The Unknown Sister Read online

  “I love you, Catherine. You’ve become my whole life.”

  David took a deep breath. “Something has come up to do with my work, and you need to be told about it.”

  He felt her eyes on him. “Are you talking about the institute?”

  “Yes. As you know, we compile data on identical twins. But there’s another aspect to this. We also put out ads to attract people who think they might be twins.”

  “What do you mean, think?” she asked.

  “Some people write or phone the institute telling us they’ve had experiences that lead them to believe they’ve got a twin somewhere, even though there’s no real proof. Twice so far, we’ve been the catalyst to bring separated twins together.”

  “That’s extraordinary!”

  “But,” he said, “consider for a moment how someone might feel if he or she had no knowledge of being a twin and was then confronted by this long-lost sibling.”

  “It would be such a shock, I can’t even imagine it. Of course, my brother Jack would probably love it, since he’s been wanting to find his birth parents for quite a while now.” She stopped suddenly. “Are you saying Jack has an identical twin who’s been looking for him?”

  “I wish I could say yes to your question.”

  It took a minute for David’s words to sink in. “I’m the one with the twin, aren’t I?”

  Dear Reader,

  I don’t know about you, but the phenomenon of identical twins has always fascinated me. In fact, my interest grew to the point that I wrote a novel, The Wrong Twin, several years ago for Harlequin Superromance.

  That particular story explored the world of identical twin sisters who were raised together, adored each other and shared everything, even their love for the same man. In that novel I focused on the special psychic bond between identical twins.

  In my latest book, The Unknown Sister, I’ve written a tale of identical twin sisters who were separated at birth. They come from entirely different backgrounds and circumstances and would never have met if they hadn’t happened to fall in love with the same man. In this novel, I’ve explored the psychological aspects of their extraordinary situation.

  I hope you’ll find their story as riveting and intriguing as I did in writing it.

  Rebecca Winters

  Books by Rebecca Winters

  HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE

  636—THE WRONG TWIN

  650—A MAN FOR ALL TIME

  697—NOT WITHOUT MY CHILD

  737—STRANGERS WHEN WE MEET

  756—LAURA’S BABY

  783—UNTIL THERE WAS YOU

  808—DEBORAH’S SON

  840—IF HE COULD SEE ME NOW

  875—THE FAMILY WAY

  THE UNKNOWN SISTER

  Rebecca Winters

  To Michael,

  whose brilliant insights

  make this world a better place for all.

  Bless you.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  “STEADY, JACK! The red Ford Taurus is trying to box you in. Don’t let him get on your left. Easy. Be careful. Keep going! That’s it! Hold on!”

  Catherine Casey’s breath caught as her brother’s rebuilt purple Chev with the yellow sunbursts flew around the turn at the Portland stock car racetrack. “Keep holding. Don’t give up your spot now. Keep holding. Yes!” she cried in excitement when he moved ahead.

  Too bad his girlfriend, Melanie, had to be out of town for a family reunion this weekend. Otherwise, she would’ve been here, too. Catherine suspected this girl was the one for Jack. Of course, only time would tell.

  What a shame the rest of the family couldn’t have come to see his performance, either, especially their two older married brothers, Brody and Mark. Today everybody who normally supported him had prior commitments they couldn’t get out of. So did Catherine, but she’d promised to watch a portion of the race.

  She was two years older than her intense, sandy-haired brother. Jack had turned twenty-five last month. She felt especially close to him, probably because he’d been adopted soon after her and they’d been raised like twins.

  Jack’s fascination with racing had begun when he was thirteen. Their parents had taken him on a business trip to Ohio with them, and they’d stopped at the Eldon Speedway in Rossberg; ever since then, he’d wanted to be a race car driver. Catherine still remembered how he’d come running into the house after their return home, sporting a World 100 T-shirt.

  Racing was in his blood, the way architecture was in hers. Over the last twelve years he’d earned his master mechanic’s degree and had gone into business with his best friend, Phil. They leased a garage from her dad and had equipped it to run their own body shop. During the day, Jack and Phil, plus their hired crew, worked on other people’s cars to earn their living. After hours, Jack was building his own race car and was making a name for himself locally. The whole family was proud of his achievements.

  His dream was to win the Save Mart/Kragen 350 NASCAR Winston Cup at the Sears Point speedway in California. Such a victory would be a stepping-stone to even bigger wins. But he needed close to seven million dollars to build a new car and put together a salaried team.

  Their dad had contributed half the money toward his goal. The rest needed to come from other members of the family, friends, sponsors and Jack’s earnings from various races. A first place today would net him ten thousand dollars. He had to win!

  With the aid of her binoculars, Catherine looked for the number of the red car trying to edge him out of the race. Pausing for a moment, she scanned the program. Number twenty-four was being driven by Mitch Britton, another contender from Portland. The name sounded familiar. According to the stats, he had almost as many racing points as Jack, and an equal number of wins.

  While she studied the list of drivers, a gust of cold wind blew the paper right out of her hand. In dismay she watched it dance over the heads of the crowd of spectators filling the bleachers. There was no way she could run after it.

  She shivered as another gust of wind sent programs flying. One glance at the overcast sky told her it would rain any minute. A good thing she’d worn warm clothes to the track. She fastened the top two wooden buttons of her heavy wool sweater before lifting the binoculars to her eyes once more.

  Jack still had a half hour’s worth of laps to go before the black-and-white checkered flags signaled the end of the race. She wished she could stay to the finish, but an important client had requested a conference concerning his new rental premises, one she’d had to cancel last week due to a bad cold. She couldn’t possibly disappoint him a second time.

  At least she had the satisfaction of knowing that Jack had seen her in the stands when he’d made his last pit stop. She put her binoculars in her tote bag, then started making her way to the end of the row.

  “Excuse me.” She tried not to step on people’s toes. “Forgive me,” she murmured after running into a hard, trousered leg.

  The man stood up to allow her to reach the stairs. She lifted her head, thanking him with a smile. But her apology did nothing to erase the barest trace of revulsion in those midnight-blue eyes staring at her from beneath dark brows and hair.

  “I think maybe it’s time you and I had a little talk, Shannon.”

  She blinked. Even with the noise from the cars roaring around the track,
she was quite sure he’d called her Shannon.

  “I’m afraid you have me mixed up with someone else. Sorry again for disturbing you.”

  Without wasting another second, she rushed down the stairs toward the exit. Rain had started to fall. If she made a dash to her car, she might not get completely soaked before she could slide behind the wheel of the restored green MG she’d bought several years earlier.

  She loved the sound of the motor, the way the little car could dart in and out of traffic. But as she left the parking area with her windshield wipers going, her thoughts weren’t on her car.

  Whoever Shannon was, Catherine felt sorry for the woman. If a man as masculine and attractive as that well-dressed stranger had ever looked at Catherine with such a lack of pleasure, she would have been shattered.

  Vaguely troubled by the encounter, she frowned. At some time in the past she’d heard that everyone on earth had a double, but she’d never given any thought to it until now. She’d certainly never taken it seriously.

  To her recollection, no one had mistaken her for anyone else before.

  How odd to think another woman walking around Portland—someone apparently called Shannon—resembled Catherine enough, that this man would address her by Shannon’s name. The deep vibrancy of his voice still resonated inside her.

  She waited for a light to change, then merged with the afternoon traffic headed into the downtown area.

  What really puzzled her was the fact that he’d waited until he’d looked into her eyes before calling her Shannon. The man was ready for some kind of confrontation.

  Sometimes Catherine had seen a superficial resemblance to a friend or acquaintance in a stranger. But the second she got closer or caught a glance of his or her face, she realized her mistake before approaching that person.

  That wasn’t the case today. He’d sounded as if he was absolutely certain, as if there could be no mistake.

  Maybe the whole thing was upsetting her because the last time she’d met a man who attracted her so strongly, she’d been a naive twenty-year-old junior in undergraduate school. She’d fallen for a teaching assistant who’d pretended to be in love with her in order to pass off her work as his own.

  The painful lesson had taught her not to trust men in general, good-looking ones in particular. Except for the men in her own family, of course.

  Perhaps she found herself thinking about the stranger more than she normally would have because he’d mistaken her for someone else and she couldn’t help being intrigued.

  Whatever the explanation, she had to acknowledge that chemistry probably had more to do with the reason she’d felt disturbed by the incident. There was no denying he was one of the most attractive men she’d ever met.

  She stepped on the gas. Five minutes later, the security guard waved to her as she drove into the underground car park of Casey & Associates, the architectural firm where she worked with her father.

  Forget the stranger, Catherine. You’ve got too much to do!

  WHILE THE RAIN beat down on his black Mercedes, David Britton sat behind the wheel in a total stupor. Everyone else was watching the race. His brother, Mitch, might even be winning it right now, but David’s mind was on the woman who’d tripped over his leg in the bleachers a few minutes ago.

  When he’d spotted Shannon sitting farther down the bench at the start of the race, his instinct had been to leave the speedway and avoid her altogether.

  But he realized if he did that, he would only be putting off the inevitable. Since he didn’t relish the thought of her coming up with a new plan to “accidentally” bump into him, he’d decided to wait until she made her move. Then he’d deliver a few home truths.

  Like the fact that they weren’t a couple, and she needed to get on with her life.

  But it wasn’t that simple. Because they had a business relationship…of sorts.

  Shannon White had answered one of the thousands of Internet and newspaper ads he’d placed around the country asking for people to participate in a study on identical twins he was conducting at his institute. People who were twins—or believed they’d been separated from their twins at birth and were trying to find them—were invited to respond.

  David had created the institute for personal reasons, having lost a younger brother, Mitch’s identical twin, to SIDS, a tragedy that had caused untold grief to his mother, who was herself a twin. But he’d grown increasingly interested in the subject and spent more time at the institute now than he did at his stock-trading firm. He’d hired psychologists and funded a laboratory to conduct genetic research on identical twins.

  Already the research had proved that the rate of SIDS deaths was higher among identical twins. He’d hoped those facts had comforted his mother, who’d held herself responsible for a death she couldn’t have prevented.

  David had become so immersed in running the institute, he hadn’t made much time for anyone except his widowed mother and Mitch. He’d ended his last relationship with a woman several months ago.

  But after his first interview with Shannon, he’d broken his rule about never socializing with a participant and had asked her out to dinner. Between her intelligence and gorgeous blond looks, he found he wanted to know her better.

  To his disappointment, however, the evening didn’t measure up to his expectations. He couldn’t explain exactly why. Nothing had changed since the interview, except that he realized he didn’t feel an emotional connection, after all.

  Frustrated because the evening had gone flat, he’d hoped to find the elusive spark by kissing her good-night outside her hotel-room door. She’d shown every sign of wanting more than just talk.

  Unfortunately, the chemistry wasn’t there.

  After thanking her for going out with him, he told her she’d hear from the institute if any data came in suggesting there might be a match. He’d thought she understood he was dismissing the possibility of a romantic involvement.

  The next morning, nothing could have surprised him more than to arrive at his office and be told by his secretary that Shannon White was on the line. David assumed she must have forgotten to tell him something relevant to her case. In reality, she’d called to ask if he was free for lunch before she left town.

  As tactfully as he could, he told her he had other commitments. He thanked her for the invitation, but was careful not to add that they’d have to get together again some time.

  It was bad enough that she continued to phone him over the next few weeks. But he almost lost his patience the Friday she showed up in his office at noon, just as he was leaving to watch one of Mitch’s races.

  At least he could tell her, with a clear conscience, that he was busy, although he still had to be careful to choose the right words so he wouldn’t alienate her. After all, she’d responded to the institute’s ad in the hope that her twin sibling, if she really had one, would contact the institute, too. On principle, he needed to treat her as he would any other participant.

  But that was the hell of it. He’d done the total opposite. Blinded by her attractiveness, he’d made the mistake of asking her out on a date, of kissing her good-night. Now he was forced to walk the fine line between extending her professional courtesy and ignoring her, and he had no one but himself to blame.

  Her presence at the speedway today made him realize she wasn’t about to go away. Obviously, during the one and only time they’d gone out together, she’d stored the information he’d told her about Mitch and his passion for race car driving.

  When she couldn’t get David to ask her out again, she’d decided to make an unexpected appearance at the track, knowing he couldn’t very well tell her he had other plans for the afternoon.

  Aware that the situation had escalated into something potentially ugly, he’d decided to have it out with her, race or no race, even if it meant offending her in the process. There was just one problem with that scenario.

  The woman who’d apologized for bumping into him wasn’t Shannon.

  The
shock had made him slow on the uptake. Not until she’d disappeared from the stands did he realize he’d just met Shannon’s missing twin. A woman, not a man.

  The unknown sister.

  David couldn’t begin to estimate the odds of this chance occurrence, not when Shannon wasn’t even positive her adoptive mother had been lucid at the time of her deathbed confession.

  But he was positive.

  The two sisters had identical faces and figures. The same feather-cut blond hair, gray eyes and curving mouths.

  Yet when she’d looked at him just now, telling him he must have mistaken her for someone else, the warmth of her smile seemed to permeate his bones. Her voice, her expression, her eyes—they all divulged a world of difference between her and Shannon.

  Then, before he’d had time to react, she’d vanished in the rain, leaving him breathless with myriad impressions.

  Her eyes.

  They’d been so alive, they’d recalled swirling storm clouds etched in silver to make them glow. Everything about her glowed, especially the strands of silvery-gold hair blowing in the wind.

  She was like Shannon—and yet she wasn’t.

  She reminded him of someone who knew a wonderful secret and could hardly contain her excitement. Then she’d run away.

  By the time David had recovered enough to go after her, she’d long since left the parking area in a vintage-model green MG. He’d been too far away to make out the numbers on her license plate.

  He had no idea who she was. He didn’t have a name. But the rush of adrenaline doing crazy things to his heart told him he had to find her. Otherwise, he felt with an odd certainty, nothing in his life would ever make sense again.

  Even while he plotted how to go about tracing her, he heard a voice inside his head.

  What about Shannon? When do you plan to tell her the news?