Anna Adams - Her Reason To Stay

He stared at her for a moment, the look in his eyes confused as his hand clasped hers. Her palm disappeared in his. Her fingers felt crushed and her arm grew heavy from her wrist to her shoulder. Heavy with awareness.

“I didn’t expect you to be like this,” Patrick said. “You’re strong enough to walk away.”

She retreated, fighting her attraction. A woman who’d grown up with inappropriate men, Daphne recognized the danger of being vulnerable to a man like Patrick—one who got through her defenses, one who was committed elsewhere. Affairs always started this way. Sexual longing. Looking too deeply into his eyes. Him holding her hand too long, drawing out perfectly natural physical contact, making it something more. That path, however tempting, led to heartache. It led away from the real, safe love she deserved.

She should run, if only because of Patrick and the threat of a relationship that had nothing to do with her reasons for coming to Honesty.

But there was Raina. Suppose he was right. Suppose she really wanted to know Daphne, but she didn’t know how to say so.

Wasn’t it worth another day or two in this little town to have the chance to know her sister?

“I’ll stay.”

Instead of sagging with relief, he seemed to grow larger. His shoulders went back as he took a deep breath.

“But she has to call me. She has to make the next move.” Daphne had a right to make demands after the way they’d treated her. “And next time we meet on neutral ground.”

Before he could counter or touch her again in a way that would persuade her to linger, she left. She walked to where she’d parked, ignoring the rain. She tried to look purposeful, as if she weren’t trembling from scalp to toe with unexpected, totally illogical need of a man who loved her sister.

“DID YOU CATCH HER?”

“I caught her.” Patrick pressed his tingling palm to the side of his jacket.

What was his problem? Daphne was his client’s sister. Besides, he wasn’t interested in a relationship right now. There’d been plenty of women who’d offered to comfort the poor, divorced single dad whose ex-wife had loved pills better than their family.

He’d turned down those women because his son needed him and he couldn’t afford to complicate his life any further. But something about Daphne had almost made him forget.

With ridiculous weakness, he’d basked in her scent, eased closer so that the dark tendrils of her hair had curled against his shoulder, while he’d kept her talking, not only to persuade her to give Raina a second chance, but to prolong the pleasure of drowning in the whiskey-honey tones of her voice.

He’d been too long on his own with his son, Will.

“She’s staying, but you have to call her, Raina. I’m done.”

“I will.” Raina pushed herself out of her chair. Happiness softened the pinched lines of her face as she hurried to the window.

Patrick had worried about her since the moment her mother had pulled him closer to her hospital bed and begged him to look after her daughter. It was good to see those lines ease.

Nevertheless, he had to make sure she understood he wasn’t part of her relationship with Daphne, whatever it turned out to be.

“You’re too late,” he said as Raina’s forehead bumped the window. “She was speed walking last time I saw her.” He’d probably lit the fire—hanging on to her as if she were a rope at the edge of quicksand.

“I didn’t know what to say.” Raina pressed fingertips to her head. “She looks like me, but she…she seems so different.”

Raina was right. Daphne was different. She was strong, independent and, most telling, she wasn’t afraid to let her feelings be known.

At twenty-eight, Raina remained, improbably, the princess under glass in one of Will’s Disney movies.

“You know where she’s staying?”

“She sent me the address.” Raina dug in her purse. “Even after your secretary told her to get in touch with you if she wanted to meet today.”

“She doesn’t take orders well.”

“You admire her, Patrick?”

Admire her? He shrugged. “She’s got courage. She’s had a harder life than you.”

He needn’t have been so blunt. Daphne had rattled him, resurrected feelings he’d thought had gone forever. He’d deliberately kept his emotions on ice after what had happened to his son last year. Staying detached from everyone except Raina and Will had become his special skill.

“How do you go to someone you’ve never met and tell her you’re her twin? And how do you anticipate being welcomed?” Raina found what she was looking for, a crumpled envelope. “I admire her courage, but I don’t have it in me to love a sister who’s a stranger.”

“I’ll repeat what I said to her. Give her a chance.”

“You asked her to give me a chance?” Raina looked affronted at the idea that she had done something that required being given a second chance.

Which was Patrick’s last straw. He should have walked when Raina had first called him about her twin-out-of-nowhere. Untouched by life except in her own extraordinary home, she might be out of her depth with a woman like Daphne.

Patrick began to gather the papers around his folder, still open on the table. “Raina, I’ve paved the way for you. The rest is up to you.”

Raina waved off his impatience. “I know. I get upset about the wrong things, and I always look to you to help me make a decision, but my mother’s not here, and I can’t ask her why she didn’t tell me I was adopted. She should have warned me. She had to know Daphne or my birth parents might show up.”

“No one came in all these years. Hannah probably thought her secret was safe.”

“Okay, okay.” Raina gripped the envelope so hard it crinkled in the silent room. “Why do you suppose they didn’t adopt Daphne, too?”

“I don’t know. You were infants. Maybe your parents didn’t know about Daphne.”

“Does that seem likely?”

“I’d think the agency would have wanted sisters to go together.”

“Just when I need my memories most, I feel as if I didn’t know my parents, either.” Raina straightened the envelope and pulled out the letter. “I’ll call Daphne’s hotel.” She scanned the writing. “Good Lord, it’s one of those cheap ones out on Helier Drive.”

Patrick had noticed the frayed cuffs of Daphne’s long-sleeved T-shirt and the worn spots on her jeans. Those shiny white patches, forming the seat of her pants, would stay on his mind a while, but he couldn’t attribute them to her sense of style.

“That hotel is probably all she can afford.” He wasn’t any happier than Raina at the thought of Daphne in an area where most of Honesty’s criminal activities occurred.

“I wonder if she’d meet me for coffee?”

“Ask her.” He glanced at his watch. “I have some meetings.”

“Why are you so eager to rush off? We didn’t intend to hurt her feelings.”

“It got out of hand fast. We should have been more tactful.” Accusing Daphne right at the start of wanting money had been unfair. “She wants to get to know you. You’re interested in finding out about her. If you talk, things will work out.”

Raina took out her cell phone. “Mind if I use this room a second longer?”

“Fine. Will’s waiting for me.” His mother looked after Will, and Patrick was already late to pick up his son. He shoved the last of the loose pages inside the folder he’d made on Daphne. Sports clippings from the Internet, bank statements, her initial letter to Raina, hope written between every line. “Take your time and try to keep the games to a minimum, Raina.”