Christmas Babies

It was a firm kiss, a taking of possession kiss, his lips sending delight to the contours of hers. Her first instinct was, of course, to push him away. Yet somehow she found herself leaning toward him…leaning into him, a swirl of sensations catching her off guard. Desire, longing, confusion…

Impossible. This couldn’t be happening. A man’s arms, a man’s touch…a man she hardly knew, making her feel as if she had come alive more than at any time she could remember.

Something thudded to the floor. It took Danni a few seconds to realize that she’d dropped her tape measure. She pulled away from him at last. He smiled at her. Perhaps the kiss had ended, but his eyes held a promise of more.

“I’ve been waiting to do that all day,” he said.

“All day…?”

“After last night, Danni, I’ve been waiting.” He took her into his arms again. But now Danni understood his words—and his actions—all too well. She felt a coldness deep inside, and then she just felt angry. There was only one explanation for this sexy, magical moment.

Kristine.

“I DON’T SEE WHY you’re so upset. It’s only a game, Danni. The same one we’ve always played,” Kristine remarked several hours later.

Danni scowled at her twin sister, studying the face so much like her own she might as well have been looking into a mirror: blue-green eyes, a mouth just a shade too generous, a high forehead resolutely undisguised. In college Kristine and Danni had gone through a phase where they’d tried to minimize their foreheads with bangs. Kristine had been the one finally to let her blond hair grow out. Danni, as usual, had followed her sister’s lead. But she was no longer the follower.

“We’re a little old for that joke, don’t you think?” she said acidly. “Switching places, trying to fool everyone we can. Dammit, Kris, you told him you were me. Used my name—”

“Well, I couldn’t very well use my own, could I? After all, I’m a married woman. Supposedly, anyway.” Kristine used her flippant tone, but she couldn’t quite hide the misery shadowing her expression. Danni felt an unwilling stir of sympathy. Some things apparently didn’t change: the way she hated to see Kristine unhappy for any reason, the fierce protectiveness she’d always felt toward her sister.

“I wish you’d tell me what’s wrong between you and Ted,” Danni said. “What’s the real problem here?”

Kristine glanced away. “Ted is just…Ted. Nothing to be done about him. That’s what Mom always says, anyway.”

Kristine had committed the ultimate heresy in the Ferris clan—she’d married a lawyer instead of becoming one. According to the family view, it was mandatory for the Ferris girls to achieve success on their own. They weren’t supposed to drop out of college one semester before graduation, meander from one job to another and then elope with a scandalously wealthy man ten years their senior. But that was exactly what Kristine had done.

“All right, forget Ted for now,” Danni muttered, the anger washing over her again. “Let’s discuss Bryan McKay instead. Let’s talk about the fact that no matter what’s going on in your marriage, you have no excuse for using my name, my identity to…what? Have an affair? He talked about last night as if…” Danni couldn’t finish.

“Relax. It hasn’t gone that far. Not for lack of wishing, though.” Kristine drew up her knees and clasped her arms around them. She looked like a woman contemplating adultery.

Danni sank down on Kristine’s sofa, the one upholstered in wild geometric shapes. It was like Kristine herself—vivid, excessive, yet rigidly structured.

“All right,” Danni said, “you’d better tell me the whole story from the beginning. And don’t leave anything out.”

Kristine made an attempt at a careless shrug. “Surely you’ve figured it out by now. A couple of weeks ago, when you said you couldn’t make that big event because you were too busy…I went in your place. It seemed harmless enough at the time. I needed…I needed something to forget my own life….I told myself it would only be for a few hours. An escape for just a little while. But then this perfectly gorgeous man came up to me, and he thought I was you…and I didn’t know how to tell him otherwise….”

Danni remembered telling Kristine about the Partner to Partner gala, and how sorry she was that she couldn’t attend. She’d never imagined, though, that her sister would use the opportunity to play the old game. It was the kind of thing Kristine had been guilty of at twelve, or sixteen. Trying to escape whatever trouble she’d been in at the moment…pretending she was Danni. She ought to have outgrown that tactic long ago.

“How many times have you seen Bryan?”

“It doesn’t really matter, does it?” Kristine mumbled.

“How many times, Kris?”

“Hardly any. The night I met him. And then twice afterward, if you count last night.” Kristine was starting to get her defiant look—the one she always got when she realized she’d gone too far but wouldn’t admit it. “I didn’t plan on any of this, you know.”

“Nothing you could do about it, I’m sure,” Danni remarked sarcastically. “It was totally out of your control.”

“Don’t be so damned superior,” Kristine snapped back. “You know why we’ve switched places before. It’s a chance to slip out of your own life and into something more…bearable.”

Admittedly, there had been times growing up when Danni had played the game, too. She’d longed to be someone more daring and reckless and so she’d pretended to be Kristine. But they were both adults now, thirty years old, and the time for pretending was long past.

Now Danni studied her sister. “Is your life really so bad,” she asked, “that you have to escape?”

Kristine stood and moved to the impressive row of picture windows. Night had fallen, but the moon cast a glimmer on the beach and rippled across the ocean waves beyond.

“What could be bad?” she asked, her voice hollow. “Everyone thinks I have the most wonderful husband in the world.”

“Kris, what is going on with you and Ted?”

Kristine folded her arms, and her face got a closed-in look. “Let’s talk about you for a change. Is your life so fantastic that you don’t want to change it—you don’t want to escape?”

“My life,” said Danni, “is perfectly fine.”

“Oh, right. You have a job you hate. The only reason you keep it is because Mom and Dad are thrilled one of their daughters is finally a corporate success. And then there’s your love life. Basically, you don’t have one.”

Now Danni stared out at the restless ocean waves. “I date,” she said.

“Ha. You never get beyond the first date with anyone. You haven’t had anything serious since Peter. And, by the way…let’s not forget you stole Peter from me.”

Danni shook her head. “You know it wasn’t like that. Why do you keep saying it?”

Kristine, stubborn as ever, didn’t answer. Danni thought back to four years ago, when her sister had been seeing Peter Mackland. But then Ted had come along, Kristine had fallen madly in love and eloped with him…and afterward Peter had turned to Danni. At first she’d offered him friendship, nothing more. It wasn’t long, however, before she’d convinced herself that she was in love with him.

“What if,” Kristine continued finally, as if Danni hadn’t spoken. “What if you hadn’t snatched Peter away from me? You were always the one he preferred. I could see it. But maybe…maybe if I’d felt that he truly loved me…I wouldn’t have been so susceptible to Ted….”

“Oh, Kris, stop,” Danni said in exasperation. “You always distort the truth. You dumped Peter, remember? I was just the consolation prize. Besides, he turned out to be an ass. You got Ted—definitely the better end of the bargain.”

“I married Ted,” Kristine said in a clipped tone. “That was my first mistake.”

The two of them had once seemed so in love, lost in their own special world. What could have happened to bring the bitterness to Kristine’s voice, the heartache to her eyes? Danni wondered.

“Don’t ask,” Kristine muttered. “Just don’t.”

It wasn’t the first time Kristine had read Danni’s thoughts. They were twins. They were close…no changing that, it seemed.

“Look,” Danni said. “You have a habit of running away from your problems. And this time—this time you’ve really done it, Kris. If I weren’t so damn furious at you—”

“It’s not like you want Bryan McKay,” her sister interrupted. “Or then again…maybe you do, and you just don’t know how to show it.”

“What I feel or don’t feel about Bryan has nothing to do with it.” Danni was making a supreme effort to stay calm and in control. “You’ve done something very wrong, Kris, and you’ve got to stop.”

Kristine swiveled away from her. “Don’t you think I know that? But I need something. I need the way Bryan makes me feel—”

“No. What you need is to work things out with Ted. After you’ve told Bryan the truth.”

“All I want is a few more days,” Kristine said in a low voice. “Only a few. You can’t deny me that much. After Peter…you owe me.”