Elane Osborn - Which Twin?

“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.