Chapter Three #3
Lexie swallowed hard. They’d been so close, yet so far away from each other. They’d grown up on opposite sides of the same city. Same city, but obviously very different lives. How much longer would they have remained in the dark about each other if not for that billboard?
Would they have ever crossed paths?
Roxie reached for her bourbon, and Lexie did the same.
She took a stiff drink, throwing it back.
It burned going down, but she needed it.
Badly. If she’d felt like Alice down the rabbit hole before, it was nothing compared to what she felt now.
She couldn’t stop sneaking peeks across the table.
It was so bizarre to see herself sitting there, wearing those clothes and making gestures that were so familiar.
It was like having an out-of-body experience.
Anyone looking at Roxie would think it was her, plopped down into the wrong scene.
“Oh!” The drink in Lexie’s hand nearly sloshed out of the glass. “Oh no.”
“What’s wrong?”
“My family… I mean, my adopted family. I thought one of them had…” God, she couldn’t admit what she’d thought.
This woman wouldn’t understand her family’s dysfunction.
She’d blamed them, while they’d blamed her.
In the end, none of them had been right.
Rowe had been closest to the truth. He’d been the only one who’d known it wasn’t even her.
Lexie frowned. There he was again, inside her head.
“One of them had what?” Roxie prompted.
“Hmm? Oh, I thought the billboard was a prank. I blamed them.”
Roxie leaned closer, her gaze sharp. She took in the expensive suit, the fancy shoes and the designer handbag. “What are they like? Your family?”
Lexie stilled, guilt stinging her. All the hurt, anger and finger-pointing earlier this morning now seemed petty.
She’d been adopted. She’d been taken in and loved.
She had others she could turn to for support and advice.
Others to play with, laugh with and fight with.
Roxie hadn’t been so lucky. “Like any other family, I guess.”
“I wouldn’t know what that’s like.”
Lexie felt even smaller.
Roxie took another gulp of her bourbon. “Tell me about them. Do you have brothers? Sisters?” She ran her finger carefully around the rim of her glass. “Parents?”
Charlie and Skeeter backed away until they were behind the bar.
“Two brothers and two sisters.” Lexie fought not to squirm. She’d been given so much. Things hadn’t always been perfect, but did she really have anything to complain about? She gripped the tumbler and took another fiery drink. “Two parents.”
Roxie frowned. “That’s a lot of kids. What are they, social do-gooders?”
Her parents were big into philanthropy, especially her mother. Of course, if the charity could be tied back into the family business, all the better.
“It wasn’t my parents’ way of giving back,” she confessed. “I came first. They…uh, they didn’t think they could have kids.”
“And then they had four of their own?”
She shrugged.
“But if they wanted a bunch of rugrats, then why?” Roxie didn’t continue, but she didn’t have to. She wanted to know why one of them had been adopted and the other hadn’t.
Only Lexie didn’t know. She’d never known there were two of them. “We must have already been separated.”
“But how could that happen? How old were you when they took you in? Do you remember?”
“Around two, or so I’ve been told.”
Roxie’s face darkened and, in her eyes, Lexie finally saw the edge that Cameron had described. It was there, and it was jagged.
“How the hell did we get split up so early? Why didn’t the adoption agency keep us together?”
“I don’t know,” Lexie said. “I thought they tried to keep families intact. And we’re not just siblings, we’re…”
“Identical twins,” they said simultaneously.
Roxie ruffled her hair. She didn’t seem like someone who cried easily, yet this was upsetting her. Clearing her throat, she steadied her gaze. “Were they good to you?”
Lexie toyed with her glass. She’d been fed and clothed. A roof had been put over her head. She took another quick sip and was surprised to find her bourbon nearly gone. She downed the dregs. “Yes. Was foster care…?” She couldn’t find the right word. Terrible? Lonely? Scary?
Roxie shrugged. “I was passed around the system until I got out at sixteen.”
“So young?”
Her twin stared down into the swirling liquid of her drink. “A friend got me out.”
Lexie didn’t want to push, so she just squeezed her sister’s hand. “Have you ever thought about our parents? What they must have been like?”
“And why they gave us up? Kind of hard not to, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Lexie agreed. She’d always wondered.
“I never thought about a sister, though.” Her gaze landed again on Roxie Cannon’s face.
It was still so shocking. Every time she caught her reflection doing something she wasn’t, it was a jolt.
Yet the hand clutching hers told her it was real.
Real…irrefutable… Her brain began clicking. “We need to have a DNA test run.”
Roxie’s chin snapped up. “What, you think I’m trying to scam you?”
Lexie started shaking her head as soon as she saw the woman’s reaction. “To prove it once and for all. I want documentation that shows you’re mine. I’m not going to lose you again.”
They’d gotten split up once and nobody had been the wiser. She wanted it on paper this time and in computer databases. She wanted a solid line connecting her and Roxie on a family tree somewhere.
“Oh. Yeah, that’s a good idea.” A slow smile slid onto Roxie’s face. “It would be kind of cool running around showing everyone our matching double helixes.”
Lexie grinned back. Really cool for somebody who’d always been considered different. A square peg in a round hole…
She watched as her twin flipped back her hair, the gesture unconsciously sexy.
The dark strands trailed down Roxie’s back in wild tumbles.
As similar as they were, there were differences.
Nurture over nature. Her twin was tough and impulsive.
Bold, confident and nonconforming. A poser couldn’t have pulled off that billboard.
Yet at the moment, Roxie looked vulnerable. “Can you stay for a while?” she asked.
Lexie felt her shoulders relax. She had nowhere else to go, and she certainly wasn’t heading back to the offices.
She’d found the answer to all the questions that had been screamed at her this morning, but this wasn’t something she was going to fix.
She lifted her empty drink in Charlie’s direction and got more comfortable in her chair.
“Are you kidding me? I’m not going anywhere. ”
Charlie grinned and reached for the bottle of bourbon.
The vulnerability disappeared, and Roxie bent forward, resting her arms on the table. “Tell me more.”
“About what?”
“About you. I don’t care what.” She glanced at Lexie’s left hand. “Doesn’t look like you’re married. Do you have a boyfriend? Somebody who makes your heart go pitter-patter?”
From out of nowhere, Cam popped into her head. Leaning over her in the elevator… Dark, intense eyes watching her… Hard body radiating heat… Lexie was so surprised when her belly clenched, she shifted in her seat.
Roxie’s eyes widened. “I take that as a yes?”
“No. Definitely no.” She and Rowe had just veered into subject matter that they shouldn’t. Like her relationship with the Underhills… And her cleavage…
“Looks like a definite maybe to me.”
The hatchet man had no place here. None. Lexie had so many questions she wanted to ask. What was her sister’s favorite color? What kind of music did she like? What did she like to do? Where did she like to go? Was she dating anyone? “Okay, my turn—and this is a big one.”
“All right,” Roxie said, obviously relishing a dare.
Lexie grinned. “Is that billboard showing something it shouldn’t?”
Roxie laughed and gave her a wink. “What do you think?”