Emily McKay: A Bride for the Black Sheep Brother

“That clumsy bitch shouldn’t be anywhere near a function like this.” Then Celeste flounced off to clean herself up.

Portia turned back to the waitress, half surprised to still see her there. The young woman looked to be in her early twenties. Her hair was dyed a dark maroon, cut short on one side and long on the other. She wore too much eye makeup and had a stud in her nose. And she was glaring belligerently at Portia.

“My name’s Ginger, by the way. If you’re going to go tattle to my boss.”

Portia held up her hand palm out in a gesture of peace. “Look, I’m not going to have you fired, but maybe you could just stay out of Celeste’s way for the rest of the night.”

Ginger blinked in surprise. “You’re not?”

“No. It was an accident.”

“Accident. Right.” Her tone was completely innocent, but there was a slight smirk to her lips as she stepped toward the door into the ballroom. Her smirk made her look so familiar. “Thanks.”

“Wait a second—” But the door swung open and two more waiters came into the hall and pushed past them. Portia reached for Ginger’s arm and stepped off to the side, where they weren’t in anyone’s way. “Did you do that on purpose?”

“Tip the glass down your mother’s back? Why would I do that?” Ginger smirked again and Portia felt another blast of recognition. Like she should know this girl.

“I don’t know,” Portia admitted. She looked pointedly at the tray of champagne flutes. “But it seems like it’d be awfully hard to tip just one glass without them all spilling.”

“You gonna have me fired or not?”

Portia sighed. “Why would you do that?”

“What? Spill a drink on someone who’s verbally abusing her daughter in public? I can’t imagine why.” Ginger turned as if she was going to stalk off, but stopped and turned back before she reached the door. “Look, it’s none of my business, but you shouldn’t put up with that. Family should treat each other better.”

“Yes. They should.” Portia had no illusions about her mother. She wasn’t sure why she felt as if she had to justify her mother’s words—certainly not to a stranger—but she found herself doing it anyway. “I know my mother can be a bitch. I’m not going to pretend she has my best interests at heart. But when it comes to this kind of thing, she’s almost always right. And I’m usually wrong. If she thinks people will misinterpret those photos of me, then I’d bet money they already have.”

“That’s messed up.” Ginger just shook her head. “That doesn’t bother you?”

“It does, but it’s the world I live in.”

“I don’t care if that’s the world you live in. Family should be on your side. No matter what.” Ginger’s expression darkened. “The world you live in sucks.”

The fierceness in Ginger’s gaze took Portia aback for a moment. Portia looked at the girl closely. Again she was struck by how familiar she seemed.

“Have we met before?” she asked impulsively.

Ginger took a step back, the startled movement jostling the champagne flutes on her tray. “No. Where would we have met?”

Before Portia could press her for more information, the waitress spun away and disappeared through the door.

Now Portia was sure they’d met before. It was something in the girl’s smile. And something through the eyes.

The eyes.

Portia’s breath caught in her chest as the realization hit her.

This young woman. This waitress whom Portia had met by chance had eyes the exact same color as Dalton Cain’s. Now that she’d placed the eyes, Ginger’s other features seemed to slip right into place. That fierce intensity was pure Griffin Cain. That sarcastic smirk looked just like Cooper’s. Ginger was a near perfect amalgamation of the three brothers. Yes, in a more delicate and feminine form, but still, she could be their sister.

Which Portia might be able to dismiss, except for one crucial fact. Dalton, Griffin and Cooper actually had a half sister. They all knew she existed, but no one knew who or where she was. As impossible and unlikely as it seemed, had Portia just found the missing Cain heiress?

* * *

Portia looked for Ginger the rest of the night. She constantly scanned the crowd for the waitress’s maroon hair and nose stud, but she seemed to have disappeared completely.

By the time Portia had made it back to her small home at the end of the night, she was determined to track down the waitress. It wasn’t that she was obsessed with finding the girl, but it gave her something to think about other than the gossip about her that had been simmering in the background.

Why was it acceptable for people to talk about her merely because her ex-husband was going to be a father? Or because someone had snapped a photo of her playing basketball with some disadvantaged teens? Other people could do truly bad things and no one seemed to care.

The same brutal dynamic was at work with Caro Cain. Hollister Cain, Portia’s ex-father-in-law, had had countless affairs. Somehow Caro had held her head up through it all. When Caro divorced him, people gossiped about her.

Of course, Hollister and Caro had paid the price for his many affairs. Just last year, when Hollister’s health had been so bad, he had received a letter from one of his past conquests. The woman had heard he was on his deathbed and had taunted him with the existence of a daughter he’d never known about.

Whoever had written the letter had known what a manipulative bastard Hollister was. She had known it would drive him crazy to learn he had a daughter he’d never met and couldn’t control. When he’d received the letter, Hollister had called his three sons to his bedside—Dalton and Griffin, his legitimate sons, and Cooper, his illegitimate son. He’d demanded that they find the daughter and bring her back into the family fold. Whichever son found her first would be Hollister’s sole heir. If she wasn’t found before Hollister died, he’d will his entire fortune to the state.

The quest he’d set his sons on had torn the family apart. It had destroyed his own marriage. And now, a year later, the missing heiress still hadn’t been found. And Hollister’s health had improved. The last time she’d seen him, he’d seemed as bitter and angry as ever, but he was no longer haunted by death. He was just as determined that someone find his daughter.

Maybe it was ridiculous for Portia to think that she might have just found the woman tonight.

As far as she knew, Dalton and Griffin had figured out that their sister was from somewhere in Texas, but that hardly narrowed it down. There were almost thirty million people in Texas.

But of all the people Portia had ever met, only five of them had Cain-blue eyes. Hollister and his sons and now Ginger. This woman with Cooper’s smirk and Dalton’s determination. She looked just like a Cain.

Not that it was any of her business.

So what if a waitress at a hotel in Houston looked like she could be Dalton’s sister?

It didn’t have anything to do with Portia.

Except that when Portia thought about Ginger—about the waitress’s petulant defiance, about the fierce way she talked about how families should treat each other, Portia felt oddly protective of her. If she was the missing heiress, someone would find her. Someday—maybe someday soon—one of the brothers would stumble on a piece of evidence and they would track her down. Everything about her life would change in a moment. And she was completely unprepared for it.

Ginger was about to be thrust into a world of cutthroat gossips where her every action and motive would be questioned, analyzed and criticized. Where mothers berated their daughters in public and where divorcées were ostracized when they didn’t get a lavish divorce settlement. It was a world of wealth and power, but it was also a crummy world.