by Ginna Gray
Then there was only silence.
In the shortest possible space of time Kate had gone from being deliriously happy and aroused to cold, bereft and alone. For a moment she was too stupefied to feel anything but shock. She looked around, dazed and bewildered, unable to move.
Slowly, however, one truth seeped through her confusion—one inescapable, undeniable, humiliating truth. J.T. had rejected her.
For whatever reason he obviously had changed his mind and no longer wanted her.
Red-hot pain expanded inside her like shock waves radiating out from an explosion. Kate held herself tighter and swore she would not cry. She would not.
But not even her fierce pride could hold the pain at bay. A dry sob shook her whole body, then another and another.
She fought for control, but despite all her effort her chin began to quiver, and though she tried to press her lips together, they wobbled uncontrollably. Scalding tears soon filled her eyes. When they began to spill over she surrendered with a wail of pain and threw herself facedown on the pillow and sobbed.
* * *
"My sister. Kate is my sister! Mine and Matt's triplet sister!"
Every time J.T. said the words, the pain cut deeper, but he forced himself to repeat them over and over, hoping the agony would help to sear the truth into his brain. Because, God help him, he didn't want it to be true.
J.T. paced back and forth across his room, raking his hands through his hair, rubbing the back of is neck, cursing under his breath. Dammit! He needed to hit something. Hard.
He halted in the middle of the floor, pressed the heels of his hands against his eye sockets and made a low sound of pain. What a fool he'd been. What an utter fool! Why hadn't it occurred to him that Kate, not Zach, might be his sibling?
At the very least, he should have realized that if Zach was adopted, then Kate probably was also.
What a mess. Which just shows what happens when you think with your heart instead of you head, he thought viciously.
He and Matt had known there was a possibility their sibling might be female. It was fairly common for fraternal triplets to be made up of both sexes, and he and Matt were obviously fraternal. They bore no more resemblance to each other than most brothers, and had even less in common.
But because of that damned message on the Internet, he assumed his missing sibling was another brother. Plus the talk he'd heard in town and a few remarks that Kate had made had led him to believe that she was the Mahoneys' natural child.
Or maybe that was simply what he'd wanted to believe. Exhausted, mentally and emotionally, J.T. gave up pacing and flopped down across the bed on his back. He focused on the ceiling without seeing the fancy plasterwork or the painted cupids. Absently he rubbed his hand over his chest. His heart felt as though it had been clubbed into a bloody pulp.
Dear Lord, how was he going to live without Kate? Worse, how could he bear to accept her as his sister? See her now and then and never be able to touch her, pretend that his feelings for her were brotherly.
And as horrible as J.T.'s pain was, he knew that Kate's had to be just as bad, maybe worse. She, after all, had no idea why he had walked out.
And he had no idea how he was going to explain it to her. What could he say that wouldn't shock and repulse her?
She probably had no idea that she was one of a set of triplets. She might not even know she was adopted, for Pete's sake. It was unusual these days for adoptive parents to withhold that information, but it still happened.
In addition, he dreaded Kate's reaction when she realized he'd deceived her. She was an intelligent woman. She was sure to put two and two together and figure out that he'd come there looking for his sibling. The odds that he had just happened to choose this particular town and this particular B&B were just too astronomical. Even if she believed in fate, that was stretching it a bit.
He had to find a delicate way to tell her the truth. Until he knew how best to handle the situation—hell, until he could come to grips with it himself—he wasn't going to say anything.
She would probably hate him for it. She probably hated him already, but it couldn't be helped.
Actually, it was probably for the best if she did, he thought, rubbing his chest again. Hate would be a whole lot easier to take than this agony. He felt as though someone had driven a stake through his heart.
* * *
The next morning Kate had barely entered the kitchen when she heard J.T. leave the house through the side door and drive away in his Jeep.
Just as well, she told herself as she stoically ground coffee beans and started the pot brewing. She wasn't ready to face J.T. just yet. She still felt too fragile, too wounded. Too vulnerable. After that marathon crying jag, she looked, and felt, like hell.
One glance at her puffy face and red-rimmed eyes and J.T. would know that she'd spent half the night crying. She couldn't tolerate his pity. That would be the ultimate insult.
She made herself a piece of toast and poured a cup of coffee, but when she sat down to eat she merely picked at the bread and stared off into space. Over and over during the night she'd asked herself what had gone wrong. Had she done or said something to repulse him?
She'd played the scene over in her mind at least a dozen times, but she was no closer to figuring it all out than she'd been the night before. The only thing that was clear was that J.T. no longer wanted her.
No matter the cause, or how much it hurt, she had no choice but to accept that.
* * *
J.T. did not return to the Alpine Rose until late that night. Nor did Kate catch so much as a glimpse of him for almost two weeks. Each morning he left early and did not return until late, long past the time she usually retired for the night.
A couple of times when Kate went into town to pick up her mail, she saw his car—once parked in front of the newspaper office and once in front of the Miners' Lodge, but there was no sign of him around.
Had she not cleaned his room daily she might have thought he'd moved out, but his things were still there, and there were always soiled towels in his bathroom and other small signs of his occupancy.
Kate spent New Year's Eve alone watching an old black-and-white Clark Gable movie on television. On New Year's Day she cooked a ham and the traditional pot of black-eyed peas for luck, but she ate the meal alone. After that she dragged out a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle—one of her favorite winter pastimes—but she was too agitated and tense to settle, and after only a short while she put it away again. The rest of the day was spent prowling the house, looking for something to do.
As the days passed, Kate's reaction to what had happened between her and J.T. underwent a gradual change. After days of self-doubt and assuming she was to blame, her pride asserted itself once again, and she adamantly refused to accept that.
She had gone over and over that scene in her mind, and by heaven, she had done nothing wrong. Nothing.
Kate began to wonder if the whole thing hadn't been deliberate on J.T.'s part. Maybe he was just a trophy hunter, one of those vile men who liked to prove he could have any woman he wanted. Maybe he got his jollies by humiliating women. Or maybe he was one of those who enjoyed the chase more than the actually lovemaking.
Whatever his reason for doing what he'd done, by the second week in January, Kate's humiliation had turned to simmering anger. Though she had been glad of the reprieve in the beginning, she was now heartily sick of J.T.'s disappearing act.
Whether he liked it or not, they were going to talk about what had happened and clear the air.
That evening Kate settled in the parlor with a book and a cup of coffee, determined that no matter how long it took, she would wait up for J.T. and waylay him before he had a chance to disappear into his room.
She tried to concentrate on the book, but she was so keyed-up and alert for the least sound of his return that she found herself reading the same passages over and over and still not retaining a word.
By midnight Kate had consumed a who
le pot of coffee and there was still no sign of J.T. In desperation she turned on the television.
The next thing she knew she awoke with a start, shivering with cold. It was a little past two in the morning, the fire in the fireplace had burned out, snowy lines filled the television screen and static came from the speakers.
J.T.! Kate bolted out of the chair, switched off the TV and hurried down the hallway. "Oh, no," she groaned when a quick check out of the side door revealed his Jeep in the port cochere.
Kate considered storming up the stairs and banging on his door until he answered it, but she discarded that idea almost immediately. When she confronted him she wanted to do it calmly and with dignity.
Trudging up the stairs to bed, she tried to come up with a way to force him to talk to her, but she was too weary to think. Feeling absurdly like Scarlett O'Hara, Kate told herself she'd worry about that tomorrow and collapsed into bed.
* * *
The next morning Mother Nature came to Kate's aid.
She awoke at her usual time, about an hour before dawn. She felt wooden-headed and achy from too little rest but knew she would not be able to go back to sleep: her internal clock had been set years ago.
Climbing out of bed, Kate lifted her arms above her head and stretched, then, as she did every morning in winter, she padded over to the window and peeked out to check the weather.
When she pulled back the curtain, her eyes widened. Beyond the panes the world had been reduced to a swirling maelstrom of white. The blizzard that had been predicted on the TV weather report the previous evening had roared in with a vengeance.
A slow, self-satisfied grin curved Kate's mouth. J.T. wasn't going anywhere for several days.
* * *
Kate was waiting when J.T. came downstairs. She'd propped the kitchen door open, and when he passed by, heading for the side exit, she walked over and stood in the doorway and watched him.
Blowing snow hit him in the face when he opened the door. He halted abruptly and stared. Even beneath the shelter of the port cochere the blizzard winds whipped the snow into a frenzy.
"Wherever you were heading, forget it. You won't make it to the road in that."
J.T. whipped around. "Kate! I, uh … I didn't see you there."
"Yes. I can see that." He stood with his hand still gripping the knob of the open door, looking uncomfortable, and she could swear he had paled when he saw her. "The road into town is impassable. Why don't you just come in the kitchen and have some coffee."
"Impassable? You didn't plow it this morning? Look, if you're too busy I'll be happy to do it for you."
"J.T., besides being dangerous, it's pointless to plow in a heavy storm like this." She nodded toward the open doorway. "In case you haven't noticed, we're in a white-out. Visibility is so poor I wouldn't be able to find the road, much less plow it. It would be suicide to try. Even if I could plow without going over the side, by the time I reached the bottom, the road would be covered over again."
"But … I need to go to town."
"I did warn you about winter in the high country, remember? Now, would you mind closing the door before we freeze?"
"Oh. Sorry." He did as she asked, then turned with a feeble attempt at a smile. "Well, I guess I'll go back to my room and get some work d—"
"J.T., we need to talk."
"Talk? You mean … now?"
This time there was no doubt: he definitely paled.
"Yes, now."
"I'm, uh … I'm kinda busy, Kate. Can't it wait?"
"I've been waiting for over two weeks. I think that's more than enough." She fixed him with a level look. "You owe me an explanation, J.T."
Looking as though he would rather be anyplace but there, he grimaced and turned his head to the side to stare down the hall. Finally he sighed and looked back at her. "All right. I guess it's time to get this over with."
Kate would have felt better about the whole thing if he hadn't looked as though he were going to his own execution, but she wasn't about to back out now. Turning, she led the way into the kitchen. While J.T. shed his coat and hung it on the back of a chair, she poured two mugs of coffee.
"Have a seat," she offered, placing the drinks on the table.
"If you don't mind, I'd rather say what I have to say standing up."
Oh, dear. Was it that awful? Kate watched him pace, noted the agitated way he kept raking his hand through his dark hair, and she felt the knot of sick dread in her stomach tighten. She took a sip of coffee, wrapped her cold hands around the mug to keep them from shaking and plunged in.
"Why did you do it, J.T.? Why did you leave me like that? You'd been pursuing me almost from the day you arrived, then, just as we were finally about to make love, you ran out. Do you have any idea how much that hurt? How humiliated I felt?"
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Kate. Believe me, the last thing I wanted to do was hurt you."
"Then why did you do it?"
His jerky steps carried him to the back door. He stared out through the glass as though looking for an avenue of escape. "I didn't have a choice. I had to."
"Had to? Why?"
J.T. tipped his head back and looked up at the ceiling, his face contorted with what looked like pain. Finally he turned to face her fully, and Kate almost cried out at the living hell in his eyes.
"I couldn't make love to you, Kate, because … because you're my sister."
Kate goggled at him, speechless. She couldn't have been more shocked if he had confessed to being a murderer.
The absurdity of it was too much. She simply couldn't help herself. She burst out laughing.
For over two weeks J.T. had agonized over telling Kate the truth. He'd imagined dozens of scenarios and ways she might react. Laughter wasn't one of them.
Yet there she sat, doubled over in gales of laughter. She laughed so hard and so long she lost her breath and nearly choked, and J.T. began to feel affronted.
"This is funny to you?"
"N-not … fu-fu-funny. Just … ri-ridiculous," she sputtered in between helpless peals.
"Dammit, Kate, will you stop that laughing! I'm serious. You and I are brother and sister."
Shaking her head, she wiped her eyes with her fingertips and struggled to contain her mirth. "Not unless my parents had a son they never told me about," she choked out. "And I have to tell you, that doesn't seem likely."
"You don't understand. I have proof."
"Proof? Oh, J.T., that's impossible," she insisted, trying without much success to stop her lips from twitching.
"No, listen to me. You, me and our brother, Matt Dolan, we're triplets. Our mother gave us up for adoption when we were two years old. She required only one thing of our adoptive parents, and that was they we were always to wear these."
Reaching into the neck of his shirt, he pulled out the silver chain that held his medallion piece and dangled it for her to see. "She gave us each one. When you put the three pieces together they form a whole medallion. That's how Matt and I learned we were brothers. We discovered that we wore similar pie-shaped fragments that fit together perfectly. When I saw the piece you wear, I knew you were our missing sister."
"Ah, I see. When we were in bed, about to make love, you saw my medallion."
J.T.'s stomach roiled at the appalling memory of what they had almost done. "Yes."
"I see. No wonder you turned that sickly shade of green and ran out."
Frowning, J.T. watched her, waiting for the shock and horror to hit her, but to his amazement her lips began to twitch again, and a sound suspiciously like a chuckle bubbled up. Then another, and another. When she could no longer hold back, more gales of laughter rolled from her throat.
"Dammit, Kate! What's the matter with you?"
"I'm sor-ry. I'm sorry, I ca-can't help it."
"Well, I'm glad you're enjoying this. Personally, I feel like a gutted fish."
"Oh, J.T." Instantly contrite, Kate jumped up and put her hand on his arm. "I didn't mean it that wa
y. It's just that this whole thing is a silly mistake. I'm not your sister, J.T. For starters I'm not adopted."
"But your medallion piece—"
"Is a copy."
He froze.
"A copy?" he repeated weakly.
"Yes, a copy. Look, I'll show you." She reached into the neckline of her sweater and fished out the piece of silver. "Your piece has some sort of symbol on one side and fragments of writing on the other, right?" At his nod, she held out her own. "Mine doesn't. See?"
His knees gave way, and he sank down onto the chair she had just vacated.
Immediately Kate knelt beside him and took his hands in hers. "J.T., listen to me. The real medallion piece belongs to my brother. I told you how close we are. We have been from the day I was born.
"You see, after ten years of marriage produced no children, my parents adopted Zach, but as often happens, three years later they had me. From the moment they brought me home from the hospital Zach was the proudest, best big brother any girl could have, and as a child I idolized him. I still do.
"Naturally, when I was old enough I was told all about the adoption, how my parents had chosen Zach to be their son, and about the medallion fragment that his birth mother had asked that he always wear.
"As a kid I was fascinated by that piece of silver and the mystery behind it. To tell the truth, I was envious. I wanted one of my own. I guess I thought having it made Zach special.
"I was thirteen when he left for college, and it broke my heart to lose him. To console me, he had a copy of his medallion made for me. He told me that as long as we both wore them, the bond between us would never be broken, no matter how many miles separated us."
Her mouth quirked in a self-conscious half smile. "As an adult, I know it was just a gesture to ease the transition for me. That's the kind of brother Zach is. But it still gives me comfort. I wear it all the time, the same as he wears his."
Not yet allowing himself to fully accept what he wanted so badly to be true, J.T. eyed her cautiously. "Then you're saying … you're not my sister?"
"That's right." Kate's lips twitched again, but he was too relieved to care. "I am most definitely not your sister."