Читать книгу Wrong Twin, Right Man - Laurie Campbell - Страница 9

If only she could say he loved her, the toothpaste wouldn’t matter.

Neither would the late hours. Neither would the baby—

No, the baby mattered.

“I want a baby,” Beth told her sister. “It all comes back to that.”

“Write it down,” Anne ordered, turning over the dining-car flyer on their breakfast table and sliding the blank page across the white tablecloth. “If you want to straighten things out with Rafe, you need to know exactly what the problem is.”

He doesn’t love me!

But she couldn’t bring herself to say that aloud.

“He doesn’t want a baby,” Beth said instead. Which amounted to the same thing. “I know we agreed to wait until the legal clinic was up and running, but that’s taking a lot longer than I expected.”

“Write it down,” her twin repeated, handing over a pencil, and Beth dutifully jotted “doesn’t want baby” on the paper. “When was the last time you talked about it?”

“Friday. The night before I left to meet you.” The night before her and Anne’s annual “Sisters’ Vacation,” she had accused her husband of caring more about Tucson’s street kids than having kids of his own.

And he hadn’t denied it.

“What happened?” Anne asked, and Beth gritted her teeth against the tip of the pencil.

“Nothing. I was kind of hoping he’d get mad, get upset, say I was wrong.” If he had lost his temper, sworn at her in the same gutter-style Spanish he used with the former gangbangers who occasionally phoned the house, she could have taken comfort in knowing his emotions were fully engaged. “But he just said the clinic’s not all the way there yet, and we have plenty of time.”

“Twenty-six isn’t exactly over the hill,” her sister observed. “And Rafe’s, what, twenty-eight? But okay, there’s problem number one. What else?”

“Isn’t that enough?” Beth protested, just as the waiter arrived with their breakfast order. She wished they could send him away, finish this conversation without the distraction of mushroom omelets and rye toast, but of course the fun of eating in a dining car was why they’d taken the train from Los Angeles back to Tucson.

Back to the husband who didn’t want her.

Or at least not nearly as much as she wanted him.

“I still can’t believe you decided to leave your wedding ring home,” Anne told her, eyeing the claddagh ring she’d loaned Beth when she found her crying over the vacancy a few nights ago. “And didn’t even mention it! Bethie, you need to talk about things more.”

Maybe so, but she couldn’t expect her sister to fix her problems. Taking care of people was Beth’s strong point, while Anne took care of everything else.

Besides, she’d hoped that a week away from Rafe would settle the turmoil inside her.

“I just thought,” she muttered, “I could try pretending we’d never gotten married, and see how it felt.”

“But it feels sad, doesn’t it?”

Which pretty well summed up her problem. Leaving the wedding ring in her jewelry box had been a foolish gesture, and the loan of her sister’s ring hadn’t made her finger feel any less forlorn.

“You have to talk things out,” Anne continued. “Forget this new-look stuff, that’s not what you need. Not that you don’t look wonderful—”

“You’re only saying that because I look like you.”

Her sister grinned, acknowledging the point. With Beth’s brand-new haircut, they looked more alike than they had in years. “Strawberry blondes are better with short curls, that’s all there is to it. But anyway, talking to Rafe would be the fastest way to fix things. I mean, if you want to stay married.”

“That’s what’s so embarrassing!” She still wanted him as her husband, and a whole week of vacation hadn’t made any difference in that fierce, heartfelt yearning for Rafe Montoya. “What kind of woman wants a husband who doesn’t need her?”

Anne hesitated, gazing at her coffee cup before meeting her gaze with an uncomfortable expression. “Bethie, I know you’ve got this thing about taking care of people, but being needed isn’t the same thing as being loved.”

Maybe such statements made sense for a career woman who didn’t understand the essentials of love, but Anne was completely wrong. “That’s what marriage is about!”

Her sister thought that over long enough for Beth to realize there was no comfortable solution to be found, then tapped the page on the table with her usual executive determination.

“You need a list of pros and cons,” she announced. “Reasons to stay married, and reasons to get divorced. Come on, write it down.”

“But…” What if the reasons for divorce outweighed the reasons for marriage? And how on earth had she and Anne traded roles so quickly, when normally she was the one taking care of her sister? “I don’t want to give up on him yet.”

“That goes in the pro column,” Anne ordered, taking another sip of her coffee. “What else do you like about him?”

It wasn’t a question of liking him, though. It was more a matter of loving him.

And suspecting he would never love her.

“Come on,” her sister prompted. “Is he smart, handsome, rich, charming, good in bed—”

“Anne!” They were in the middle of a dining car, with people all around them, and here she was asking about Rafe in bed?

“Good-looking, punctual, courteous, good athlete—”

“All of that,” Beth interrupted hastily, trying to dismiss the memory of his athletic body pressed against hers. At least while making love to her, Rafe Montoya could be wonderfully free with his emotions. “Well, except rich. He’s still paying back his student loans, and the legal clinic won’t ever make big money.”

“So that goes in the con column, along with waiting for a baby and leaving the lid off the toothpaste,” Anne directed. “Good thing he’s punctual, though, if he’s picking us up at the train station.”

They had arranged last week that Rafe would meet them at nine-thirty this morning, so he and Beth could show Anne their new house before taking her to the airport. And, knowing him, he had phoned the station at dawn to check on their arrival time.

Because while Rafe Montoya would never give his heart, neither would he give up a responsibility.

“Probably coming right from work,” Beth said, drawing a wavy line between the two columns on her page.

“He’s at work this early?”

No hour was too early for a man whose workday could easily begin at three in the morning. Or last for seventy-two hours at a stretch…especially if a juvenile gang member needed someone to post bail, a ride home from the police station, or a temporary place to stay.

“He probably spent the night at Legalismo,” she explained. “I mean, with me on vacation, there’s not much reason to come home.”

But as soon as she heard the words “not much reason to come home,” she wished she hadn’t spoken. Because they sounded like a death knell for her marriage.

And she wasn’t quite ready to accept that yet.

“Some people,” Anne said dryly, “might think sleeping in a real bed was worth driving home for.”

People who’d grown up sleeping in a real bed, yes.

“People like you and me,” Beth agreed. “But you know how Rafe is.”

Anne raised her eyebrows in agreement, as if confirming her initial opinion of Beth’s husband. On the night of Beth and Rafe’s engagement party, the first time she’d ever met him, she had drawn Beth aside and observed that the man was “incredibly gorgeous if you like that reformed-rogue, dark-and-dangerous look. But, Bethie, do you really want to spend the rest of your life with this Saint Rafael of the street kids?”

A question which had haunted her for the past six months.

“I know how Rafe is,” Anne agreed, glancing at her wristwatch. “If you say he’s gonna be on time, he’s gonna be on time.”

“You’ll make your flight home just fine,” Beth promised, noting with a touch of amusement that her sister was already slipping from vacation mode back into work mode.

Because she was still staring at her watch.

Or rather, at Beth’s engraved confirmation gift, which Anne had borrowed on the first day of their trip. Leaving her own watch at home, Beth’s twin had announced, was a stupid idea, and she was never listening to that stress-reduction tape again.

“Okay,” Anne said now, looking up with an apologetic smile as if realizing how quickly she’d shifted gears. “So I’ll be in Chicago by dark. But, listen, if you want time alone with Rafe, you don’t have to give me the house tour yet. I can see it next time I come out.”

“No, you have to see it! You’ll love how I did the guest room like an office, and next time you visit it’ll be like having your own desk right there.”

Anne grinned at her. “Humor the workaholic, right? I did pretty good this week, though.”

If you counted phoning the business manager twice a day as pretty good, then she had.

“You did,” Beth agreed. “And we even found time for shopping.” Her sister had insisted on new clothes to complement Beth’s midvacation makeover at San Diego’s trendiest salon, which had left them looking more like twins than they’d looked since seventh grade.

“Wasn’t that fun? The waiter just now, I could tell, was dying to ask.”

Anne always enjoyed fielding questions about what it was like to have an identical twin, and Beth had always been glad to let her sister do the talking. “You can tell him when he comes back with the coffee,” she offered, returning her gaze to the list of pros and cons. “I wish we had another few days of vacation.”

Sometimes a sympathetic look spoke more loudly than words, and Beth felt a flicker of dismay as she caught Anne’s expression. Her sister evidently suspected that a few extra days of vacation wouldn’t make any difference to the Montoyas’ marriage, but she was too tactful for such an observation.

“Listen,” Anne offered instead, “you know you can always come visit me. Actually, it’d be wonderful to have you looking out for things.”

“What, at the office?” That wasn’t Beth’s domain, even though they shared ownership and responsibility for their nonprofit company. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“But you could learn. I mean, if you decide you want a change in your life.”

Regardless of what happened with Rafe, though, she couldn’t imagine trading roles with her five-minutes-older sister. Anne was born to run a Dolls-Like-Me business that had blossomed ever since she took it over, while Beth was happy to work at home, designing look-alike dolls for Down syndrome children.

“Not that big a change,” she said. “But thanks, anyway.”

“All right, then, think about your list. You’ve only got three hours to finish it.”

Three hours to decide whether she wanted her marriage to last? “I can’t decide anything that fast,” Beth protested.

“You’re not making any decisions yet,” Anne explained, lifting her coffee cup and nodding at the waiter. “You’re just listing the pros and cons.”

“All right,” she conceded, and as soon as the waiter returned for the kind of conversation that men everywhere seemed to enjoy with her sister, Beth set to work on her list.

There wasn’t nearly enough space on the page, though, to describe what had happened over the past two years. Ever since she’d turned over the management of her home-based business to Anne, who’d returned from Harvard with an MBA, Beth had been ready to start a family ahead of schedule.

And Rafe wasn’t.

Not last year.

Not six months ago.

Not now.

No, all his passion was reserved for the legal clinic. All his fierce energy, all his intensity, all his time was devoted to helping kids escape the kind of life he’d survived with his crusading spirit aglow. The knight-in-shining-armor spirit which had captivated her the first time they’d met.

Back before she realized that it was far easier to love a knight in shining armor than to live with one.

“Tell you what,” Anne said, jolting Beth out of her reverie as the waiter departed. “You look like you need a break. Let’s go check out the observation car.”

They hadn’t toured the train last night, settling into their bunk-bedded sleeper compartment as soon as they’d pulled out of Los Angeles, but a view from the upper level would be a nice change of pace.

“Okay,” Beth agreed, and folded her list in half. She stuffed it into the side pocket of her suitcase as they passed the luggage area, hoping that’d help her forget the entire problem.

At least for the last few hours of the trip.

After all, the whole point of a “Sisters’ Vacation” was to enjoy spending time with her sister.

“Where shall we go next year?” she asked as they settled down in the observation car’s last pair of up-holstered seats, with a floor-to-ceiling view of the wide open desert. “It’s your turn to pick.”

“New York,” Anne said immediately. “You’ve never been, and you’re way overdue. Besides, if I’m still in touch with Marc, he’ll get us tickets to any Broadway show we want.”

Marc was the Italian architect her sister had met a few months ago, the latest in a string of eligible men whom Anne attracted and discarded with astonishing ease. But the idea of him being around next year implied more than the usual duration.

“You think he might be…” Beth hesitated, searching for the right word. “Is he special?”

“Not for a lifetime or anything,” Anne said, handing the newspaper on the table between them to a passenger who had evidently been hoping for a seat. “But for a few months, I think he’s a lot of fun.”

If only she could borrow her sister’s confidence as easily as she’d borrowed her claddagh ring. If only she could view the man in her life as “fun” and nothing more….

But that was no way to start a family!

And without a family, she might as well give up on mattering to anyone.

“You know what we need?” Anne asked, evidently noticing the distress on her face. “Coffee with brandy in it. Make the last part of the trip a little more bearable, what do you say?”

Coffee with brandy wouldn’t make her homecoming any easier, Beth suspected, but if Anne was dreading the end of the trip, as well, it would be no problem to run down to the bar car.

“I’ll get it,” she offered, scanning the aisle and realizing there were already passengers waiting for someone to leave. “If you want to save our seats, I’ll be right back.”

“Well, at least let me pay for it,” Anne said, handing over her wallet-size purse and moving Beth’s handbag into the empty chair beside her as a placeholder. “I’ll be right here unless some better seats open up.”

Such confidence was typical of her sister, Beth decided as she made her way down the narrow staircase with Anne’s flame-red purse in hand. Some people were born with the kind of certainty it took to make things go exactly the way they wanted…which made them even more attractive to everyone they met.

And that observation was confirmed as soon as she reached the bar car, where a man with a briefcase looked up from one of the tables and greeted her with an exuberant smile.

“Anne Farrell! Jake Roth, from Boston. How’ve you been?”

She hadn’t been mistaken for her sister since high school, and it was as disconcerting as ever. Flattering, yes, but also embarrassing when someone refused to believe they’d gotten the wrong twin.

Jake Roth was already standing up to shake hands, looking so pleased that she hated to disappoint him. “Actually,” Beth began, “Anne is my—”

“Great to see you!” he interrupted, offering a hearty handshake before she could continue her explanation. “Mindy still asks about you, I’ve gotta tell her we were on the same train. Where you heading?”

“Uh, Tucson.” It was hard to keep her balance, for some reason, the train felt shakier than usual. “But, Mr. Roth—”

“Jake,” he protested, when suddenly the floor jerked underfoot and Beth felt herself lurching sideways. He caught her, then stumbled himself, and the floor seemed to sway in the other direction.

She grabbed the table, which felt solid for a fleeting moment, until something slammed into the man beside her and sent them both staggering back. Then, as another passenger cried out in alarm, she heard a harsh, grinding shriek of metal and his warning shout, “Anne, hold on, we’re gonna crash!”

No, surely they’d just hit a rock or something—but even as she fought for such reassurance there came a heart-wrenching scream. Beth froze in panic, felt the floor give way beneath her, and looked up to see the wall of the train collapsing on top of Jake.

And herself.

Would Beth be smiling?

Maybe, Rafe decided as he unlocked the scarred wooden door with its Legalismo sign, he should hold the flowers in plain sight when she got off the train. He’d stopped on his way to work for the kind of bouquet people gave visiting celebrities, a comparison she’d probably blush at…but he needed to show her how much she mattered.

After their grim parting last week, without even a phone call since her plane landed in California, he needed to prove to Beth she was still the most important person in his life.

So he’d made reservations for a homecoming dinner tonight, and—

“Hey.”

The kid’s voice was elaborately casual, but he recognized the desperation that would lead someone to camp outside a law office at this hour of the morning. And he’d be glad at any hour to talk with Oscar Ortiz, who reminded him so acutely of himself at fifteen.

“Bueno,” Rafe greeted him, then saw the gun in his waistband. Rather than risk losing the kid again, he made a show of fighting a yawn. “I was just thinking about getting some coffee. Walk with me?”

He wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee in spite of the August heat, because as long as they stayed on the street he could avoid enforcing the No Drugs/No Weapons policy that ruled the clinic. So when Oscar shrugged, he locked the door and started down the cracked sidewalk toward the nearest bodega.

If he could ease Oscar out of Los Lobos the same way he’d gotten himself out of the Bloods…

“You still lookin’ to meet Cholo?” the boy asked, and Rafe shot a quick glance at his watch. This could be tight, because he had to leave for the train station in plenty of time to meet Beth. Yet he couldn’t ignore the chance to strengthen a potential bond with the leader of the second biggest gang in the area.

Oscar evidently saw the glance, though, because he immediately withdrew the offer. “Lawyer’s got places to be.”

“Yeah,” Rafe said. No sense trying to save the conversation now, and as long as he kept things straightforward there might be another chance later. “I’m picking up my wife. She’s taking the train in from L.A.”

The kid gave him a suspicious glance, even as he swiped his hand across a bench with a rival gang’s chalk-marked emblem. “That’s not the one that crashed, is it?”

A train crash? No, he would’ve heard.

“It was on the radio,” Oscar reported, evidently seeing his disbelief. “Some big wreck out in the desert.”

No. Not Beth’s train. There had to be, what, half a dozen trains between here and Los Angeles? More than that. There had to be.

But even so, he felt a cramp of fear in his chest before reminding himself that Beth was surely fine, that he wasn’t losing anyone he loved.

Not again.

Never again.

“She can’t be on that train,” Rafe told Oscar, who shrugged and looked past him toward the police car at the corner. “Not Beth.” Not his wife. “She’s fine.”

The kid shrugged again, as if unwilling to comment, and Rafe felt his body tightening with the same reflex he used to feel before an attack.

“It’s a mistake, that’s all,” he said. The radio probably reported things wrong all the time, and some station must’ve been trying to stir up excitement by announcing a train wreck that had never taken place. “I just need to straighten it out.” A simple phone call would do the trick, and for the first time he found himself wishing he’d given in to Beth’s request that he carry a phone for those nights he worked late.

“The radio—” Oscar began, and Rafe cut him off.

“I’ve gotta find out what happened.” There, a pay phone across the street. No one there, either, which—if the phone still worked—would save him the two minutes it’d take to run back to the office. He sprinted for the phone and felt a surge of relief at the sound of a dial tone, then fumbled in his pocket for change.

Beth was fine.

He just had to—

Damn! Two nickels and a couple of bills, which meant he’d have to hit the bodega for change and then—

“Here.” Oscar dropped a handful of coins on the ledge beside him, then sauntered away as Rafe fumbled with the quarters. Where to call, somebody, who, the train station? Right, they would know, and from memory he dialed the number he’d called at dawn to confirm the nine-thirty arrival from Los Angeles.

Somebody had to know, he told himself as he listened to the phone ring. Somebody there would tell him everything was fine, that Beth was fine—she had to be fine, he wasn’t losing her. She had to be safe.

“The nine-thirty from Los Angeles,” Rafe barked at the clerk who answered the phone. “My wife is on there, and—”

“Sir,” came the reply, “there’s been a…a delay…and we’ll have all the information here. If you’ll please come—”

“No, I just need to know, is she all right?”

A hesitation.

“Sir, please come to the station and—”

He slammed down the phone. This wasn’t working, but everything would be fine. Beth would be fine. Okay, maybe they were having some problems, but he could fix that. Get everything straightened out, make her understand they still had plenty of time for a baby. He could fix anything, he just needed to find out what was—who could—

Morton, he remembered. The cop who’d helped him, under the radar, a few months ago when those kids needed a word.

Morton could find out. Except, damn it, he’d left the number back at the office.

Rafe took off running, fueled by the same panic that had once filled his nights as a matter of routine, back when you never knew who was coming after you. Nobody after him now, the streets were almost empty—although that didn’t necessarily mean anything—but all he had to do was reach the clinic, fumble with the door key, shaking, damn it! and there was nobody waiting for him, good, because he couldn’t protect anyone else right now, not until he found Beth.

There, the phone. Morton’s number, direct line, if the cop would just pick up, okay, no time for conversation, just identify himself and ask—

“Can you find out about a train wreck?”

“What, the derailment?” The cop’s voice was more curious than bewildered, which meant Oscar’s radio report might’ve been accurate after all. But that still didn’t mean there was anything wrong. Beth was fine.

“The one from Los Angeles,” Rafe said over a short, tight breath. “My wife’s on there.”

“Oh, man.” Morton sounded alarmed, but that was probably just the phone connection. Because everything was fine. “Hold on, let me see what—hold on.”

Beth was fine, he repeated to himself as he gripped the phone with a fist too numb to release, and paced the six-foot gap between his desk and the door.

Beth was safe.

She was on her way home right now.

Right. Right, although people didn’t always come home—look at Mom, look at Carlos, look at Nita and Gramp and Rose—but this wasn’t the same thing. It wasn’t like he depended on Beth.

Never had, never would.

So she had to be fine. It was just taking Morton a while to confirm that, but any minute he’d be back on the line with word that Beth’s train delay was nothing, a minor glitch…. And there he was now.

“Rafe?” The cop sounded uneasy, and he felt himself bracing for a blow before he could remember that everything was fine. “Look, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but—” Then Morton broke off. “Wait a minute, was your wife traveling with—”

“Her sister, yeah,” he managed to answer. Maybe there was a mix-up, maybe something had happened to her sister. Which would be hard on Beth, yeah, but as long as she was still alive— “Anne. They’re twins.”

“Ah, hell,” the cop muttered. There was a pause, during which Rafe scrambled for any prayer he could think of, any hope, any magic, and came up completely blank. “The sister’s being transported to emergency right now. But Beth…I’m sorry. She didn’t make it.”

No.

No, he repeated as he slowly replaced the phone in its cradle. That wasn’t possible.

It couldn’t happen.

It happens all the time.

No.

Not this time.

“She didn’t make it.”

Not Beth.

Not again.

But already he recognized the feeling—that same heaviness, that same hot pressure of tears—

No.

No tears. He had to move, Rafe knew, he had to move someplace, do something—

Not cry.

No. No point. He stumbled into the lobby, where if anyone was waiting he could find something to do, something besides crying, because he wasn’t crying, this was crazy, even with nobody here he still wasn’t breaking down—

It hurts.

No, it couldn’t. Beth couldn’t be gone, because he still needed to fix things. After the way she’d left, thinking that delaying a baby meant he didn’t love her, when he did love her—

But not enough.

Never enough.

Rafe felt a shudder rising in his chest and gulped it down, bracing his hands against the back of the cracked plastic sofa where clients waited for the lawyer on duty. He couldn’t lock the door, not when someone might show up any minute, but he couldn’t—

God, he couldn’t do this.

He couldn’t fix this.

He had to fix this! That was his job, fixing things, and he couldn’t stand here crying in the clinic lobby—

But the tears wouldn’t stop. No matter how he clenched his muscles, how rigidly he held his breath, for some reason there was no swallowing the—

Not here!

Rafe fled to the bathroom and slammed the door lock home, already feeling the torrent of heat swelling into his eyes, his throat. God, he was practically choking, and suddenly he was sobbing, and somehow he couldn’t seem to stop, couldn’t keep from gasping out the desperate plea….

No. Not Beth.

Not this time.

Please!

There was no answer, which he already knew was the only possible response, but even so he begged with all his heart, with all his hope, knowing all the while that it wasn’t enough. Crying wouldn’t help, nothing helped, and he had to get himself together, get himself out of here, get back to the kind of strength he’d spent a lifetime building so this pain would never come back.

It was back now, though, worse than he remembered from the last time, although by now he knew how to fight it. Knew how to move, knew to flex his arms behind his back, to stop those bone-jarring gasps for breath and count five, ten, fifteen…

Seventy-five, eighty, eighty-five.

Two twenty, two twenty-five, two hundred thirty.

Counting as high as it took. That was the beginning, he knew, but real strength lay elsewhere. For real strength, he had to get out of here, he had to take care of someone. Anyone. Maybe some clients in the lobby, although he hadn’t heard anyone come in—and when he finally managed to square his shoulders and resolutely opened the bathroom door, the clinic was empty.

Okay. He could still get through this.

He knew what to do.

If there was nobody here, he’d try somewhere else. He could do it, Rafe knew. He’d done this before. Just find someone to look out for, somebody hurting or scared or—

Hurting. Right.

Anne.

Emergency, the cop had said, and she’d have to be at the hospital by now. So…

Okay. He locked the clinic door for the second time that morning and started for the dirt lot behind the building. Just move, just go. Protecting someone was the key to staying strong, and Beth’s sister was probably in bad shape right now.

So get going, Rafe ordered himself, stumbling blindly toward his car. Go, and you can get through this.

You can do this.

Go take care of Anne.