Devin Quartermain always liked the first of the month. It meant that things began all over again. Fresh. Bills piling up from the last month were finally paid and he was faced with a brand—new opportunity to get things off to a good start.
His brother, Evan, thought this to be a hopelessly optimistic view of life, which was why, in Devin’s opinion, Evan was stuck behind a corporate desk, unable to enjoy the piles of money he was earning. He, on the other hand, could be perfectly happy with the small, and at times tidy, sums that being a private investigator afforded him.
The difference between them boiled down to attitude and time. Evan had little of the latter because he possessed the wrong type of the former.
Eventually, Evan would learn, Devin thought, spreading the morning edition of the newspaper out on his desk. After all, Evan was still a young man. He only acted old. At times, it was hard for Devin to remember or believe that they were exactly the same age, twenty—nine. Evan acted as if he were his father, not his brother, dispensing irritating advice that Devin had no interest in hearing.
“Okay, let’s see what’s going on in the world today,” he murmured. He was comfortable talking to himself, a habit he’d acquired after spending so much time alone. Half his work hours, if not more, were spent in his own company, either doing surveillance or piecing things together in solitude.
As he was about to take a bite out of a well stuffed jelly doughnut, a confection he looked forward to with as much relish as his first cup of coffee in the morning, there was a knock on his door.
He glanced at the clock on his desk, a stark, reliable thing that Evan had given him when he opened his practice. At nine in the morning, Devin wasn’t expecting anyone. All his cases were closed.
Whoever it was knocked again.
Opportunity, Devin thought with a smile.
He rose, but then, because he was hungry and dinner had been a hamburger the previous evening at six, he took one quick bite before going to the door. The bite managed to displace an inordinate amount of jelly, which came shooting out the other side. Reacting instinctively, he stopped it with his hand. A large red raspberry glob began to drip slowly down his palm.
Devin’s trip to the door was momentarily curtailed as he looked around for a napkin. The jelly continued its journey, forging a trail along his fingers.
Belatedly, he remembered that he hadn’t taken a napkin when he left Rosie’s Diner. Muttering an appropriate oath, Devin pulled a wrinkled handkerchief out of his back pocket and quickly began wiping away the red residue from his fingers. Everything felt sticky.
On the third, louder knock, he called out a distracted, “It’s open.”
That was when she walked in. The most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Five foot six—no, five foot three, he amended, noticing that the high heels she was wearing looked to be a good three inches. She had long blond hair and electric—blue eyes. The onepiece gray—blue dress she was wearing seemed to breathe with her. As did he.
Devin stopped wiping his hand. A snatch of a poem by Byron ran through his head. His mother would have been happy to know that all his education hadn’t completely evaporated as soon as the diploma had been placed in his hand.
The lady looked both distressed and regal. Just like in the movies, he thought. The old—fashioned movies that played on local channels as fillers, and had fascinated him as a child. The same ones that had gotten him hooked on what he wanted to be when he grew up—a private investigator. His parents had, by turns, thought his professed avocation cute, then annoying, then worrisome. No matter how much they cajoled and pleaded with him to “Do something sensible with your life, like Evan,” Devin had stuck to his guns, so to speak.
In deference to filial duty and the “something sensible” they touted so highly, he went to college and earned a degree in criminology from the University of California at Irvine. In deference to himself, he used what he had learned to live out his fantasy. And get paid for it.
Occasionally.
The man was staring at her as if she’d left the house half dressed. What was she doing here, anyway? Blair asked herself.
Looking for answers, the tiny voice within her whispered. The same tiny voice that had urged her on in the first place. The same tiny voice she remembered hearing as a child. It was a small voice, a child’s voice, not unlike her own had been when she was very young.
As she’d grown older, Blair had been convinced that the voice she had once adamantly sworn she remembered hearing must have belonged to an imaginary friend. An imaginary friend she’d created to keep herself company and make up for the fact that while her cousins—or the people she’d once believed to be her cousins, she amended silently—had siblings, she had none.
Blair looked around cautiously. In her wildest dreams, she had never envisioned herself walking into a detective’s office. What she knew about detectives, or thought she knew, could have been stuffed into a thimble with enough room left over to accommodate a thumb. She had a vague impression that they were cynical and rumpled, with lived—in faces. This detective’s face was far from lived—in. It was boyishly handsome. Maybe even charming. The only thing that was slightly disheveled was his hair, and even that was not without its charm. Black and thick, it was curling along the edge of his collar like a garden left to its own devices.
Only his eyes gave his profession away. Bright, green, with a hint of humor, they seemed to be looking right into her.
Blair noticed the red streaks on the man’s hands and raised her eyes to his in a silent question.
“Jelly,” he told her quickly. “Raspberry.” He nodded at the culprit resting on top of the waxed bag he’d brought it in. “My doughnut decided to explode on the first bite.” He shoved the handkerchief into his back pocket. “Please, have a seat.”
There was only one to choose from, besides the chair behind his desk. Taking it, Blair looked around again, trying to get her bearings. Trying very hard not to be agitated.
The room was bright and cheery despite its rather sparse furnishings. That, in part, was due to the large rectangular painting hanging on the wall behind the detective. It was a huge, breathless whirl of colors that could mean different things to different people.
To Blair it looked like a celebration of life. Or life as it should have been. A whirl of happiness. As hers had been. Before.
It made her think of her mother—or the woman who had said she was her mother. Ellen Stephens was an artist who adored her work.
Devin followed her line of vision and looked over his shoulder. “My sister painted it.”
He grinned, remembering how excited Paige had been when he accepted her gift. Everyone else in the family just teased her about her involvement with her work. Painting was her passion and it showed. Devin figured Paige would be able to buy and sell all of them in about ten years. Maybe nine.
Though she was preoccupied, Blair heard the distinct note of pride in his voice. Why shouldn’t he be proud? He knew who his family was. But she didn’t.
Blair ran her tongue along her upper lip. “It’s very… colorful.”
She didn’t care for it, he guessed. “And you’re very tactful.” Not to mention damn sexy. New bills to face notwithstanding, Devin found himself entertaining the hope that she wasn’t going to turn out to be a client. That would leave other avenues open to him that would be otherwise closed.
He sat not behind his desk, but on the edge of it, directly in front of her. With his arms folded across his chest, Devin allowed himself a moment to study her and form his own impressions. He prided himself on speed. Second chances were not always available in his line of work.
“And upset,” he added quietly. His first order of business, he decided, if they were to engage in any, was to put her at ease and to gain her trust. “What can I do for you?”
Her hands fluttered in her lap like two white doves, unable to decide where to settle. “I don’t know where to start, exactly.”
Definitely upset, he
thought. His personal interest was quickly shunted to the back as his professional side moved forward.
“Pick a place,” he urged kindly. “I’ll jump in behind you and we’ll work from there.” He smiled at her. “Why don’t you start by telling me your name?”
His smile almost succeeded in putting her at ease. “Blair Stephens.” Blair focused on the tips of her fingers and began with the first thing that came to her. “My mother just died.”
“I’m sorry.”
The genuine note of concern in his voice had her looking up again. There was no reason for him to be sorry, or be anything at all, for that matter, Blair thought. Ellen Stephens wasn’t anything to this man, although she’d been the world to her.
And now that world was crumbling.
Blair struggled to hold herself together as she continued.
“That is,” she rephrased, “the woman I thought was my mother just died. I don’t know if my mother, my real mother, is alive or not. I just found out—rd;
Blair stopped abruptly as tears came to her eyes. Angry tears, tears belonging to a trusting person who’d been utterly and completely betrayed by everyone she’d ever loved.
Damn it, Mother, why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you trust me enough to tell me? Did you think I was going to walk away from you if I knew? Why did you have everyone keep it from me? I had a right to know.
Aunt Beth had tried to explain things to her, to make her understand and in understanding, forgive, but she couldn’t. It hurt too much, finding out after all this time that her mother had lied to her.
That everything she believed in was a lie.
Devin hated facing tears. They always made him feel so helpless. As far as he was concerned, it was easier looking down the barrel of a weapon than into a woman’s tears. He knew what to do facing a gun—he’d been trained to deal with that. Luckily, the situation had never come up.
But tears, well, tears always left him in a quandary. Every woman reacted differently to offers of comfort. Like as not, they lashed out. Bracing himself, Devin fished out his handkerchief and offered it to her, holding it as if it were a white flag of truce.
“Careful,” he warned as she took it, “there’s jelly in one corner.”
It sounded so absurd, it made her laugh. And laughing made her feel better. At least a little. After carefully dabbing at the streaks beneath her eyes, Blair handed the handkerchief back to him.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
He replaced it in his pocket, his attention focused on the woman. “You were saying?”
Blair cleared her throat. Whether or not she was her real mother, Ellen Stephens had raised her not to be afraid.
So why were you afraid to tell me who I was, Mother?
It wasn’t easy to siphon off the bitterness that kept insisting on rising in her throat. She tried harder. “I just found out that I was adopted.”
“And you’d like me to find your birth mother?”
It wasn’t really a guess. Why else would she be here? Finding people was his specialty, what he wanted to build his reputation on. There was a lot more money to be made in tailing and photographing unfaithful spouses. But crouching in doorways and melding into shadows with telescopic lenses trained on people in the act of making love had never appealed to Devin. Every man had to live by his own code of ethics. His involved reuniting people, not splitting them apart.
“No,” Blair replied, her voice hardly more than a whisper.
Fresh tears mounted in her throat. She was still mourning the mother she’d thought she’d had, mourning her death twice over. Once as a mother, and once as a person she had trusted. Within the space of four days, she’d been robbed of both of them.
Blair set her jaw squarely. She had no interest in the woman who had not only given her away—as if she were nothing more than a toy that had ceased to amuse—but had willingly let her be separated from her sister as well.
“I don’t need any more mothers.”
That was an odd way to phrase it, Devin thought. “Father, then?” This time, he was guessing.
Her father. Funny, she hadn’t even thought about finding her birth father. To Blair, the word “father” meant a man with a wide, enveloping smile and a booming laugh. A man with rolled—up sleeves and suspenders, and shoulders strong enough to ride her around the room when he came home from work. The man she’d called Daddy had died fifteen years ago. She wasn’t interested in finding someone else to take his place.
“No.”
That left Devin puzzled, but he waited in silence, letting her take her own time. She had come here for a reason and he could wait to hear it. It wasn’t as if looking at her while she gathered her courage was any sort of a hardship. She brought the room to life far more intensely than Paige’s painting did.
He watched as Blair opened a purse that was so orderly inside, it drew a whistle of admiration from him.
Surprised, Blair raised her eyes to his face. “Excuse me?”
“Sorry.” An engaging grin underlined his apology. “My mother and sisters have purses that look like the aftermath of a hurricane.” He leaned over slightly, peering unselfconsciously into the interior. “I’ve never seen one that looked so neat before.”
Her purse appeared to have a place for everything. There was even a loop for a pen—with a pen in it. The woman was amazingly meticulous.
Blair made no comment. Instead, she handed Devin the photograph she’d found in her mother’s drawer two days ago.
“I want to find her. My sister.” She tapped the little girl on the left. “My twin sister.”
Blair repeated the words as much for her own benefit as for his. After two days, they still hadn’t fully sunk in. She’d been raised as an only child. To know that there was someone walking around out there with not only her blood, but her face, left Blair stunned and almost speechless.
Devin studied the photograph in silence for a moment. It was a happy scene. There was nothing to set it apart from tens of thousands of other photographs just like it. Except that the two little girls were carbon copies of each other.
“Cute. Both of you.” He raised his eyes to her face. “You look like her. The woman in the photograph,” he clarified.
The comment drew an uncomfortable shrug from Blair. She didn’t want to be compared to the woman in the photograph, even though she was attractive. She didn’t want to think of that person as her mother.
“I don’t have much to go on. Just her name.” She indicated the back of the photograph.
Devin turned it over and read. “Blair and Claire.” He smiled. “Looks like your mother had the same perverse sense of humor mine had.”
She didn’t follow. “I don’t—”
“Devin and Evan.” He nodded at the photograph. “Blair and Claire.”
She knew what his name was. Evan had to be his brother. Her eyebrows drew together as the significance sank in. “You’re a—?”
“Twin?” he filled in. “Yes.” He and Evan were as identical as the two little girls in the photograph. And as different as two people could be. “Spent my first two years in sailor suits.” After that, his mother had mercifully given up the idea of dressing them alike. “Small world, huh?”
“No, it’s a very large world,” she contradicted. If it were a small world, she would have already run into this woman who carried the same genes as she did. She would have known about her before this.
Haven’t you? Haven’t you somehow always known that something, someone was missing?
She was making herself crazy, she thought. Blair shrugged in response to the question she’d asked herself, then saw that he was looking at her.
She laughed shortly, helplessly. “I don’t even know if that’s still her name. Claire,” she repeated.
It didn’t faze him. “Don’t worry, I love a challenge,” Devin told her.
For the briefest moment, Blair had the strangest feeling that he was looking at her and not the photograph when he sai
d it. But then she dismissed it, knowing she was being absurd. Since Aunt Beth had told her about her real origins, she’d been suspicious of absolutely everything.
2
Devin always believed in being upfront with people. Following his personal code of ethics had cost him more than one client, but Devin didn’t believe in playing games. At least, not professionally. He could think of several games he’d be willing to engage in with the lady in his office if she were willing, but they were all on a personal level, a level that was not about to be reached anytime soon.
Right now, she needed his help. His professional ethics prevented him from mixing business with pleasure, no matter how tempting that might seem. His career meant too much to him for him to give anything less than his full attention to each case.
Devin tapped the back of the photograph lightly.
“Was this the last time you two were together?”
The slight, helpless shrug told him more than he figured she wanted to at the moment. He glanced at the writing. Blair and Claire, twenty—three months.
He guessed her to be in the neighborhood of about twenty—four. “That would make the trail about what, twenty—two years cold?”
The hopelessness she hadn’t been able to shake in two days wrapped itself a little tighter around her. Twenty—two years was a long time. “Good guess.”
“You develop a knack.” He flipped the photograph back onto the desk. “A trail that cold might take time to follow.” That it might prove impossible was not an idea he was willing to entertain just yet. Though his view of the world was grounded in reality, he was at bottom an optimist.
Quartermain was worried about getting paid for his efforts, Blair thought.
“I have money. Not a lot,” she put in, wishing she didn’t have to make the admission, but it was only fair that he knew where she stood. “But until it runs out, I want you to keep looking for my sister.”
Devin leaned back and fixed her with a long, thoughtful look. The woman was a walking mark and she didn’t even know it. More than a few people of his acquaintance would have been eager to see how long it would take them to separate her from her money. She was lucky she’d come to him instead of someone else.
Desperately Seeking Twin... Page 2