by Shari Low
‘Bus’ was probably a bit of an understatement for the luxury coach that had transported them here from LA. It had picked them up at a plush hotel in West Hollywood, a few blocks from Aaron and Zac’s apartment. She’d stared out of the window the whole way, loving the transition from the beach, to the desert, to the kaleidoscopic extravaganza that was Las Vegas. At his insistence, they’d checked into Caesars Palace, courtesy of Aaron’s credit card. Unlike the card that she’d put this holiday on, she was fairly sure Aaron could more than afford to pay it back.
Not that she’d worry about her burgeoning credit balance for a single moment. Not while she was here, in a gorgeous hotel room in one of the most exciting cities on the planet with a breath-takingly gorgeous man whose hand still appeared to be wandering up the inside of her thigh.
This trip had definitely taken an unexpected turn for the incredible. She’d landed almost twelve weeks ago at LAX with her best friend, Celeste, intent on experiencing everything Tinsel Town had to offer two twenty-something Scottish girls with a thirst for adventure. They’d checked into a chain motel off Santa Monica Boulevard, then showered, thrown on dresses and heels, and headed out to explore.
It was pure chance, serendipity, that Aaron and his mate Zac were sitting at the bar in the Chateau Marmont. Agnetha had dragged Celeste in there because she’d once seen it mentioned in a Jackie Collins novel and wanted to see it for herself. It didn’t take long to get chatting to the two handsome guys at the next seats.
‘So, actors, models or musicians?’ Celeste struck up the conversation with a coy seductive smile. ‘I’m thinking models?’
Agnetha could see she was flirting, but then, it was a standing joke that Celeste would flirt with a bamboo plant just for practice. She couldn’t help herself. It was her natural default setting. However, it had got them into more clubs than they could count, got them out of more sticky situations than they wished to remember, and led to some memorable nights with unforgettable fun, so Agnetha had long ago learned to roll with it.
‘None of the above. I work at CAA. I’m the assistant to an agent that represents TV and movie talent,’ Zac had replied. He was the shorter of the two, and gave off an unusual vibe of stockbroker crossed with surfer in his white dress shirt with his tie loose, smart dark trousers and long blond hair pulled back into a messy ponytail.
Celeste’s reaction made it obvious that she liked that answer. Anything less than five degrees of separation from someone who’d actually met a movie star and she was all over it. Last year she’d made them stand outside Robert De Niro’s block in New York for two hours in the hope that he’d nip out for a newspaper. All they’d got was an enquiry from an agitated doorman as to why they were there and several small New York dogs barking in their direction.
‘And you?’ Agnetha had asked breezily, the combination of happiness, a little jet lag and her second bourbon and Coke making her feel both chilled and giddy at the same time.
The other guy was much more her type. Taller. More casually dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt. Brown hair cut so short she wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d been in the armed forces. ‘Construction. Family business,’ he said. So the biceps and the wide, muscular shoulders that shaped and stretched the white cotton fabric hadn’t come from a gym.
That night, they’d chatted for a couple of hours, then wandered down to Sunset, where they’d let the guys take them to a couple of bars, then on to a club. At every one of them, Zac and Aaron seemed to know someone on the door or behind the bar, and Agnetha loved the party atmosphere. This is what she lived for. She slogged her heart out for weeks and months on temporary catering jobs and in the family café back in Glasgow, working day and night, so she could escape to fabulous places and live wild and free for weeks at a time. Thankfully, her parents were understanding of her wanderlust and positively encouraged it, keeping her job open every time. It was an unconventional way to live, but she loved it, especially when her childhood friend, Celeste, who’d moved to London a couple of years ago, could get time off from her bar and part-time modelling work to join her. That’s when the really wild stuff tended to happen. Like checking out of their hotel and moving into Zac and Aaron’s West Hollywood apartment after their first week there. Like postponing their return home three times now, because they were making the money they saved on hotel bills last as long as possible. Like waking up naked in Vegas on the morning of her birthday with an utterly captivating man who was clearly intent on doing all kinds of blissful things to her. Maybe the sights of Vegas could wait.
The thought was interrupted by a knock at the door. Aaron grabbed a towel that he’d dropped on the floor after his shower last night and wrapped it around his waist. Agnetha pulled the sheet up to her neck and enjoyed the view. Every muscle in his back rippled as he walked. There was a sight she’d never get sick of looking at and one that was going to be tough to say goodbye to, but she had to go. The money was now running out and so was the time on their tourist visa.
The wheels of the room service trolley clanked quietly as it was trundled into the room by an impeccably uniformed waiter.
Aaron tipped the waiter, then lifted the lids of the two silver cloches on the table. Pancakes. Bacon. Maple syrup. Strawberries. With orange juice and coffee to wash it all down.
Tucking the sheet around her body like a sarong, Agnetha got up and padded over to the dining area at the window, watching as Aaron transferred the food from the trolley to the small round table. She poured two coffees from a tall silver pot, then two glasses of orange juice.
For the first few moments, they sat in comfortable silence. Agnetha, knees pulled up in front of her, nursing her coffee with both hands, stared out of the window.
Aaron tossed up a strawberry and caught it in his mouth. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘I’m thinking that this is so far away from my normal life that it all feels completely unreal,’ she answered honestly.
‘What would you be doing at home right now?’ he asked, genuinely curious.
She’d already told him the bones of her life in Glasgow. Lovely mum and dad. Only child. Lived above the West End café in Hyndland that her grandparents had passed down to her parents. Went to catering school. Became a qualified pastry chef. Now worked in the café, as well as for a temping agency, taking short-term catering and cooking jobs because she wanted the flexibility to travel and enjoy life.
‘Depends, if I had a temp job. If so, I’d be there already, prepping the food for the day. If not, then I’d have opened up the café with my dad, and I’d be up to my elbows in bread dough and cake mix.’
‘Is it wrong that I find that mental image completely sexy?’
Agnetha’s chuckle was low and throaty. ‘Completely wrong. I refuse to associate with a man who gets turned on by carrot cake.’
‘It’s not the carrot cake,’ he answered, his eyes locked on hers, his smile still there.
‘Ginger sponge?’ she asked innocently.
God, she was rubbish at sexy. She much preferred funny. Thankfully, Aaron seemed to feel the same. She was going to miss this guy more than she wanted to think about right now.
‘Yep, definitely the ginger sponge.’ He leaned over, his hand curving around the side of her neck, his thumb stroking her cheek, as he pulled her towards him and kissed her slowly, sexily… ‘I think we’re going to have to hold off going out for a little while longer,’ he murmured.
‘I think you’re right.’ There was no tourist spot in Vegas that would feel better than this.
His other hand was in her hair now, his tongue probing hers and she was just about to slip over on to his knee when there was another knock on the door.
‘Ignore it,’ she whispered, still kissing him.
‘I’m going to,’ he replied, his fingertips working their way down her neck, across her collarbone, to her…
Another bang on the bloody door. Louder this time. Insistent.
It was enough to make Agnetha break the
lip lock and grin. ‘That’s one stroppy housekeeper. We’d better answer before they storm in.’
‘It’s not housekeeping. I put the “Do Not Disturb” on.’
‘Then what else have you organised? A brass band? Personal shoppers? The Chippendales?’
Aaron shook his head, his laughter revealing his slightly crooked but pearly white smile. ‘Nope. Not setting myself up for that kind of competition.’ He rose, then paused. Lifted her chin. ‘I meant it, you know. I really don’t want you to leave.’
Agnetha’s stomach swirled as the realisation dawned. She didn’t want to leave either. Right from that first night, when they’d ended up sitting in a layby off Mulholland at dawn, watching the sunrise, she’d known this was different from the holiday flings she’d had before. There had been romances in Paris. In New York. In Thailand. On a skiing trip to Austria. But much as she fell hard and fast and enjoyed every moment of them, she always knew she wanted to leave them in the magical place they belonged and not drag them back into the real world. But this time…
Aaron barely had the door open a few inches when Celeste barged through, her gleaming mane of Cindy Crawford dark waves falling down to cover the top of her silver bikini, the rest of her tanned torso tucked into a tiny pair of Daisy Duke denim shorts.
‘Have you seen Zac this morning?’ she blurted, brittle fury clipping every word.
Agnetha and Aaron glanced at each other, then back at the room’s source of irritated energy.
Aaron answered for both of them. ‘No. Isn’t he with you?’
Celeste’s hands were on her hips now. ‘Eh, that would be a definite no. The bastard got a phone call in the middle of the night, snuck out and hasn’t come back yet. Honestly, I could kill him. How rude is that?’ Without waiting for an answer, she plonked down on the chair vacated by Aaron and picked up a rasher of bacon. ‘Well, his loss. Anyway, Happy Birthday Aggs. What have we got planned for today, then?’
Years later, Agnetha would always remember that moment as being the start of the unravelling of the day that changed her life.
4
Hope McTeer
‘Hope, are you absolutely, positively, completely sure you don’t want me to come with you?’ Maisie asked, eyes wide and pleading. ‘I mean, he could be a complete fraud after your money. Or a serial killer. Or one of those catfish guys.’
Hope stopped applying her mascara at the mirror on the kitchen wall and responded with pursed lips of cynicism that eventually broke into a smile.
‘First, I’m twenty-two, not twelve. That makes me a grown-up who is allowed out on her own. Secondly, he’s not a fraud because it was me who tracked him down, not the other way around. And even if he was, all he’d get from me is my shoe collection and a payment plan for my student loan. Same goes for the catfish stuff. And he may be a serial killer, but if that’s the case, it’s better that I know before I start shelling out for Christmas cards.’
Over at the white IKEA dining table, a shadow crossed Maisie’s face. ‘Fine. But if you don’t come back, I’ll hunt him down. And I want a call or a text every hour.’
‘Deal. I’ll also keep my phone on so you can track me. And if you get a text that says SOS, you can commando crawl in and get me out.’
Maisie nodded. ‘I’m on it.’
Hope went back to applying her make-up. Not that there was much of it. A coat of mascara, a bit of blusher so that she didn’t look like the walking dead, and a clear lip gloss to finish it off. Growing up with her mousy brown hair and pale skin, she’d always been beyond jealous of Maisie’s dark complexion and thick ebony hair. They’d got used to the raised eyebrows of surprise when they told people they were sisters. Mum and Dad had equipped them with all sorts of answers when they were younger, but they’d soon realised that it was far more effective to throw back a defiant stare and watch the curiosity turn to an embarrassed squirm.
They were sisters. Adopted a couple of years apart, but sisters in every sense of the word that mattered. The fact that they didn’t share the same DNA was irrelevant and always would be, regardless of what happened today.
Maisie reached over to the biscuit tin in the centre of the table and liberated a chocolate digestive, just as her mobile phone rang. ‘It’s Mum.’
Hope felt another explosion of butterflies in her stomach. Her mum had been supportive from the start of this journey, but that didn’t mean that it had been easy to navigate the emotions of such a difficult and complicated situation.
‘Hey, Mamma,’ Maisie said, with a sigh, unable to mask her mood as always. ‘Yep, she’s just getting ready to leave.’
Hope chimed in from the other side of the room. ‘Tell Mum I’ll buzz her on the way there.’
‘Did you get that, Mum? Hope will call you on the way. She won’t let me go with her. I mean, what if she gets kidnapped?’
Hope could only hear one side of the conversation, but she could guess what her mum was saying. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. She’ll be fine. She needs to do this.’
Always the voice of reason. Their dad had been the same. Both teachers, her mum, Dora, in English and dad, Tim, in Chemistry, neither of them were prone to drama or over-anxiety. That was Maisie’s role in the family. Handy, given that she’d been a jobbing actress since she came back to Scotland after studying at RADA for four years. It had made perfect sense for her to move into the spare room in Hope’s flat. She contributed to the rent when she was working, and when she wasn’t, Hope’s wages from her job at the hospital and her student loan made up the slack until Maisie paid her back when she landed another job. Hope didn’t mind. Studying at university for the fourth year of her medical degree while moonlighting as a part-time care assistant on a paediatric ward at Glasgow Central didn’t leave her enough time to spend her money on a social life any way.
Mum had offered to come with her today too, but Hope had declined. This was something she had to do on her own. There was no plan. No script. She wasn’t even sure how much she’d tell him or whether this was going to be a twenty-minute meeting with a full stop and no further contact at the end. All she knew was that she had to try.
‘Mum, I have to go,’ Maisie said into the handset. ‘Stay near a phone in case we need you to identify her body.’
That actually made Hope giggle. ‘You are shameless, do you know that?’
Maisie disconnected the call and tossed her phone on the table. ‘I do.’
‘Fine. I see you trying to get Mum onside and I raise you this.’ Hope opened the kitchen drawer, the one below the cutlery that was full of miscellaneous stuff like batteries, bulbs, Sellotape and pens, and pulled out a small white box. Crossing the room, she placed it in front of Maisie. ‘Here’s the perfect thing to distract you while I’m gone. Get this done.’
Her sister stared at the box. ‘Man, you fight dirty.’
Hope shrugged then snaked her arms around Maisie’s neck and leaned down to kiss her on the cheek. ‘Yup. Only because I know you want to, but it’s only fear that’s holding you back.’
They both stared at the box for a few seconds. The logo on the front said ‘Ancestry’.
They’d both received them on their twenty-first birthdays from Mum – her way of telling them that if they ever wanted to track down their biological families, she supported their decision. They both knew Dad would have too. His passing the year before had devastated them all.
Neither of them had done the test immediately. They’d lain in the drawer until the day, a couple of months ago, when Hope learned just how important it was that she find someone with a genetic link.
Doing the test was easy – just a case of spitting into a tube, then sending it off for analysis. Getting Maisie to do the test proved more difficult. Hope tried to persuade her to do it at the same time, but her sister resolutely refused, claiming that she had no desire to know more about her heritage. Realising she was fighting a losing battle, Hope went ahead and did it by herself. Last weekend that decision paid off.
&nbs
p; On Sunday, she’d just got home after a twelve hour shift at the hospital and all she needed was her bed and to sleep. Trying to combine studies with work was exhausting, but she was determined not to live off her mum, especially now that her dad was gone. She was so tired, she was tempted to ignore the ping of an email dropping into the inbox on her phone. A quick glance had changed everything. The headline read:
Your Ancestry results are in!’
Suddenly awake, she’d grabbed her laptop and opened it on the kitchen table, fingers trembling as she logged on.
The first result she clicked on was her ‘Ethnicity Estimate’ and her eyebrows had immediately knitted together in confusion. She’d expected to see the Scottish heritage. It was where she’d been born and raised. But the shock? 44 per cent North American.
What?
She was almost half American?
As far as she knew, her only connection with the USA was a couple of trips to Disney World when she was a kid. The revelation took her breath away for a moment, as her chest had tightened with anxiety, while her brain had refused to send her hand the signal to click on the next category: DNA Matches. This was it. The people on the database with whom she shared a genetic link.
Breathe. Breathe. Click.
She’d read that it wasn’t uncommon to have up to half a million fifth to eighth cousins, so she was hoping for something a bit closer than that. A starting point. Maybe an aunt. Or a great-grandparent. Just some place to begin the search. She hadn’t dared to hope that there would be anything closer in there. After all, her adoption had been a closed one and there were no clues to go on, no background information, only the emphatic stipulation on her adoption file that the mother wished for no contact at any time in the future and requested that no information ever be released to Hope or her new family.