Christmas Babies

“I have a sister, Bryan.”

He shrugged. “Lots of people have sisters.”

Danni took a deep breath, steeling herself. “A twin sister. You’ve…you’ve met her.”

He was getting the picture now. She could see it in his eyes. But his expression was unreadable. She would have preferred his anger, his outrage.

She didn’t know how long they would’ve remained like this, frozen in a dreadful tableau. But then the front door opened, and heels clicked across the oak floor.

“Bryan? Bryan, I hope you’re here—” Kristine appeared in the arch to the living room. And then she, too, froze as she glanced from Bryan to Danni and back again. Bryan faced them both.

Identical twin sisters!

Dear Reader,

What would it be like to have a twin? That’s something I’ve often asked myself. I’m very close to my two sisters, but I can’t help wondering what it would be like to have an identical twin. Would I find the similarities comforting? Or would I rebel against them?

These are the questions I’ve explored while writing Christmas Babies. Danni Ferris has tried as hard as she can to establish her own identity, her own life. But sibling closeness—and sibling rivalry—keep getting in the way. Especially when Danni and her identical twin sister fall in love with the same man…

I hope you enjoy reading Danni’s story—and meanwhile I wish you a joyful holiday season!

Sincerely,

Ellen James

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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 FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

THE MAN WAS even more attractive than Danni had remembered. Dark brown eyes, darker hair…decisive features, a look of unassailable confidence. Bryan McKay also gave the impression that he appreciated the humor in a situation. Right now he was gazing at Danni with the faintest of smiles.

“You work fast,” he said.

She flushed. Maybe she was being a little overenthusiastic. There’d been no answer when she’d knocked at Bryan’s half-open door. And so she had wandered inside his house, started to get familiar with the place. A few moments later he’d appeared and found her in this rather awkward position, kneeling on the floor of the living room, her tape measure skittering out across the baseboard. She became uncomfortably aware of her less than professional appearance—windblown hair, denim shirt, canvas shorts, work boots. Ordinarily she met clients wearing a suit and heels. But today’s business…well, it wasn’t ordinary.

Danni had first seen Bryan a few months ago, when she’d joined Partner to Partner, a volunteer association of San Diego executives. Since then they’d had a few casual conversations at luncheons, charity dinners and the like. Bryan had mentioned the house he’d recently purchased, and its need for remodeling. Danni had mentioned her longtime dream of doing exactly that—remodeling a house with her own two hands. Of course, she’d told Bryan, her advertising career left no time for dreams. He’d told her not to be so sure. And then last week—unexpectedly—he’d called her, proposing this meeting. Maybe Danni could take on Bryan’s house. They would discuss the idea, anyway.

“I guess I got ahead of myself,” she admitted now, reeling in her tape measure. “It’s just that ever since my Grandpa Daniel taught me how to use a miter saw, I’ve wanted to do some real carpentry work.”

Bryan merely stood there watching her, his gaze lingering. She couldn’t deny that she’d been attracted to him during their brief encounters in the past.

“I’m sure,” Danni said, “what you really want is a professional contractor—”

“First rule,” Bryan said. “Don’t sell yourself short. Didn’t they teach you that in advertising school?”

Danni grimaced. “It would be different if I were trying to sell you on an ad campaign—”

“Because it wouldn’t matter to you nearly as much,” he interrupted.

The insight surprised her, and unsettled her, too. “I guess we should discuss specifics,” she said, trying to sound brisk. But suddenly Bryan walked toward her, took her hand and drew her up beside him. He had an air of knowing what he wanted. And his eyes seemed to say that right now he wanted her.

“Ridiculous,” Danni muttered under her breath. Why was her imagination suddenly running away with her? She was usually very levelheaded.

“You are beautiful,” he murmured now. She felt an odd sense of unease, small details intruding on the edge of her consciousness: the warm breeze stirring through the open window beside her, the dusty surface of the oak floors…the look in the man’s eyes. Bryan drew her toward him, and then he put his arms around her and kissed her.

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.”

Danni battled a growing frustration. “No way,” she said. “Forget it. You refuse to see things the way they really are, Kris. You spin fantasies, you cling to half truths—”

Kristine turned back and gave her a hard look. “If you’re so against deception, why didn’t you tell Bryan the truth yourself?”

At first Danni simply couldn’t answer. She stared out at the moonlit night, remembering this afternoon…remembering the way Bryan McKay had taken her into his arms and kissed her. Just thinking about it, her skin tingled with warmth.

“He is rather hard to resist, isn’t he?” Kristine remarked.

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“Sure,” Kristine said. “Nothing.”

Danni curled her fingers against her palms. Why hadn’t she told Bryan the truth, once she’d realized what her sister had done? Instead she’d pulled away from him, mumbled some incoherent excuse, and rushed out the door. It had all been so embarrassing and undignified. Why couldn’t she have handled the matter with some authority?

Maybe her sister was right. Maybe she hadn’t told Bryan the truth because she did find him attractive…very attractive. But slowly another answer came to her. Perhaps deep down she’d known it all along. The main reason she hadn’t enlightened Bryan was because, quite frankly, she’d felt an odd, surprisingly intense disappointment. If a man was going to kiss her the way he’d done, she wished that he could have told her apart from her sister. Kristine and Danni were different. And for once, just once, Danni wanted a man to see without being told.

“What I find most interesting of all,” Kristine said astutely, “is that during your little social tête-á-tête you neglected to tell Bryan you even have a twin.”

“We were just casual acquaintances. The subject of twins never came up. But he needs to know the truth now,” Danni said. “All of it. And if you can’t tell him, I certainly will—”

“No,” Kristine said urgently. “Just give me a few days. I promise I’ll tell Bryan—but just let me do it in my own way, my own time.”

Danni pressed her hand to the window. Waves glided across the sand, surged and fell back.

“Just two days, Danni. That’s all I’m asking.”

Maybe, deep down, Danni was a coward. Because she certainly didn’t want to be the one to tell Bryan he’d been tricked. She didn’t want to see the look on his face when he found out.

“Two days, Kris,” she said at last. “You have forty-eight hours…and not a minute more.”

BRYAN HAD EXPECTED his mother to be taking it real easy. That had been the first thing he’d suggested. It had all happened so quickly. Son gets the midnight call. Son drops everything, flies out to Saint Louis to arrange things. Son transports mother, mother’s belongings and mother’s three cats back to San Diego. Thus son fulfills his dying mother’s plea to live out the last few remaining months of her life in the city of her birth. So what the hell was the old gal doing perched on a high stool, dusting the pantry cabinets?

“I’ve hired a service, Mom. Cleaning’s done three times a week. Meals are Monday through Friday. The weekends we’ll have to fend for ourselves, but that shouldn’t be a problem—”

“I’m not dead yet, Bryan,” his mother said, still chasing phantom cobwebs and imagined dust bunnies with a damp cloth. “I’ve cooked and cleaned and looked after myself since I was ten years old. That’s fifty-seven years of managing things—”

“59 years, Mom. You were sixty-nine last May.”

“I know when my own birthday is,” she muttered. She strained to reach a far corner of the pantry shelves, teetering dangerously on the edge of the stool. Bryan stepped forward, ready to stop her from toppling off. She scowled at him.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Just fine.”

She was anything but fine. She’d lost too damn much weight, seeming to shrink right before his eyes. Her once-thick hair hung listlessly, and new lines had etched into her face. The cancer seemed to be whittling away at her. He’d talked to the doctors in Saint Louis, rounded up the best he could find here in San Diego. They all used the same words, the same phrases. Incurable. Inoperable. We’ll make her as comfortable as we can.

Bryan wasn’t ready to give in just yet. And neither, it seemed, was his mother. She swiped her cloth along another shelf.

“You found me a very nice apartment, Bryan, even if the neighborhood is a bit upscale for my taste.”

The remark was typical of her—paying him a compliment but being sure to throw in a little criticism at the same time. Ever since he was a kid, his mother had operated on the “don’t let your son get a swelled head” theory of parenthood. Namely, she’d done everything in her power to ensure that Bryan didn’t turn out like his father: conceited and cocksure, self-important and self-indulgent.

Not that Bryan had ever had much of a chance to imitate his father. He’d only been seven when Randall McKay was killed in a boating accident. In all the years afterward, his mother had freely elaborated on her dead husband’s faults. She’d dwelled on his inconsistencies, his many annoying habits…never quite able to hide how much she’d loved him in spite of his flaws or how angry she was at him for leaving her. Her complaints about him were her way of keeping him alive. Bryan had long since figured that out.

Funny thing was, lately she hadn’t talked much at all about him. That worried Bryan. Of course, everything about his mother worried him these days.

“I’m not sure an apartment was the right way to go,” he said now.

“I know you wanted to stick me in a nursing home, Bryan. Or, even worse, have me live with you. A parent should never live with a grown child. It’s not good for either of them.”

Elizabeth McKay had a lot of rules. She was not a woman who tolerated shades of gray; she cherished absolutes.

“Okay,” Bryan said, “so you won’t move in with me. But what I really had in mind wasn’t actually a nursing home. More of a…cooperative living arrangement, with nurses on duty—”

“Nursing home,” said his mother flatly. “Doesn’t matter what you call it, or how fancy it is.”

Another of Elizabeth’s absolutes: she would not end up in a nursing home, no matter what the circumstances. So Bryan was playing it her way, trying to give her the dignity of spending her last few months as she wished.

He felt a heaviness inside. His mother had raised him single-handedly, with virtually no help from anyone. Among his father’s failings had been improvidence. Randall McKay had left his widow with no insurance, no assets and a pile of bills. After his death, she’d struggled along on a secretary’s salary. And—unknown to Bryan at first—she’d cleaned houses in her off hours in order to afford a few luxuries for him. Basketball shoes, a guitar when he went through his music phase, even sailing lessons “so you’ll learn not to kill yourself on the water like your poor reckless father.”

Bryan still remembered the jolt he’d had at the age of twelve when, emerging from youthful self-absorption, he’d finally figured out what his mother was doing. Her long hours weren’t all spent at the office typing reports and financial statements. Instead, she spent a good portion of her time mopping other people’s floors, scrubbing their kitchen sinks, scouring their bathroom tiles. Pride had kept her from telling Bryan. Pride…and not wanting him to feel guilty. The day he’d learned the truth had been the beginning of manhood for him. It had given him a hearty dislike for deception, and it had made him vow someday he’d be rich enough so that his mother wouldn’t have to work at all.

Of course, he hadn’t counted on her stubbornness, or her independence. She’d kept right on working, well past the time when he could have supported her several times over. It had been something of a coup when at last he’d convinced her to retire. She’d chosen Saint Louis, to be near one of her girlhood friends. But now…now she was back in San Diego, trying to arrange the end of her life as neatly as she was arranging the cans on her pantry shelves.

Having set down her cloth, she’d lined up the potato soup next to the cream of tomato. “It would be nice,” she said, “if you could meet someone, Bryan. Someone besides those dreadful businesswomen you usually surround yourself with.”

Another backhanded compliment. “Actually,” Bryan said, surprising himself, “I have met someone.”

His mother perked right up. “Oh—who is she?”

He smiled a little. “You could say she’s a carpenter.”

Elizabeth shrugged. “That’s different, at least. About time you got away from those icy corporate types.”

Bryan had to smile again at that. Danni was indeed a “corporate type,” but hardly icy. Maybe she’d been standoffish at first, but at their last few meetings all that had changed.

“What’s her name?” Elizabeth asked.

“Danni. Danni Ferris.”

“Go on,” his mother said impatiently. “Is it serious?”

There was only so much he was willing to share. He didn’t tell his mother a whole lot about his personal life; that was one of his rules.

“Bryan,” said his mother, “don’t keep me in suspense. Is it serious?”

Maybe there was no point in hiding the truth. Especially since his mother was so ill. And so he gave a grudging nod.

“Could be,” he said. Finally, Bryan saw a smile ease the pain and weariness on his mother’s face.

CHAPTER TWO

IT WAS GOING TO BE a long night at the offices of Nolan, Williams and Beck. A new account had just been dumped on Danni’s desk, deadline yesterday, and she was brainstorming with the two members of her team. At least, she was attempting to brainstorm while one half of her team sat slumped over a notepad, making non-sensical doodles, and the other half rambled on.