BEVERLY BARTON - Beg To Die

For about the hundredth time since she left Chattanooga at daybreak that morning, Reve Sorrell asked herself why the hell she was doing this. Why did she feel compelled to come to Cherokee Pointe in search of a woman she’d never met? It wasn’t as if she needed any more relatives. Since her mother died this past summer, cousins by the dozens had come out of the woodwork, all with an interest in the vast Sorrell fortune she’d inherited. One rather ungentlemanly cousin of her father’s had actually had the balls to sue her, on the grounds that she was only Spencer and Lesley Sorrell’s adopted child. The case had never gotten off the ground, since Reve’s lawyer had convinced her cousin’s lawyer that they’d be laughed out of court.

As she drove slowly along Main Street, she searched the faces of the citizens scurrying to and fro in the small downtown area. She had grown up in Chattanooga, a mid-size city, with just the right amount of hustle and bustle not to have remained a sleepy Southern town and yet not so large as to have lost its old-fashioned charm. She still lived in her parents’ home on Lookout Mountain, in an old and prestigious neighborhood. Although not the Sorrells’ biological child, she’d still been raised with their beliefs, traditions, and social snobbery. She was, in all but blood, a true Sorrell. And there wasn’t a day that went by she didn’t thank God for her good fortune.

As an infant of only weeks, she’d been blessed the day she was placed with the Sorrells. Her parents hadn’t told her she was adopted until she was six, and in the telling, they’d made her feel very special and greatly loved. When at fourteen she’d asked them a lot of questions about her true parentage, they swore they knew nothing about her birth parents. It wasn’t until she’d been awarded her bachelor’s degree from UT that her then widowed mother told her she’d been found in a Dumpster in Sevierville, thrown away like trash when she was little more than a newborn.

It wasn’t as if she had come to Cherokee Pointe today on a whim or that she’d simply taken Jamie Upton’s word that she had a look-alike in this small mountain town. She’d met Jamie at a Christmas party late last year when he’d been visiting friends in Chattanooga. He’d done his best to charm her, and he had almost succeeded. She’d found the man utterly irresistible.

But once she’d discovered that he’d been fascinated by her because she resembled his teenage sweetheart, her common sense kicked into play. And if there was one thing Reve Sorrell was known for, it was her common sense. Never a playgirl, always a serious student as well as an obedient daughter and a lady who had been accused by many men of being an ice queen, Reve prided herself on not allowing emotions to rule her. She was an admitted control freak. Of course, knowing Jamie Upton for the charming scoundrel he was didn’t mean she might not look him up while she was in the area. After all, hadn’t he invited her to come for a visit and stay with his family on their estate outside town?

“I know a girl who could be your twin,” Jamie had told her. “You should come to Cherokee Pointe and meet Jasmine. She’d get a kick of meeting her look-alike.”

Reve had hired a private investigation agency to compile a report on Jasmine Talbot. She and the woman were the same age, although their birthdays were almost a week apart; but then her parents hadn’t known her exact birth date. And Jazzy, as her friends called her, had been raised by an aunt, an old woman known as the town kook.

Would a mother have given her sister one child and thrown the other into the garbage? Somehow it didn’t seem likely. The private detective had included a dozen photographs of Jasmine Talbot when he’d handed in his report, and Reve had to admit that there was a striking resemblance between the two of them. Enough so that they could easily be sisters, perhaps even twins. She had put off meeting the woman face-to-face, unsure how she would react when she met Jazzy. If they were sisters, would she feel an instant bond, an immediate familial connection?

Reve parked half a block down from Jasmine’s, got out of the Jag, locked it securely, and stepped up on the sidewalk. The air was crisp, fresh and cool, springtime morning cool. She checked her watch. Eight-fifteen. Still early enough to order breakfast at the restaurant. Just go inside, she told herself. Order breakfast and see how the people who work for Jasmine react to you. If they don’t go running to her with news that they’ve seen her twin and she doesn’t come out to see for herself, then you’ll have to ask to speak with her.

When she arrived at the entrance to the restaurant, she paused, took a deep breath, then stiffened her spine and reached for the door handle. A large masculine hand shot out around her and grabbed the handle. Startled by the unexpected move, she gasped and glanced over her shoulder. A tall, lanky man with overly long brown hair and sexy golden eyes smiled at her. Her stomach did an involuntary flip-flop when he stared at her as if he wanted to kiss her. It wasn’t that she didn’t have a long line of eligible men knocking on her door. She did. But every single one of them knew she was a multimillionaire. This man didn’t know her, had no idea she was the heir to the Sorrell fortune. And he acted as if he was instantly interested in her.

His smile wavered. He shook his head. “Lady, has anyone ever told you that you’ve got a twin?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Different hair style and your color is darker. More auburn. And your eyes are brown, not green, but then I’m pretty sure she wears colored contacts.” He surveyed her from head to toe. “You’re a few pounds heavier, maybe an inch taller. And your clothes are classier. But I’ll be damned if you don’t look enough like her to be—”

“And just who are you ?” Reve asked, her tone deliberately stern.

“Sorry.” He stepped back as she turned to face him. “I’m Caleb McCord.” He held out his hand.

“Mr. McCord.” She shook hands with him. “I’m Reve Sorrell. Does that name mean anything to you?”

He shook his head. “Nope. Should it?”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Does the name Jasmine Talbot mean anything to you?” he asked. “You wouldn’t by any chance be a relative I don’t know about, would you?”

“Do you know Ms. Talbot well?”

“Well enough to know she doesn’t have a sister, at least not one she knows anything about.”

“That certainly makes two of us. As far as I know, I don’t have a sister. But a resident of Cherokee County I met at a party a few months ago mentioned I had a look-alike here in Cherokee Pointe, and since I was in the area anyway…well, I remembered his comments and I’m curious enough to want to meet her.”

“And who would that be—the person who told you that you looked like Jazzy?”

“Jamie Upton. Do you know him?”

A dark frown erased all warmth from Caleb McCord’s ruggedly handsome face. “So you’re one of Jamie’s women, huh? Something else you and Jazzy have in common.”

“I take it that you don’t especially like Jamie.”

“Hate the guy’s guts.”

“Because?”

“Because being a man instead of a woman, I have the good fortune to see the son of a bitch for what he is.”

“Which is?”

“He’s a sorry, good-for-nothing louse whose hobby is breaking hearts and destroying lives.”

Apparently this man cared for Jasmine Talbot and resented Jamie’s connection to the lady. “You’re jealous because Jasmine was his teenage sweetheart and she still loves him.”

Caleb chuckled. “The guy did a number on you, too, didn’t he? Is that the real reason you’re in town? Jamie romanced you, screwed you, then left you to come back to Jazzy. And you’re here in town to see what Jazzy’s got that you don’t have?”