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Synopsis
What she doesn't know ...
The victims are all found face-down in the murky waters of the creek that runs through Cherokee Pointe, Tennessee. They are naked, except for the black satin ribbon tied around their necks. And each murdered woman shares a single characteristic ... they are all redheads ...
Just might ...
Socialite Reve Sorrell has come to Cherokee Pointe seeking answers about her family history and her shocking connection to wrong-side-of-the-tracks Jazzy Talbot. With their stunning good looks and shining red hair, the two are mirror images of each other—twins abandoned at birth and raised in very different worlds. And whoever left them for dead on a cold night thirty years ago isn't about to let them uncover the truth now ...
Kill her
As a serial killer leaves another chilling calling card in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains, Reve turns to Sheriff Jacob Butler to help her unravel the potentially deadly secrets of her past. But someone will do anything to stop her ... someone who won't make the same mistake twice ... someone more cunning than she knows ... and closer than she ever could imagine ...
Release date: July 31, 2018
Publisher: Pinnacle Books
Print pages: 384
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As Good as Dead
Beverly Barton
Kat Baker applied the dark pink lipstick to her mouth, tossed the plastic wand onto the dressing table and stood up to view herself in the full-length mirror. Studying her image, she decided she looked damn good, despite her hair color, an outrageous shade of dark red. She’d been a brunette since childhood and had gone blonde in her early twenties, but never had she considered dyeing her long, glossy mane red. However, being a working girl whose livelihood depended upon pleasing her clientele, she did whatever the men in her life requested. And this new man had the money to pay for the exclusive rights to her whenever he was in town.
Tonight would mark their fourth “date.” When he’d telephoned two days ago, he’d given her specific instructions on how to dress and where to meet him, just as he’d done on two previous occasions. He called himself Harry—no last name—but she knew that wasn’t his real name. Few of her clients ever divulged their true identities and she couldn’t blame them, although some used their real given names. They seemed to want to hear her cry out their name when she came. And she was good at faking those earth-shattering orgasms many men tried so hard to give her.
But Harry wasn’t like that. He didn’t seem to give a damn whether or not she got off, just as long as he did. A shudder passed through her as she recalled the last time he’d been in town. He’d come here the first time, as most of her johns did, to this small Knoxville apartment she rented strictly for her business dealings. She kept another place—her own private home—across town in a nicer neighborhood where no one knew what she did for a living. The first two times with Harry, he’d been aggressive and demanding, but hadn’t requested anything out of the ordinary. But the third time had been different. And truth be told, if he hadn’t offered her such an exorbitant amount of money to be available whenever he came to Knoxville, she’d never see him again. She could deal with rough sex, even with mild S&M, but Harry had come damn near close to choking her. When she’d managed to breathe again, she had tried to get away from him, but he’d held her down and fucked her like crazy.
Before he’d left that night, he’d given her a huge sum in cash, instructed her to dye her hair red and to wear a black corded ribbon around her neck the next time they were together. He’d even pulled the ribbon from his pocket and handed it to her. The guy gave her the creeps, but she’d convinced herself that he hadn’t really hurt her—just scared the shit out of her—and the money was three times what she usually made. A woman in her business who was over thirty had to think about her future, didn’t she?
Kat opened the middle drawer in her dressing table, reached inside and pulled out the black ribbon. As she tied it at the back of her neck, she wondered just what it was about this strip of black braided satin that turned Harry on. Probably some freaky thing from his past. Something to do with his mommy or his nanny or his teenage sweetheart.
Grabbing her purple leather jacket from the closet where she kept her working clothes, she thought ahead to her appointment and wondered what Harry would do to her tonight. Whatever it was, she was sure she’d earn her pay.
Kat’s eyelids fluttered as she tried to open her eyes, but the lids were heavy. So heavy. Her head throbbed something awful. Where was she? What had happened to her? Why couldn’t she remember?
She heard an odd noise rumbling in her ears and realized it was the sound of her own groans. Wake up, Kat. Dammit, girl, wake up.
Something odd was going on. Had somebody drugged her? Think. Try to remember. She’d had an appointment with Harry tonight. Oh, God, that was it! The last thing she remembered was having drinks with Harry. Wine. She hated wine, but he’d insisted, telling her that it was a very expensive bottle he’d bought especially for them.
Suddenly she felt something brush over her breasts. Hands. Large hands. A man’s hands. But those hands felt strange, as if they were covered in plastic.
She tried again to open her eyes, but without success. Then she tried to speak, but all she managed was a hoarse moan.
“You’re beautiful, Dinah,” a man said, his hands caressing her body with gentle force.
Who the hell was Dinah?
Kat moaned and tried again to open her eyes. When she gazed up at the man hovering over her, she recognized him. It was Harry.
Harry looked down at her and smiled as he rammed into her. “You’re always a good fuck, Dinah. The best.”
“Har…ree…?” She couldn’t manage to keep her eyes open.
“You shouldn’t be waking up, my love. But it doesn’t matter. It’ll soon be over. For this time.”
For this time? Her mind was still so foggy she couldn’t think straight. She knew she was with Harry, knew he was screwing her and suspected he had drugged her. But why had he drugged her? He’d paid her for her services. She’d do anything he wanted. He knew that. Hell, maybe he got off fucking a woman while she was unconscious. You never knew what turned a guy on.
He pumped into her, his thrusts increasing in speed. She lifted her arms, intending to caress him, to urge him on, but her arms felt as if they weighed a hundred pounds each. That must have been some strong drug he’d put in her wine.
She forced her eyes open again only moments before Harry came. Grunting and shivering, he moaned into her ear. “Dinah…my Dinah.”
He lifted himself up and off Kat, then slid backward out of the car. Kat managed to halfway sit up. That’s when she realized they were in a parked car. She peeked out the window. Darkness. She stared at Harry, who stood just outside the open back door. He carefully removed the condom from his penis and placed it in a plastic bag.
How odd was that? Maybe the guy’s a neat freak.
After laying the bag on the floor board beside her, he zipped up his pants, which couldn’t have been an easy task with gloves on.
Gloves?
Why was Harry wearing plastic gloves?
Glancing at her, he smiled again. He reached out, shoved her back down on the seat, then caressed the black satin ribbon around her neck.
“Harry? What—”
“Hush, sweet Dinah. Don’t talk. It’s not part of our game.”
“What game?”
He laughed and the sound sent chilling ripples up her spine.
Harry untied the satin cord, then grasped the ends.
When Kat saw the wild look in his eyes, she panicked. She knew in that very instant that he was playing a deadly game.
“No…don’t,” she pleaded. “I—I don’t want to play this game.”
“I told you not to talk.”
He tightened the ribbon around her neck.
Grasping his hands, she struggled against him.
“Please…” Is he going to kill me?
He slowly tightened the ribbon more and more.
She could barely breathe. God help her, he was choking her to death.
Don’t kill me, she pleaded silently. I don’t want to die.
Allowing the good feelings to linger inside him for a few minutes, he looked up at the dark night sky and laughed aloud. God, he felt great! When he’d come, when he’d finished humping Dinah as he’d dreamed of doing, a great sense of satisfaction had claimed him completely. She had denied him, snickered at him, made him feel like a fool. But in the end, she’d given in and allowed him to make love to her.
He focused his gaze inside the car at the lovely redheaded woman lying on the backseat. Moonlight illuminated her luscious naked body—her parted thighs, her full, round breasts, her slightly open mouth. Power surged through him, every nerve in his body electrified by the dark energy flowing through him. He could taste her—all that lush sweetness. He intensified the pressure as he pulled the cord until it cut into her neck. As he squeezed the life out of her, the pressure from the ribbon burned into his palms and heat suffused his body. This was the defining moment, the pleasure almost unbearable.
It took only seconds for her to die. Or at least that was the way it seemed to him.
But she would not stay dead. She never did.
He had to act quickly, remove her body and dispose of it so that he could put this incident behind him and live in peace for a while. Until she returned to him.
Slipping his arm beneath the plastic sheet he had used to protect the car seat, he pulled her into a sitting position, wrapped the sheet around her and dragged her toward him. He didn’t especially like the scent of death, but it didn’t repulse him, either. Actually, the odor reassured him that he had accomplished his goal.
Resting there passively cocooned in the sheet, like a limp dishrag, she made no protest when he scooped her up into his arms. Although she wasn’t a large woman, she felt heavy, as if she weighed two hundred pounds.
Dead weight, he thought.
Carrying Dinah with great care, he tromped down the dark, isolated dirt road. He could hear the soft rush of the river nearby, a melodic lull carrying quietly through the woods. When he neared the edge of the embankment, he paused, leaned over and opened the sheet enough to expose her face, then leaned down and kissed her good-bye. Sighing heavily, he tossed her into the Tennessee River and stood watching while the current carried her body downstream.
Farewell, my love.
There, that was done. Now he could go home, return to his normal life and put her out of his mind. At least temporarily. Of course, it was only a matter of time before she would come back. To taunt him. To entice him. To drive him crazy until he possessed her again. Each time she left, a part of him hoped—even prayed—that she would stay away for good. But his prayers were never answered. She always came back. At first it had been years between her reappearances, but gradually she’d begun returning more frequently. Often she returned within a year or less, but most recently she had shown up again in a little over six months.
He wondered how long she would stay away this time.
Reve Sorrell closed the lid on her suitcase, lifted it off the foot of her bed and set it on the floor. She’d been up for over an hour, after waking at three, unable to sleep. Her decision to return to Cherokee Pointe had been made after a great deal of deliberation. She’d spent months unable to put Jazzy Talbot out of her mind. Back in the spring she’d driven up to the mountains to seek out the woman Jamie Upton had told her was her spitting image, a woman who looked enough like her to be her twin. She’d met Jamie at a party here in Chattanooga, back before Christmas last year. He’d been a charming jerk, the type of man she usually avoided. But he had piqued her curiosity when he’d mentioned that his teenage sweetheart, a bar and restaurant owner in Cherokee Pointe, could easily pass for Reve’s twin.
If she hadn’t been an abandoned child, adopted in infancy by wealthy socialites, Spencer and Lesley Sorrell, she’d have passed off Jamie’s comments without a second thought. But since she knew nothing about her birth parents, she’d wondered if it was possible that this Jasmine Talbot Jamie had mentioned could be her sister. So she’d disregarded what her common sense had told her—not to go digging around in the past—and had gone to Cherokee Pointe.
Her first encounter with Jazzy had been less than pleasant. She’d found the woman to be rather crude and vulgar. They had disliked each other on sight. And Reve would have returned home that very day, if she hadn’t been involved in a minor car accident.
As if wrecking her Jag hadn’t been bad enough, following the accident, the local sheriff had treated her abysmally. Sheriff Jacob Butler was an old friend of Jazzy’s and took offense at an offhand comment Reve made about the woman. It had seemed to Reve as if half the men in town were Jazzy’s friends, a fact Reve had learned both firsthand and from local gossip.
To complicate matters now that she was returning to Cherokee Pointe, she’d been plagued by thoughts of the big, surly, half-breed sheriff. He was a thoroughly unpleasant sort. A real ruffian. After their initial encounter, she had hoped she would never see the man again. But when Jamie Upton was murdered while she was still in town and a witness identified a woman fitting Jazzy’s description—and therefore her description—as having been seen with Jamie shortly before his death, Sheriff Butler had come knocking on her door. He’d had the gall to practically accuse her of the murder, had in fact assumed—erroneously—that Jamie and she had been lovers. Naturally, it hadn’t taken the authorities long to realize she wasn’t involved in the crime, so she had, thankfully, been able to escape from Cherokee Pointe and the watchful eyes of the Neanderthal sheriff.
Upon returning to Chattanooga, to her home on Lookout Mountain and her own set of friends and business associates, she’d tried to put her less than pleasant experiences in Cherokee Pointe behind her. She hadn’t wanted to think about Jazzy or the fact that they did in fact resemble each other in a way only twins did. But try as she might, she hadn’t been able to erase from her mind the image of her double, a woman of dubious character.
Reve sighed heavily. Would she regret going back to Cherokee Pointe and joining forces with Jazzy to seek the truth about their possible sisterhood? They had spoken on the phone several times recently. Somewhat reluctantly, Reve had made that first call. Thirty years ago, someone had thrown her into a Dumpster in Sevierville and left her for dead. She’d been an infant, possibly only days or weeks old at the time. However, Jazzy’s Aunt Sally, who had raised her from a baby, swore that her sister Corrine had given birth to only one child. Was Sally Talbot lying? Or was there some other explanation? Reve knew she’d never have any peace of mind until she found out the truth—the whole truth.
She hadn’t intended to leave Chattanooga this early. It wasn’t quite four-thirty. But why not go ahead and get on the road? If she left now, she’d be in Cherokee Pointe by the time Jasmine’s opened and she could have breakfast at the restaurant before meeting Jazzy at Dr. MacNair’s office around nine. They had agreed that DNA testing was the first step in discovering the truth about their past.
Not wanting to bother any of the servants at this ungodly hour, she heaved her suitcase off the bed. As she walked through the house and out to the garage, she couldn’t help wondering if she was making a monumental mistake. She and Jazzy Talbot had nothing in common, other than a strong physical resemblance—and possibly the same birth parents. Did she really want to form a familial connection with this woman who was, by all standards, socially beneath her and morally inferior? God, Reve, listen to yourself. You sound like the biggest snob in the world. All right, maybe she was a snob. No maybe about it. She was a snob. But she’d been trained by her parents and peers to look down her nose at her inferiors. There you go again, assuming just because she grew up poor, has a reputation as the town tramp and owns a honky-tonk, that Jazzy isn’t your equal.
Reve unlocked the trunk of her Jaguar, dumped the suitcase inside, then slid behind the wheel and started the car. Even if Jazzy and she turned out to be twin sisters, that didn’t mean they had to become friends. She seriously doubted that Jazzy wanted to build a relationship with her anymore than she wanted one with Jazzy. But there was a need deep inside her to find out the truth—who had thrown her in that Dumpster and why? Had her birth mother thrown her away? If so, why had she disposed of one baby and not both? And if she and Jazzy were twin sisters, why had Jazzy’s Aunt Sally lied to her all these years? After the DNA testing confirmed their relationship, the likely place to start their search for the truth was with Sally Talbot. And what a place to start—with a nutty old woman the whole town thought of as a kook.
Reve hit the button to open the garage door, backed out and then closed the door. As she entered the street, she stopped the Jag and took a long, hard look at her home. This house had belonged to her grandparents, Spencer Sorrel’s parents, and the plush mansion held only happy memories for Reve. If only she weren’t adopted. If only the Sorrells had been her biological mother and father. But her adoptive mother had pointed out to her on numerous occasions that she was a true Sorrell in every way that counted. Except by blood.
As she drove along the steep, twisting street leading off Lookout Mountain, Reve compared the similarities between this road and the one where she’d had her car accident outside Cherokee Pointe. Damn! Why had she thought about that wreck again? Automatically her mind brought Sheriff Butler to the forefront—a vivid image of his hulking six-five frame, his green eyes, his hawk nose, his fierce frown. She intended to do her best to avoid Jacob Butler while she was in Cherokee Pointe. Not only did the man annoy her, but he unnerved her. His nature was a bit too savage to suit her. He’d been more than just downright unfriendly toward her; he’d shown no respect whatsoever for who she was—one of the richest and most powerful women in the state of Tennessee.
Jazzy’s orgasm exploded inside her, eliciting a loud, guttural moan from deep in her throat. The powerful sensations went on and on until they finally tapered off into delicious aftershocks. Hot, damp, completely sated, she smothered Caleb with deliriously exuberant kisses. He toppled her off him and onto the bed, his hard penis slipping out of her during the maneuver. Before she had a chance to catch her breath, he thrust up into her. Deep and hard. Once. Twice. And then he came.
Roaring like the male animal he was, Caleb shuddered with release. Moments later, their bodies damp with sex-induced sweat, they lay on their backs, their bodies not touching, only their entwined fingers.
She loved holding hands with Caleb. A sweet, sentimental gesture, but it said so much about their relationship. About who she was when she was with him. About the type of man Caleb McCord was.
Jazzy looked up at the ceiling, stretched languidly and smiled. Sex with Caleb was always like this—explosive and fully satisfying. But there was so much more to their relationship than great sex. They were friends as well as lovers. And they were madly in love, too. Honest to goodness in love.
She didn’t know what she’d done to deserve a fabulous guy like Caleb, but she thanked God for him. And with each passing day, she trusted Caleb and the love they shared more and more. Maybe one of these days soon she would be able to accept his marriage proposal. He had asked her to marry him so many times, it had almost become a joke between them.
Almost.
Even now, months after Jamie Upton’s death, his memory haunted her. But not in the way Caleb thought it did. On some basic, totally masculine level Caleb was still jealous of Jamie, of the fact that he’d been her first love and her first lover. There was no reason for him to be jealous. She didn’t love Jamie. Only the distrust and fear Jamie had instilled in her kept him alive and allowed him to stand between her and Caleb, between her and happiness.
“Jazzy?” Caleb said her name in that lazy, sexy Memphis drawl she loved so well.
“Hm-mm?” She turned sideways and looked at the silhouette of his long, lean body there in the semidarkness of her bedroom. She knew his body as well as she knew her own.
“Marry me.”
Her smile widened. She reached over and ran her fingertips up and down his body, from throat to navel.
He grabbed her hand. “I mean it. Marry me. Let’s get a license tomorrow and just do it. We’ll elope. No fanfare, no—”
“No Miss Reba throwing a hissy fit until it’s over and done.”
“Do not bring my grandmother into this equation. I’ve told you a thousand times that I don’t give a damn what she thinks.” Totally naked, Caleb jumped out of bed and grabbed his jeans up off the floor.
Damn it, she’d hurt his feelings by questioning his loyalty to her. Her mind told her that he would never do as Jamie had done and allow Miss Reba to dictate who he could and couldn’t marry. But her heart had been broken once by an Upton heir, by the charming, worthless, womanizing Jamie. And her heart was afraid to trust, afraid to believe that Miss Reba didn’t wield the same power over Caleb that she had over her other grandson.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m putting on my clothes,” Caleb told her.
“Why? You aren’t leaving, are you? Please, Caleb, don’t go.”
He pulled on his jeans, then felt around on the floor until he found his shirt. “I’m just going outside for a few minutes. I need some early morning air to clear my head. I’ll be back in a little while.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “Just remember, I’m not Jamie. I’m not walking out on you or giving up on us. Not now or ever. You couldn’t beat me off with a stick, honey.”
“I know you’re not Jamie.” When she sat up, the sheet dropped to her waist, exposing her breasts.
“Then stop assuming I’m going to treat you the way he did. I can’t stand it when you project his actions onto me.”
Caleb turned from her and hastily left the room. Jazzy flipped on the bedside lamp, then got up and headed for the bathroom. Usually they didn’t get up this early—and seven-thirty was early for people who didn’t go to bed until two in the morning—but she had an appointment to meet Reve Sorrell in Dr. MacNair’s office at nine. Galvin had explained to them that the results of the DNA test might take a few weeks, but Reve had informed him that she would pay any extra costs necessary to facilitate a speedy response.
Jazzy turned on the water, waited a couple of minutes for it to heat, and then stepped under the showerhead. As the warm spray doused her, she thought about her future. Her first concern was Caleb. She couldn’t keep putting him off. Sooner or later he’d get tired of waiting for her to marry him. The thought of losing him was too terrible to consider, yet she wasn’t ready to say yes. There were too many unanswered questions in her life, too many loose ends she had to tie up before she could build a solid future with the man she loved. And she did love Caleb. More than she’d ever thought possible to love a man. But she had to convince him that he was the only man she loved. In order to do that, she had to let go of Jamie completely.
Since Caleb spent most nights at her apartment above Jazzy’s Joint, they usually closed the bar together and came upstairs for a late-night meal and then went to bed. She loved being with him, making love with him, sharing her life with him.
So why don’t you marry the guy? she heard Lacy Fallon’s voice inside her head. Lacy, the bartender at Jazzy’s Joint, treated Jazzy like a kid sister, giving her advice and watching out for her.
Don’t let what Jamie did to you keep you from finding happiness with Caleb, Jazzy’s best friend Genny Sloan, had told her repeatedly.
Even her own heart advised her to reach out and grab the happiness Caleb offered.
Jazzy bathed hurriedly, washed her hair and emerged from the shower, fresh and clean and clear-headed. By the time she dried her hair and dressed, Caleb would probably be back in the apartment and in the kitchen fixing their breakfast. She smiled to herself. Her Caleb was a man of many talents.
The telephone rang. Who on earth would be calling so early? Everyone knew they slept late. After wrapping a towel around her, Jazzy rushed into the bedroom to answer the phone.
“Hello.”
“Jazzy, this is Reve Sorrell. I got an early start so I’m already in town. I’m over at Jasmine’s and have just ordered breakfast. Any chance you can join me?”
“Ah…I just stepped out of the shower, but—” Maybe it was a good idea to touch base with Reve before they went to see Galvin. After all, if it turned out they really were twin sisters, as they suspected, they’d be spending a great deal of time together in the upcoming weeks. They had agreed that if the DNA tests proved they were siblings, they would work together to discover the truth about their parentage.
“If you’d rather not—” Reve said.
“No, it’s okay. I’ll hurry and dress.” Jazzy peeked through the open bedroom door and into the living room. No sign of Caleb. She listened for any sound of him in the kitchen. None.
“It’s okay if I bring Caleb along, isn’t it?”
“Sure. After all, he is your fiancé, right?”
“He most certainly is. Unofficially.”
“Have you two set a date?”
“Not yet.” Everyone assumed that sooner or later she’d accept Caleb’s proposal—everyone except Caleb’s grandmother, one of Cherokee County’s grande dames, Reba Upton.
Damn the old bitch!
“Bring him along,” Reve said. “I’ll go ahead and eat, then have coffee when y’all arrive. Or would you like for me to order for you two and wait?”
“Yes, do that. Just tell Tiffany that Caleb and I will be eating at the restaurant this morning. She knows our usual order.”
“See you soon.”
“Mm-hm.” The dial tone hummed in Jazzy’s ear.
Reve Sorrell had been pleasant enough, but not overly friendly. The woman had erected some sort of emotional barrier around herself, one that effectively kept people at bay. If they were twin sisters, how was it possible that their personalities were as different as night is from day? She supposed it all boiled down to the old question about which dominated a person’s physical, mental and emotional makeup more—nurture or nature.
Reve Sorrell was a class act. A real lady. Jazzy Talbot was a dame, a broad, a good old gal.
“Jazzy?” Caleb called to her as he entered the living room.
“Huh?”
“Want me to put on some coffee?”
Caleb might get upset with her, he might storm off in a rage, but he always came back. He never left her for more than a few minutes, an hour or two on a few occasions. He meant what he’d said about not ever leaving her. Not the way Jamie had done, time and time again.
“Reve Sorrell just called,” Jazzy said. “She wants us to meet her for breakfast over at Jasmine’s.”
“She got in early, didn’t she?”
“Yeah, she did. I guess she’s as anxious as I am to get our DNA samples sent off to the lab.”
Caleb appeared in the bedroom doorway. “Give me a couple of minutes to grab a quick shower.” As he moved past her, he paused, leaned over and kissed her cheek, then yanked off her towel before he went into the bathroom.
Jazzy hugged herself and sighed contentedly. Reve Sorrell might be a lady—a very rich and important lady—but who cared? Caleb didn’t. And it didn’t matter to him that Jazzy wasn’t some blue-blood with a lily-white reputation. He loved her just the way she was. And Caleb’s opinion was all that mattered.
Sally Talbot stood on her front porch, a tasty chaw of tobacco in her mouth. Peter and Paul, her old bloodhounds, lounged lazily under the porch, their heads barely peeking out as they snored. She wished she could sleep as easy as them two varmints did, but if they had the worries she had, they wouldn’t be sleeping so soundly either. After spitting a spray of brown juice out into the yard, Sally wiped her mouth and took a deep breath of autumn mountain air. There weren’t nothing like autumn in the Appalachians. The crisp, clean morning air. The bright colors nature painted the earth this time of year. No, sirree, weren’t no place on earth as near God’s heaven as these here mountains.
All her life—some seventy-one years now—she’d spent here in Cherokee County, most of it in this same old house her pa had built for her ma before he up and died of TB back in forty-nine. And all these years she’d been an oddball, different from folks hereabout. Not crazy, mind you, but not quite all there either. She had book learning. She could read and write and add up figures. And she knew these hills as well as anybody, better than most. She’d always been poor and hadn’t never cared a hoot about money. Not until Jazzy came into her life. She’d wanted to give that gal everything her little heart desired, but she’d failed miserably. She’d done the best she could. If she’d had a man bringing in a living, things might have been better, but she and Jazzy had made out all right. They’d had a roof over their heads and they’d never gone hungry. Jazzy had grown up to be a fine woman, a real smart woman who’d done all right for herself. Her gal owned a restaurant and a bar in Cherokee Pointe and she was a partner with some other people in Cherokee Cabin Rentals. Yep, she was damn proud of her niece.
A chill racked Sally’s body. “Winter’s coming,” she said to no one in particular.
But it wasn’t the cool morning breeze that had chilled Sally. It was thoughts of Jazzy. Her little Jasmine. She’d named Jazzy for them beautiful flowers that her sister Corrine had loved so. When she’d put Jasmine in Corrine’s arms thirty years ago, she’d never dreamed that within a few months Corrine would be dead—her and her lover—and she’d be left to raise Jazzy all alone. But there hadn’t been a day passed that she hadn’t thanked the good Lord for that gal. She loved Jazzy as if she were her own, and Jazzy loved her like a mother.
“God, forgive me and please help me,” Sally said softly. “You know I didn’t have no idea there was another baby, that Jazzy had a sister.”
Reve Sorrell might not be her sister, Sally told herself. Could just be a coincidence that they look so much alike. But if that DNA test they was having done proved them to be twins, then Jazzy was going to be asking a lot more questions. She’d want to know how it was possible that her aunt Sally hadn’t known nothing about another baby.
All the lies she’d told Jazzy from the time she’d been a little girl would come back to haunt her—if that Sorrell gal turned out to be Jazzy’s sister. She knew what Jazzy would say to her, could almost hear her.
“You told me that my mama came back home to you right before I was born, that her boyfriend had run out on her and she had no place else to go. You told me that you delivered me and that you sent for old Doc Webster a few days later to record my birth and check me and Mama to make sure we were all right. Isn’t that so? Tell me, Aunt Sally, did you or did you not deliver another baby? Were you the one who threw my sister away?”
Them there DNA tests wouldn’t lie. If they proved them gals to be sisters, then Sally had some explaining to do. If I tell Jazzy the truth, will she hate me? I just couldn’t bear it if that gal hated me.
Genny Sloan stopped suddenly on her morning trek from the greenhouse to her back porch. Although she’d seldom been able to control the visions that came to her, she had learned what signs to expect, signs that forewarned her.
Drudwyn paused at her side, then licked her hand.
“It’s all right, boy. I think I can make it to the porch.” Genny stroked the half-wolf dog’s head. “But if I don’t make it, you let Dallas know that I need him.”
Drudwyn hurried ahead of her, then paused and waited at the door. Genny made it to the porch. Barely. She slumped down on the back steps and closed her eyes. She’d been born with the gift of sight, a God-given talent inherited from her grandma. More times than not, she’d found the gift could be a curse.
Lights swirled inside her head. Colors. Bright, warm colors. And then she heard Jazzy’s laughter mixing with softer laughter. Another woman’s laughter. Happiness. Beautiful happiness. Genny sensed a togetherness, a oneness, almost as if Jazzy and this other woman were a single entity. As that knowledge filled Genny’s consciousness, she understood she was receiving energy from Jazzy and from Reve Sorrell. She didn’t need to see the results of a DNA test to know they were twins. Identical twins. Individuals, yet forever linked from the moment of conception.
Suddenly the bright, cheerful lights inside Genny’s mind darkened. Black clouds swirled about in her consciousness, completely obliterating the beauty and happiness. Fear. Anger. Hatred. Je. . .
Tonight would mark their fourth “date.” When he’d telephoned two days ago, he’d given her specific instructions on how to dress and where to meet him, just as he’d done on two previous occasions. He called himself Harry—no last name—but she knew that wasn’t his real name. Few of her clients ever divulged their true identities and she couldn’t blame them, although some used their real given names. They seemed to want to hear her cry out their name when she came. And she was good at faking those earth-shattering orgasms many men tried so hard to give her.
But Harry wasn’t like that. He didn’t seem to give a damn whether or not she got off, just as long as he did. A shudder passed through her as she recalled the last time he’d been in town. He’d come here the first time, as most of her johns did, to this small Knoxville apartment she rented strictly for her business dealings. She kept another place—her own private home—across town in a nicer neighborhood where no one knew what she did for a living. The first two times with Harry, he’d been aggressive and demanding, but hadn’t requested anything out of the ordinary. But the third time had been different. And truth be told, if he hadn’t offered her such an exorbitant amount of money to be available whenever he came to Knoxville, she’d never see him again. She could deal with rough sex, even with mild S&M, but Harry had come damn near close to choking her. When she’d managed to breathe again, she had tried to get away from him, but he’d held her down and fucked her like crazy.
Before he’d left that night, he’d given her a huge sum in cash, instructed her to dye her hair red and to wear a black corded ribbon around her neck the next time they were together. He’d even pulled the ribbon from his pocket and handed it to her. The guy gave her the creeps, but she’d convinced herself that he hadn’t really hurt her—just scared the shit out of her—and the money was three times what she usually made. A woman in her business who was over thirty had to think about her future, didn’t she?
Kat opened the middle drawer in her dressing table, reached inside and pulled out the black ribbon. As she tied it at the back of her neck, she wondered just what it was about this strip of black braided satin that turned Harry on. Probably some freaky thing from his past. Something to do with his mommy or his nanny or his teenage sweetheart.
Grabbing her purple leather jacket from the closet where she kept her working clothes, she thought ahead to her appointment and wondered what Harry would do to her tonight. Whatever it was, she was sure she’d earn her pay.
Kat’s eyelids fluttered as she tried to open her eyes, but the lids were heavy. So heavy. Her head throbbed something awful. Where was she? What had happened to her? Why couldn’t she remember?
She heard an odd noise rumbling in her ears and realized it was the sound of her own groans. Wake up, Kat. Dammit, girl, wake up.
Something odd was going on. Had somebody drugged her? Think. Try to remember. She’d had an appointment with Harry tonight. Oh, God, that was it! The last thing she remembered was having drinks with Harry. Wine. She hated wine, but he’d insisted, telling her that it was a very expensive bottle he’d bought especially for them.
Suddenly she felt something brush over her breasts. Hands. Large hands. A man’s hands. But those hands felt strange, as if they were covered in plastic.
She tried again to open her eyes, but without success. Then she tried to speak, but all she managed was a hoarse moan.
“You’re beautiful, Dinah,” a man said, his hands caressing her body with gentle force.
Who the hell was Dinah?
Kat moaned and tried again to open her eyes. When she gazed up at the man hovering over her, she recognized him. It was Harry.
Harry looked down at her and smiled as he rammed into her. “You’re always a good fuck, Dinah. The best.”
“Har…ree…?” She couldn’t manage to keep her eyes open.
“You shouldn’t be waking up, my love. But it doesn’t matter. It’ll soon be over. For this time.”
For this time? Her mind was still so foggy she couldn’t think straight. She knew she was with Harry, knew he was screwing her and suspected he had drugged her. But why had he drugged her? He’d paid her for her services. She’d do anything he wanted. He knew that. Hell, maybe he got off fucking a woman while she was unconscious. You never knew what turned a guy on.
He pumped into her, his thrusts increasing in speed. She lifted her arms, intending to caress him, to urge him on, but her arms felt as if they weighed a hundred pounds each. That must have been some strong drug he’d put in her wine.
She forced her eyes open again only moments before Harry came. Grunting and shivering, he moaned into her ear. “Dinah…my Dinah.”
He lifted himself up and off Kat, then slid backward out of the car. Kat managed to halfway sit up. That’s when she realized they were in a parked car. She peeked out the window. Darkness. She stared at Harry, who stood just outside the open back door. He carefully removed the condom from his penis and placed it in a plastic bag.
How odd was that? Maybe the guy’s a neat freak.
After laying the bag on the floor board beside her, he zipped up his pants, which couldn’t have been an easy task with gloves on.
Gloves?
Why was Harry wearing plastic gloves?
Glancing at her, he smiled again. He reached out, shoved her back down on the seat, then caressed the black satin ribbon around her neck.
“Harry? What—”
“Hush, sweet Dinah. Don’t talk. It’s not part of our game.”
“What game?”
He laughed and the sound sent chilling ripples up her spine.
Harry untied the satin cord, then grasped the ends.
When Kat saw the wild look in his eyes, she panicked. She knew in that very instant that he was playing a deadly game.
“No…don’t,” she pleaded. “I—I don’t want to play this game.”
“I told you not to talk.”
He tightened the ribbon around her neck.
Grasping his hands, she struggled against him.
“Please…” Is he going to kill me?
He slowly tightened the ribbon more and more.
She could barely breathe. God help her, he was choking her to death.
Don’t kill me, she pleaded silently. I don’t want to die.
Allowing the good feelings to linger inside him for a few minutes, he looked up at the dark night sky and laughed aloud. God, he felt great! When he’d come, when he’d finished humping Dinah as he’d dreamed of doing, a great sense of satisfaction had claimed him completely. She had denied him, snickered at him, made him feel like a fool. But in the end, she’d given in and allowed him to make love to her.
He focused his gaze inside the car at the lovely redheaded woman lying on the backseat. Moonlight illuminated her luscious naked body—her parted thighs, her full, round breasts, her slightly open mouth. Power surged through him, every nerve in his body electrified by the dark energy flowing through him. He could taste her—all that lush sweetness. He intensified the pressure as he pulled the cord until it cut into her neck. As he squeezed the life out of her, the pressure from the ribbon burned into his palms and heat suffused his body. This was the defining moment, the pleasure almost unbearable.
It took only seconds for her to die. Or at least that was the way it seemed to him.
But she would not stay dead. She never did.
He had to act quickly, remove her body and dispose of it so that he could put this incident behind him and live in peace for a while. Until she returned to him.
Slipping his arm beneath the plastic sheet he had used to protect the car seat, he pulled her into a sitting position, wrapped the sheet around her and dragged her toward him. He didn’t especially like the scent of death, but it didn’t repulse him, either. Actually, the odor reassured him that he had accomplished his goal.
Resting there passively cocooned in the sheet, like a limp dishrag, she made no protest when he scooped her up into his arms. Although she wasn’t a large woman, she felt heavy, as if she weighed two hundred pounds.
Dead weight, he thought.
Carrying Dinah with great care, he tromped down the dark, isolated dirt road. He could hear the soft rush of the river nearby, a melodic lull carrying quietly through the woods. When he neared the edge of the embankment, he paused, leaned over and opened the sheet enough to expose her face, then leaned down and kissed her good-bye. Sighing heavily, he tossed her into the Tennessee River and stood watching while the current carried her body downstream.
Farewell, my love.
There, that was done. Now he could go home, return to his normal life and put her out of his mind. At least temporarily. Of course, it was only a matter of time before she would come back. To taunt him. To entice him. To drive him crazy until he possessed her again. Each time she left, a part of him hoped—even prayed—that she would stay away for good. But his prayers were never answered. She always came back. At first it had been years between her reappearances, but gradually she’d begun returning more frequently. Often she returned within a year or less, but most recently she had shown up again in a little over six months.
He wondered how long she would stay away this time.
Reve Sorrell closed the lid on her suitcase, lifted it off the foot of her bed and set it on the floor. She’d been up for over an hour, after waking at three, unable to sleep. Her decision to return to Cherokee Pointe had been made after a great deal of deliberation. She’d spent months unable to put Jazzy Talbot out of her mind. Back in the spring she’d driven up to the mountains to seek out the woman Jamie Upton had told her was her spitting image, a woman who looked enough like her to be her twin. She’d met Jamie at a party here in Chattanooga, back before Christmas last year. He’d been a charming jerk, the type of man she usually avoided. But he had piqued her curiosity when he’d mentioned that his teenage sweetheart, a bar and restaurant owner in Cherokee Pointe, could easily pass for Reve’s twin.
If she hadn’t been an abandoned child, adopted in infancy by wealthy socialites, Spencer and Lesley Sorrell, she’d have passed off Jamie’s comments without a second thought. But since she knew nothing about her birth parents, she’d wondered if it was possible that this Jasmine Talbot Jamie had mentioned could be her sister. So she’d disregarded what her common sense had told her—not to go digging around in the past—and had gone to Cherokee Pointe.
Her first encounter with Jazzy had been less than pleasant. She’d found the woman to be rather crude and vulgar. They had disliked each other on sight. And Reve would have returned home that very day, if she hadn’t been involved in a minor car accident.
As if wrecking her Jag hadn’t been bad enough, following the accident, the local sheriff had treated her abysmally. Sheriff Jacob Butler was an old friend of Jazzy’s and took offense at an offhand comment Reve made about the woman. It had seemed to Reve as if half the men in town were Jazzy’s friends, a fact Reve had learned both firsthand and from local gossip.
To complicate matters now that she was returning to Cherokee Pointe, she’d been plagued by thoughts of the big, surly, half-breed sheriff. He was a thoroughly unpleasant sort. A real ruffian. After their initial encounter, she had hoped she would never see the man again. But when Jamie Upton was murdered while she was still in town and a witness identified a woman fitting Jazzy’s description—and therefore her description—as having been seen with Jamie shortly before his death, Sheriff Butler had come knocking on her door. He’d had the gall to practically accuse her of the murder, had in fact assumed—erroneously—that Jamie and she had been lovers. Naturally, it hadn’t taken the authorities long to realize she wasn’t involved in the crime, so she had, thankfully, been able to escape from Cherokee Pointe and the watchful eyes of the Neanderthal sheriff.
Upon returning to Chattanooga, to her home on Lookout Mountain and her own set of friends and business associates, she’d tried to put her less than pleasant experiences in Cherokee Pointe behind her. She hadn’t wanted to think about Jazzy or the fact that they did in fact resemble each other in a way only twins did. But try as she might, she hadn’t been able to erase from her mind the image of her double, a woman of dubious character.
Reve sighed heavily. Would she regret going back to Cherokee Pointe and joining forces with Jazzy to seek the truth about their possible sisterhood? They had spoken on the phone several times recently. Somewhat reluctantly, Reve had made that first call. Thirty years ago, someone had thrown her into a Dumpster in Sevierville and left her for dead. She’d been an infant, possibly only days or weeks old at the time. However, Jazzy’s Aunt Sally, who had raised her from a baby, swore that her sister Corrine had given birth to only one child. Was Sally Talbot lying? Or was there some other explanation? Reve knew she’d never have any peace of mind until she found out the truth—the whole truth.
She hadn’t intended to leave Chattanooga this early. It wasn’t quite four-thirty. But why not go ahead and get on the road? If she left now, she’d be in Cherokee Pointe by the time Jasmine’s opened and she could have breakfast at the restaurant before meeting Jazzy at Dr. MacNair’s office around nine. They had agreed that DNA testing was the first step in discovering the truth about their past.
Not wanting to bother any of the servants at this ungodly hour, she heaved her suitcase off the bed. As she walked through the house and out to the garage, she couldn’t help wondering if she was making a monumental mistake. She and Jazzy Talbot had nothing in common, other than a strong physical resemblance—and possibly the same birth parents. Did she really want to form a familial connection with this woman who was, by all standards, socially beneath her and morally inferior? God, Reve, listen to yourself. You sound like the biggest snob in the world. All right, maybe she was a snob. No maybe about it. She was a snob. But she’d been trained by her parents and peers to look down her nose at her inferiors. There you go again, assuming just because she grew up poor, has a reputation as the town tramp and owns a honky-tonk, that Jazzy isn’t your equal.
Reve unlocked the trunk of her Jaguar, dumped the suitcase inside, then slid behind the wheel and started the car. Even if Jazzy and she turned out to be twin sisters, that didn’t mean they had to become friends. She seriously doubted that Jazzy wanted to build a relationship with her anymore than she wanted one with Jazzy. But there was a need deep inside her to find out the truth—who had thrown her in that Dumpster and why? Had her birth mother thrown her away? If so, why had she disposed of one baby and not both? And if she and Jazzy were twin sisters, why had Jazzy’s Aunt Sally lied to her all these years? After the DNA testing confirmed their relationship, the likely place to start their search for the truth was with Sally Talbot. And what a place to start—with a nutty old woman the whole town thought of as a kook.
Reve hit the button to open the garage door, backed out and then closed the door. As she entered the street, she stopped the Jag and took a long, hard look at her home. This house had belonged to her grandparents, Spencer Sorrel’s parents, and the plush mansion held only happy memories for Reve. If only she weren’t adopted. If only the Sorrells had been her biological mother and father. But her adoptive mother had pointed out to her on numerous occasions that she was a true Sorrell in every way that counted. Except by blood.
As she drove along the steep, twisting street leading off Lookout Mountain, Reve compared the similarities between this road and the one where she’d had her car accident outside Cherokee Pointe. Damn! Why had she thought about that wreck again? Automatically her mind brought Sheriff Butler to the forefront—a vivid image of his hulking six-five frame, his green eyes, his hawk nose, his fierce frown. She intended to do her best to avoid Jacob Butler while she was in Cherokee Pointe. Not only did the man annoy her, but he unnerved her. His nature was a bit too savage to suit her. He’d been more than just downright unfriendly toward her; he’d shown no respect whatsoever for who she was—one of the richest and most powerful women in the state of Tennessee.
Jazzy’s orgasm exploded inside her, eliciting a loud, guttural moan from deep in her throat. The powerful sensations went on and on until they finally tapered off into delicious aftershocks. Hot, damp, completely sated, she smothered Caleb with deliriously exuberant kisses. He toppled her off him and onto the bed, his hard penis slipping out of her during the maneuver. Before she had a chance to catch her breath, he thrust up into her. Deep and hard. Once. Twice. And then he came.
Roaring like the male animal he was, Caleb shuddered with release. Moments later, their bodies damp with sex-induced sweat, they lay on their backs, their bodies not touching, only their entwined fingers.
She loved holding hands with Caleb. A sweet, sentimental gesture, but it said so much about their relationship. About who she was when she was with him. About the type of man Caleb McCord was.
Jazzy looked up at the ceiling, stretched languidly and smiled. Sex with Caleb was always like this—explosive and fully satisfying. But there was so much more to their relationship than great sex. They were friends as well as lovers. And they were madly in love, too. Honest to goodness in love.
She didn’t know what she’d done to deserve a fabulous guy like Caleb, but she thanked God for him. And with each passing day, she trusted Caleb and the love they shared more and more. Maybe one of these days soon she would be able to accept his marriage proposal. He had asked her to marry him so many times, it had almost become a joke between them.
Almost.
Even now, months after Jamie Upton’s death, his memory haunted her. But not in the way Caleb thought it did. On some basic, totally masculine level Caleb was still jealous of Jamie, of the fact that he’d been her first love and her first lover. There was no reason for him to be jealous. She didn’t love Jamie. Only the distrust and fear Jamie had instilled in her kept him alive and allowed him to stand between her and Caleb, between her and happiness.
“Jazzy?” Caleb said her name in that lazy, sexy Memphis drawl she loved so well.
“Hm-mm?” She turned sideways and looked at the silhouette of his long, lean body there in the semidarkness of her bedroom. She knew his body as well as she knew her own.
“Marry me.”
Her smile widened. She reached over and ran her fingertips up and down his body, from throat to navel.
He grabbed her hand. “I mean it. Marry me. Let’s get a license tomorrow and just do it. We’ll elope. No fanfare, no—”
“No Miss Reba throwing a hissy fit until it’s over and done.”
“Do not bring my grandmother into this equation. I’ve told you a thousand times that I don’t give a damn what she thinks.” Totally naked, Caleb jumped out of bed and grabbed his jeans up off the floor.
Damn it, she’d hurt his feelings by questioning his loyalty to her. Her mind told her that he would never do as Jamie had done and allow Miss Reba to dictate who he could and couldn’t marry. But her heart had been broken once by an Upton heir, by the charming, worthless, womanizing Jamie. And her heart was afraid to trust, afraid to believe that Miss Reba didn’t wield the same power over Caleb that she had over her other grandson.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m putting on my clothes,” Caleb told her.
“Why? You aren’t leaving, are you? Please, Caleb, don’t go.”
He pulled on his jeans, then felt around on the floor until he found his shirt. “I’m just going outside for a few minutes. I need some early morning air to clear my head. I’ll be back in a little while.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “Just remember, I’m not Jamie. I’m not walking out on you or giving up on us. Not now or ever. You couldn’t beat me off with a stick, honey.”
“I know you’re not Jamie.” When she sat up, the sheet dropped to her waist, exposing her breasts.
“Then stop assuming I’m going to treat you the way he did. I can’t stand it when you project his actions onto me.”
Caleb turned from her and hastily left the room. Jazzy flipped on the bedside lamp, then got up and headed for the bathroom. Usually they didn’t get up this early—and seven-thirty was early for people who didn’t go to bed until two in the morning—but she had an appointment to meet Reve Sorrell in Dr. MacNair’s office at nine. Galvin had explained to them that the results of the DNA test might take a few weeks, but Reve had informed him that she would pay any extra costs necessary to facilitate a speedy response.
Jazzy turned on the water, waited a couple of minutes for it to heat, and then stepped under the showerhead. As the warm spray doused her, she thought about her future. Her first concern was Caleb. She couldn’t keep putting him off. Sooner or later he’d get tired of waiting for her to marry him. The thought of losing him was too terrible to consider, yet she wasn’t ready to say yes. There were too many unanswered questions in her life, too many loose ends she had to tie up before she could build a solid future with the man she loved. And she did love Caleb. More than she’d ever thought possible to love a man. But she had to convince him that he was the only man she loved. In order to do that, she had to let go of Jamie completely.
Since Caleb spent most nights at her apartment above Jazzy’s Joint, they usually closed the bar together and came upstairs for a late-night meal and then went to bed. She loved being with him, making love with him, sharing her life with him.
So why don’t you marry the guy? she heard Lacy Fallon’s voice inside her head. Lacy, the bartender at Jazzy’s Joint, treated Jazzy like a kid sister, giving her advice and watching out for her.
Don’t let what Jamie did to you keep you from finding happiness with Caleb, Jazzy’s best friend Genny Sloan, had told her repeatedly.
Even her own heart advised her to reach out and grab the happiness Caleb offered.
Jazzy bathed hurriedly, washed her hair and emerged from the shower, fresh and clean and clear-headed. By the time she dried her hair and dressed, Caleb would probably be back in the apartment and in the kitchen fixing their breakfast. She smiled to herself. Her Caleb was a man of many talents.
The telephone rang. Who on earth would be calling so early? Everyone knew they slept late. After wrapping a towel around her, Jazzy rushed into the bedroom to answer the phone.
“Hello.”
“Jazzy, this is Reve Sorrell. I got an early start so I’m already in town. I’m over at Jasmine’s and have just ordered breakfast. Any chance you can join me?”
“Ah…I just stepped out of the shower, but—” Maybe it was a good idea to touch base with Reve before they went to see Galvin. After all, if it turned out they really were twin sisters, as they suspected, they’d be spending a great deal of time together in the upcoming weeks. They had agreed that if the DNA tests proved they were siblings, they would work together to discover the truth about their parentage.
“If you’d rather not—” Reve said.
“No, it’s okay. I’ll hurry and dress.” Jazzy peeked through the open bedroom door and into the living room. No sign of Caleb. She listened for any sound of him in the kitchen. None.
“It’s okay if I bring Caleb along, isn’t it?”
“Sure. After all, he is your fiancé, right?”
“He most certainly is. Unofficially.”
“Have you two set a date?”
“Not yet.” Everyone assumed that sooner or later she’d accept Caleb’s proposal—everyone except Caleb’s grandmother, one of Cherokee County’s grande dames, Reba Upton.
Damn the old bitch!
“Bring him along,” Reve said. “I’ll go ahead and eat, then have coffee when y’all arrive. Or would you like for me to order for you two and wait?”
“Yes, do that. Just tell Tiffany that Caleb and I will be eating at the restaurant this morning. She knows our usual order.”
“See you soon.”
“Mm-hm.” The dial tone hummed in Jazzy’s ear.
Reve Sorrell had been pleasant enough, but not overly friendly. The woman had erected some sort of emotional barrier around herself, one that effectively kept people at bay. If they were twin sisters, how was it possible that their personalities were as different as night is from day? She supposed it all boiled down to the old question about which dominated a person’s physical, mental and emotional makeup more—nurture or nature.
Reve Sorrell was a class act. A real lady. Jazzy Talbot was a dame, a broad, a good old gal.
“Jazzy?” Caleb called to her as he entered the living room.
“Huh?”
“Want me to put on some coffee?”
Caleb might get upset with her, he might storm off in a rage, but he always came back. He never left her for more than a few minutes, an hour or two on a few occasions. He meant what he’d said about not ever leaving her. Not the way Jamie had done, time and time again.
“Reve Sorrell just called,” Jazzy said. “She wants us to meet her for breakfast over at Jasmine’s.”
“She got in early, didn’t she?”
“Yeah, she did. I guess she’s as anxious as I am to get our DNA samples sent off to the lab.”
Caleb appeared in the bedroom doorway. “Give me a couple of minutes to grab a quick shower.” As he moved past her, he paused, leaned over and kissed her cheek, then yanked off her towel before he went into the bathroom.
Jazzy hugged herself and sighed contentedly. Reve Sorrell might be a lady—a very rich and important lady—but who cared? Caleb didn’t. And it didn’t matter to him that Jazzy wasn’t some blue-blood with a lily-white reputation. He loved her just the way she was. And Caleb’s opinion was all that mattered.
Sally Talbot stood on her front porch, a tasty chaw of tobacco in her mouth. Peter and Paul, her old bloodhounds, lounged lazily under the porch, their heads barely peeking out as they snored. She wished she could sleep as easy as them two varmints did, but if they had the worries she had, they wouldn’t be sleeping so soundly either. After spitting a spray of brown juice out into the yard, Sally wiped her mouth and took a deep breath of autumn mountain air. There weren’t nothing like autumn in the Appalachians. The crisp, clean morning air. The bright colors nature painted the earth this time of year. No, sirree, weren’t no place on earth as near God’s heaven as these here mountains.
All her life—some seventy-one years now—she’d spent here in Cherokee County, most of it in this same old house her pa had built for her ma before he up and died of TB back in forty-nine. And all these years she’d been an oddball, different from folks hereabout. Not crazy, mind you, but not quite all there either. She had book learning. She could read and write and add up figures. And she knew these hills as well as anybody, better than most. She’d always been poor and hadn’t never cared a hoot about money. Not until Jazzy came into her life. She’d wanted to give that gal everything her little heart desired, but she’d failed miserably. She’d done the best she could. If she’d had a man bringing in a living, things might have been better, but she and Jazzy had made out all right. They’d had a roof over their heads and they’d never gone hungry. Jazzy had grown up to be a fine woman, a real smart woman who’d done all right for herself. Her gal owned a restaurant and a bar in Cherokee Pointe and she was a partner with some other people in Cherokee Cabin Rentals. Yep, she was damn proud of her niece.
A chill racked Sally’s body. “Winter’s coming,” she said to no one in particular.
But it wasn’t the cool morning breeze that had chilled Sally. It was thoughts of Jazzy. Her little Jasmine. She’d named Jazzy for them beautiful flowers that her sister Corrine had loved so. When she’d put Jasmine in Corrine’s arms thirty years ago, she’d never dreamed that within a few months Corrine would be dead—her and her lover—and she’d be left to raise Jazzy all alone. But there hadn’t been a day passed that she hadn’t thanked the good Lord for that gal. She loved Jazzy as if she were her own, and Jazzy loved her like a mother.
“God, forgive me and please help me,” Sally said softly. “You know I didn’t have no idea there was another baby, that Jazzy had a sister.”
Reve Sorrell might not be her sister, Sally told herself. Could just be a coincidence that they look so much alike. But if that DNA test they was having done proved them to be twins, then Jazzy was going to be asking a lot more questions. She’d want to know how it was possible that her aunt Sally hadn’t known nothing about another baby.
All the lies she’d told Jazzy from the time she’d been a little girl would come back to haunt her—if that Sorrell gal turned out to be Jazzy’s sister. She knew what Jazzy would say to her, could almost hear her.
“You told me that my mama came back home to you right before I was born, that her boyfriend had run out on her and she had no place else to go. You told me that you delivered me and that you sent for old Doc Webster a few days later to record my birth and check me and Mama to make sure we were all right. Isn’t that so? Tell me, Aunt Sally, did you or did you not deliver another baby? Were you the one who threw my sister away?”
Them there DNA tests wouldn’t lie. If they proved them gals to be sisters, then Sally had some explaining to do. If I tell Jazzy the truth, will she hate me? I just couldn’t bear it if that gal hated me.
Genny Sloan stopped suddenly on her morning trek from the greenhouse to her back porch. Although she’d seldom been able to control the visions that came to her, she had learned what signs to expect, signs that forewarned her.
Drudwyn paused at her side, then licked her hand.
“It’s all right, boy. I think I can make it to the porch.” Genny stroked the half-wolf dog’s head. “But if I don’t make it, you let Dallas know that I need him.”
Drudwyn hurried ahead of her, then paused and waited at the door. Genny made it to the porch. Barely. She slumped down on the back steps and closed her eyes. She’d been born with the gift of sight, a God-given talent inherited from her grandma. More times than not, she’d found the gift could be a curse.
Lights swirled inside her head. Colors. Bright, warm colors. And then she heard Jazzy’s laughter mixing with softer laughter. Another woman’s laughter. Happiness. Beautiful happiness. Genny sensed a togetherness, a oneness, almost as if Jazzy and this other woman were a single entity. As that knowledge filled Genny’s consciousness, she understood she was receiving energy from Jazzy and from Reve Sorrell. She didn’t need to see the results of a DNA test to know they were twins. Identical twins. Individuals, yet forever linked from the moment of conception.
Suddenly the bright, cheerful lights inside Genny’s mind darkened. Black clouds swirled about in her consciousness, completely obliterating the beauty and happiness. Fear. Anger. Hatred. Je. . .
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