Kara Lennox - Twin Expectations

“Hasn’t found the right woman, so I hear.” Liz got a thoughtful look on her face. “Maybe he’s waiting for me.”

“Dream on, sister.”

“Now, wait a minute. I’m a successful account executive at Oaksboro’s biggest ad agency, I can eat fettuccini without making a mess, and I’m a darn nice person. Are you saying I wouldn’t be a good match for Eric Statler?”

Uh-oh. Bridget recognized that gleam in Liz’s eye.

“All right, maybe he wouldn’t marry me,” Liz continued, “but he’s good father material.”

“Liz, you don’t even know him.”

“I could meet him. It would be easy. I have contacts.”

Bridget laughed. “You’re nuts.” But she could tell Liz was warming to this idea, another one of her crazy schemes.

Suddenly Liz focused her sea-blue eyes on Bridget with the force of double laser beams. “Hey, Bridge, will you help me?”

Bridget cringed. When Liz got that light of zeal in her eyes, nothing could stop her. “I have a few contacts I could tap, I suppose,” she agreed reluctantly. She decided she’d better keep an eye on her competitive sister. If Bridget’s artificial insemination worked and she ended up pregnant, Liz would be desperate to keep up. And no telling what she might do in her quest for, as she so elegantly put it, a “donor.”

Bridget sipped her club soda nervously as she surveyed the jewel-and tux-bedecked crowd around her. Normally she favored a little something with the soda. But now that she was pregnant…

She paused in her thoughts, savoring the word. Pregnant. Today she’d had her official pregnancy test at the Statler Clinic. The results had only confirmed what she’d already known. At just three weeks from conception, her body was changing in some slight, indefinable way.

In a few months she would start expanding like a dashboard airbag. The prospect was scary but kind of exciting, too.

“See anyone we can mingle with?” asked Liz, standing beside her. They’d wangled invitations to the Oilman’s Ball from a dry-cleaning baroness, a family friend whose portrait Bridget had painted. The ball was Oaksboro’s social event of the season, and Eric Statler was guaranteed to be in attendance. But now that they’d arrived, the hard work began—finding someone who would provide Liz with a personal introduction to Statler.

“I’ve never been that great at mingling,” Bridget replied. “Wait…over there. Are those Eric Statler’s parents?” She nodded toward a distinguished-looking couple who appeared to be holding court.

“That’s them, all right,” Liz said. “Geraldine and Eric Statler, Jr. Everyone calls Mr. Statler ‘Two,’ you know. Because he didn’t like ‘Junior.”’

“And the son?” Bridget wanted to know. “Do they call him ‘Three?”’

“They call him just plain Eric,” Liz said, her eyes scanning the crowd.

“How do you know so much about the Statlers?”

“The Internet. Wait, I see one of our agency’s clients,” Liz said. “Let’s split up. We can cover more territory that way.”

Bridget nodded, only too happy to step away from Liz. They’d foolishly forgotten to check with each other beforehand, and they’d worn nearly identical dresses. Even their shoulder-length blond hair was styled in a similar fashion. That was one of the hazards of being a psychically attuned twin.

Liz winked at Bridget, then took off, leaving Bridget to find someone of her own to mingle with. Fortunately, she spotted Mrs. Hampton, the dry-cleaning baroness.

“Bridget, I’m so pleased you could make it,” the stylish silver-haired matron said as Bridget approached. “There’s a lovely couple I want you to meet. I bet they’re in the market for a portrait.”

Though she was booked through the summer, Bridget was always pleased at the prospect of new business. And, who could tell, maybe this couple knew Eric Statler.

She’d thought this romantic goal of Liz’s was crazy at first. But the more she’d thought about it, the more she’d come to realize that Liz would make a good match for Statler. She had the social skills, the assertiveness, the self-confidence to keep up with someone who moved in his circles, whereas Bridget, while appreciating the man’s finer qualities, knew she would prefer a…quieter marriage.

Mrs. Hampton trundled off, dragging Bridget gamely behind her.

NICHOLAS RAINES drained his second gin-and-tonic and stifled a yawn. He despised these functions, but his mother had laid a guilt trip on him about attending. It was for charity, she’d said. It was a chance to see and be seen, make important business contacts, blah-blah-blah. She’d even hinted that he might meet a woman, as if he had time for a relationship. Still, if a mother couldn’t count on her own son to buy a ticket to a charity ball when she was on the committee, who could she count on?

He hoped the charity—a women’s shelter—raked in a bundle. But he’d yet to meet anyone this evening with whom he had the slightest interest in doing business. As for running into an appealing woman, what a joke. Practically every woman here was either over sixty, married or both.

He wondered how long he had to stay. Till the auction, he supposed. If he didn’t bid on something, he’d never hear the end of it from his mother. He was already in trouble because he hadn’t worn a tux. Maybe he could hide behind one of those big potted trees until the—

His thoughts froze. Who was that? She was under sixty, that was for sure. Maybe even under thirty. She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, he noticed right away. And he’d never laid eyes on her before, because he would have remembered that face. So she wasn’t a regular among this crowd. They had that in common to start with.

He grabbed two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter and approached the woman, noting with pleasure that she got even prettier the closer he came. She looked up, smiling boldly as he held out his offering to her.

“Oh, champagne!” she said, her blue eyes sparkling with enthusiasm. “Thank you. I’m Liz Van Zandt. And who might you…” Her voice trailed off, and her gaze focused on something faraway and over his left shoulder. He turned to look, then felt a momentary deflation when he saw what had snagged her attention.

Eric. Why did his handsome, rich, and well-meaning little brother always intrude at the wrong time? Social situations, business, it didn’t matter. Didn’t he know how annoying perfection could be?

“Is something wrong, Miss Van Zandt?” Now, what the hell was her first name? Faces stayed in his brain on permanent record, but he had an appalling memory when it came to names.

“Huh? Oh, sorry.” The woman returned her attention to Nick. “I believe that’s Eric Statler, near the podium,” she said casually.

“Yeah. That’s Eric, all right.”

“You know him?” she asked hopefully.

“Yeah.”

“Really?” She continued to study Eric with undisguised hunger. “Is he as smart and hardworking as everyone says?”

“He’s an okay guy,” Nick was forced to admit. It would be so much easier if he could hate Eric, but he couldn’t. His younger, half brother was pretty cool.

The woman continued to wax enthusiastic. “I was just doing some reading about Eric Statler. This one article said he baled his black-sheep brother’s airline out of bankruptcy, took it over, then fired him. Or the brother quit, no one’s sure.”

“The brother quit,” Nick confirmed, gritting his teeth. That wretched magazine story, back to haunt him again. Eric had bought up a majority share in Lone Star Air so that his half brother would be free to fund a new start-up. That was what Nick did best. Lone Star wasn’t, and never had been, near bankruptcy, but the press loved to twist things around, give commonplace events more drama.