Kay David: Two Sisters

“I’d be happy to look into your sister’s disappearance.”

Elizabeth’s eyes widened in surprise. “Oh, no. Please. That’s not why I told you about it.”

“I know, but I don’t mind. I can check some things Missing Persons might not get around to so fast.” If ever.

“I appreciate it, but…” Rising from the bench, Elizabeth ran a hand over her jacket, as if ensuring that her defensive shell was still in place. “I really can’t ask you to do that.”

John’s curiosity got the better of him, and he decided to push her to find out why she wouldn’t allow herself to accept his offer. “I want to help you. Why won’t you let me?”

She blinked. “April will turn up sooner or later,” she said in a stilted voice. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate your offer, but I don’t want to involve you in our personal problems.”

Something in the way she spoke took his curiosity to another level. “You have some personal problems?”

Her gaze didn’t waver. “Doesn’t everyone?”

He didn’t answer, but let the silence build. Most people felt uncomfortable with silence. He found out all kinds of things when they tried to fill the void. Elizabeth simply stared at him—which told him even more about her….

Ranging from the deeply emotional to the dark and dangerous, Kay David’s stories frequently take place in one of the many exotic locations where she and Pieter, her husband of twenty-five years, have resided, including the Middle East and South America. Currently, Kay and Pieter have come back home to live with their much-beloved cat, Leroy, on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

Books by Kay David

HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE

798—THE ENDS OF THE EARTH

823—ARE YOU MY MOMMY?

848—THE MAN FROM HIGH MOUNTAIN

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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

“I DANCE AND men pay money to watch.” April Benoit glared at her sister, her expression tight in the growing darkness, her voice tense. “What right do you have to hassle me over this? You, of all people?”

Standing in the living room of her Houston town house, Elizabeth Benoit met April’s angry stare. Their eyes were so similar it was like looking into a mirror. But beyond the physical resemblances, nothing else about them was the same—from the way they thought to the way they dressed. It’d been different in the past; they’d been so connected, they could finish each other’s sentences. Now they were opposites, and Elizabeth often wondered how they could even be sisters, much less identical twins. She spoke quietly, her demeanor calmer than she felt.

“I have that right because I love you and I only want what’s best for you.”

“Well, what’s best for me is eating! And if I don’t work, I don’t eat.” April’s beautiful eyes narrowed. “As I recall, there was a time when you depended on me for that, as well, or have you forgotten?”

“I haven’t for—”

“Good! Then leave me alone and let me make a living the way I want to.”

Elizabeth said patiently, “There are a lot of ways to make money, April. Dancing isn’t—”

April cut her off. “Gosh, you mean I could be a brain surgeon? All these years, I could have been operating on people and making a bundle, instead of taking my clothes off?” She made a sound of disgust. “Get real, Elizabeth! I wasn’t lucky enough to finish school like you.”

“Luck had nothing to do with it. It was hard work, okay? You could have done it, too.” Elizabeth shook her head, exasperation finally edging its way inside her at the turn the conversation was taking. “You could go back to school right now, for God’s sake. There’s plenty of time. You’re still young.”

“Young! Yeah, right.” April rolled her eyes. “Twenty-eight isn’t old?”

“Only dancers think that’s old, but it’s not. And even if it was, it’s never too late for a new start.”

April rose abruptly from the sofa where she’d been sitting and crossed to the window. Her back to Elizabeth, she stared out at the street. It was another hot Texas evening. The summer sun had just fallen below the horizon, but streaks of red and orange still colored the sky.

“You don’t understand,” she said plaintively. “You just don’t understand.”

At her sister’s tone, Elizabeth’s irritation turned to sympathy. She’d been about to turn on a lamp, but instead moved quickly to April’s side and put a hand on her arm. “I do understand, and you know it, but you could get out,” she said. “If you wanted to…”

“I like dancing.” Without meeting Elizabeth’s eyes, April spoke into the night. “I like the money. I like the people…”

“You like the peop—” Elizabeth broke off, shaking her head and dropping her hand. “How can you say that, April? Look at Tracy! You’re her friend—you help her out and do things for her—but she isn’t yours. She’d stab you in the back and never give it a second thought. And Greg! Is he really the kind of man you want to spend your life with?”

“Tracy’s okay, and Greg gave me a job when I needed one. Don’t knock him.”

“Any idiot with eyes in his head would have given you a job. You’re gorgeous! You’re smart! Sweetheart, c’mon! You could be doing anything you want to if you’d just—”

April whirled around, eyes flashing, hands balled into fists. “Goddamn it, Elizabeth, get off my case!” she yelled. “For once just leave me alone, would you?”

Elizabeth stepped back, the room humming with April’s startling fury. “Sweetheart, I’m concerned. I was only—”

“—poking your nose into my business like you have ever since Dad died. I’m not a kid, Elizabeth, and I don’t need somebody taking care of me all the time. I’m not Mom, okay?”

Elizabeth immediately blanked her expression to hide her hurt, but the words cut deeply, painfully. When they were twelve, they’d lost their father—a euphemism Elizabeth hated but used out of habit—and she’d taken care of herself and April and had pulled them through the disaster with their mother that had followed. Not because Elizabeth wanted to but because she’d had to. Their mother, a fragile woman, had depended on her husband so completely that when he died…well, what had happened to him had been less painful by far.

She pointed out none of this.

“I’m sorry,” she said, instead, her voice stiff. “I thought I was helping.”

April paused, then took a deep breath, the line of her jaw tightening. “Well, you aren’t. I’m not perfect like you. And I never will be, so stop trying to make me that way, okay?”

Elizabeth’s mouth dropped open in surprise. “Perfect? That’s ridiculous. I’m not perfect! And I never meant to make you like me. Is…is that what you think?”

“I don’t know what to think, but I do know you’ve been trying to run my life for years, and I’m sick and tired of it. I just want to be myself, do things my own way.”

“Being yourself is what you should be, April. I only—”

April held up her hand, her bloodred nails gleaming in the dying light. “Drop it, Elizabeth! Let me make my own mistakes. Leave me alone.”