Tell Me Your Secrets...

When she picked up the call, Cameron said, “I hear you’ve had a rough time.”

“Rough time?” Sloan repeated. He hadn’t quite put together in his mind what he wanted to say to Cameron. “I guess you could say so.”

She laughed softly. “You’re pissed at Dad and me both, aren’t you?”

He nearly smiled then, and was surprised that he could. But then Cameron had always understood him so well. Just as he had always understood her. “To borrow a phrase from James, you’re a smart gal. It was a near thing.” He paused to push the memory out of his mind. “We nearly lost your sister.”

“Yeah. I got that much from Dad. Believe me, we had no idea that Beatrice was the one who pushed me. My prime suspect was Austin, but I didn’t think he had the guts to do it himself.”

“The police are still checking to make sure he wasn’t involved in some way, but I think they’ll find that Beatrice was acting alone, albeit perhaps in some measure on his behalf.”

“What’s my sister like?”

“Like?” Sloan let his gaze move out past the gardens to the stables and the hills beyond. A series of scenes moved through his mind—nearly running her down on the bluff, kissing her in the garden, watching her stand up to James at that dinner party, finding her poking around in his refrigerator, seeing her face down Beatrice in the tower. He wondered when it was that he’d first started falling in love with her.

“Earth to Sloan,” Cameron prompted.

Sloan tried to clear his mind. “Your sister, Brooke, is curious and stubborn and courageous and…amazing. And I’m in love with her, Cam.”

When Cameron spoke, he could hear the smile in her voice. “I take it our engagement’s off.”

He smiled then. “Yeah. I’d say so. It’ll piss the old man off.”

“Not at all. Haven’t you figured it out yet? Part of the reason he contacted Brooke was he thought the two of you might make a better match than you and I. I told him the night I left for L.A. that I was having second thoughts about marrying you. I told him that both of us deserved the chance to find what he’d found with Elizabeth.”

Sloan turned and saw that James was watching him. He should have guessed it sooner. “That sly old fox.”

“Oh, he’s that all right, and we just continue to play into his hands. But in this case, I think he’s done us both a favor. After watching my sister’s soap for five weeks, I think she just might be perfect for you. You’ll never be able to predict what she’ll do next.”

“Well, there’s that.” Then his expression sobered. “But that night when you left, you weren’t going to go along with the old man’s plans, were you? I’ve had some time to think about it. You were really going to call off the wedding.”

Cameron laughed. “We’ll never know that for sure, will we? Why don’t we just say that I’m happy to have a twin who can take my place. She is going to take my place, right?”

“I haven’t gotten her input on that yet.”

“Want some advice from a kid sister?”

“Yeah.” It was his turn to laugh now, and he felt his tension and anger melt away. “Yeah, that would be good.”

WHEN SLOAN AND SATURN found me, I was sitting on the bluff very close to the spot where I’d first met Sloan. He didn’t say a word as he dismounted. After he’d secured the horse, he sat down next to me and merely put his arm around me. Almost at once, the thoughts that had been swirling around in my head settled, and I felt suddenly and completely at home.

“I know you needed some time to think,” Sloan said. “But I couldn’t give you any more.”

“It’s all so sad. I’m a writer. I should at least in my imagination be able to understand Beatrice’s motivations, but I’m having trouble getting my mind around what she did, what she lived with all of these years.”

“She did it for what we’re looking at right now. But she can’t have been completely sane to have murdered all of them. My father, both of James’s wives.” His arm tightened around me. “Then to have almost murdered you and Cameron…”

He turned to me then and tipped my face up so that I met his eyes. “I had a talk with Cameron.”

My stomach knotted. I didn’t want to ask the question, but I had to know the answer. “Did you work everything out?”

“Yeah. You might say that. When do you have to go back to L.A.?”

My heart sank. Did he think that I was just going to leave, that everything that had happened between us was…Another thought occurred to me. Were he and Cameron going to go ahead with their wedding? Had he come up here to say goodbye? “I—” There was a lump in my throat I couldn’t seem to get any more words around.

“I want to go with you.”

I blinked and stared at him. “You want to go with me?”

“Yeah. To L.A. I’ve got this little plot—you’d probably call it a story line—and I thought that you might help me flesh it out and then see if it would fly on Secrets?”

I studied him, trying to read something in those dark gray eyes. “You have a story line for Secrets?”

“Yeah.” Sloan tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. “It’s about these twins who were separated at birth, and one of them was given up for adoption. Years later, the twin who wasn’t given up for adoption disappears just before her wedding, and the other one, just learning of her sister’s existence, decides to take her place.”

His hand had moved to the back of my neck and those fingers began to work their magic on me. The chill I’d experienced when he’d told me he’d worked things out with Cameron was fading as the heat spread from his touch all the way through me.

“Then there’s what you call a complication.” He brushed his mouth against mine, and even as he drew back, my lips parted in response.

“A complication?”

“Umm, hmm,” he murmured as he leaned down to kiss me lightly again. “She finds that she’s very attracted to her twin sister’s fiancé.”

He was trailing kisses along the side of my jaw. When he reached my ear, he said, “And another complication is that he’s incredibly attracted to her. He can’t be near her and not want his hands on her. Not want to be inside of her. And that’s not all….”

His teeth nipped my earlobe, but then he drew away again. “The final complication is…I love you, Brooke Ashby. I’m not going to marry Cameron. She doesn’t want to marry me, either.”

For a moment, I didn’t know what to say. My blood was pounding and there was a ringing in my ears. This was exactly the way I would have written it—if I were writing it. But this was actually happening to me—Ms. Nothing-ever-happens-to-me Brooke Ashby. Then I saw something come into his eyes. Was it fear?

“You’re going to have to say something, Red.”

“It’s a great story line. But there are so many possible complications. There’s the land and James…my father.”

“Forget him. He’s probably hatching some new plot even as we speak. You come by your talents naturally.”

“There’s my job in L.A.”

“It’s not a long commute.”

“But—if the wedding’s off—I mean—won’t my father change the will? Won’t you have to make new plans?”

Now it was impatience that flashed in his eyes. “I told you my plans. I’m coming to L.A. for a while. I want us to have some time together away from here. Away from all that’s happened here. Gus can run things for a bit. And after James decides what to do with the ranch, we’ll come up with a new plan.” He tightened his hand at the back of my neck. “Haven’t you ever worked with another writer?”

“Collaborated, you mean?”

“Yeah. We can collaborate. There’s only one thing you have to say if you want our story line to continue. Don’t make me wait any longer to hear it.”

Suddenly, I couldn’t wait to hear it, either. “I love you, Sloan Campbell.”

When his mouth took mine, suddenly all the complications melted away. I knew that we could work everything out. And we would work everything out—together.

Epilogue

I SAT ON THE BED with Hannibal and watched my sister step out of her shoes and then move quickly to the sitting area of her bedroom. My sister. It had been nearly a week since she’d returned to the ranch from Los Angeles, and I was still getting to know her. Still getting used to the idea that she was my sister and that looking at her was like looking into a mirror.

Not that we’d had much chance to really talk to each other yet. The past few days had been hectic. First there’d been more visits from the police, then Beatrice’s funeral and finally, my parents had surprised me by flying in from Chicago to assure themselves that I was safe and to meet James. As a result, Cameron and I hadn’t been able to spend much time together. Tomorrow we had a date to go riding. Sloan had offered to let me take Saturn, and Cameron would ride Lace Ribbons.

But first we had to get through tonight. An hour ago, right after we’d had dinner, my father—I was still getting used to calling James that—had announced that he’d signed a new will that afternoon, and then he’d revealed the contents. My stomach was still churning, and I was sure that Cameron’s was, too. She couldn’t be happy with what her father had done.