HIS DOUBLE, HER TROUBLE

by Donna Sterling

  "Settle down, Chloe. She knows I'm not Evan."

  "She knows? Oh, come on. I've seen the gags you've pulled on her and I know how crazy you get when she's around, but I never thought you'd stoop this low."

  "If I had stooped that low, do you really think she wouldn't have noticed the difference?"

  She stared at him, nonplussed. "I sure as hell did. The first kiss you laid on her had me suspicious, but I chalked it up to the surprise of the party. By the time you got around to that last kiss … ha! … you and Evan aren't even in the same species."

  "Which species seems to make her happier?" It wasn't a rhetorical question. He sincerely wanted to know.

  "For heaven's sake," cried Chloe, shaking her head incredulously, "you're not only unscrupulous, you're delusional. You don't really think that your masquerade can possibly make her happy! She'll be humiliated. Devastated. Don't fool yourself, Jake—if she knew who you were, she wouldn't spit on you to put out a fire."

  "Your eloquence moves me to tears, Chloe," he uttered with a wry twist of his mouth, "but as unlikely as it seems, she knows who I am."

  She gawked at him, visibly making the effort to give his story a fair shake. "Then why is she letting you kiss her?"

  "I don't know." And he realized it was true. He hadn't the slightest idea why Brianna was letting him kiss her.

  All too quickly, he remembered why. He was supposed to be helping her overcome inhibitions. How could he have forgotten that? Because you wanted to.

  "If she knows who you are," challenged Chloe, "then why is she pretending you're Evan?"

  Jake closed his eyes and rubbed his hand across his eyelids and the bridge of his nose. He'd obviously made a big mistake in coming here tonight. Even so, nothing could have kept him away. "Call her in and we'll talk about it."

  "Don't worry, I plan to." She paced to the door. "I'm warning you, Jake. If we're springing some surprise on Brianna, you will not leave this room alive."

  "I can't believe you didn't trust me enough to clue me in."

  "It wasn't my secret to tell, Chloe," Brianna countered. "I gave my word to Cy Rowland, and if you hadn't guessed the truth I never would have broken that word."

  "Okay, okay, I know how you are about keeping promises."

  Brianna sat on the bed watching as Chloe paced. She'd sent Jake from the room shortly after they'd explained the fundamentals of the situation.

  "You've explained why Jake's pretending to be Evan," Chloe said, "but not why you're so lovey-dovey with Jake. You looked like a couple on their honeymoon, hardly able to wait to get back to—" Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped. "Don't tell me you went to bed with him!"

  Brianna raised her chin, determined to remain in control of her emotions, which seemed stretched to their limits. "I appreciate your concern, but—"

  "I'm worried about you, Bri! You told me you were in love with Evan. Now you're going to bed with Jake?"

  "Evan and I broke up," she imparted, glad to be able finally to admit it. "He sent me a letter saying he wants to be 'just friends.'"

  "Oh, Bri, I'm sorry. I should have known you wouldn't go to bed with Jake if you were still involved with Evan." Chloe shook her head. "That explains a lot. You were in a highly vulnerable state. You went to Jake on the rebound. At least you're getting over your hangup about sex, I guess. Too bad it's with the wrong guy."

  A surprising pain pierced Brianna. As much as she wanted to tell Chloe she was wrong, she couldn't. Jake was the wrong guy. The very worst guy in the world for her. Any other man she'd be able to leave—or rather, shove out the door—the moment the relationship grew uncomfortable. She couldn't do that with Jake. He wielded some strong, uncanny power over her that kept her with him, even while her head begged her to put an end to their affair.

  Then again, why should she worry about ending their affair? He'd be leaving her as soon as Evan returned. Their affair would die a natural death. She felt as if her heart might die along with it.

  "Bri, I'm sorry." Chloe sat on the bed and slipped an arm around her. "I shouldn't have said that. I can't think of anyone better qualified to help you learn to enjoy sex than a stud like Jake."

  Brianna's breath caught. "Don't call him that." She hadn't meant to sound so sharp, but something inside her couldn't allow anyone to talk that way about him.

  Chloe's lips slowly parted and her hand rose to her cheek. "Oh, no. Oh, no!" In horror, she cried, "You're falling in love with him, aren't you?"

  "Don't even say that!" This time the rebuke rang out with deliberate sharpness. "I'm not in love with Jake, and I never will be."

  "I hope not. I really hope not." Her usually sparkling eyes now shone with worry. "I mean, he's a lot of fun, but you can't get caught up in the game. Face it, Bri—you're a hometown porch-swing kind of girl. A guy like Jake would gobble you up, just for the novelty of it, then fly off in his private Learjet."

  Unable to utter a rational reply, Brianna bent her head and made for the door. Swinging it open, she stopped short.

  There stood Jake, leaning in a negligent pose with one hand against the wall, the other hooked in his hip pocket. His solemn stare held her arrested, then flickered beyond her. "You really should be aware, Chloe, that voices carry pretty far from your bedroom."

  He then turned his dark, unsmiling eyes to Brianna. "Let's go, Bri," he whispered. "Wouldn't want to let my private Learjet sit idle for too long."

  He was damned glad she'd come with him. For a moment he'd thought she wouldn't, and drastic impulses shot through his mind, most involving physical abduction. He wouldn't have left without her.

  He escorted Brianna into the clear, frigid November night, down the driveway to where the Mercedes was parked. Only the crunching of snow beneath their feet disturbed their silence. As he opened her car door, the conversation he'd overheard returned to him in disturbing flashes.

  Brianna had come to him in a "highly vulnerable state," Chloe had said. "On the rebound." He supposed that should make him feel guilty. It didn't. If she had to be vulnerable to let him inside her defensive walls, so be it.

  Chloe had also called him "the wrong guy." His teeth gritted at that. She'd meant that Evan was the right guy. Brianna hadn't argued. I'm not in love with Jake, she'd said, and I never will be.

  He slammed the car door and buried his hands in his coat pockets as he strode to the driver's side. The problem was, he loved her—so much that he didn't know how he'd ever "keep it light." But he had to. Love was a tricky, treacherous thing that he never had understood. All he knew was that a wrong move, a wrong word could snatch a person he loved out of his reach.

  Neither of them spoke as they drove down a rural highway toward her house; the silence between them was uncomfortable.

  "Jake," she finally said as they reached a backstreet of town, her tone a pitiful attempt at lightness, "Despite everything, I … I enjoyed being with you at the party."

  "Yeah, I'm a real fun guy."

  She pressed her lips together and looked down at her lap. As he parked the car in front of her house, she murmured, "If Chloe and I said something in that conversation that hurt your feelings or insulted you, I'm … I'm sorry."

  "I can't imagine what that would have been." He lifted a quizzical brow at her. "Did you think I'd take it as an insult that Chloe called me a stud?" She didn't answer, but he sensed her discomfort and in a near whisper demanded, "Why did you stop her from saying it?"

  She lifted her palms, at a loss for an answer.

  "You know what a stud is, don't you?" he persisted. "It's a male used for sex."

  She made an inarticulate sound in her throat.

  "What's the matter, Brianna?" His voice had grown gruff, and he couldn't gentle it. "Does that hit a little too close to home?"

  "If you're talking about you and me," she cried in choked tones, "then I don't need your … your stud service." She made a move toward the door handle.

  He caught her arms and held her still, searching her face. "I'm not t
he one who ever thought of us that way. This sex thing we have going is a two-way deal. I'm there for you and you're there for me."

  A sheen welled in her eyes. "That's not a very big difference."

  "It is to me," he whispered. Slipping his fingers into her luxuriant hair, he caressed her face with his own, his eyes tightly closed. "I need you tonight, Brianna. And tomorrow, and the day after that."

  "Oh, Jake." Her head lolled back against the leather seat as he kissed her throat. "What are we doing?"

  "Whatever it is, we've already started … and we can't stop in the middle." He dissolved her doubts with hot, determined kisses.

  He didn't understand love, but he understood sex. He knew how to play music within her, when others apparently hadn't even struck a chord. That had to mean something. He'd use that "something" to bind her to him … until she needed him the way she needed food or air or water.

  The way he needed her.

  * * *

  11

  « ^ »

  A couple on their honeymoon. Chloe's description drifted back to Brianna as she sat at her desk Monday morning. It had been a strikingly apt description of how Jake and she had spent the remainder of the weekend—making love, sometimes with a passionate urgency, sometimes with sweet, erotic tenderness that filled her to overflowing.

  If only their time together didn't have to end. It would soon, though. Jake had received a call from a detective he'd hired. The embezzler had been traced. He had her under surveillance, hoping to find the stolen money.

  "Have the police take her in," Jake had instructed. "Let them know that if she doesn't sign a confession and return the cash, we're going to spend twice that much to convict her and keep her in prison."

  Evan, it seemed, would be coming home very soon. As relieved as Brianna was to know that his nightmare would be over, she didn't want to think about Jake leaving. She wanted so much to live on in the day-to-day relationship they'd forged. To keep on loving him.

  She stiffened. Is that what she was doing? Loving him?

  A sharp rapping at her office door distracted her from that alarming thought. She opened the door and Maude rushed in, her thin, weathered face pasty white. "I have to talk to you, Ms. Devon. I think something terrible is happening."

  She took the secretary's cold, rigid hands and guided her to the sofa. "Sit down, Maude, and tell me what's wrong."

  "Maybe I should have told you sooner, but Cy Rowland called me last week and asked me to spy on Jake."

  "To spy on Jake!"

  "He told me to make copies of all his paperwork and computer disks. It seems he doesn't trust him."

  "But Cy was the one who put him in charge!"

  "Only to stand in for Evan. He didn't mean for him to start fooling around with the company. At least, that's what Cy's secretary told me."

  Brianna stared at Maude in mute disbelief. Jake had told her he had the authorization he needed to make those changes. Had he lied to her? Had he been acting without Cy's approval? "Why would Jake make changes that Cy or Evan would overrule? It's only a matter of time before Evan returns."

  "Cy believes that Jake sees this as a game, and that he's trying to outdo Evan. Maybe even wrest the power away from him. Corporate one-upmanship."

  Brianna refused to believe it. Surely Jake cared more about the company—and his brother—than that! Think back, an inner voice scoffed. You'd have easily believed it before your affair with him. Have you become blinded to his true character? Her mother had been blinded by a man, too—a man she thought loved her—until she'd lost everything.

  "Do you know Jake has made inquiries into selling the executive golf course and the new expansion building?" Maude disclosed.

  "No, he never said a word about those."

  "I did a little research into his business background. He owns a company called Global Corporate Consultants."

  Brianna didn't find that as surprising as she once would have. Jake was no stranger to corporate business. He'd tried to tell her during Cy's meeting, she remembered; he'd claimed to have worked as a corporate consultant. She hadn't believed him then. She hadn't yet seen him in action.

  "Do you know what his company does, Ms. Devon?" In a black whisper, she revealed, "They downsize corporations."

  "Downsize!" repeated Brianna, aghast.

  "He's known as a hatchet man. He chops workers out of jobs. Terminates their positions. He'd be a hero in the stockholders' eyes if he downsized our staff, cut the overhead and upped their stock value. But workers would be laid off after years of loyal service."

  "He can't do that without the approval of the board."

  "He's selling off company assets, isn't he?"

  "I'm sure he'll have to present every sale to the board for their final okay."

  "It's a family business, Ms. Devon, and we don't know if stock has changed hands among the family members. Jake may have acquired a voting majority. Nor do we know what tricks he has up his sleeve. I've read about corporate maneuvers involving stocks and takeovers and things I don't understand. I'll bet Jake understands them."

  An ache formed in Brianna's heart. "Oh, Maude, we can't jump to conclusions. Where is Jake?"

  "I don't know. That's one of the reasons I decided to talk to you about this. Something big is going on right now. Jake was working on his computer, then jumped up and yelled at me to get Evan on the line. Meanwhile, Cy called, demanding to talk to Jake. Then Jake told me to cancel all his appointments and raced out of here like he was on fire."

  Forcing herself to maintain her composure, Brianna assured Maude that she'd done the right thing in telling her. After the secretary had returned to her desk, Brianna dialed Jake's cell phone. His line was busy.

  Had he been operating with some hidden agenda? No, there had to be another explanation for Cy's spying. She needed badly to hear it.

  Alone in the hospital waiting room, Jake hung up from his call to Evan's stockbroker and glanced at his watch. Cy had been in with a doctor for nearly an hour. They'd either sedated him or promised to send him home; Jake no longer heard him yelling. An ambulance had rushed him in for chest pains—a possible heart attack—but Jake knew that nothing would keep Cy Rowland in the hospital now.

  Not while his favorite company in the conglomerate was collapsing under its own weight. And that's just what was happening with the Rowland Insurance Company.

  Evan's high-risk investments had bottomed out.

  Jake curled his lip in dour reflection. He hadn't wanted the old man to learn about the plummeting stocks until he'd come up with a plan of action to soften the blow. Evan's investments had been a private transaction, not listed in the corporate minutes. Cy wouldn't have known about the investments if it hadn't been for his spying.

  He'd had Maude making copies of his paperwork and reporting on his every move, as he'd told Jake this morning. Too bad the old codger hadn't done the same while Evan had been running the company. He could have stopped him from making those risky investments in the first place.

  The company's downfall now seemed imminent. The investment failure was the proverbial straw that would break the camel's back. After Evan's mismanagement, the company was too weak to survive it. Too many assets would have to be liquidated to cover the loss.

  "Mr. Rowland?" A bearded doctor approached and shook hands with Jake. "We're keeping your grandfather for a few more hours. If he remains stable, he'll be free to go home."

  Jake gave the doctor his cell phone number, then strode out of the hospital and into the bright November day. He felt the need to walk, far and long. As he headed for the wooded towpath that ran between the old canal and the river, his cell phone rang. He tensed, bracing himself for whatever news it might bring.

  Brianna's voice rushed over him like a soothing balm. "Maude said you left in a hurry. Is something wrong?"

  "Cy had a few chest pains. He's doing okay now."

  "Thank goodness for that. I … I need to talk to you." Her voice sounded strained, and he wond
ered if she'd already heard about the plummeting stocks.

  "Come meet me." He wanted to see her, needed the comfort of her presence. He'd have to break the news of the company's downfall to her, but he wasn't ready to talk about it yet. How could he explain without mentioning Evan's mistakes? He'd promised Evan not to tell her. He couldn't betray his brother's trust, especially not when his life was caving in on him. From the reedy pitch of Evan's voice this morning, Jake knew he couldn't handle more stress right now.

  "Where should I meet you?" Brianna asked.

  "The towpath. Remember the place where I chained your tenth-grade boyfriend's bike to the bench?"

  "Yeah, I remember."

  "Meet me there."

  With her throat clogged by too many burning questions, Brianna trod along the wide leaf-strewn towpath of the Ohio & Erie trail, where horses had once pulled barges down the lazy-moving canal.

  She found Jake not on the wrought iron bench, as she'd expected, but on the bridge beyond it, leaning against its wooden rail, gazing across the green, rushing river that ran parallel to the canal. His dark brown hair glinted golden in the sunlight and rippled in the breeze. The masculine beauty of his strong, lean face and sturdy form struck her once again and deepened the ache inside her.

  She couldn't bear to think that he might be playing some game that could affect her company, her community, her future. But what if he was? Fighting to keep her voice level, she called out, "Is your grandfather all right?"

  He turned toward her, and she noticed a disturbing soberness in his expression. "I'm sure he will be. He's too ornery to stay down long. Let's walk." He held his hand out for her, and her heart begged her to take it.

  But she couldn't. She hung back, wrapping her arms around herself and shivering in the November chill. "Were you telling me the truth, Jake, when you said you had Cy's approval to make changes?"