Kitabı oku: «Sisters Found»

Dear Reader,

It’s amazing how characters become real when you write about them. When I first introduced Faith and Hope Butler, I never imagined that they were anything more than twins. But I was having dinner with a couple of Harlequin sales reps, when one of them quipped, “What about Charity?”

I suddenly realized, “Oh, my God. There is a Charity!” But why would one third of a set of triplets be separated from her siblings? Why would loving parents allow two sisters to grow up thinking they were twins when they had a sister who was lost out in the world somewhere? Answering those questions became the challenge when writing Sisters Found. I hope you’ll enjoy reading the story of Faith, Hope and Charity as much as I enjoyed writing it.

I appreciate hearing your comments and suggestions. You can reach me through my Web site, www.joanjohnston.com. Be sure to sign up on the mailing list at my Web site if you’d like to receive an e-mail/postcard when the next Joan Johnston novel is in stores.

Take care, and happy reading!

MILLS & BOON

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JOAN JOHNSTON
Sisters Found

My deepest gratitude to my editors

Karen Taylor Richman

and

Dianne Moggy

for your unending patience and support.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE
HOPE

HOPE BUTLER WAS DESPERATE. The man she loved was engaged to another woman, and he planned to marry her in two weeks. Hope had to do something. Jake Whitelaw didn’t belong with that other woman. He should be spending the rest of his life with her.

Jake had fought his attraction to Hope from the very beginning. She could hardly blame him. She’d been only eighteen when she’d first realized she loved him. He’d been thirty-six. Perhaps her infatuation would have died a quick death if Jake hadn’t returned her interest. But he had.

She hadn’t known for sure until that fateful day more than three years ago, when she’d placed temptation in his path. She recalled their confrontation in her daddy’s barn as though it had happened yesterday.

She’d been waiting a long time for the chance to get Jake alone, and it had come when he made a delivery of hay.

His shirt was dirty, the sleeves rolled up to reveal strong, sinewy forearms. His Stetson was sweaty around the brim, and shaggy black hair was crushed at his nape. His cheeks were hollow, and he had a sharp nose and wide-set, ice-blue eyes. He was half a foot taller than she was, lean at the hip, but with broad, powerful shoulders. He made her body come alive just looking at him.

“How are you, Jake?” she said, walking with her shoulders back so her breasts jutted and her hips swayed.

He eyed her sideways. “Just dandy,” he muttered.

“Daddy wants that hay in the barn,” she said, hop-skipping to keep up with his long strides.

“Why didn’t you just say so? You don’t need to come with me, little girl. I know where it goes.”

Little girl. Hope ground her teeth. She’d show him she was no little girl! “There’s some stuff needs to be moved first,” she hedged. “Machinery that’s too heavy for me to pick up by myself.”

“Why didn’t your daddy move it?”

“I told him I could do it. That is, before I realized how heavy it was,” she fibbed.

Jake didn’t look suspicious, but it wasn’t going to take long once they got inside the barn for him to realize she’d lied. The space where the hay was supposed to be stacked had been cleared out that morning. She opened the door and went inside first, then waited for him to enter before she closed the door behind him.

The barn smelled strongly of leather and manure. Sunlight streamed through the cracks between the planks of the wooden barn, leaving golden lines on the empty, straw-littered dirt floor.

He turned to confront her. “What the hell is going on, little girl?”

She was backed up against the door to keep Jake from leaving. She put her hand over the light switch when he reached for it, afraid of what she’d see in his eyes in the stark light of the naked overhead bulb. He didn’t force the issue, merely stepped back and stood facing her, his legs widespread, his hands on his hips.

“What happens now?” he said. “You want sex? Take off your jeans and panties and lie down over there on that pile of straw on the floor.”

Hope’s eyes went wide when he started to unbuckle his belt. “Stop! Wait.” She was shocked by his brutally frank speech, by the rough sound of his voice, by his plain intention of taking what she seemed to be offering without any pretense of romance. This wasn’t how she’d imagined things happening between them.

He had his shirt unbuttoned and was ripping it out of his jeans when he paused and looked her right in the eye. “You chickening out, little girl?”

Maybe if he hadn’t made it a dare, she would have run, which is what she realized he expected her to do. She stared right back at him and began untying the knot at her midriff.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

She watched his eyes go wide, then narrow. A muscle jerked in his cheek. He no longer seemed interested in taking his clothes off. He was too busy watching her. Waiting, she suspected, to see how far she would go.

Her mouth was bone dry, but she wanted him to know why she was doing this. “I…I love you, Jake.”

He snorted. “Get to it or get out.”

Her cheeks pinkened in mortification, but she refused to run. It wasn’t easy undressing in front of him. She kept her eyes lowered while she fumbled with the knot. He stood watching, waiting like a lone wolf stalking an abandoned calf, certain of the kill.

When the knot came free, her shirt fell open. She let it slide off her shoulders and onto the floor, revealing the pure white demi-cup pushup bra she’d bought with her baby-sitting money, which revealed just about everything but her nipples.

When she lifted her gaze to his face, she was frightened by what she saw. His eyes had a dangerous, feral look, his jaw was clenched tight, and his hands had balled into fists. He looked intense, unapproachable, but she forced herself to walk up to him, to slide her hands around his neck, to lift up on tiptoe to press her lips against his.

A second later she was shoved up hard against the barn door with Jake’s hips grinding against her own. His tongue was in her mouth taking what he wanted, and she was so full of sharp, exciting sensations that she couldn’t breathe.

Just as suddenly he backed off, leaving her with Jell-O knees that wanted to buckle, a heart that was threatening to explode and her insides tied up tight, hurting and wanting. “Jake,” she said. It was a cry of emotional pain. A plea for surcease from her unrequited need.

“I’m twice your age,” he said flatly. “You’re too damn young for me, Hope.”

“You want me,” she said boldly.

It would have been hard to deny. His jeans bulged with abundant evidence of his desire. “I’m a grown man. Old enough to know better,” he said with a disgusted sigh. He unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans, but only so he could tuck his shirt back in. He buttoned his shirt, buckled his belt and adjusted his clothes, then leaned down and picked up her shirt. “Put this on,” he said.

She did as she was told. She hadn’t gotten what she’d expected when she’d come into the barn with Jake. But she’d gotten what she wanted. Proof that he desired her. Proof that if she pushed long enough and hard enough, she might convince him that she was what he needed.

Her hands were shaking too much for her to tie a knot in the shirttails.

“I’ll do it,” he said, pushing her hands out of the way.

Her stomach quivered as his knuckles brushed against her flesh. She glanced up and saw the feral look was back in his eyes. He yanked the knot tight and stepped back.

“Now get the hell out of here!” he snarled.

Hope yanked open the barn door and ran.

She’d kept running until she got to the house, unaware of the tears on her face until she slammed into the kitchen. Her twin sister Faith had lurched from the table where she was sitting with her boyfriend Randy and demanded, “What did he do to you?”

“Nothing,” Hope sobbed. That was the problem. To Jake Whitelaw she was just a little girl. She’d run to her room and locked herself in and stayed there the rest of the day.

But the more she’d thought about what had happened, the more encouraged she’d been. Jake might not want to be attracted to her. But he was.

She’d been devastated when she’d discovered at dinner on the night of her high school graduation that he’d gotten himself engaged to the high school English teacher, Miss Carter. Hope was aptly named, because even then, she hadn’t given up hope.

She’d seen Jake once more before the summer was over. And what she’d discovered in that meeting had directed the course of her life over the past three years.

Jake had offered Faith and Randy a ride into town and Hope had gone along. After Jake dropped them off, she was alone with him for the first time since the day she’d revealed her feelings to him in the barn.

Jake was angry. Hope recognized the signs. The vertical lines on either side of his mouth became more pronounced because his jaw was clamped, and his eyes narrowed to slits. There was an overall look of tautness to his body—shoulders, hands, hips—that suggested a tiger ready to leap.

She knew she shouldn’t have invited herself along. She knew Jake didn’t want her around. She also knew he didn’t want her around because he was tempted by her presence, like a beast in rut responding to the relentless call of nature.

Hope let her gaze roam over Jake and saw his nostrils flare as her eyes touched what her hands could not. She wondered whether she ought to push him into something irrevocable. Like taking her virginity.

He would marry her then. She was sure of it. But would he love her? She didn’t want him without his love. She knew that much. But she was running out of time. Why, oh why, had he gotten engaged to Miss Carter? She wouldn’t feel this desperation if he hadn’t forced her hand. She knew in her bones that they belonged together, and she didn’t intend to lose him to another woman.

“You haven’t asked where I want to be let off,” she said when Jake had driven half the length of the main street in town without stopping.

He shot her a look filled with scorn. “Don’t insult my intelligence. You haven’t got any errands to run. But I do. So sit there like a good little girl and be still.”

It was the little girl that did it. It was a flash point with her and always would be, because it diminished who she was, which was more than the sum of her age. She began to unbutton her blouse right there, driving down Main Street.

Jake glanced in her direction and nearly had an accident. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Taking my clothes off.”

“Do you want me to get arrested?”

“I’m not a minor, Jake. We’re two consenting adults.”

“I’m engaged. I’m promised to another woman.”

“Not once word of this gets around,” she said, glancing at the passersby who gawked in through the window as she pulled her shirt off her shoulders, leaving her wearing only a peach-colored bra.

Jake swore under his breath and gunned the engine, heading for the old, abandoned railroad depot on the outskirts of town. He braked to a halt in front of the depot and turned to glare at her. She saw the flicker of heat as he glimpsed the fullness of her breasts above her bra.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m not a little girl anymore, Jake. I don’t know what I have to do to prove it to you.”

“I’m not going to marry you, Hope. You’re not what I want. I want someone who can share my memories of the world, someone who’s lived a little.”

“I can catch up,” she said desperately.

He shook his head. “No, little girl. You can’t.”

Hope felt her chin quivering and gritted her teeth to try to keep it still. “So you’re going to marry Miss Carter?”

“Yes, I’m going to marry her. Put your blouse back on, Hope.”

She grabbed her shirt and tried to get it on, but the long sleeves were inside out, and her hands were shaking too badly to straighten it.

She heard Jake swear before he scooted across the bench seat, pulled the shirt from her hands and began to pull the sleeves right-side out. He held the shirt for her while she slipped her arms into it. Her cheek brushed against his as she was straightening. She turned her head and discovered his mouth only a breath from her own. Their eyes caught and held.

She wasn’t sure who moved first, but an instant later their mouths were meshed, and his tongue was inside searching, teasing, tasting. He was rough and reckless, his hands cupping her breasts as a guttural groan was wrenched from his very marrow. His mouth ravaged hers as his hands demanded a response.

She couldn’t catch up. He was moving too fast.

And then he was gone. Out the opposite door. She scrambled after him, pausing in the driver’s seat when she spied him leaning against the van, his palms flat against the metal, his head down, his chest heaving.

He stood and faced her. “That was my fault,” he said. “I…” His eyes were full of pain and regret. “You’re formidable, Hope. I’ll grant you that. Somewhere out there is a very lucky young man.”

“I want you,” she cried.

“I belong to someone else.”

“You’re only marrying Miss Carter because you don’t think you can have me. But you can!” Hope insisted. “There’s nothing stopping us from being together except your own stubborn bias against my age.”

“Your youth,” he corrected.

She snorted. “Eighteen years isn’t that much. Lots of men marry younger women.”

“You need to go to college. You need to find out what you want to do with your life. Maybe you’ll decide you want more out of life than simply being some rancher’s wife. If I were to marry you now, the day might come when you decided marriage to me wasn’t fulfilling enough, that you needed to go find yourself.”

“Is that what happened with your first wife?” Hope asked, her eyes wide.

“I’ve seen it happen,” Jake said without answering her question directly. “You’re too young to know what you’d be giving up, Hope. Go to school. Get an education. Find out what you want to do with your life.”

“If I do that, if I go to college, will you wait for me?”

She saw the struggle before he answered, “In four years I’ll be forty. I—”

“Wait for me,” she said, stepping out of the van. “Don’t marry Miss Carter. Promise you’ll wait for me.”

“I can’t promise anything, Hope. There’s another person in this equation you’re not considering. I’ve proposed to another woman, and she’s said yes. Unless Amanda breaks the engagement, I’m honor-bound to marry her.”

“Even if you don’t love her?”

“Who says I don’t?”

The shock of his words held Hope speechless. “How could you love her and want me like you do?”

He shoved a frustrated hand through his hair. “I respect and admire her. And she loves me. We can have a good life together.”

“You don’t love her,” Hope accused.

“I don’t know what I feel anymore,” he retorted. “You’ve got me so damned confused—”

“Wait for me,” Hope said. “There are such things as long engagements.”

“That wouldn’t be fair to Amanda,” Jake said stubbornly.

“It is if you don’t love her. Don’t you think she’ll notice? Don’t you think she’ll miss being loved?”

Jake stared at the ground, then back at her. “I’ll go this far,” he said. “I won’t press her to get married. But I’m not going to walk away if she sets a date.”

“Thank you, Jake,” she said. “At least that gives me a chance.”

Hope had finished college in three years, waiting with bated breath the entire time for news of Jake’s wedding. But it had never come. She’d seen as much as she could of the world in her two summers off, traveling once to Australia and once to Europe. She’d kept her eyes wide open, absorbing as much of life as she could, trying hard to catch up to Jake.

She’d come home in September, still in love with him, still wanting to spend her life with him, only to discover that Amanda Carter had at long last set a date for their wedding—Christmas Eve.

Which gave Hope only two more weeks to find a way to stop it.

CHAPTER ONE
FAITH

FAITH BUTLER HADN’T SEEN HER twin sister Hope since shortly after they’d arrived at the party celebrating Jake Whitelaw’s impending marriage to their former English teacher Miss Carter. Not that Hope’s entrance hadn’t been noted by one and all.

The afternoon gathering that was supposed to be held inside Miss Carter’s two-story frame house had been moved into her backyard when a warm Chinook wind came through, making the mid-December afternoon feel like a summer day.

Hope had stepped out onto Miss Carter’s back porch dressed in a tight black skirt barely long enough for decency and a form-fitting, V-necked black cashmere sweater cut low enough to raise a man’s heart rate. Ruby-red lipstick emphasized her full lips, and she wore enough mascara and eye shadow to dramatize a dozen dark, smoldering eyes.

Faith knew her sister’s outrageous behavior only stemmed from desperation and determination. Because the man Hope loved was about to marry someone else.

Nonetheless, Hope’s get-up had done the trick. She’d managed to attract the one pair of eyes she’d been hoping to snare. Jake Whitelaw hadn’t been able to stop staring at her. Or maybe it was more honest to say glaring at her.

Faith sighed loud enough to catch her boyfriend’s attention.

“What’s wrong?” Randy asked.

Faith reached for Randy’s hand without noticing that she did so with the prosthetic device on the end of her left arm, where a hand was supposed to be—but had never grown. Randy Wright’s total devotion over the past three years had made it possible for Faith to forget sometimes that she wasn’t perfect, like her twin.

“I wish Hope would give up and accept reality,” Faith said. “Jake Whitelaw might be physically attracted to her, but—”

“Might be?” Randy said with a snort. “He practically paws the ground every time he lays eyes on her.”

Faith lifted an expressive black brow. “All right, he’s got the hots for Hope. But he’s going to marry Miss Carter.”

“It sure looks that way,” Randy said, eyeing Jake, who stood with his arm around Miss Carter’s slender waist. “Unless somebody does something fast.”

“Hope has done everything she can to make herself into a potential wife for Jake. She raced through college in three years to get her degree in computer science from Baylor this past summer. And she’s spent the past two summers traveling the world and experiencing as much of life as she can. But—”

“But she can never catch up to him, because he’s lived too much longer than she has,” Randy finished for her.

Faith sighed again. Jake Whitelaw might be only eighteen years older than Hope, but he was ages older in life experience. She didn’t understand her sister’s attraction to the older man, but Hope had fallen head over-ears for Jake years ago, and was still tumbling even now.

“So what are you going to do to help her out?” Randy asked.

“What can I do?”

Randy grinned. “You might have acted like the shy sister growing up, but I know better. Whenever you want something and go after it, you get it. So, I ask again, how are you going to help Jake discover that he belongs with Hope?”

“Do they belong together?” Faith asked skeptically.

“Look at Jake,” Randy said. “His gaze is constantly searching out Hope. And his behavior with Miss Carter is anything but loverlike.”

“Oh,” Faith said as she watched Jake’s eyes scan Miss Carter’s backyard, even though Hope was nowhere to be seen in the crowd. His arm was linked around Miss Carter’s waist, but they stood a good six inches apart. And although they were physically together, Miss Carter seemed to be talking to everyone except Jake.

Faith watched as Hope appeared at one of the five entrances to the gazebo in the center of Miss Carter’s backyard, laughing and flirting with one of Jake’s hired hands. When Hope looked toward Jake to see if he’d noticed her, Jake quickly and carefully averted his eyes. Oh, Jake was attracted, all right. But it looked like he’d be damned before he’d let Hope know it.

“There’s something else you may not have noticed,” Randy said. “Check out Jake’s younger brother Rabb. Look who has his eye.”

Faith searched out Louis Whitelaw, who’d earned the nickname Rabbit as a kid, which had been shortened to Rabb as he’d grown older. Rabb was attractive, with chestnut-brown hair and hazel eyes, but nowhere near as good-looking as his brother Jake, who was easily four inches taller and broader in the shoulders, with chiseled features that demanded female attention.

It was amazing how they ended up being brothers. Zach and Rebecca Whitelaw had adopted eight kids in all. None of them looked much like the others, but they were as close-knit as any family tied together by blood. Maybe more so, precisely because there was no blood tie to bind them. Each kid had a different background, some more horrific than others, but once they’d been adopted into the Whitelaw clan, they’d cleaved to one another like ivy to oak.

Which made the situation Randy had pointed out to her all the more compelling.

Faith watched in fascination as Rabb Whitelaw stared with lovesick eyes at his older brother’s fiancée. “Oh,” she murmured. “Oh, my. That is interesting.”

“Rabb has been eating Miss Carter with his eyes all afternoon,” Randy said. “Surreptitiously, of course. He’d never poach on his brother’s territory.”

“So he’ll let Jake marry Miss Carter, even though he loves her himself?” Faith asked.

“It looks that way,” Randy said. “So you see, you’d be doing more than one person a favor if you helped break up this engagement.”

“Believe me, I’m tempted,” Faith said. “It’s just too late. The wedding’s in two weeks.”

“Consider the fact that Jake and Miss Carter didn’t set the date for their wedding until now, the exact time Hope finished school and has returned all grown up,” Randy said. “What does that tell you?”

Faith pursed her lips and made a humming sound. “You think that Jake’s only marrying Miss Carter to avoid his attraction to Hope? Is that possible?”

“Jake and Miss Carter have been engaged for three very long years. If they were in love, why didn’t they get married a long time ago?” Randy asked.

Before Faith could speak, he answered his own question.

“Because Jake isn’t in love with Miss Carter. Because being engaged to her has kept him ‘safe’ from acting on his attraction to your sister. You told me he believes he’s too old for her. And he was married before to a younger woman, who left him when she got bored with ranch life.”

“Hope loves living and working on a ranch,” Faith said in defense of her sister. “She’d never get tired—”

“I didn’t say she would,” Randy interrupted. “But Jake got burned once. You can’t blame him for wanting to avoid the fire.”

Faith frowned. “I have to admit I thought Hope was too young for Jake when she first told me she’d fallen in love with him. But her teenage crush hasn’t gone away. If anything, she seems more determined than ever to have him.”

“If they’re meant for each other, you’d be doing them a favor throwing them together,” Randy said, “before Jake marries the wrong woman. And if they’re not destined to be together, it’ll be better in the long run to help Jake get over this infatuation he has for Hope before he marries Miss Carter.”

“But the wedding is in two weeks!”

“Then you’d better get started, sweetheart,” Randy said, kissing her on the nose.

“Are you going to help me?” Faith asked.

Randy held up his hands. “Uh-uh. Not me. Matchmaking is for females.”

“You just stood there and talked me into it!” Faith protested.

Randy grinned. “You were going to interfere anyway. I merely gave you the nudge you needed to get started.”

Faith grimaced and then laughed. “All right. I admit it. I can’t stand to see Hope so unhappy. Especially if there’s something I can do about it.”

“You go, girl,” Randy said with a wink.

“I do love you,” she said as she lifted herself on tiptoe and kissed him on the mouth. His arm slid around her waist and pulled her close, deepening the kiss as she leaned into his solid strength. When he let her go, she looked into his eyes, hoping he could read the gratitude she felt.

If she was no longer the shy person she’d been in the past, it was because she saw a beautiful woman reflected in Randy’s eyes, not the imperfect person—the twin without a left hand—she’d been when they’d first met.

“I think I’ll go get myself a drink,” he said as he released her. “You have work to do.”

He kissed her again, a quick, hard kiss that told her he wanted to take her somewhere and lay her down and make mad, passionate love to her. Then he let her go and headed for the open bar that had been set up in the wooden gazebo in the center of Miss Carter’s backyard.

Randy was right, Faith thought, as she watched him saunter away. If someone didn’t do something, the wrong people were going to end up married to each other.

She turned her attention back to the engaged couple. Maybe she should start by seeing if she could get Miss Carter interested in Rabb Whitelaw. Maybe if Miss Carter met up with someone who really loved her, she would be willing to give up Jake. The question was how to accomplish this miracle in two weeks!

There was no time to waste. Faith contemplated her surroundings and plotted the best way to create…a ruckus.

RABB WHITELAW HAD FALLEN IN love with Amanda Carter long before his brother had come along and gotten engaged to her. Rabb had first noticed Amanda when they were both in the ninth grade. All through high school he’d admired her from afar, because he’d never felt like he was anyone she’d be interested in. Amanda was smart; he hadn’t done well in school. And Amanda was tall. He hadn’t caught up to her in height until he was a senior.

The long and the short of it was, he’d never been able to work up enough courage to ask her out. He’d figured she’d want to talk about Shakespeare and Molière and Faulkner and Hemingway, and reading was difficult—make that excruciating—for him, because he was dyslexic. She’d dated lots of different boys, but he’d always been grateful that she’d never settled on any one in particular.

When Amanda had pursued her teaching degree at the local university, Rabb had been in agony worrying that she would fall in love with someone else. But she’d finished her education unattached and gotten a job teaching English at the local high school.

During the years Amanda had been in college, Rabb had found his niche working with his hands. He’d started small, making kitchen cupboards for his mom and then graduated to a bedroom suite for his sister Jewel and her husband Mac. Most recently he’d made a baby crib for his brother Avery and his wife Karen.

He took pride in his work, and now made a very comfortable living creating unique pieces of wood furniture that were in demand across the country. About the time professional success had given him the self-confidence he needed to pursue a relationship with Amanda, her mother had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and Amanda had become her mother’s nurse.

He’d asked her out anyway. She’d gone to the movies with him once, leaving her mother home alone, because at the time Mrs. Carter’s disease wasn’t very far advanced. But Amanda had come home to find her mother distraught and confused about where she was. Amanda had been so upset that she’d hurried inside. Rabb hadn’t even gotten to kiss her good-night.

He’d asked her out a number of times after that, even offered to come over to her house with some popcorn and a rented video, but Amanda always refused.

But he hadn’t stopped loving her. He’d figured that at some point Amanda would put her mother in a home where she could get round-the-clock care. But Amanda had never sent her mom away. She’d hired a nurse for the days when she was teaching high school. And spent her evenings at home.

Mrs. Carter had survived a long time. She’d died only three years ago. And Jake had swooped in at a vulnerable moment shortly after the funeral and asked Amanda to marry him.

She’d said yes.

Rabb had felt like punching his brother’s lights out. Instead, he’d swallowed his anger and wished both of them well. He’d been miserable, wondering how soon he would have to sit in church and watch the brother he idolized marry the woman he loved.

But they’d never set a wedding date, and Rabb had begun to hope it would never happen.

Two years ago, he’d volunteered to build a gazebo for a charity raffle, and amazingly, Amanda had purchased the winning ticket. He’d spent far longer working on the gazebo he’d built in her backyard than was necessary. But it had given him the opportunity to get reacquainted with her.