distant.

Logan looked up just in time to see Anna disappear down the circular staircase. Immediately he gave chase, twisting down the now-slick steps, blinking away the rain to watch Anna through the openings in the ironwork beneath his feet, scowling more deeply each time his wide shoulders rammed the center post, refusing to slow in deference to the narrow curve.

By the time he neared the bottom, Logan had almost caught up with her. He missed grabbing Anna’s hand by mere inches as she released the railing and headed toward the second set of stairs at the far end of the veranda. However, he knew he had her now, knew she would need to slow down in order to keep from slipping on the expensive tiles that Charles Benedict had installed forty years ago only to discover that they became dangerously slick in the fog and the rain.

Anna, like Logan and her brother Chas, had been indoctrinated from the time she could walk never to run on the veranda, especially when it was wet. Logan prepared to slow his rushing feet as he reached the bottom step. Anna, however, hadn’t paused for a second. Across the now-shiny tiles she ran, and when she started into the sharp turn that would take her to the second stairway, her feet flew out from beneath her. She landed flat on her back, then slid to a sudden stop against the brick planter.

In moments Logan was at her side, down on one knee bending over her and asking, “Are you hurt?”

Her dark eyes stared up at him as she gave her head an uncertain shake. Her mouth opened and formed the word no, but not a sound passed her lips. At that point her eyes widened, filling with sheer terror as she fought to breathe. When she tried to sit up, Logan placed his hands on her shoulders.

“Lie back. You’ve had the wind knocked out of you. You have to relax.”

Relax? Rose wanted to scream. A weight was pressing on her chest, threatening to squeeze the very life out of her, and this man wanted her to relax? Panic stiffened every muscle and she again fought to struggle into an upright position.

“Take it easy,” his deep voice soothed as strong hands restrained her attempts to rise. His touch felt terrifyingly like the pressure around her chest. With a vehement shake of her head she battled both.

“Don’t!” His voice was harsh again; he was digging his fingers into her shoulders. A second later he said more softly, “You have to stop fighting and let your lungs take over. It will happen. Trust me. Just listen to me.”

Believing she had no choice, given the man’s greater strength, she gazed into his eyes as he continued to utter reassuring words. Her world began to turn black as she sank against the cold, wet tiles and tried not to fight the painful constriction in her chest.

A second later her ribs expanded and cold air rushed into her aching lungs. Along with a mouthful of rain.

Immediately Rose began to choke. This time the man helped her to a seated position, slipping strong arms around her, holding her as violent coughs racked her body. By the time the coughing fit eased, Rose realized she was too weak to attempt another escape. She would be forced to explain how and why she’d come to trespass on his private balcony.

Just as she was getting ready to do that, however, the man suddenly slipped an arm beneath her knees, cradled her to his chest and stood. Her abused lungs barely managed to draw a startled gasp before he began striding along the balcony. Rose shook her head and squirmed as she tried to form a verbal protest.

“Oh, no you don’t, Anna.” The man’s arms tightened around her as his harsh voice rose above the rattle of the rain. “I’m not going to put you down and give you the chance to pull God-knows-what new stunt. Not till we’re inside where it’s dry and I get a damned good explanation for what you’ve been up to.”

Rose was fully prepared to explain her actions, but she wasn’t about to take the heat for what someone named Anna might have done. Aware that they were moving past the French doors she’d noticed earlier, she opened her mouth to tell him that he was making a mistake.

“Look,” she started, but before she could say another word, one of the doors opened.

The man stopped, and Rose turned. Framed in the doorway was a blond woman dressed in a champagne-colored jacket over a matching skirt. She was maybe a shade over five feet tall, and from the lines marking her delicate, perfectly made-up features Rose guessed she was somewhere in her late forties or early fifties.

The woman’s fingers tightened around a small ivory purse as she frowned and spoke sharply. “Logan, what are you—”

She broke off as her dark-brown eyes met Rose’s. Lifting a slender hand to cover her mouth, the woman blinked and breathed a stunned-sounding, “Anna?”

Again the Anna business. Rose shook her head, but the man named Logan was already replying.

“Yes, Elise. She slipped on the tiles and took a fall. I need to get her inside and see if she’s broken anything.”

As the man carried Rose through the doorway, the woman backed into the cream-and-beige room, her wide brown eyes gazing in surprise before narrowing slightly.

“Anna,” she said. “You know how dangerous those tiles are. I must have told you a hundred times that—” The woman broke off. Her eyes narrowed further as she went on, “Where have you been, young lady? What have you done to your hair? And where did you get those clothes? Not to mention those vulgar earrings?”

Rose frowned. Young lady? No one had addressed her in such a patronizing, belittling tone since her junior year in high school. And as to the comment about her earrings, she touched the long tangle of beads strung in hues of blue and purple that her mother had given her this past Christmas, then opened her mouth to protest the term vulgar. But before she could say a thing, again she heard, “Anna?”

This time the word was barely a whisper, filled with unmistakable relief. Rose turned. A tall man with gray hair that nearly matched his light-charcoal suit stood on the threshold between the bedroom and the hallway behind him. He appeared to have paused in the act of tugging loose his red silk tie to stare across the room at Rose.

The man holding Rose was quick to reply. “Yes, Robert. Anna took a fall, and I want to lay her down on the bed and see if anything is broken.”

He’d barely taken one step forward before Rose gave a protesting wiggle and managed to blurt out, “That’s not necessary. I’m fine, just let me—”

“Logan,” the blond woman interjected, stepping toward them. “I really think it would be better if you took your sister up to her bed.”

Rose followed the woman’s gaze to the water dripping from her thoroughly soaked purple skirt and turquoise sweater, then over to the large bed draped in a pristine ivory coverlet.

The arms holding her tightened convulsively. A second later she was being whisked past the bed, then the man named Robert. The action took place so quickly that Rose found herself halfway down a cream carpeted hallway before it occurred to her to twist violently in an attempt to escape this Logan person’s hold.

“Put me down,” she demanded.

When he ignored her, instead turning and mounting a set of stairs, Rose tried again. “Look, I’m sorry about sneaking up to the balcony. That was wrong of me, but—”

Rose stopped speaking as she realized that Logan had reached the top of the stairs and turned down another hall without even looking at her. When he came to a stop in front of a closed door, Rose demanded, “Have you heard one word I’ve said?”

The man ignored her as he stretched out the arm supporting her legs, grasped the doorknob and twisted it several times. When the door didn’t open, he finally looked at her, his eyes narrowed with undisguised fury.

“All right, Anna. Dig your key out of that dammed suitcase you call a purse.”

Rose shook her head helplessly. This was her fault, she supposed. The first time he’d called her Anna, she should have pointed out his mistake. And she shouldn’t have run, shouldn’t have acted so irrationally.

“Please listen to me,” she said in a low, level tone. “I’ve been trying to explain that you are mistaking me for someone else. I don’t have a key to this room, because I don’t belong here. So just…put me down and allow me to leave.”

“What do you mean, you don’t…” he began.

“Hey, kiddo,” another voice broke in. Rose turned to see the gray-haired man approach, followed by the blond woman. “Give me your purse,” the man went on, “and I’ll fish that key out.”

When he reached toward the bag’s shoulder strap, Rose twisted away. “No!” she yelled. “What’s wrong with you people? Why won’t you listen to me? I’ve been trying to tell you that I don’t know you. I don’t know…”

She paused, frowning as she realized that both these people’s faces were vaguely familiar. She gave her head an impatient shake and finished, “I don’t know any of you.”

The gray-haired man frowned, the woman gasped, and the stranger named Logan sighed. “Anna, give your father that damned key.”

Before Rose could tell him she didn’t have a father, the woman stepped forward and snapped open her ivory purse. “When Anna insisted on getting a key made for her room, I suspected she’d eventually lose it, so I had the locksmith make one up for my key ring. Here, I’ll get us in.”

As Logan backed off to allow access to the lock, Rose once more demanded to be put down and began kicking for emphasis. Aware that her actions had broken his grip, Rose tried to twist out of his arms, but as the door clicked open those arms tightened again and he carried her into the room. She opened her mouth once again to attempt to make these people, especially the one holding her so firmly, understand that some mistake was being made. But once she caught sight of her new surroundings, all she could do was stare.

The carpet was the color of amethyst, the walls a pale shade of lilac. The bed she found herself being carried toward was covered in pale aqua—the exact color scheme of her room back in Seattle. Well, perhaps not exact. The tones she’d used were several shades darker, but, still, Rose found the similarity startlingly uncanny.

Even more uncanny was the neatly folded quilt at the foot of the bed, composed of yellow and pink flowers appliquéd onto alternating squares of turquoise and purple. It matched perfectly the one lying across the foot of her own bed—the exact same colors, faded slightly from repeated washings.

She knew her quilt was one of a kind, made by her mother the year she was born. Yet this one was…

“Just like mine,” she whispered.

“It is your room, Anna,” Rose heard Logan say, as he placed her on the bed.

Rose looked up. The man remained bent over her, frowning deeply, but the concern in his hazel eyes lent a certain softness to his scowl.

“I’m going to get Dr. Alcott,” the blond woman said abruptly. She glanced at Logan. “Aunt Grace somehow learned that Anna was missing and became so upset that we had to call the doctor in.”

She dropped a disapproving frown on Rose, then turned to leave the room. A second later the woman’s voice echoed from the hall.

“Robert, Martina says that Chas is on the telephone. He needs to speak to you about tonight’s speech.”

The man glanced at the door, down at Rose and finally to Logan. “I should only be gone a moment. Keep an eye on your sister, won’t you?”

Rose saw one corner of Logan’s mouth lift in a ghost of a smile as he watched the older man leave. Taking advantage of her captor’s momentary distraction, she rolled off the opposite side of the bed and onto her feet, then made a mad dash for the still-open door. But before she even made it around the edge of the bed, Logan was blocking her escape with his body. When she raised her hands to push him out of the way, he grabbed her wrists and demanded, “Blast it, Anna, what the hell is wrong with you?”

Rose looked up as she tried to pull her wrists free. She winced as the large hands tightened around them, then shook her head.

“Haven’t you been listening to me at all?” she asked. “I do…not…know…you. I’m not someone named Anna. My name is Rose. I know I shouldn’t have come onto your grounds. I certainly shouldn’t have been up on your balcony, but—”

Rose stopped speaking. She had to. The man in front of her had begun to laugh.




Chapter 2


The laughter had started as a soft chuckle, but it quickly built in strength and volume until it was nearly deafening. As he continued to chortle, his grip on Rose’s wrists relaxed slightly, though not enough for her to break free.

Rose knew this because she jerked her hands down, hard, in an attempt to escape. At this point he stopped laughing, and although he tightened his grip, a slight smile tilted one corner of his mouth as his eyes once more locked on to hers.

“Good grief,” he said with a shake of his head. “Not that again.”

Rose stared at the crooked smile she’d seen so often in her dreams, then looked up to the amused eyes. Behind the gently teasing glint she saw a mix of anger and concern. Her response was a mutinous frown. Who was this man to stand there laughing at her, judging her? For that matter, who were any of these people? What was this place? Just what sort of nightmare had she stumbled into?

She gave an uneasy glance to the room. It was nearly three times larger than the one she occupied in Seattle. The bed was a queen, where hers was only a twin. These walls were nearly blank, while hers were filled with pictures and memorabilia. But the color scheme and placement of the furniture was eerily similar, even without the inexplicable presence of the turquoise-and-purple quilt that matched hers so precisely.

Then there was the matter of the blond woman and gray-haired man. They’d looked familiar, also, in a misty, half-remembered way. Was it possible that they had appeared in her dreams, as well?

A shiver raised gooseflesh on Rose’s arms. It was as if she’d fallen through Alice’s rabbit hole into a world filled with oddly familiar sights, like this room and the view of the bridge outside. And the man holding her wrists.

Rose looked at him and found that the remains of his smile had been replaced by another frown. “What do you mean by ‘not that again’?” she asked.

His green-brown eyes seemed to assess her before they narrowed. “Come on, Anna,” he replied. “You know. Rose— the imaginary friend you made up when you were little? And that business about missing a part of yourself.”

The floor beneath her feet began to roll from side to side like the bridge of a ship in a wind-tossed sea. All her life Rose had felt an odd sense of loneliness, as if she were somehow incomplete. Somewhere around the age of six, when she’d asked her mother about this, the woman had reminded Rose that she’d been born prematurely. Perhaps, her mother suggested, in Rose’s hurry to arrive on earth she had somehow inadvertently left some part of herself back in heaven.

At the time, Rose had accepted this explanation. After all, she’d rarely been alone. Early on she and her mother had lived in an artist commune in Oregon, where she’d been surrounded by other caring adults and their children. After she and her mother moved to Seattle, there had been classrooms full of children to interact with, along with after-school music teachers and the customers who visited her mother’s shop. During her brief marriage, she’d been surrounded by people. And for the past two years she’d been in the constant company of her mother, always conscious of the inoperable tumor, dictating that Rose’s time with Kathleen Delancey would all too soon come to an end. So, she could hardly claim to have been lonely in the conventional sense. Yet whenever she looked inside herself, she’d felt as if a part of herself was missing, some odd hole in the fabric of her existence.

And now this man was suggesting that someone else felt this way. Someone, moreover, who apparently looked enough like Rose to make everyone she came in contact with think that she was this person. Someone who’d once had an imaginary friend named Rose.

This was all nuts. It was no wonder that her head was spinning, her ears ringing and her legs suddenly wobbly. If it weren’t for the tight grip this Logan maintained on her wrists, she was certain her legs would give way, leaving her to collapse on the floor at his feet.

She couldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t give in to the whirling eddy that threatened to drag her into unconsciousness. She had to stay alert, on her feet, and somehow find her way out of this nightmarish place. Drawing a deep breath, Rose forced herself to meet the man’s dark eyes and speak as calmly as possible.

“I know this must sound crazy, but I am who I say I am. Let me go, and I’ll prove it to you.”

The man—Logan, she reminded herself—seemed to search her face for a moment before releasing her wrists. Rose continued to stare into his eyes a moment longer, oddly reluctant to look away. Finally she took two steps back, pulled her gaze from his as she slipped her large purse from her shoulder. She reached in and fished out her turquoise leather wallet. Drawing her driver’s license from its plastic sleeve, she handed it to the man. Shivering within her damp sweater, she watched as he studied it.

“Well, I know you use false IDs to avoid the attention that comes with the Benedict name,” he said at last. One corner of his mouth lifted in that half smile of his as his eyes met hers. “But why choose Seattle? Was there a sale on fake Washington State licenses?”

His smile became a mocking grin as he handed the document back, hardening Rose’s frustration into anger.

“For your information, that license is real. And it says I’m legal to drive in the State of Washington because that is where I live.”

“Right. And what about the wallet? This was my Christmas present to you a little over a month ago.”

Again Rose felt the floor begin to shift beneath her feet. The turquoise wallet had been a day-after-Christmas-sale purchase at Nordstrom’s. It was something she hadn’t really needed, but upon seeing it, she’d felt she had to have it—as if it was somehow meant to be hers.

The fact that this Anna possessed the exact same wallet sent another wave of shivers dancing down her spine. Rose straightened that part of her anatomy. This was no time to get giddy over coincidences, she told herself. Such a reaction would only make it more difficult to convince this stranger of her identity.

Not that it mattered if he believed her or not. She knew who she was. What was more, in spite of all the unanswered questions tumbling through her mind regarding this look-alike of hers, she now only wanted to get out of this house, to escape from these people and the vague unsettling sense that she’d seen them before.

“Look, Logan whoever-you-are.” Rose spoke softly as she shoved her driver’s license back in place and dropped her wallet into her purse. Pushing her damp bangs out of her eyes, she glared up at him as she went on, “I’m through trying to reason with you. I am Rose Delancey, just as my license states, and I refuse to be kept in this madhouse one moment longer.”

She pivoted toward the door, but before she could take one step, strong fingers gripped her elbow and spun her back around. The man’s lips twisted scornfully as he asked, “If you aren’t Anna, then how do you know my name is Logan?”

“It’s what that woman called you.”

His eyes narrowed. “That woman is your mother.”

“No. My mother is…dead.”

Immediately Rose clamped her jaw shut, trapping the sob that wanted to follow. She wasn’t going to cry. Not now. Not after she’d promised her mother.

It was just that this was the first time she’d actually said the word dead out loud, with all its echoes of finality. The small group that had gathered for her mother’s funeral had all known what had happened, so there had been no reason for Rose to explain a thing. The end had been expected, after all, and Rose had heard several people murmur that the suddenness of it had been something of a blessing. Rose knew, of course, that they’d meant that her mother was now beyond pain, not that it was a blessing that Kathleen Delancey was gone, leaving her daughter truly alone.

And feeling, suddenly, crazy.

Swallowing hard, Rose stared at the lapel of the man’s leather jacket. She should have stayed in the apartment above her mother’s gift shop, should have gone through all her mother’s papers as the lawyer had suggested, then gradually come to terms with her loss. She never should have followed her crazy visions without first putting her life in order and getting her emotions in hand.

“Rose?”

The soft inquiry brought Rose’s head up and hope into her heart. “You called me Rose,” she said as another damp chill shuddered through her. “Does that mean you believe what I’ve been—?”

The shake of Logan’s head left the rest of Rose’s question unasked.

“I tried Anna,” he replied. “When you didn’t look up, I decided to give Rose a try.” He paused a moment, frowning into her eyes as if weighing a decision before he went on. “Look, Anna. You’re wet, cold and probably tired. We can talk after you take a warm shower and get into some dry—”

Now it was Rose’s turn to shake her head, interrupting him to insist, “For the last time, I am not Anna. I don’t live in this house, have never even been in this house, or in this…room.”

Rose shuddered as her gaze slid from his to the hauntingly familiar decor.

“Then why are you here?”

Rose closed her eyes as a sense of hopelessness engulfed her at the thought of telling this obviously cynical man about her recurring dreams of the view from the balcony outside this particular room.

When she felt Logan’s hand gently grasp her upper arms, she realized he must have seen her shoulders slump. Her knees seemed to bend of their own accord. Once she was sitting on the edge of the bed, she opened her eyes. Aware of the man seated next to her, she stared at the bridge through the sliding glass door, realizing that her explanation would sound insane.

“Dreams,” she said anyway. “I have repeatedly dreamed of this particular view of that bridge. I came here to find if this view existed in reality. I needed…”

As her voice trailed off, Logan couldn’t miss the despair shimmering in her dark eyes. The expression on her face was so damned sincere that he was half tempted to believe that this truly might not be Anna Benedict. But he knew Anna’s vivid imagination all too well for that. Like Alice In Wonderland, she was fully capable of imagining “six impossible things before breakfast” and believing each of them completely.

Logan had always suspected that this characteristic was a reaction to her family’s expectations. Keeping an eye on Anna had been a duty he had gladly fulfilled ever since the day that Robert and Elise Benedict brought their new daughter home. The tiny infant’s cry had elicited a fierce sense of protectiveness in his ten-year-old soul that had never waned no matter how she’d tried his patience over the years.

Not, he reminded himself with a twitch of his lips, that he was a paragon of patience, but he understood the introverted young woman’s battle to find her place in a family of over-achievers. In the past six months, though, he’d been so busy overseeing Benedict family legal concerns that he hadn’t spent much time with Anna.

It occurred to him now, as he studied the combination of confusion and fear on Anna’s too-pale face, that her brief disappearance might have been in response to the numerous social and political functions she’d been required to attend. But whatever the cause, it was obvious that something had made Anna snap. Something serious enough, it seemed, to cause her to fantasize that her mother was no longer alive.

Logan recoiled from the thought. Fifty-three-year-old Elise was a dynamo of organization, capable of simultaneously setting up a charity bazaar, overseeing the arts foundation her husband had established for local schools, and designing the interior of a homeless shelter. The fact that Elise managed all this without losing an ounce of composure, getting a spot of dirt on her tasteful haute couture outfit or allowing one lock of hair to escape her meticulously arranged hairstyle might intimidate any daughter.

But to imagine her mother dead?

“Look. You have to believe me.”

Anna’s words pulled Logan’s attention to her pleading eyes. “I don’t belong here,” she went on. “I want to leave this house, now.”

The desperation in her voice made Logan look at her long and hard. Anna’s face seemed thinner and very pale, considering her fondness for the California sun. Her indigo eyes appeared more deep set, yet larger and more luminous.

Luminous? Logan blinked. Where the hell had that word come from. Never, in all the years he’d known Anna, had he paid much attention to her eyes. Well once, when she was twelve and insisted that her blue eyes, combined with the fact that both her parents had brown, proved that she’d been adopted. The explanation had been simple enough, of course. Elise and Robert each had one blue-eyed parent, supplying the recessive gene that Anna, but not her brother, Chas, had inherited.

Logan’s sudden poetic attention to the young woman’s features was far less easy to explain. Even more confusing was his sudden awareness of the gentle curves that formed the body so close to his. As his flesh began to warm, his muscles tensed. He’d known Anna all her life, and never before had he reacted to her with this…this—

He shook away the half-formed thought. Anna was his sister, dammit. Okay—she was Chas’s sister, but as an unofficial Benedict that was how he’d always viewed her. Yet, insane as it was, he found himself mesmerized by the hopeless expression in those dark eyes of hers, fascinated by the curve of her lips, felt his head bending inexorably toward hers.

It was at that moment, without any warning, that Anna stood. Logan got to his feet as well, instinctively grasping her upper arms again, the strange moment of temptation forgotten in his concern about Anna’s mental state.

“I can’t let you leave,” he said. “Not the way you’re acting. I’m sure your moth—that Elise will be along with the doctor any minute. Then—”

“Then what?” she demanded. Concern tightened the straight black eyebrows beneath her new bangs. “This doctor will give me a sedative? Something to ease my poor befuddled mind? Absolutely not.”

Again she pulled away from him, this time with so much force that Logan was jerked forward. Rather than risk hurting her arms more than his bruising grip must already be doing, he let gravity draw her backward, onto the bed. Following her down, he pinned her there with his body.

This didn’t end the struggle, however. Instead of lying still, Anna continued to twist and squirm as her arms flailed in an attempt to hit him. Logan slid his hands down each arm, until he again captured her wrists. Although her upper body was now relatively still, the area below her waist continued to shift wildly. When she began to buck, Logan decided he’d had enough.

“Knock it off.”

He purposely spoke in the low growl he used when dealing with a roomful of arguing lawyers and clients. It apparently worked on half-crazed women, too, for Anna not only stopped moving, she went completely limp.

Slowly Logan raised his head and looked down. Her eyes were closed, her features soft and without expression. Pushing himself into a sitting position, he grabbed the obviously unconscious Anna’s left wrist. As he searched for a pulse, Elise Benedict’s voice echoed down the hall.

“Yes, Doctor. Anna is claiming she doesn’t know any of us. She seems disoriented and unusually excitable. I think she needs something to calm her nerves—to keep her from doing damage to herself.”

Logan managed to scramble to his feet at the side of the bed seconds before Elise entered the room. She was followed by a tall, thin man with white hair and black-framed glasses. The dark eyes behind those spectacles glanced at Logan before focusing on the inert young woman in the bed.

“I think she fainted,” Logan said.

Dr. Alcott bent down to place two fingers on the side of Anna’s neck. After a second he straightened. “Good strong pulse,” he said, then once more looked at Logan, his dark eyes narrowed. “Elise tells me that Anna fell and hit her head. Is this true?”

Logan nodded. “Yes. She lost her footing on the veranda, and her feet flew out from under her. Her back took the brunt of the fall, but her head apparently hit the tile surface, too. She appeared to be a bit dazed when I reached her.”

Something of an understatement, Logan thought as Robert Benedict reentered the room. The man was under a great deal of pressure, between serving in California’s legislature and battling to win the primary that would, hopefully, propel his political career into the national arena. The last thing he needed to hear was that his daughter had been acting strangely even before she hit her head.

“Dr. Alcott,” Robert said as the man opened his bag and removed a stethoscope. “Do you think that blow to Anna’s head could have caused her to act as if she’d suddenly found herself in a house of strangers?”

Alcott glanced up with a frown. “Is that what’s been going on?”

“I’m afraid so,” Elise replied with a sigh. “Of course you know how she was before…before I called you the other day. But at least then she seemed to know us. Now—” the woman paused to bite her lip as she gazed at her daughter “—amnesia.” She shook her head. “Oh, Anna.”

Logan tensed at the almost undetectable note of disapproval in Elise’s soft voice. The tone had the power to cut like a lash, in spite of, or perhaps because of, the charming smile that accompanied the words. He knew this because that tone had been directed toward him more than once after the death of his parents placed him in the Benedicts’ care.

And in their debt.

No, he reminded himself. In Robert’s debt. It had been Robert who had recognized a ten-year-old orphan’s fear of being sent to live with strangers. It was Robert to whom he owed his loyalty, along with whatever help he could offer now.

Logan turned to the man and said quietly, “You left word that Anna was missing. What’s been going on?”

He purposely didn’t mention the messages that Anna had left him. In her second call, she’d begged Logan not to tell her family that she’d been trying to reach him. Until he knew more about what had been happening in his absence, he would honor that request.

Robert glanced toward his wife before replying. “Well, I mishandled a question Anna placed to me yesterday morning.” Robert’s hand rose to comb through his hair as he went on. “The timing couldn’t have been worse. You were in France, Chas was making arrangements for the campaign, Elise was up to her earlobes in arranging tonight’s fund-raiser, and I was putting the finishing touches on a speech. I’m afraid that I—”

“Robert,” Elise broke in softly as she placed a graceful hand on his arm. “I refuse to allow you to feel guilty. Despite our busy schedules, we’ve always been there for Anna, always encouraging her, even when it became obvious that she was incapable of seeing anything through, that she would always be chasing after something new.”

There it was again, Logan thought as he gazed at Elise, the disparity between the concern wrinkling the woman’s brow and the barely discernable note of exasperation beneath her sad tone. He was never sure which emotion was real. And at the moment this was beside the point.

He turned to Robert. “What exactly was it that Anna confronted you with?”

The man seemed to hesitate. In the silence Elise replied, “Oh, it was that silly old not belonging in this family nonsense. I’ll never understand what prompted my daughter’s notion that she was adopted. Probably those fairy tales Aunt Grace read to all of you, full of princes and princesses, faithful knights, changelings and evil stepparents. Such a waste of time.”

The woman sighed. “I thought Anna had given up that silly fantasy until the other day. Good Lord, she even brought up that imaginary Rose creature again. It frightened me so that I had no recourse but to call Dr. Alcott.”

Logan glanced over to see Alcott pry Anna’s right eye open and shine a flashlight into it. “Why the doctor?” he asked as he turned back to Elise.

The woman’s lovely features tightened. “I reminded Anna that we’d been totally up-front about the fact that she’d been conceived in a fertility clinic. I again assured her that she was the product of my egg and her father’s sperm, but she just kept insisting she was not our child. Then she threatened to have someone investigate this if we didn’t confirm her suspicions.”

Elise glanced at her husband. “Considering that Stephen Dahlberg is just looking for a hint of scandal—no matter how absurd or unfounded—we had no choice, really, but to ask for Dr. Alcott’s help. He suggested she be placed under close observation.”

A cold chill crept up the back of Logan’s neck. “Close observation?”

“That’s right.” Elise lifted her chin. “Dr. Alcott arranged to take Anna to a very private facility run by a psychiatrist friend of his, where we hoped a discreet professional might get to the root of her problems. But yesterday, when the doctor stopped at the gated entrance, Anna opened the car door, ran down the street and somehow managed to hop onto a city bus just as it pulled away.”

Elise paused to once more shake her head. When she resumed speaking, the defensive tone was replaced with what sounded like heartfelt regret. “Unfortunately, this just proves how much she needs help. She’s always preferred to run away rather than face her responsibilities.”

Robert took a step toward the bed, then stopped. “You know,” he said softly, “when Anna announced she had enrolled at UC Berkeley again, I thought she’d at last decided to take control of her life.”

Silence filled the room for several moments. “I see,” Logan said at last. “And when these questions came up, you simply decided to have Anna…” He paused to search for the word. Unable, and suddenly unwilling, to come up with something politically correct, he finished, “…committed?”

“There was nothing ‘simple’ about it.” For once the steel in Elise’s voice matched the hardness of her expression. “Things have been difficult enough since Victor died, what with Grace’s mind slipping in and out of reality at the most inopportune times. Grace’s mutterings, however, are easily explained as the onset of senility. But Anna’s rantings are quite another story—perfect fodder for a scandal, which is something Robert can’t afford this close to the primary.”

She paused, took a deep breath, then reached out to touch Logan’s arm as she went on in a softer tone, “You’re doing a good job, keeping the family holdings and charities running smoothly so that Robert can concentrate on the matter at hand. Victor taught you well. But you don’t have the time to watch over Grace as he did—nor to baby-sit Anna.”

The honest sympathy in Elise’s eyes touched Logan. His jaw clenched against the pain shooting through his chest at the mention of Victor Benedict. While Robert had been his surrogate father, Robert’s uncle Victor had been Logan’s mentor, schooling him in the ways of finance and the law. He missed the older man’s rock-steady presence, couldn’t help asking himself how Victor would have handled this situation.

“So, I hope you understand,” Elise went on. “That when Robert and I consulted Dr. Alcott, we felt it best to go along with his suggestion that Anna go to a quiet place where she could…pull herself together.”

It wasn’t until Elise spoke these last three words that Logan once again found himself biting back words of anger. That little undertone of sarcasm was there again, whispering that Anna wasn’t living up to the picture of Benedict family perfection.

“Excuse me.” Dr. Alcott’s voice broke the silence following Elise’s last statement. “Anna’s injuries seem minor—some scratches to her palms and perhaps a bruise on her hip. Her vital signs are strong, and while her pupils show no sign of head injury, a CAT scan might be in order. This can be performed at Dr. Shriver’s clinic. Did you want to use the limousine, as before?”

Robert gazed at his daughter before he nodded and slowly turned to Logan. “Would you mind carrying Anna down and placing her in the back seat?”




Chapter 3


After hearing Robert ask Logan to carry her to the waiting car, Rose barely let herself breathe. Despite the instinct urging her to leap from the bed and rush from the room, she forced herself to remain inert, eyes closed, just as she had since the moment she realized it would be impossible to escape Logan’s powerful grip.

Little did she think this “playing possum” trick would ever be useful when, at the age of twelve, she’d reluctantly taken the self-defense class that her mother enrolled them in. There had been no fancy moves to learn, just basic common-sense kicking and twisting and hitting, all of which she’d tried to use against Logan in her attempt to escape from his hold—and this house.

Pretending to pass out had been a last-resort move, meant to lure the attacker into complacency until an opportunity to escape arrived. It had never occurred to Rose, as she listened and gathered information, that she would be forced to remain inert while some strange doctor poked her and pried open her eyes, one by one, to examine them from behind a blinding light.

And for what? She was fairly certain that the clinic the doctor had just referred to was the nut house that this Anna person had been headed for—a place she had no intention of ending up. It appeared that this was just what would happen, however, if she continued to lie there.

Rose was wondering if the element of surprise would be enough to allow her to escape, should she suddenly jump up and dash past all these people, when she heard Logan reply, “As a matter of fact, I would mind taking her to the car.”

“Logan.”

The scandalized protest came from the woman Rose had come to know as Elise. Logan responded evenly.

“I don’t want to send Anna off to some institution if it’s not necessary. From what I understand, she’s been gone all night. Simple exhaustion might be the reason she passed out. I’d like to let her rest a bit and see if she won’t wake up on her own, then try to find out what’s behind her confusion.”

“It won’t do any good.” It was Elise again. “I tried reasoning with her, but her rantings only escalated. My daughter needs professional help, not someone to hold her hand and encourage her unreasonable behavior. Or to indulge her, as her father has done.”

Rose was aware of a long pause before Logan asked in a quiet, steely tone, “When have I ever encouraged Anna to behave in any way that would be detrimental to herself, or to the family?”

“Never.” This came from the man called Robert. “While I may have occasionally been guilty of ‘indulging’ my daughter, you’ve always been a steadying influence on her. But her behavior the past few days—” he paused to sigh before finishing “—I’m really afraid her mental stability is in danger. You heard her claim that she didn’t know any of us.”

Another long pause followed this. Rose’s heart began to race as she recalled the less-than-sane way she’d been behaving since first seeing Logan on the deck outside. She wouldn’t blame him at all for giving in to the pressure, and letting her—or rather Anna—be locked up.

“I want an hour,” Logan said suddenly. “I’d like to see if she won’t regain consciousness, then talk to her here, in surroundings that are familiar to her. Alone.”

Dr. Alcott’s “I don’t think—” blended with Elise’s “We’ve already agreed that—”

Robert interrupted them both. “Logan is right. I would much prefer Anna be treated at home, if possible.”

As Rose’s tense muscles began to relax she heard a soft sigh, followed by Elise’s voice. “Well, I suppose that would prevent news of this…breakdown, or whatever, from reaching the press. But Dr. Alcott is—”

“A good man,” Robert finished. “And for just that reason, I’m going to ask him to stay around until Logan has had time to work with Anna. You have an hour, Logan. The rest of us will be downstairs, visiting with Aunt Grace. I know you’ll call if you need us.”

Rose listened to the sound of multiple feet shuffling away, followed by the click of the door as it closed. She heard a single set of footsteps approach the bed.

Logan. Rose drew a slow, soft breath. She didn’t know who this Anna person was, but she did know that the woman was lucky to have such a determined friend. And so, by extension, was she.

But, despite this man’s frequent appearances in her dreams, Logan was a stranger. She didn’t feel she could trust him to listen to her explanation of the other set of dreams—those involving the Golden Gate Bridge—without calling the doctor back to cart her off to the hospital with the rubber rooms. However, if she wanted to prevent this, she would have to put an end to her “unconscious” charade sometime soon.

Besides, she had her own reasons for wanting to stay in this house, in this room, for a little while longer. And that reason was Anna Benedict. Rose had a lot of questions about the young woman she apparently resembled so very closely. Fortunately, the conversation she’d just overheard had suggested a way to get answers to some of these.

Elise had mentioned amnesia. How perfect. All she had to do was continue to say that she didn’t know any of these people. Since amnesia was hardly a reason to lock someone up—and with Logan around to champion her, believing that she was Anna—she could stay in this room long enough to investigate this look-alike of hers. And then she could wait till the gate was open, slip down those iron stairs, walk back to the gas station with the pay phone she’d noticed when the cab turned into the area, retrieve her luggage from the hotel she’d checked into yesterday, then return to Seattle. And sanity.

With this plan in mind, Rose took a deep, loud breath as she let her eyelids flutter. When she felt the mattress dip near her head and heard a deep voice say, “Anna?” she waited a heartbeat before slowly opening her eyes.

Logan was bending over her, his hands resting on the bed, his eyes dark with concern. Rose was struck suddenly by the weak-muscled sensation that flowed through her body, the sensation that always followed her dreams of this man. This time the heat rushing through her veins engulfed her in an even stronger wave as she continued to meet his gaze.

“Anna,” he said again, this time more firmly. “Are you all right?”

No, she wanted to reply, I think I’m running a fever.

Hardly the thing to say, of course. Not if she wanted to be left alone to search this room. Instead, she pulled her eyebrows into a slow frown as she asked, “Who…who is Anna?”

“You are,” he replied.

Allowing her frown to deepen, she shook her head. “You called me that before, but it doesn’t sound right. My name is—”

“Rose,” he finished. “So you keep saying. And you live in Seattle?”

It was obvious that the man was trying to humor her—or rather, the woman he thought she was. She decided to play along.

“I…” She hesitated before nodding slowly. “Yes. I…I must be.”

“Why do you say that?” Logan asked. He smiled slightly, lifting his eyebrows as he went on. “Is it because that’s where your driver’s license says you live?”

Oh, this was almost too easy, Rose thought as she widened her eyes and focused on his. “Well,” she said at last. “Yes.”

Logan moved away slowly, leaning against the back of the chair next to the bed. Rose turned her head to watch him study her. A moment later his lips curved into a smile as he asked, “How do you feel?”

Rose blinked, then shrugged. “A little stiff.”

“Would you like to sit up?”

The moment Rose nodded, Logan leaned forward, placed his hands beneath her shoulders and eased her into an upright position. Rose found her heart beating wildly again. Whether it was a reaction to having lain flat for so long or the heat from this man’s touch she wasn’t certain. But once she was upright, she placed her hands on the aqua coverlet and scooted away, seeking refuge against the wrought-iron headboard.

This didn’t place her very far from Logan, but the distance was enough to break the strange, warm current that seemed to flow between them and allow her to continue her act. Reaching for the back of her head, Rose felt the tender spot that had struck the bricks of the veranda. It took no acting ability at all to wince as she asked, “Did I pass out?”

“You did. Do you remember anything else?”

Rose hesitated, not certain how far to take this. “I remember you carrying me up here—and that I fought with you.”

Logan nodded. He continued to smile but his eyes narrowed ever so slightly as he said, “That’s right. But now can you tell me how you arrived here, at this house?”

Rose frowned as she gathered her thoughts. Careful, she warned herself, before starting slowly. “I…arrived in a taxi. I knew I was looking for my home…I somehow must have directed him to this neighborhood, but I don’t recall doing that.”

So far, so good, Rose thought as she paused. Now, all she had to do was explain how she came to think her name was Rose.

“I remember feeling foolish, suddenly realizing that I didn’t know the address I was searching for. I…my mind was fuzzy, but I felt certain I was heading home. So I checked my wallet and found a driver’s license with my name on it. Then I—”

“How did you know it was your name?”

Rose blinked as she stared at Logan. She had no idea how—then it came to her in a flash.

“There’s a little mirror in the wallet,” she said quickly. “I could see that my features matched the license photo. So I assumed I was Rose.”

“Except the address shown is in Seattle.”

Rose wasn’t going to allow herself to be tripped up. Without considering why it was so important to win this battle of wits, she gave her lips a wry twist and nodded.

“I know. That puzzled me. But still, I had this sense that I was somehow looking for my home. And then we drove by this place, and I caught a glimpse of the bridge between this house and the one next door, and the scene was so familiar that I was sure this must be the place I was looking for. I…remember thinking that perhaps I grew up here, or that I had relatives here. Anyway, I was embarrassed by the odd looks the driver was giving me, so I told him to drop me off at the gate.”

Rose ended her story with a satisfied sigh. For someone who had been reared to speak only the truth, she hadn’t done a bad job of lying. Of course, other than the bit about thinking some relative might live here, most of her tale had been true. And from the looks of things, Logan seemed to be buying it. Until his eyes narrowed.

“Are you telling me you made up that story about having dreamed of the bridge?” he asked.

Damn. She’d forgotten about that.

Rose bit the inside of her lower lip hesitantly before she shrugged. “Sort of. I do know that the view seemed familiar—the dream thing seemed the only explanation.”

Logan stared at her for a moment. Slowly his scowl relaxed and the suspicion in his green-brown eyes softened into an expression of speculation and concern.

“Do you remember anything from before you got in the cab?”

Rose sat quietly, staring at the open vee of his white shirt, pretending to think. Instead she was struck with a memory from one of her dreams in which she’d stared at that same chest. Only in the dream there had been no shirt, just bare, muscled skin. Feeling her face grow warm, she blinked the image away and quickly shook her head.

“No. Nothing.”

“Well then,” he said quietly. “Will you accept the idea that you just might be Anna Benedict?”

Rose fought off a shudder that had nothing to do with the fact that her clothes were still slightly damp. She wanted to shake her head, insist that she was Rose Delancey, but controlled the impulse. Slowly she lifted her shoulders in a shrug.

“I’ll consider it.” She paused. “Perhaps it would help if you’d tell me a little about Ann—me. So far all I know is that I have a mother named Elise, a father named Robert and an aunt named Grace. Elise mentioned someone named Chas. Who is he?”

“Your older brother,” Logan replied.

Rose frowned. “I thought you were my older brother.”

“No, I’m not,” Logan replied. “Not really.”

Logan watched Anna’s eyebrows twist into a puzzled frown, which told him just how confusing this might sound—especially to an already confused mind.

“My parents, Thomas and Brenda Maguire, worked for your grandfather,” he explained. “I was ten when they died, and I didn’t have any other family. Your father managed to get himself appointed my legal guardian and has always treated me like a surrogate son.”

Logan saw an expression of sympathy darken Anna’s eyes. His chest tightened around the pain he’d locked away so long ago, and he frowned.

There was something deeply empathetic in that look of Anna’s, almost as if she knew just how that loss had affected him. But she couldn’t. By the time Anna learned about the accident that had killed his parents, the young girl had long been accustomed to thinking of him as her “bigger brother,” which had been her way of distinguishing him from Chas, two years his junior.

Receiving sympathy from Anna now was something entirely new to him, and rather than try to deal with the uncomfortable emotions she evoked, he did what he did best—focused on the business at hand.

“Come with me,” he said. “And let me introduce you to the family.”

Logan noticed Anna offered no resistance when he took her hand to pull her to her feet, then lead her across the room to stand in front of an oak rolltop desk. The wall above was filled with framed photos. He pointed to a five-by-seven on the far right.

“There’s Elise, holding you on the day you came home,” he said. “Other than her hairstyle, you can see that her looks have changed little. And I think you can recognize Robert, despite the fact that his hair was nearly black back then. Just like yours is now. And the shorter blond boy on the left? That’s your brother, Chas.”

Logan watched Anna scrutinize each figure until a sudden frown formed and she abruptly turned to him. “And the other blond boy. Is…is that you?”

Her eyes were wide. Thinking he saw a hint of recognition in them, he nodded. “Yes. Look familiar?”

An expression very close to fear darkened her eyes before she blinked and shrugged. “Maybe…a little. I don’t know.”

“Well, maybe looking at some of these other photographs will stimulate your memory.”

Logan directed her attention to the images that Elise had framed in silver and placed on the wall of her daughter’s room. He started with a large oval sepia-toned photograph at the top.

“That’s your great-great-great grandfather, Lucas Benedict. He established the family fortune back in the 1870s when he struck a vein of silver in Virginia City, Nevada. No one can find a picture of his wife, but the men in the two pictures on either side are his sons, Jonah and Jerald. Beneath those we have Jerald’s sons, Raymond and William, along with William’s wife, your grandmother, Anna. Some think you bear a close resemblance to her.”

He watched as Anna studied this last photo. “I don’t agree.”

Logan shrugged. “Well, you do both have curly hair—and there’s a widow’s peak beneath those new bangs of yours. The picture is rather faded, so it’s hard to make out any further resemblance. Anyway, the next set of pictures are of William and Anna’s two sons and their wives. That’s Victor and Grace on the left. The other couple is your grandfather, Charles, and your grandmother, Louise. You wouldn’t remember your grandmother, because she died before your first birthday.”

“And this picture on the top of the desk?” he heard her ask softly.

Logan frowned at the photo of two dark-haired men sitting at a piano. “That’s a shot of your father,” he said slowly, “with his brother, your uncle Joe. You wouldn’t remember Joe, either. He died…shortly before you were born.”

Logan swallowed against the sudden tightness in his throat and blinked back the sudden memories of the day that Joseph Benedict died, and the two people who had perished with him.

“Oh, Anna! You’re up.”

Elise Benedict’s voice echoed from the doorway. Logan turned as the woman stepped into the room, followed by her husband and the doctor.

“How is our patient?” Dr. Alcott asked as all three stopped in front of Anna and Logan.

When Anna said nothing, Logan replied, “She’s fine, physically. At least, she hasn’t complained of any major aches or pains.”

“And her mind?”

Logan turned to Elise. “I think I’ve convinced her that she is Anna Benedict. She appears to recognize some things, but her memory is far from clear.”

“Oh, dear.” Elise sighed, then turned to the doctor. “Well then. Perhaps we should still consider sending her—”

“No!”

Logan glanced at Anna, who had broken into her mother’s suggestion just moments before Logan could reject what was undoubtedly going to be another suggestion that Anna be placed in the hospital. He turned to Anna’s father.

“I don’t think that’s necessary, Robert. Or particularly wise right now. I’m sure the facility that Alcott recommended is discreet, but this sort of thing has a way of leaking out. Not that I think there’s any shame in a person checking in for mental help, but you know how it could look.”

Robert nodded.

“Besides,” Logan went on, “Anna might benefit by being around familiar things and people. Don’t you agree Dr. Alcott?”

The man’s dark eyes narrowed a moment behind his glasses before he nodded. “Possibly. Theoretically, being exposed to familiar items speeds recovery in persons suffering from amnesia.”

Logan looked to Elise, half expecting her to show some kind of displeasure at having her plans denied. Instead the woman was treating her daughter to a speculative gaze.

“Well, perhaps that is best. I wasn’t sure how I was going to explain Anna’s absence at the campaign dinner tonight. And many of our longtime friends and associates will be there. Maybe seeing one of them in a relaxed atmosphere will prompt Anna’s memory. What do you think, Dr. Alcott?”

Logan gave his head a small shake. Only Elise Benedict would consider a campaign dinner and dance a “relaxed” atmosphere. Anna certainly would not. She hated spending time in the public eye.

Before he could bring this up, however, the doctor replied, “Excellent idea.”

This brought a wide smile to Elise’s lips. She turned to Logan. “You’ll be there, of course.”

“Actually,” he said, “I got very little sleep during the past three days, so I’d planned to catch up on it after I filed the paperwork from my trip to France and explained the details of your father’s will.”

Only the slightest tightening of the woman’s jaw gave any hint of Elise’s feelings about the now-deceased man who had abandoned his wife and daughter so many years ago. A second later she was smiling again.

“Oh, there will be plenty of time to discuss dreary financial matters at a later date. What’s important now is that you escort Anna to this affair tonight and keep an eye on her. You know, point out the people she should know and, of course, see to it that she doesn’t say the wrong thing.”

Before Logan could reply, Robert spoke up. “I’m not so sure this is a good idea, Elise. Logan is obviously suffering from jet lag, and Anna looks as white as a sheet.”

The woman glanced from Logan to Anna, concern wrinkling the brow over her dark brown eyes. “Yes, they do both look a bit ragged. But it’s hours yet until they need to make an appearance. I’ve reserved a suite at the hotel, where you and I can change so that I can be on hand to oversee the last-minute arrangements. When I planned this months ago, I’d figured that Anna would go with us, and keep Aunt Grace company until it was time to go downstairs. But Chas and Nicole can take care of Grace. That way, Anna can stay here and rest up while Logan goes home and catches up on his sleep before dressing and returning to get her. And who knows? Perhaps after Anna takes a nap, her memory will have returned and everything will be fine.”

Rose knew that neither of these things were going to happen. First, she had no memories of Anna’s life to recall. And second, nothing was going to be fine until she escaped from this mad house.

That was going to have to wait a bit, however. No one would believe her now if she were to suddenly insist that she was Rose Delancey. Most likely they would cart her off and lock her up in the room they’d reserved for poor Anna. So, until she could get them to leave her alone she would be forced to go along with this charade.

“Anna.”

Rose’s heart beat two or three times before she realized she was being spoken to. Turning to the speaker, Robert Benedict, she was met by soft brown eyes full of concern as he took her hand.

“Are you up to this plan?”

Rose took a deep breath. As soon as these people cleared out of this room, she had every intention of slipping out the sliding glass door and making her way to freedom. She no longer gave a fig who this Anna person was, or why she’d had all those dreams of the view outside this window. She just wanted to get back to her own life. This might not happen, though, if she gave these people any reason to suspect that she might do anything other than what they were suggesting.

But she’d been raised not to lie, so she forced a small smile to her lips and said simply, “I’m feeling okay.”

“Wonderful!” Elise leaned forward to brush a kiss across Rose’s cheek before stepping back, saying, “Robert, we need to be hurrying along. Logan, you go home and rest up. Anna, are you hungry? No, well then you take a long nap. Your dress hasn’t arrived yet, but I’ve been assured it will be here in plenty of time.”

The woman started to leave, then stopped and reached out to take Rose’s hand. “Anna, dear, your father needs to be seen with his family. Promise me you will be there, and on your best behavior.”

Rose stared into those dark eyes. Promise? Kathleen Delancey had held promises sacred and taught her daughter to do the same. If she promised, she would have to follow through. And if she didn’t, the slight narrowing of Elise’s eyes suggested that she might end up in a nut house.

“I promise,” Rose breathed.

At that, Elise released her hand. “Robert,” she said. “Doctor—I think we can leave now. Logan. You, too.”

Logan nodded but didn’t follow the other three out of the room. When they’d disappeared into the hall, he looked at Rose and asked, “Are you going to be all right here?”

After a moment of hesitation, Rose shook her head. “No. Not at all. I thought I could do it, but I can’t.”

She expected him to scowl. Instead his gaze softened with understanding as he asked, “The crowd thing?”

Rose blinked. “What crowd thing?” Before he could reply, she stuck her hand out in a halting motion. “Never mind. I don’t want you to explain. I want you to listen. I can’t keep the promise I just made. I can’t go to this dinner campaign thing and pretend to be someone I’m not. I can’t—won’t—live a lie. I am not Anna, and I will no longer pretend to be her.”

Logan closed his eyes and shook his head. A jolt of anger and fear made Rose grab his upper arms, much as he had held hers so many times that day, and shake him.

“Listen,” she hissed as his eyes flew open. “You have to believe me. If I am telling the truth, then Anna is out there somewhere, alone, confused and probably frightened.”

“Confused,” he said quietly, gazing at her pointedly. “Undoubtedly.”

Rose shook her head. “I am not confused. I have people you can call who will confirm that I am who I say I am. The woman who owns half of my mother’s shop, for instance. I’ll give you the number. Call her.”

“Why should I believe someone I’ve never met?”

Rose’s frustration was building by the moment. She clenched her teeth. “All right. Then…then have me write something and compare it to something Anna has written.”

“You could easily disguise your handwriting, so that won’t prove anything,” he said slowly, his eyes narrowing. “However, I could arrange to have your fingerprints analyzed.”

There was no mistaking the challenge in his gaze. Instead of retreating from this, Rose smiled.

“You’re on.”




Chapter 4


Twenty minutes later Rose was seated in Logan’s red Mustang.

“Where are we going?” she asked as Logan finished pulling off the quiet residential street and onto a busy boulevard.

He gave her a quick glance before turning his attention to the traffic ahead. “To see a friend of mine from college.”

Rose blinked. Her life had been turned upside down and he wanted to socialize? Slowly she asked, “And we would do this because…?”

“Because he works in the police forensics lab.” Again Logan glanced her way. “You are still willing to prove your identity, aren’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Well, I have the glass from Anna’s bathroom, one of her perfume bottles and her brush, which should hold her fingerprints. I also have a clean glass for you to leave your prints on. My friend Dennis agreed to do a quick comparison. That is, if you’re still so sure of yourself.”

Logan turned narrowed eyes to Rose as the car stopped for a red light. She stiffened beneath his suspicious glance. “I’m sure. And once I prove to you that I am Rose Delancey, I want you to promise—”

“One step at a time,” Logan broke in.

Rose had barely managed to nod before Logan’s attention was once more captured by traffic. As the car moved forward, he shifted into second gear, then into third to race down the street. As he swerved from one lane to another, passing the slower vehicles, Rose’s heart leaped, then began to race.

Was this due to fear, she wondered, or excitement? The last few years had become a blur of doctors’ offices, hospital rooms and the small chamber her mother retreated to after each chemo treatment. There had been ups and downs to deal with, hopes and fears, tears and laughter. So her life had hardly been uneventful. And although she and her mother had been dealing with death, together they had learned to live each day as fully as possible, to notice the way the clouds moved in, the taste and texture of each bite of food.

But since the funeral Rose had come to see how narrow her world had grown, and how empty she felt. She’d greeted this numbness with fury, seeing it as a poor way to remember the woman who had given her life, showed her how to live, encouraged her to dream and to follow those dreams, even as all of hers were fading.

Rose sighed and stared out the window at the tall buildings and the business-lunch crowds bustling along the sidewalk. Kathleen Delancey had undoubtedly been referring to life choices and career direction when she’d urged her daughter to “follow your dreams,” but the woman’s death had left Rose feeling too lost to address such imposing matters. So she’d followed the only dreams she could think of, those involving the Golden Gate Bridge and the laughing-eyed man who so resembled Logan Maguire.

This thought brought Rose’s attention back to the man sitting next to her. The sense that she somehow knew this man warred with the knowledge that he was really a complete stranger. A stranger who thought—no, wanted—her to be someone else, something quite ironic, considering that two years ago she’d walked away from what she knew had looked like a fairy-tale marriage for just that reason.

“Yesss!” Logan hissed as the car braked to a sudden stop. He glanced over to smile at her puzzled look and explained, “The parking gods have smiled upon us.”

Rose looked ahead to see a large silver car pull out of a parking space directly in front of them, then held her breath as Logan gunned his motor and angled into the spot practically on the heels of the departing vehicle.

After switching off the engine, he reached into the back seat for the black backpack that held the items he’d referred to earlier. He whipped a handkerchief out of the inside pocket of his leather jacket, then wrapped it around his hand as he retrieved a plain drinking glass.

“Grip this,” he said. “Make sure all five fingers leave a mark. All right, now. Give it back.”

Rose placed the glass in his handkerchief-wrapped hand, then watched him fold the white fabric around the item before returning it to the backpack.

“Okay.” He gave her a smile. “Now we feed the meter, then go confirm that you are who you say you are. Or rather, who you aren’t.”

Rose fought a strange sense of nervousness as she exited the elevator on the third floor of the building Logan led her into. This was silly, she told herself as she followed him down the hall and into a green-and-stainless-steel room, where Logan introduced her to a man wearing a white lab coat over a denim shirt and tan tie.

Dennis Langtrey stood a little over five-seven. He had light, caramel-colored eyes, a round, youthful face beneath short, wavy blond hair and a smile that could only be described as angelic, which instantly put Rose at ease. Once Logan explained what he wanted, the man placed the items taken from Anna’s room into one tray and the glass holding Rose’s prints in another. He then brushed gray powder over them and used tape to lift the resulting smudges. All the while, Dennis chatted with Logan about “old times” at Stanford University. Occasionally he glanced at Rose, as if expecting her to comment, leaving her to assume that this man must have met Anna on several of those occasions.

“Yes, that was some party Robert threw for our graduation,” Dennis said, then smiled as he straightened from his work. “Well, I have a pair of perfect thumbprints. Now for the fun part.”

He moved over to a desk, fiddled with the computer sitting there, and a moment later he was staring at a screen displaying two gray ovals formed of tight concentric lines.

A look of total concentration creased Dennis’s features as he repeatedly glanced from one print to the other. When Rose realized she was holding her breath, she slowly and determinedly released it. This was ridiculous, she told herself. Any second now, this man was going to announce that the prints did not match. She was, after all, not Anna Benedict.

“Wow. These are close,” Dennis said on the heels of her mental declaration. Lifting his head, he looked at Logan and went on, “But, as they say, close only counts in horseshoes.”

“Are you trying to say the prints don’t match?” Logan asked.

“That’s right.” Dennis stood and stretched before going on. “But, damn, they are close.”

“I got that. Are you sure they’re from two different people?”

Dennis glanced at his computer screen with a frown, then looked at Logan again. “Ye-es,” he said slowly.

“Is there some question?”

“No. Not about—”

“Because this is vitally important,” Logan said. “I need you to be 100 percent sure on this.”

“I am 100 percent certain,” Dennis replied. “However, I have a theory I want to check out. There are some hairs on this brush. Can you get me some from the person who donated the other set of prints so I can run a DNA test?”

Logan turned to An—Rose, he reminded himself. He raised one eyebrow inquiringly and after a moment’s hesitation she nodded. Opening her purse, she drew out a small brush and handed it to Dennis.

As the man removed the few strands of hair tangled in the bristles, Logan asked, “Just what are these suspicions of yours?”

“Suspicions?” Dennis’s full lips curved into a particularly cherubic smile as he returned the brush to Rose. “Let’s see…I agreed to look at these fingerprints, despite the fact that you said that you couldn’t tell me what all this was about. So, until I’ve run this test, I think it only fair that I keep my own counsel. Wouldn’t you say?”

Logan met his friend’s wide-eyed, innocent gaze with narrowed eyes. Games. He’d forgotten how much Dennis Langtrey loved to play guessing games. Most likely this characteristic was what enabled the brilliant mind behind that round, childlike face to focus on tiny bits of minutia day after day, trusting that eventually they would lead to the unraveling of a puzzle.

And this was definitely a puzzle worthy of Dennis’s mind. Two women who were almost identical—no, who were identical—yet came from completely different backgrounds. And to make things even more interesting, the day after one of them runs off, her look-alike shows up.

Logan glanced at Rose. And what about this claim that she’d appeared on the Benedict veranda in response to some dream? The story sounded preposterous—like one of Anna’s more outrageous fantasies. But…Dennis had just unequivocally stated that her fingerprints didn’t match the ones he’d lifted from Anna’s glass. They were close, Dennis said. An impossible suspicion grew in his mind. Maybe this test of Dennis’s would confirm it. In the meantime, he needed to keep the Benedict family as normal as possible.

Aware that nothing would get Dennis to tip his hand before he was ready, he asked, “How long before you have the results?”

Dennis shrugged. “Tomorrow, probably.”

“I thought DNA testing took weeks.”

“It can, especially in a murder investigation when you must compare several samples and run multiple tests for accuracy. But if my guess is right in this case, I should only have to run the most basic screen. Also, I don’t have any pressing cases going right now to hold me up.”

It was clear that the man had no intention of giving out any more information. “All right, Dennis,” he said with a sigh. “Keep your little secret for the time being. But call me as soon as you finish running your test.”

“Of course,” the man responded with a nod. “And then you’ll explain what is going on?”

“As soon as I know the whole story.”

And know it’s politically safe to reveal, Logan thought as he ushered Rose out the door. As they walked to the car, he found himself recalling the speculative glint in his friend’s eyes. Upon reaching the car, Logan held the passenger door open for Rose, then walked around to the driver’s side, deep in thought. It was his job to see that the family name remained above reproach, he reminded himself. It was even more important now, with Robert running against an opponent known for gleefully slinging any mud he happened upon—or dug up.

Robert’s track record in state government was above reproach, but news that his daughter might be unstable could kick up a media frenzy that would drain attention from the proposals the man wanted to communicate to the electorate. Logan drew a deep breath. So he had landed in the last place he wanted to be—a political campaign.

Schmoozing and charming was Chas’s department. However, damage control was Logan’s. It was up to him to straighten out this situation, and quietly.

A not-too-polite honk broke Logan out of his thoughts. Realizing that he’d put on his seat belt and placed the key in the ignition only to sit and stare out the window, he switched the engine on. Glancing in the rearview mirror, he noted with a grim smile that the car behind him slid into his spot even as he moved forward, just as he’d done over an hour earlier.

An hour in which he hadn’t learned much more than the fact that the woman next to him was definitely not Anna.

“Now what?” she said, echoing his own thoughts.

Logan glanced at her as he stopped for the next light. “Good question. How about some food? It’s after noon, and the last meal I recall was something in a plastic dish served on the airplane an hour before I landed. I don’t think all too well on an empty stomach.”

Rose frowned. “What’s to think about? Your friend confirmed that I’m not this Anna person. End of story. The hotel I’m staying at is around here somewhere, I think. Just drop me off, then you can—”

“Which hotel?” Logan asked as the light turned green.

“The Herbert, on Powell and O’Farrell.”

Logan nodded. He needed a plan, and to give himself time to come up with one, he made small talk.

“I know where that is. Small place. Rather old.”

“Yes. And all I can afford.”

Rose turned to stare out the window, her jaw stiff with chagrin at the ever-so-slightly defensive note she’d heard beneath her words.

It wasn’t that she was ashamed of the reduced state of her finances. She didn’t regret for one moment the money spent on battling her mother’s illness, nor her choice to cut back her performing and teaching schedule to spend as much time as possible with Kathleen rather than taking on new students.

She was a bit embarrassed by the way she’d set off on this trip without considering the cost—driven by a need to escape Queen Anne Hill, to get away from the hustle and bustle of the well-to-do customers who patronized her mother’s gift shop, to escape the sudden emptiness that filled the rooms above that had once rang with loving laughter.

“I can help you with that.”

Logan’s quiet words captured Rose’s attention. She turned to him with a lift of her eyebrows. Before she could ask what he meant, he gave her a smile. It was a wide, warm smile. But this time she noticed right away that it didn’t reach his eyes. Immediately she stiffened suspiciously.

“You can help me with what?”

“Money?”

“And why would you do that?”

“As payment.”

“Payment? For what?”

The smile widened as the car slid to a stop. “For services rendered. And hopefully for services to be rendered.”

Rose frowned. “What are you talking—”

“Park your car, Mr. Maguire?”

A thin brown face appeared at the driver’s side window. Anticipation glittered in the teenager’s dark eyes as Logan replied, “We’ll see. Give us a moment, okay?”

When the boy stepped back, Logan turned to Rose. “I have a proposition for you. It’s of a rather sensitive nature, and given that I’m rather well known in the city, it’s not something I’d feel comfortable discussing in a crowded restaurant. I live in the building across the street. There’s a conservatory on the top floor, an area that’s both public and private at the same time, so you needn’t worry that I’m luring you to my lair. We can stop at the deli to pick up some sandwiches. What do you say?”

Rose wasn’t sure what to say. She glanced around, disoriented.

Apparently, while she’d mulled over the question of her finances and the pain of her recent loss, she’d failed to notice that Logan Maguire hadn’t been driving toward her hotel, as she had assumed. Instead of finding herself in the heart of downtown San Francisco, she discovered that they’d come to a stop on a street running along the southern edge of the bay.

The silver-toned Oakland Bridge soared off to her right. On her left, the building Logan had referred to stretched down the street in both directions, a peachy stucco several stories high with iron balconies and windows framed by brightly colored shutters. High-priced condos, she decided, set up to look like something in a quaint Mediterranean fishing village.

Quaint and expensive.

Tension crept into her shoulders. Once upon a time quaint and expensive had called to her like honey called a fly. And had caught her, just as surely. But, she reminded herself, she’d escaped. Now, forewarned was forearmed. She could walk into quaint and expensive with no fear of becoming entangled in its silky web. She could satisfy her still-unquenched curiosity about this Anna person, then walk away and return to her own pared-down and simple life.

Freed, hopefully, from the dreams that had so haunted her.

“All right,” she replied.

“Leon.” Logan turned to the boy. “Do you know how important my car is?”

The kid nodded solemnly. “You restored every piece of her yourself, and you will hurt anyone who so much as scratches her bumper.”

“Right,” Logan said as he got out. “I’ll call the garage when I’m ready for you to bring her back, in an hour or so.”

Rose watched the boy’s face light up as Logan handed him the keys. By the time Logan reached her side of the car, Leon was behind the wheel, obviously ready to take off as soon as Rose got out. And sure enough, the moment her door closed the kid gunned the motor to a loud roar. He then let it ease to a purr before shooting a grin toward Logan and pulling sedately away from the curb.

Logan led her across the street, then pulled a cell phone from his jacket. As they entered the small deli located on the building’s ground floor, she heard him ask about “the family home project” as she gazed at the selection of salads behind the slanted glass counter.

When the phone conversation ended, Logan stepped up to the counter to order. After the food was prepared and packaged, Rose noted Logan’s composed response to what she considered an exorbitant amount of money for food and beverages that barely filled one small grocery sack, while it was all she could do to keep from choking.

She should be accustomed to people who thought little or nothing of spending large amounts of money, she told herself. After all, her mother’s shop would hardly have supported the two of them, along with her partner, Goldie Lander, for the past nineteen years, if not for customers who were willing and able to pay top dollar for the items on display.

And, she reminded herself as she followed Logan to the stainless-steel elevator, there was nothing intrinsically wrong with that heady lifestyle. She’d simply learned that the cost to maintain it was too high for her blood. No regrets, she told herself as she followed Logan into the elevator.

The area that greeted Rose when the doors opened again whispered of understated elegance. The terra cotta floor was open to the blue sky above, protected from wind and rain by large panes of glass. Here and there lacy potted palms and dwarf citrus trees screened benches or umbrella-covered tables.

Aware that Logan had been as silent as she since leaving the deli, she followed him to one of the tables, where he placed a sandwich and container of salad in front of her. He then took a small pad of paper out of his jacket pocket and began making notations on it with his right hand as he devoured the sandwich in his left.

Rose realized that this was the first chance she’d had to really study the man since those first breathless moments on the balcony, when he’d seemed a dream come true. And, if one went by looks alone, that was just how this man would appear, with his square-jawed, tanned features. The fact that he was every bit as well built as the fit of his jacket indicated had been something she’d learned as she lay pinned to Anna’s bed beneath that powerful body, a memory that now brought a blush to her cheeks and heat flowing wildly through her veins.

Oh, yes, the man of her dreams, she thought as she placed a forkful of macaroni salad in her mouth. Except for the fact that Logan Maguire seemed to be every bit as controlling as the last man she’d thought of in that way. Logan was a man of power, just like Josh—a man who knew what was best for everyone and didn’t hesitate to use charm, coercion or even force to get others to see things his way.

Feeling old angers rise, Rose glanced at her surroundings. She had to admit it would be easy to get used to this sort of life again. Chewing a bite of sandwich, she took in the vistas provided by the windows and the glass roof above. Without even working at it, she could easily allow herself to slip back into the world of wealth and privilege.

Except, she doubted that the price had changed since the last time she considered such a move. And her soul was no longer for sale.

Rose sighed and swallowed her last bite of the vegetable foccacia, then realized she hadn’t said one word to the man who’d paid for it. Lovely manners, she chided herself before saying, “Great view you have here.”

Her words had caught Logan with his mouth full of meatball sandwich. In reply he lifted his eyebrows and nodded.

“Yeah, it is,” he said after swallowing. He glanced around slowly. “I’d almost forgotten about this place. The real estate agent walked me through this area when she showed me the condo, but this is the first chance I’ve had to spend any time up here.”

Rose shook her head. She didn’t know why his words surprised her. Her experience with Joshua Whitney should have taught her how little the very well-off really knew about getting the most out of life.

“Something wrong?”

Logan’s question pulled Rose’s gaze from the magnificent San Francisco skyline rising beyond the glass wall in front of her. When she turned to him, the corner of her eye caught a glimpse of the green water stretching out toward the east bay.

“Yeah,” she said slowly. “I tend to get irritated when natural beauty is ignored.”

Logan’s eyes narrowed. “Ignored? By me?”

“Yep. You have this great place you can use anytime, and you don’t even take the trouble to come up here.”

“And that bothers you, because…”

“Because,” Rose started, then shut her mouth. Waste of time, she told herself. She’d had this conversation before, or at least a strikingly similar one. And the last thing she needed at the moment was to have someone point out how naive and unsophisticated she was, then attempt to teach her about the “finer things in life,” like caviar.

Unable to prevent the shudder brought on by the thought of those salty, slimy little eggs, she made the gesture into a shrug.

“Never mind. Look, the lunch was delicious and the view spectacular. I appreciate your sharing both of them with me, but—”

“But,” Logan broke in, “we have more important matters to discuss. I want you to stay at the Benedicts’ house a bit longer, to pretend to be Anna. You won’t have to do much. Everyone already thinks that you are—”

“No,” Rose managed to break in.

Logan frowned. “Why not?”

“Why not?” Rose echoed. “My life is in Seattle. I have…things to do. Obligations to fulfill.” A life to put back together, she finished silently.

Logan seemed to consider her words carefully before he leaned forward, looked deep into her eyes and asked, “You mean to tell me you’re going to leave without meeting Anna? You claim that you’ve come all the way from Seattle to find a view that has been haunting your dreams for years, learned that it can be seen from the room belonging to a woman who looks exactly like you, and you’re going to leave without taking the trouble to meet this person?”

Rose could hardly miss the way his tone mocked the words she’d so recently flung at him. She also thought she caught a teasing glint in his eyes, but his lips showed no hint of a smile.

“It’s not the same thing,” she replied. “Besides, as I said, I have a—”

“Life to get back to. Of course. You have kids?” Rose shook her head.

“A husband?”

Again Rose shook her head. Careful to keep her voice neutral, she replied, “Not any longer.”

Logan lifted one eyebrow. “Bad breakup?”

“No, actually. I think we were both relieved when it ended.”

With that response, Rose shifted her attention to the skyline again. That wasn’t the complete truth, of course, but she didn’t think this man needed to hear the entire story.

After several seconds she heard Logan ask softly, “Then what are you running away from, Rosie?”

She turned to face him quickly. “My name is Rose. Only my mother—” She broke off, took a deep breath then said slowly, “I’m not running away from anything. I just want to go home. Where I belong.”

“I see.” His expression was skeptical. “And you’re not even curious about Anna?”

“Of course I am. However, I don’t have the kind of money, or the time at my disposal to—”

“As far as money goes,” Logan broke in, “I have enough at my disposal to make it worth your while to stick around. And I’m more than willing to do so.”

Every muscle in Rose’s body stiffened. The rich and powerful had one easy answer to everything. She knew better.

Getting to her feet she said, “I’m not interested in your money.” Then she turned and headed toward the elevator.




Chapter 5


Surprised by Rose’s reaction, Logan still managed to stand and reach her side in three long strides. When he placed a hand on her shoulder, she whirled toward him.

“What do you want?” she asked.

Beneath her angry scowl Logan could see fear. He found himself scowling in return as he became aware of the sudden urge to pull her into his arms, to reassure this woman as he had so often comforted Anna, with a brotherly hug.

However the tingle in the hand that gripped Rose’s shoulder warned that his feelings while holding this woman would hardly be brotherly. This didn’t make any sense, but then none of this made any sense—not Anna’s sudden breakdown, nor the fact that she’d run away from the doctor she’d trusted to treat her and every member of the family for over ten years. And the presence of Rose Delancey, with her uncanny resemblance to the missing Anna made the least sense of all.

Logan wasn’t used to things not making sense. For more years than he could count, he’d worked at perfecting the art of making things fall into place. At this moment, though, the only way he could imagine getting things to work out right was to buy some time.

And Rose Delancey was the only currency at hand.

“I’m not asking this on a whim,” he said quietly. “I need you to pretend to be Anna a while longer.”

Rose’s dark blue eyes grew wary. “Why?”

“Because I need time to find her.”

“Isn’t that a job for the police? From what I understand, she’s been missing nearly twenty-four hours now. Put them on the case.”

Logan shook his head. “That would mean telling the family that you aren’t Anna, that the real Anna is off somewhere, getting into God-knows-what sort of—”

“Trouble,” Rose broke in. “Exactly my point. If she’s as…unbalanced as her mother seems to think she is, you shouldn’t be standing here talking to me. You should be notifying the authorities, getting an all-points bulletin out or putting her picture on a milk carton. Whatever it takes to get her back under proper care.”

Logan considered her words before shaking his head. “First off, I’m 99 percent certain that Elise is exaggerating Anna’s mental state. When I listened to the messages Anna left on my machine, she sounded urgent but hardly unbalanced.”

“Then it’s normal for Anna to insist she was adopted?”

“More or less. From the age of eight or so, Anna would periodically insist that she was a changeling, that she really didn’t belong in the family. After a while it became a family joke, along with the imaginary friend Anna invented.” He paused. “The Benedicts’ idea of a joke, that is. It was more like a not-so-gentle chiding.”

Rose noticed the way Logan’s features tightened, as if he was trying to brush away an unwanted thought before he spoke again.

“Anyway, I suspect that when Anna confronted her parents with whatever new proof she’s come up with this time, Elise reacted with her I-refuse-to-discuss-this-until-you-calm-down routine, which frustrates Anna no end. She probably became even more emotional, causing Elise to imagine a threat to Robert’s campaign, then bring on the doctor and the mental health clinic. Of course, if I hadn’t…”

Logan let his words trail off as he thought about the trip to France, where he’d been dispatched to deal with the winery Elise had inherited.

“If you hadn’t what?” Rose asked in a tight voice.

Logan released a sigh. “If I hadn’t been out of the country, I would have been here to run interference, and the entire thing would most likely have blown over. But I wasn’t, and now it’s my job to put things back in order.”

“Your job?” Rose asked. “What is that, exactly?”

Logan shrugged. “Mechanic.”

“Mechanic?”

Her puzzled expression made Logan smile. “Sort of. I think I mentioned that my father worked for Robert’s father. Charles Benedict had a collection of classic cars and several airplanes, and it was Dad’s job to keep them running smoothly. Now I do the same sort of thing. As the family lawyer, I make sure that the Benedict business investments continue to pay off without creating a conflict of interest with Robert’s political career, and I take care of the legal details of the various charities the Benedicts fund.”

Logan paused, released a deep breath, then stared deep into Rose’s eyes before going on, “Look, you won’t have to stay long. Anna’s bound to call me again, and I know I’ll be able to talk her into returning. I was originally due to return late tonight. Anna has no way of knowing that I caught an early flight back, so she’ll probably call tomorrow. So, I would really appreciate it if you would stay and attend tonight’s dinner-dance fund-raiser, as Elise asked.”





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