The Substitute Sister

She flattened her palms against her ears, trying to shut out the ghostly voice.

“Go away,” Sasha whispered back. “Please, Nadine, leave me alone….” A shudder wracked her body. Had she lost her mind? She was arguing with a ghost. But was Nadine a ghost? Was she really dead? No one had found her body, just the blood.

Suddenly Sasha heard another cry. Annie’s. The storm must have awakened the child.

“Sasha…”

She ignored the whisper as she kicked back the covers. The nanny was closer, but Sasha had to go to the little girl. She needed Annie, needed to hold her to soothe herself. Her bare feet padded against the worn runner as she felt her way down the hall. The nursery door stood open and lightning flashed through the window, illuminating the room where the child slept peacefully again in the crib.

In the corner, the rocker moved to and fro….

Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,

Spring is in the air and we have a month of fabulous books for you to curl up with as the March winds howl outside:

 Familiar is back on the prowl, in Caroline Burnes’s Familiar Texas. And Rocky Mountain Maneuvers marks the conclusion of Cassie Miles’s COLORADO CRIME CONSULTANTS trilogy.

 Jessica Andersen brings us an exciting medical thriller, Covert M.D.

 Don’t miss the next ECLIPSE title, Lisa Childs’s The Substitute Sister.

 Definitely check out our April lineup. Debra Webb is starting THE ENFORCERS, an exciting new miniseries you won’t want to miss. Also look for a special 3-in-1 story from Rebecca York, Ann Voss Peterson and Patricia Rosemoor called Desert Sons.

Each month, Harlequin Intrigue brings you a variety of heart-stopping romantic suspense and chilling mystery. Don’t miss a single book!

Sincerely,

Denise O’Sullivan

Senior Editor

Harlequin Intrigue

The Substitute Sister

Lisa Childs

MILLS & BOON

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To Stacy Boyd—my helpful, insightful editor.

To Kimberly Duffy w/a Lindsey Brookes—

for unwavering friendship and support—love you!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lisa Childs has been writing since she could first form sentences. At eleven she won her first writing award and was interviewed by the local newspaper. That story’s plot revolved around a kidnapping, probably something she wished on any of her six siblings. A Halloween birthday predestined a life of writing intrigue. She enjoys the mix of suspense and romance.

Readers can write to Lisa at P.O. Box 139, Marne, MI 49435 or visit her at her Web site www.lisachilds.com.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Sasha Michaelson—She’s lost her twin on Sunset Island, but she’s in danger of losing her heart and her life, too.

Reed Blakeslee—The lawman’s determined to protect Sasha, no matter the risk…physically or emotionally.

Nadine Michaelson—She’s always resented her twin—enough to lure her to danger?

Charles Norder—Sasha’s ex-fiancé had left her for her sister. How obsessed had he remained?

Albert Jorgen—The lawyer handled all of Nadine’s personal affairs.

Roger Scott—How resentful was he that Nadine had stolen his inheritance?

Mrs. Arnold—The housekeeper served herself first.

Jerry—Does the gardener know where all the secrets are buried?

Barbie—The young nanny resents her new employer as much as her missing one.

Annie—The toddler now calls her aunt Mommy, but will she lose this one, too?

The Scott Mansion—The old Victorian house is alive with hatred and ghosts.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter One

Sasha stepped before the long oval mirror, peering at her reflection to adjust her veil. The gauzy lace hindered her sight that day, her wedding day; foolish trust blinded her every other day. Frustration jangled her nerves, so that when she lifted the veil, her shaking fingers rent the fabric, leaving it in tatters across her face.

But it wasn’t her face staring back at her through the suddenly fogging glass. It was her twin standing there, shiny black hair flowing around the shoulders of the lacy white gown, the tattered veil mingling with her thick lashes and bright-blue eyes. It was Nadine’s laughter that rang out, shattering the silence of the night and pulling Sasha from her dream.

Instead of the bright sunshine of the back room of the chapel in her dream, Sasha opened her eyes to thick darkness. But the enveloping night didn’t slow her racing heart or soothe her raw nerves. She hadn’t had that dream in years. Had the stress of her crazy day working at the high school inspired it? Counseling teens had always stressed her out. Why have the dream now?

And why did her twin’s laughter still ring in her ears?

No, not Nadine’s laughter. The phone. With shaking hands, Sasha fumbled for the receiver, knocked it onto the floor, then used the cord to reel it up to her ear. “Hello…” she stammered.

“Ms. Michaelson?” a man asked. The deep rumble of his voice rasped along her oversensitive nerve endings.

“Yes?” She wasn’t sure of her identity herself. Not after that dream.

She squinted at the illuminated face of the alarm clock on the bedside table. After midnight? Nobody called her after midnight. Her heart rate accelerated, and her hand trembled on the phone. “Who is this?”

“Sheriff Blakeslee.”

A sheriff? Sasha wrestled with the covers to sit up against the hard oak headboard, trying to clear the sleep and the awful dream from her mind. Had something happened to her parents? Had one of the kids she counseled gotten into trouble?

“What? Why…” she sputtered.

“Maybe I should have sent an officer over, but I felt I needed to tell you myself.”

“Tell me what?” Her heart hammered so hard now, she pressed a fist against it. Something bad had happened. A sheriff wouldn’t call after midnight for any other reason.

“About your sister, Ms. Michaelson.” The man’s voice vibrated with emotion. Sadness? Regret?

Sasha had her share of those feelings when it came to Nadine. She shivered, drawing the flannel comforter back around the shoulders of the faded football jersey she wore as a nightgown. Even in spring, the nights were cold in Michigan. The dream and the call had her shivering despite the warmth of the blankets.

“This is about Nadine?” She was the only sister Sasha had. Her twin. “What’s happened?”

What had Nadine done? What kind of trouble was she in this time? Sasha hadn’t heard from or about her twin in years, hadn’t even thought about her much…until tonight…until that dream….

“Ms. Michaelson, there’s…well, we believe your sister’s dead. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

Her loss? She’d lost her sister ten years ago when as a high school senior, Nadine had run away from home. “Uh, umm…” Shock numbed her brain, slowing her thought processes. “Nadine’s dead?”

No, she couldn’t accept that. It wasn’t possible. Nadine’s laughter still hung in the night.

“You’re wrong,” she told the sheriff, angry with him, with Nadine, with herself for all the lost years between them. “It can’t be her.”

“I waited until the DNA evidence confirmed—”

“No!” God, no, not Nadine. She was too young, much too young to die.

“I know this is devastating, and you’re probably concerned about Annie. But she’s all right. She hasn’t been harmed.”

“Annie?” Who was he talking about?

The deep voice roughened. “Annie is Nadine’s daughter, your niece.”

“My niece?” God, she hadn’t known. She and Nadine hadn’t talked in five years. Her eyes burned as tears swam to the surface, blurring the shadows of her dark bedroom. They would never be able to talk again, never have a chance to form the sisterly relationship they should have had as twins.

The sheriff’s voice rumbled in her ear again, “Your sister has—had—a two-year-old daughter.”

Sasha’s breath caught in her lungs, pressing against her heart. A two-year-old? A baby, really. And she’d lost her mother. “She’s all right?”

“Yes, she is,” he said, relief apparent in his soft sigh. Then he asked, “You didn’t know about Annie?”

Maybe it was the anonymity of a voice in the darkness, like a priest in a dimly lit confessional, that brought out her admission to a stranger. “I don’t know anything about my sister. I don’t even know where she’s been living, where you’re calling from.” The last place she’d seen Nadine had been in her dream. “We haven’t talked in years.”

Five years after Nadine had first run away from home, Sasha had tracked down her sister to make sure she would come to her wedding. A wedding that hadn’t taken place because Sasha had found Nadine.

“Yet in the event of anything happening to her, she named you as guardian of her daughter.” The sheriff’s voice held a trace of bitterness.

“Wh-what about the child’s father?” Was Sasha’s former fiancé Annie’s daddy? No, she doubted he and Nadine had lasted that long. Her sister had only taken him away to hurt and humiliate Sasha. Nadine had used him like she’d once bragged that she’d often used men.

Had the sheriff been involved with Nadine? From the emotion roughening his voice, she suspected he had.

“Your sister was a single mother.”

“But the little girl’s father…” Would have more right to the child than she would. Not that Sasha didn’t want Annie, this child she hadn’t known existed. Nadine’s child.

“Annie’s birth certificate says father unknown.”

So many questions burned in Sasha’s mind, the most important being, why had Nadine named her guardian of her daughter? Nadine had always resented her. Despite being twins, they’d shared nothing but the same face.

“Sheriff, I need to know—”

“You need to come to Sunset Island,” the sheriff prompted, “for Annie.”

The child was most important; the questions could wait.

“I’ll tell you everything I know when you get here,” the sheriff added.

Even if he had been involved with Nadine, how much would he know about her life? Nadine had never been the type to share, not even with her twin.

How had she died? The sheriff might know that, but would he know the rest? Would he know any of the reasons why Nadine had done the things she’d done? Why she’d run away from her family in the first place?

Now she was lost to them forever.

Poor Nadine.

Poor Annie.

Sasha flipped on the light by the bed and frantically hunted down a piece of paper and a pen as she blinked back her tears. She didn’t have time for them now; she needed to be strong for her motherless niece. “How do I get to Sunset Island? Where is it?”

“In Lake Michigan. You can take a flight into Escanaba. I’ll have a deputy meet you at the airport and drive you to the ferry that’ll bring you to the island.”

“I’ll take the first flight there.” Although Sasha had always believed they lived in different worlds, her sister had stayed in the same state, barely, on an island. She couldn’t imagine Nadine living anywhere but a bustling, exciting city. Now she wasn’t living at all.

“You’re sure…Nadine’s really dead?”

He said just one last thing before hanging up. “Yes.” The single word held a wealth of emotion, regret, guilt, sadness….

Her sister had meant something to the sheriff with the deep, rumbly voice. And as grief and guilt rushed in, lying heavy on her aching heart, Sasha realized that the angry words spoken between her sister and her, the grudge she’d harbored these past five years—none of it mattered now. Nothing mattered but that Nadine was really gone this time.

It didn’t matter that the only vow Sasha had made on what should have been her wedding day was that she would never let Nadine hurt her again. That vow had been broken, along with Sasha’s heart, with the loss of her twin.

And the last traces of Nadine’s laughter died away in the darkness…leaving only the jarring sound of Sasha’s sobs.

REED STARED AT THE PHONE he’d just put back on the charger. Her sister hadn’t exactly broken down over Nadine’s death. In fact she’d seemed more shocked to learn that she was an aunt.

He rubbed a hand over his jaw, over the stubble he hadn’t had time to shave off. God, he wasn’t being fair. Everybody handled loss in their own way. But she had admitted that she’d known nothing about Nadine’s life. And Nadine had never mentioned her.

Then why give her Annie?

He strode across the small living room to the open door of the spare bedroom. Light spilled into the room, falling across the face of the child sleeping on the mattress he’d pulled onto the floor. He didn’t have a crib, didn’t even know if she’d still sleep in one at two years old. Because of his ex, he’d never learned the things he’d wanted to learn about kids. Never had any of his own.

But in his heart Annie was his. He’d brought her into the world. He had been the first to touch her soft, tear-damp cheek. The first person who had met her crystal-blue gaze. And Nadine, grateful for his help delivering her child when they’d been snowed in on the island, had asked him to be Annie’s godfather.

So, why not her guardian?

He eased down onto the floor next to the mattress, the bare wood boards hard and cold beneath his worn-denim-covered legs. Even in spring the temperature still dropped below freezing at night on the island. Reaching across the mattress, he tugged a soft blanket up over the comforter. Then he tucked the baby-blue satin edge under her chin.

Annie’s security blanket. The kid would need that blanket more than ever. How much security would she have now that her mother was dead and she would be turned over to a stranger?

His gut twisted, anger and regret churning inside him. He’d known something was going on with Nadine, but despite sharing the birth of her child, they hadn’t shared much else. Nadine’s secrets had died with her.

Violently.

During his years as a Detroit Homicide detective, he’d seen a lot of gruesome things. But the blood pooled on the marble floor and dripping from the walls of the foyer of Nadine’s house had affected him strongly because it had spilled from a woman he’d known…personally. Maybe would have known more personally if the timing had been different.

Even now, more than two years later, bitterness over his divorce burned in him. And Nadine’s heart had been heavy with the secrets she carried and refused to share. But because of his role as Annie’s godfather, they’d been friends.

And now she was gone.

Where the hell had the sick bastard hidden her body? Reed hadn’t found it yet. So Nadine’s survivors would have nothing to bury but memories.

He brushed the tangle of black curls back from the little girl’s face, then stroked his finger over her soft cheek. A shaky little breath sighed out of her rosebud lips. Would Annie even remember her mother? She was so young.

If her aunt took her away, would the child remember him?

Perhaps the woman would stay on Sunset Island? Not damned likely. Not even with the inheritance of the old Scott mansion would a young woman willingly endure the isolation of a mostly undeveloped island where motor vehicles weren’t even allowed.

So why had Nadine? After she’d inherited the mansion from her former employer, why hadn’t she sold it and left for the brighter attractions of a city? What had she been hiding, or from whom?

And why in the hell hadn’t he pushed harder to find out?

If he had, she might be alive. But he’d been afraid, for Annie’s sake, of what he might find. Even though he’d found no evidence to support some of the rumors whispered around the small, gossipy community about Nadine, he could have dug deeper into her past. But then he might have found something to take her away from Annie. Now someone else had.

And now that it was too late to save her, he’d started the deep digging in the hopes of uncovering the identity of her killer. That was one of the reasons he’d given up Homicide and moved to a small rural department where the most violent thing that had ever happened was a bar fight. He’d gotten sick of being called when it was too late, when he couldn’t save the victim anymore…like he should have saved Nadine.

He lifted his gaze toward the window, not that he could see anything outside the dark glass. Fog and the blackness of a starless night wrapped around the small cottage. As soon as the sun had dropped from the sky, thick moisture had risen from the cold surface of the lake and drifted across the island, seeming to isolate it from the mainland even more than the miles of water surrounding it.

No, Sasha Michaelson wouldn’t be staying.

His ex-wife hadn’t even liked to visit when he’d bought the cottage on the island years ago, although like many other things, she hadn’t admitted her displeasure until their divorce. She would never have given up the bustle of Detroit for the backwardness of Sunset Island. She’d pointed out that few women would, that he’d never have the family he wanted if he moved there.

Fudge shops were the main retail store. For any other shopping or entertainment, an islander had to take a ferry to the Upper Peninsula and from there another hour’s drive to a city. The isolation was so extreme few people stayed year-round, but Nadine had. He had delivered Annie because Nadine had been determined to have her child on the island…and there had been no one else around.

Before Nadine’s murder, he’d considered the isolation of the island the perfect atmosphere to raise children, safe from all the dangers of the world. He’d seen those dangers up close and personal while he’d been a homicide detective. He hadn’t ever thought that kind of danger would visit Sunset Island. But it had.

That was why, despite the nanny at the mansion, Reed hadn’t taken Annie back there. He wanted to keep her close and safe…until he had to hand her over to a stranger.

THE CHOPPY WAVES jerked the ferry up and down. In addition to the rooster spray shooting out of the rear of the boat, a fine mist rose from the lake. Damp and cold, Sasha huddled inside her coat, shivering. Maybe she should have gone below, as the deputy suggested, but she’d been drawn to the deck, to the anger of the water and the closeness of the low-hanging dark clouds that suited her mood.

She hadn’t slept since the sheriff’s call despite the wait she’d had before the first flight available between Grand Rapids and Escanaba. Packing had only taken her a short while. The rest of the time she’d spent looking through the family albums her parents had entrusted to her while they RV’d across America in their retirement.

Old-fashioned and on a fixed income, they’d refused to get a cell phone, so she had no way of contacting them to let them know about their other daughter.

That she was dead.

They would call her on Sunday night, as always. She’d left a message on her machine for them to call her cell. And then she’d have to break the news as the sheriff had broken it to her…over the phone.

How was she going to tell them? “Nadine’s dead.” That simply? But nothing was simple about this. She didn’t even know how her sister had died. Their parents would want to know that.

Nadine was their biggest regret. Instead of supporting her through her difficulties, they’d threatened and punished her. The bad grades hadn’t been Nadine’s fault; she’d been dyslexic. But their parents hadn’t understood that. If she’d tried harder, they’d argued, she could have gotten grades as good as Sasha’s. After all, they were twins.

But so very, very different. Never more so than now that one of them lived and one had died.

Maybe Nadine had been right all along. Everything bad always happened to her. But was it, as their parents claimed, because of the choices she’d made?

Somehow, despite their long separation, Sasha was sure if given the choice, Nadine would have chosen life. If not for herself…then for her daughter. Wouldn’t she? Wouldn’t the responsibility of a child have caused her wild sister to settle down?

Nadine had a daughter.

That was the other thing she had to tell her parents. “I’m an aunt. You’re grandparents.”

Nadine’s running away had aged them. Could they handle these shocks?

God, she hoped so…because she needed someone to talk to. The sheriff’s deputy had barely said two words to her since picking her up at the airport. His first reaction had been an audible gasp, then she had explained that she was—had been—Nadine’s twin.

A dark shadow fell across the deck, and Sasha lifted her gaze toward the sky. The thick clouds had shifted even lower, an impenetrable layer blocking out the sun. A sense of foreboding chilled her soul, and she shivered. She was being silly, letting the deputy’s reaction affect her. She wasn’t her sister’s ghost, she was her niece’s guardian.

From his end of the bench seat on the ferry, the deputy kept shooting her furtive glances. When she caught him, red flooded his pitted cheeks. He reminded her of the teenagers she counseled at the high school; heck, he probably wasn’t much older.

Today, Sasha felt a lot older. It had nothing to do with sleep loss and everything to do with Nadine’s loss. Despite that vow she’d made, she’d always had a little hope in her heart that they’d be able to make amends someday. That they’d be able to form that almost sacred relationship that twins were supposed to have.

Now Sasha felt no hope. Although she was used to counseling teens, she knew nothing about babies. At two, wasn’t Annie still a baby? Could she talk? Did she know her mother was dead?

Was she devastated? As devastated as Sasha?

Fear gripped Sasha, clenching her already knotted stomach muscles. As her sister, as her twin, she’d failed Nadine. She should have been there for her, should have stopped her from running away all those years ago. Would she fail Nadine’s daughter, too?

Tired of the thoughts running through her head, she turned toward the deputy. “Can you tell me how my sister died?”

The sheriff hadn’t given her any details, hadn’t given her much of anything but a sense of disapproval. Not all siblings were close. She shouldn’t feel guilty for knowing nothing about Nadine’s life, but she did. The guilt gnawed at her, leaving her feeling hollow inside.

The deputy’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard then shook his head. “No, Miss Michaelson.”

“You don’t know?” Or he didn’t want to tell her? Maybe it had been suicide? No, Nadine wouldn’t have done that. She’d always been so independent, so strong. But if it had been an accident, surely the sheriff would have said.

“Sheriff Blakeslee said he’d tell you everything when we meet him on the island, ma’am.” And from his diffident tone, the young deputy was too in awe of the sheriff to ever consider disobeying a command from the man.