Seducing The Enemy

One look at Daniel Wolfe and all her instincts had screamed, “Danger, threat.” Her mind had leapt into overdrive, instantly dictating, “Fight, eliminate.” He hadn’t said a word, yet she’d repelled him with all the power she could harness because...because she’d felt his power and it had disturbed her, distracted her, and she couldn’t afford to be distracted or disturbed. Not until Izzie was safe.

“Are you?” he asked.

The question meant nothing to her. She was still deeply involved in analysing her reaction to him, trying to explain it away. No other man had ever affected her like that. On the other hand, she’d never been in such a nerve-racking, life-and-death situation before.

“You don’t want to answer?” he appealed.

“Pardon?”

“Are you telepathic? It’s said that twins sometimes are with each other.”

She sighed. “There you go again, thinking of me as a twin.”

“But not as a carbon copy, Annabel. I would never mistake you for your sister.”

Warm pleasure flooded through her as his eyes reinforced his insistence that she was unique to him. Then she remembered the photograph, and her heart seized up. If he had it, could he tell the difference? Most people couldn’t with photographs. Her heart kicked into life again. One man’s personal opinion didn’t count as hard evidence. He’d need more than that to prove it was Isabel who had been with Barry Wolfe when he died.

If that was his intent.

Maybe it was just curiosity to know the truth.

Or was that hope speaking?

The soup was served. Its arrival was very timely. Annabel didn’t like the confusion in her mind. She felt a very strong tug of attraction towards Daniel Wolfe. The idea of exploring where they might go together was getting more seductive by the minute. If only their connection had been simple and straightforward. But it was impossible to ignore the complications involved in his identity and hers. She had to stay on guard.

Her mind wandered over the problems as they silently consumed the soup. The truth had to be suppressed. It could hurt too many people. Even if Neil Mason forgave Izzie’s lapse into temptation, he wouldn’t forget it. His trust in her would be shaken, which would erode the supportive nature of their relationship. This would inevitably rebound on the children, and what had been a happy and secure household would start snapping with tensions.

Izzie wouldn’t be able to bear it. She needed approval. She needed someone strong to lean on. That was why she’d married Neil Mason, a man twelve years older and imbued with the confidence of having all the answers to everything, a man who was more than prepared to take charge of his innocent, malleable young wife and direct her along the lines he considered right and proper.

Had Izzie fallen into the marriage because she didn’t know what else to do? She had only been twenty. Was it because Annabel had struck out on her own, determined to pursue interests her twin didn’t share, tired of suppressing them for Izzie’s sake?

Annabel had never voiced these private doubts. Although Neil’s pompous righteousness always irritated her, it had felt wrong to criticise a choice when it seemed to fulfil Izzie’s needs. However, if she was ruthlessly honest with herself, it had been a relief to pass the responsibility of propping up her sister onto Neil. She had overlooked his faults, wanting Izzie to be happy with him.

But was she?

To go to a motel with Barry Wolfe.

How much guilt did she bear in all this for effecting a separation from her twin to claim a life of her own, knowing Izzie’s dependence on continual support?

My other half, Annabel thought with a sense of helplessness. No escape from it. They were two sides of the same coin, different, yet joined to each other in an unbreakable mould that made up the whole. What kind of fate arranged such things? Or was it simply an unfortunate trick of nature? Why, in the split that had taken place to form two of them, was it ordained that one be strong and the other weak?

Steel and putty. Daniel Wolfe’s succinct summing up slid into her mind. How had he seen it so quickly? On such brief acquaintance?

Annabel wished it wasn’t true. She was always conscious that the division could have gone the other way, with Izzie being the strong one. She knew she could not turn her back on any cry for help from her sister. It wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be fair. It wasn’t Izzie’s fault that she couldn’t cope alone. It wasn’t really Annabel’s fault, either. It was just how it was.

“It must be a difficult relationship for you, being a twin.”

Annabel glanced up sharply, startled at how closely Daniel Wolfe’s remark echoed her thoughts. He had finished his soup and was sitting back, watching her. The. instant their eyes locked she knew he was satisfied he had guessed right. It gave her an eerie feeling. How had he perceived and understood what she had kept hidden from so many others, even her own family?

Her parents were so proud of their girls, Isabel’s marriage, Annabel’s career, never really seeing the downside of their duality. Her mother would still be parading them in the same clothes if she had her way, blindly unaware it had made them feel like show dolls, not real people at all.

She looked at her bowl of soup, her hand poised over it with the spoon, and realised she had been brooding over a plate she had emptied, bar a trickle of liquid and a sliver of onion. She couldn’t remember tasting what she had eaten.

Troubled at having somehow revealed her secret burden, she carefully set the spoon down and composed herself, deciding to take the initiative from Daniel Wolfe and carry out her own inquisition. His interest in her relationship with her sister was too touchy, better blocked.

When her eyes flicked up again, it was with a look of bland inquiry. “All relationships have their difficulties, don’t you think?” Then with barely a pause she attacked, needing to get under his skin. “How do you feel about the pattern of corruption in your half-brother’s finance ministry? Does it surprise you?”

His mouth twisted in distaste. “Not really. Barry always had his eye on the main chance.”

So he wasn’t blind to his half-brother’s real character. “Did you know about it before his death?”

“Not in any detailed sense. I had little doubt the rumours were true, but it wasn’t my job to look into them, and Barry would never have confessed the truth. He rarely let his left hand know what his right hand was doing. He was a master of manipulation.”

The honesty of his assessment surprised her. He was pulling no punches on his half-brother’s behalf. Was it possible she could be equally honest with him? Would he be satisfied simply to be told the truth? And let everything lie as it was?

She barely held back the urge to do so. To reach out and... But it was crazy to trust a virtual stranger. Even crazier to confide in any relative of Barry Wolfe’s. He might be feeding her lines to see if he hooked something incriminating.

Nevertheless, his comments on his half-brother’s character certainly made sense of why her sister had fallen for Barry Wolfe. Izzie was so impressionable she would have been an easy victim for a man who had the knack of discerning other people’s needs and weaknesses and had no conscience about playing on them. Annabel nursed a bitter resentment at the callous way her sister had been used.

“He abused trust,” she muttered, her eyes flashing her condemnation of such heartless behaviour.

“People whose trust has been abused at an early age tend not to hold much stock in it,” Daniel Wolfe answered her evenly. “Trust becomes a commodity to be used in their favour.”

“You would have defended him?”

“Everyone has the right to a defence, Annabel.”

“Despite how much they hurt others?”

“That’s the law. It’s always a mistake to rush to judgment. Some people are flawed through no fault of their own. They, too, were once innocent before their circumstances in life twisted them into other paths,” he added quietly.

“That doesn’t give them the right to do as they please.”

“No, it doesn’t. Which is why we have prisons.”

But his sympathies lay with his half-brother. She didn’t like it. She didn’t like his legal argument, either, however reasonable it was. There were plenty of people these days who survived their parents’ divorces without turning into criminals who took from others when it suited them. To her mind, Barry Wolfe was a crook and a cad.

Daniel Wolfe probably didn’t want to hear that. Truth was sometimes very unpalatable. He might try to prove something else. His sense of truth and justice might demand that Izzie pay for falling into the Barry trap, regardless of the circumstances or consequences.

The waiter removed their soup plates.

Annabel picked up her pina colada again. Beyond the lit area around the pool, nightfall was turning the trees into dark silhouettes. She listened for the sound of the surf breaking on the beach, wishing she could recapture the sense of peace she’d felt earlier. It was gone. As was freedom. Daniel Wolfe had to be dealt with, one way or another.

“You’re angry,” he observed.

She gave him a derisive look. “You revive what I came here to forget for a while. That doesn’t exactly please me.”

He held her gaze with piercing intensity as he remarked, “One never really escapes from an uneasy conscience.”