Charlotte's Homecoming

He raised his brows. Wife beater? Had Faith been married to that bastard?

She ignored his open curiosity and said conventionally, “May I help you?”

“Faith mentioned she had a sister.”

She hadn’t said how startlingly similar that sister looked. Both women were taller than average—perhaps five foot seven or eight—and willowy. This sister was thinner yet, though, as if she lived on coffee and nerves but very little food. Her skin was very white, her cheekbones prominent, her nose long and her eyes the blue of a Siamese cat’s. Bluer than Faith’s, he thought, but perhaps the color was more vivid because of the fire in these eyes. Faith’s were the blue of a placid pond rather than the startling blue of the twilight sky above the pyrotechnics of the setting sun.

“Should she have mentioned you?” Faith’s sister asked.

He smiled. “Nothing to mention. We’re acquainted.” He held out his hand. “Gray Van Dusen.”

She shook, even as she seemed to be sampling his name. “Gray … Not Graham?”

“Graham,” he conceded, letting her hand go with some reluctance, “although I answer to Gray.” Did she have any idea how much tension and vitality she’d conveyed, just with that simple grip of her hand?

“The new mayor of West Fork.”

“That would be me. Also a partner in Van Dusen and Cullen, Architects.”

“Part-time mayor, part-time architect.” She sounded amused.

“More like full-time mayor, full-time architect,” Gray admitted ruefully. “There’s not enough of me to go around.”

“And yet you’re here to shop for a new shrub or a hundred-year-old dining-room table or, hmm, some blackberry jam?” With the same slender, pale hand he’d enfolded earlier in his own, she lifted a jar from the display and held it out in offering.

Faith’s hands did not look like that. They were just as slender and graceful, but also tanned, calloused and nicked.

“Thank you, but no. I actually stopped by to tell Faith that I’m sorry to hear about the accident. And, ah, to talk about traffic.”

Her eyes widened. “Traffic? In West Fork?”

“You’d be surprised.”

“Maybe not. Faith did say that West Fork is becoming a bedroom community for the east side.” She set down the jam jar. “I’m Charlotte. As you can tell, Faith’s sister.”

He wondered at the wryness in her tone. Had she, once upon a time, played second fiddle to Faith? He simply couldn’t imagine, even if Charlotte was the younger.

“He called you Char. Do you go by that?”

“Mostly with family. Rory is Faith’s ex, in case you hadn’t gathered as much.”

“Seems like a real son of a bitch,” Gray murmured.

Her voice hardened. “That’s how I think of him. Um … this conversation about traffic. Faith’s up at the house. Shall I call her?”

He shook his head. “We can have it another time. I stopped on impulse.” Following another impulse, he grabbed a different jar of jam. “I prefer blueberry.”

Charlotte Russell smiled at him, and he was jolted down to the soles of his feet. “My first chance to use the cash register.”

This woman was a mass of contradictions. That smile, a little sassy but essentially sweet, didn’t go with the ice-cold anger she’d used to deal with Rory, the wife beater. If he hadn’t been intrigued before, she had him now.

Almost at random, Gray asked, “Do you know how?”

“I’m an expert. I worked at Tastee’s while I was in high school.”

Like everyone in West Fork, he drove up to the outside window of Tastee’s for a burger and fries now and again, or went in for an ice-cream cone. Now amused, he said, “You wore that striped top and the stupid little white hat?”

She rolled her eyes. “I can’t tell you how much I hated that hat. Still, it was a job. Faith,” she told him, “picked strawberries summers. I wouldn’t have been caught dead doing that.”

He took out his wallet and paid for the jam, then nodded toward the bright outline of the door. “Walk me out?”

“Why not.” She came around the counter, and he saw that below a filmy white, short-sleeved blouse, she wore an aqua-colored, airy, linen skirt that flowed over her hips and thighs and stopped midcalf. Below that, flip-flops bared red-painted toenails. Seeing his gaze, she waved vaguely at her clothes and said, “I flew up here this morning. Haven’t had time to change into jeans.”

“From where?”

“San Francisco.”

“Are you younger, or older?”

The blue eyes flared. “You can’t tell?”

He stopped just outside and faced her. “Tell what?”

“We’re twins.” She was trying to wipe all expression out of her voice but didn’t quite succeed. “Identical twins.”

“Are you?” Assessing her again, Gray automatically put aside the pang he felt whenever he heard the word twin. “I knew right away that you weren’t Faith.”

“Gee. Black hair? Earrings?” She tugged mockingly at one lobe.

He shrugged. “Rory couldn’t.”

“That’s because he’s too self-centered to look very hard at anyone but himself.”

Gray suppressed a smile. “You’re thinner.”

She glanced down at herself. “I guess so. Faith has some muscle tone—she works hard here. I’m just bony. Despite the chocolate-mint ice cream.”

He let that pass. “What’s inside affects how we look. You and Faith aren’t that much alike, are you?”

Charlotte stared at him, her eyes curiously vulnerable. He had the sense that he’d stunned her.

“No. We could … pass for each other, when we were younger, but inside …” She sighed. “Faith has a gift for serenity that I don’t.”

“You seem … stronger,” he chose to say, instead of telling her she had a fire her sister lacked.

But she was shaking her head before he finished. “No. She was here for Mom and Dad, she withstood an awful marriage, she’s fighting to save the farm—and, so far, winning. Me, I had a job and a condo and no one else to worry about. In comparison to me, Faith is an Amazon.”

He picked the most important three words out of this speech. “No one else?”