Barbara Boswell - That Marriageable Man!

“Camryn!” Rafe rasped through his teeth. He strode to the car, Holly at his heels.

Camryn continued to riffle through the CDs. “Yuck, what is this crap? Guys and Dolls, Finnegan’s Rainbow, Annie Get Your Gun? Even you have better stuff than this, Rafe.”

“Get out of there right now, Camryn!” Rafe grabbed the girl’s arm and yanked her out of the car. “You have no right to—”

“Believe me, I’m sorry I did,” Camryn cut in sarcastically. “I’ll have nightmares for weeks about what I saw here. The soundtrack from Brigadoon? You gotta admit that’s scary, Rafe.” She stared at Holly, incredulous. “Do you actually listen to that? Or maybe you have your real CDs in those faux covers because—” Camryn paused, trying to think of a possible reason why anyone would resort to such a scheme.

“Thanks for graciously offering me an out, but no, what you see is what you’ll hear,” Holly said wryly. She shrugged. “I love Broadway show tunes, maybe because I was in the spring musical every year, from middle school through high school. We put on all those—”

“Oh, God, you were one of those perky, girly types who sings in school musicals and sells candy bars to raise funds for the big class trip!” Camryn accused. She stared at Holly with the horrified revulsion most people reserve for cold-blooded killers.

Holly’s eyes swept over the girl, taking in her chopped-off black hair, greasy with styling mousse, bobby pins stuck in at haphazard angles. She wore the definitive punk makeup, anemic white face powder, at least three coats of black mascara, smudged black eye shadow, and ultra-pale lipstick.

Camryn’s attire was the urban decay look: black spandex leggings—never mind the August heat—and a tiny black T-shirt that exposed her midriff and most of her stomach. Naturally, she had a belly button ring. Holly would’ve been surprised if she didn’t.

But the ghastly makeup and hacked-up hair couldn’t conceal an indisputable fact: Camryn possessed an exotic beauty. Minus the startling diversion of her cosmetics, clothing and hairstyle, her looks would ascend to the traffic-stopping level.

Holly’s professional interest was piqued. Why had the teenager chosen to look alarming rather than attractive? There could be any number of reasons, ranging from normal teenage rebellion to a multitude of pathologies.

“Who are you, anyway?” demanded Camryn, still glowering at her.

“I’m moving in—”

Camryn erupted with a disgusted, “Duh!”

Rafe heaved an exasperated sigh. “Holly, this is my half sister Camryn. She and her sister Kaylin live with me. And I apologize for her rudeness because she never will.”

“Notice how he said half sister.” Camryn was sardonic. “Making sure you know that me and my sister are only half related to him.”

“I did notice that,” Holly said quietly.

She’d also noticed that Rafe was eyeing his younger half sister as if she were an alien from some incomprehensible galaxy. She’d seen that same look on the faces of the frazzled relatives of her angry and confused young patients back in Michigan.

“Oh, wow, get ready to apologize to our new neighbor again, Rafe. ’Cause here comes your other half sister to embarrass you, too,” Camryn taunted as Kaylin emerged from the duplex and walked toward them.

Rafe’s lips thinned to a grim straight line. Camryn had scored a direct verbal hit. He’d never realized it before, but he always did refer to the two girls as his half sisters. He always thought of them that way.

His half sisters. Never his little sisters. They’d shared the same father, Ben Paradise, but their mother had not been his. Maybe the fact that he had Eva, whose parents were also his, who had always been his adored “little sister,” kept that “half” firmly affixed in regards to Camryn and Kaylin.

Certainly all those years spent apart from the pair made him feel less connected to them. And the big age difference between himself and the girls didn’t make things any easier. Nor did their rebellious personalities.

He’d really enjoyed Eva as a teenager. Maybe if Camryn and Kaylin were more like her...but they were the antithesis of Eva. They scorned their older half sister as one of those “perky, girly” types, the same despised category Camryn had just assigned to Holly.

Rafe looked at Holly, saw her glance from Camryn to Kaylin and back to him with the alert intensity of a microbiologist who’d just discovered a new species of pathogens. That flare of sexual awareness he’d seen in her soft brown eyes was gone. Her interest in him now was as a prospective case study. One of the dysfunctional Paradise kin. He conceded they could give an ambitious shrink plenty of material to work with.

“Hey,” Kaylin greeted them cheerfully, and returned Holly’s welcoming smile with a shy one of her own.

Holly introduced herself.

“I’m Kaylin. Cam’s my little big sister.” The girl amiably slung her arm around Camryn’s shoulder, and Holly observed the four-inch difference in their height.

Camryn was a petite five-two, thinner and smaller-boned than her younger sister. Kaylin was cute with long, dark, straight hair and bangs. She wore no makeup at all, and was dressed in baggy oversize pants and an equally huge shirt that rendered her completely shapeless.

“You’re the big little sister,” Camryn amended affectionately. Then she looked back at Holly and Rafe, and her dark eyes flashed with anger. “Wait till you see the sainted Evita. You’ll know why Rafe and—”

“Camryn, drop it, okay?” Rafe cut in impatiently. “And since you’re both out here, make yourselves useful and help Holly unload her car.”

Holly was confused. “Evita? You mean the movie? Or the CD soundtrack? I haven’t gotten around to purchasing it for my collection.”

Camryn and Kaylin looked at each other and snickered. “Evita is no soundtrack—she’s Rafe and Flint’s wicked sister,” explained Camryn. “Not a half one, a whole one.”

“That would be Eva, the medical student?” Holly recalled Rafe’s mention of her.

It took no special intuitive powers to ascertain that the diminutive used by the girls was not based on fondness. The teens’ hostility toward their half sister was palpable.

Kaylin nodded her head. “That’s her, Evita the Witch Doctor. And Flint is Rafe’s Evil Twin.”

“Are you really a twin?” Holly looked at Rafe in genuine surprise. Or were the girls playing word games with her?

“Yes,” Rafe muttered.

He wasn’t about to deny his own brother, though he guessed what his admission would mean. Studies of twins were highly valued in the fields of both psychology and biology; he and Flint had certainly been invited to take part in enough of them by eager university researchers. As Native American identical male twins, they were coveted as a resource treasure. Rafe scowled. He did not appreciate Holly Casale viewing him as a potential lab rat.

“And Eva is not a wicked witch and Flint is certainly not evil,” he added, in defense of his siblings.

He reached inside the car and pulled out Holly’s bulging, battered old suitcase that she knew must weigh about eighty pounds. The muscles of his arms rippled as he carried it.

Kaylin pulled out a hanging shoe rack, the compartments stuffed with shoes, and dragged it toward Holly’s front door.

Camryn didn’t move. “You can see how much Rafe doesn’t like us,” she said, sensing Holly’s interest, watching her stare at Rafe and the suitcase. She smiled her angel smile. “Still, he’s the good one. When our mom called to tell him she was sick, he promised that Kaylin and me could live with him after she died ‘cause there was nobody else. And he came and got us when she did. Flint and Eva wouldn’t’ve even—”