Sweet Talk

“You don’t know me. Regardless of what Nicole has told you, you know nothing about me. I could say the same about her, which is sad. We’re twins. Fraternal, but still. I hate how much we’ve messed over each other’s lives. I hate how things are now. I don’t …” She stopped and pressed her lips together. “Sorry. You don’t actually care about any of this, do you.”

He watched her without saying anything.

She squared her shoulders and raised her chin. “I’m here to help. I have no interest in nightclubs, I never have. I don’t have any friends here in Seattle, so you don’t have to worry about distractions. I want to take care of Nicole and reconnect with her. Nothing more. Those are the only words I have. You’ll either believe them or you won’t. The bottom line is, I’m not going anywhere. Not until Nicole is better.”

She spoke with a quiet dignity that appealed to him. His instinct was to believe her, but Nicole had always talked about how Claire played people with the same easy skill that she played the piano.

Still, he didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t take off from work and he had a daughter to deal with.

“I’ll be around,” he told her. “Watching.”

“Judging. There’s a difference.”

He shrugged, not caring if he offended her.

He pulled a business card out of his shirt pocket. “My cell is on this. You can always reach me on it. If there’s a problem, call.”

“There won’t be.”

He handed her the card, instead of just putting it on the counter, then realized his mistake the second their fingers touched.

The heat was so bright and raw, he expected the kitchen to explode. He swore under his breath as he glared at Claire, blaming her for the unwelcome chemistry flaring between them. She stared at the card, then looked at him.

“That was weird,” she said.

There was genuine confusion in her voice and questions in her eyes, as if she’d felt it, too, but didn’t know what it meant.

Yeah, right, he thought to himself. She was playing him.

Play away. He didn’t care. It didn’t matter how he reacted when he touched her—he would never act on those feelings. He wasn’t controlled by his hormones. He was a rational man who thought with his head, not his dick.

Still, when she smiled at him and said, “Thank you for taking care of her,” putting her hand on his arm, he wanted to pull her hard against him and kiss her until she begged for mercy. The image was so powerful, his mouth went dry and he got hard in a heartbeat. Talk about humiliating.

He stalked out of the kitchen without saying goodbye and vowed he would keep his distance from Claire. The last thing he needed in his life was another useless woman making him crazy and ruining everything she touched.

CLAIRE STARED at the clothes she’d laid across the bed and sighed. Apparently packing was not an intuitive skill. She’d been so careful with everything. Yet here were all her clothes, horribly wrinkled.

Normally Lisa’s assistant du jour would whisk the clothes away and bring them back perfectly pressed. If she wasn’t around, Claire could call the valet service at the hotel herself. But this wasn’t a hotel.

She studied a silk blouse and wondered if it was safe to iron. With another sigh, she reminded herself she didn’t know how to use an iron and if she wanted to practice, perhaps a designer silk blouse was not the place to start.

“Am I really totally useless, or is this an isolated incident?” she asked herself, speaking the words softly aloud. Better to know the truth than pretend. Her goal was to change—to fit into the real world. She needed to know where she was to find out how much work was required to get where she needed to go.

A sound from down the hall caught her attention. Still holding the blouse, she hurried toward Nicole’s room and found her sister coming out of the bathroom. She was bent over at the waist, one arm pressed across her midsection. Her face was drawn, her mouth pulled in pain.

“You should have yelled for me,” Claire said as she hurried to her side. “I’m here to help.”

“If you figure out a way to pee for me, I’m all ears. Otherwise, stay out of my way.”

Claire ignored the snarky comment and rushed to the bed where she quickly smoothed the sheets and pulled back the covers. Nicole ignored her and what she’d done as she slowly, carefully, crawled back in bed. Claire reached for the covers.

“If you tuck me in, I swear I’ll kill you. Not today, but soon and when you least expect it.”

Claire stepped away from the bed.

When Nicole was settled she closed her eyes. After a second, she opened them again. “Are you just going to stand there?”

“Do you need anything? More water? Ice chips? They’ll help you stay hydrated without making you nauseous.”

“How do you know that?”

“I was reading some articles on the Internet.”

“Aren’t you mama’s little helper?”

Claire clutched her blouse in one hand. “They didn’t say anything about surgery making one ill-tempered, so I guess the sarcasm is all you.”

“I wear it proudly, like a badge of honor.” Nicole shifted and winced. “What are you doing here, Claire?”

“Jesse called me a few days ago and told me about the surgery. She said you were going to need my help.” Claire didn’t want to say the rest when it was obviously untrue, but she couldn’t think of a way to avoid it. She’d already told Wyatt and she suspected he had passed it on to Nicole. “She said you were sorry we were still estranged and that you wanted us to be a family.”

She spoke without shaking, without her voice giving away her potential hurt. But it was still there, hidden. Because connecting was the one thing she wanted.

“You believed her?” Nicole shook her head. “Seriously? After all this time, you think I’m suddenly going to change my opinion of you?”

“Your opinion of who and what you think I am,” Claire told her. “You don’t actually know me.”

“One of the few blessings in my life.”

Claire ignored that. “I’m here now and you obviously need help. I don’t see anyone else lining up for the job. Looks like you’re stuck.”

Nicole’s expression tightened. “I have friends I could call.”

“But you won’t. You hate owing anyone anything.”

“Like you said, you don’t actually know me.”

“I can guess.” Claire hated being obligated, too.

“Don’t pretend we have anything in common,” Nicole snapped. “You’re no one to me. Fine, if you think you can help, help. I don’t care. The good news is I don’t think you’re capable of anything beyond being served, so my expectations are fairly low.”

This was so not what she’d imagined, Claire thought sadly. She’d hoped they would be able to find their way back to each other. She and Nicole were twins … fraternal, but connected from conception. Had all the time apart, the anger and misunderstandings really broken that bond?

She was here to find out.

“You probably want to rest,” Claire said. “I’ll get out of your way.”

“If only.”