“I suppose it’s possible,” Beth said. “Whenever I’ve tried to get information about my birth family I haven’t gotten anywhere. I’d love to ask her some questions.”
“She went up to the cemetery to do some research. I can ask her to come back if you’d like,” Patrick offered, at the same time groaning silently. Maddie was entirely too disturbing to his equilibrium.
“That would be great. I’m expecting a shipment at the store, otherwise I’d go myself.”
She smiled, and Patrick was relieved he didn’t feel anything except warm affection when he looked at her. His sister-in-law was an attractive woman, but from the beginning he’d realized she belonged with Kane—though it had taken them a while to figure it out for themselves.
“By the way, congratulations on the baby,” Patrick said. “I’m a little smug about it since I’m the reason you and Kane met each other.”
She beamed. “Kane spent hours on the phone last night, telling everyone from London to Japan. We’re going to have a huge phone bill, but he wouldn’t get off.”
That was something else Patrick liked about Beth. She was married to one of the richest men alive, but she continued to think like an average person with an average amount of money.
“That’s great, kiddo. I’m happy for you.”
But the contrast between Beth’s bright happiness and the shadows he’d seen in Maddie’s eyes made Patrick shift uncomfortably. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. Okay, so a woman he’d never met had cried twice while talking to him.
It was none of his business.
He was just concerned because Maddie looked like Beth, and since Beth was his sister-in-law, he was confusing family obligations. Except…his response to Maddie Jackson was far too sexual to be confused with anything.
With an effort, Patrick focused on Beth’s glowing face. “Okay, you wait for your shipment, and I’ll go find Maddie.” He kissed her again and watched as she went inside.
All things considered, he couldn’t understand how he’d confused the two women. Beth was Beth. Sweet, safe, comfortable. His brother’s wife. He liked sweet, safe and comfortable. He’d screwed up enough of his life with things that weren’t safe and comfortable.
Down the street was a small grocery shop, with racks of fresh cut flowers in front of it. Patrick ambled over and selected a bouquet of chrysanthemums. It was a small cemetery. He could always say he was putting the flowers on a friend’s grave if Maddie got nervous about him following her. He could even say she’d given him the idea.
In the back of his mind Patrick knew he was probably making a mistake to get involved, but it was important to Beth, so he couldn’t say no. It was the least he could do after she’d made his brother so happy.
Nodding to himself, Patrick got into his Chevy Blazer and headed for Crockett’s hillside cemetery. The sky had the brilliant blue of an early-fall day and the air was pleasant, with an underlying crisp edge. Soon it would be winter and folks would start complaining about the rain. He’d never understood why people lived in the Pacific Northwest if they disliked the weather so much. Though, as his mother said, being Irish he was genetically disposed to liking rain.
At the cemetery he parked, then used his cell phone to call his brother’s private office number. When Kane answered, Patrick described his meeting with Maddie Jackson…leaving out the part about being attracted to her. No sense in complicating things.
“This could be great for Beth,” Kane said. “She’s always wished she had her own family, especially now with baby coming.”
“I know.” Patrick looked across the cemetery. In her turquoise dress Maddie was easily recognizable in the distance. She moved from one stone to another, looking at the inscriptions and occasionally writing something on a pad of paper. At each stone she pulled a flower from the bouquet she carried and laid it on the ground. Once the caw-cawing of a crow caught her attention and she looked up, watching it sail across the sky.
He sighed, barely hearing his brother on the other end of the phone. Something about Maddie was so fresh and innocent. Hell, he couldn’t remember ever being that innocent.
“Uh…what was that?” he asked into the phone, shaking himself. The last time a woman had distracted him this much was when he was a teenager. He ought to have better sense now that he was the ripe old age of thirty-three. It was crazy. Even if he was interested in a long-term relationship, it wouldn’t be with a ditzy innocent who probably thought the whole world was like her hometown in New Mexico.
It wasn’t.
The world was a hard place, and nobody knew that better than Patrick.
“I’m coming over to meet Maddie, as well,” Kane repeated. “I’ll notify the helipad and leave in a few minutes.”
Despite his inner turmoil, Patrick grinned as he slipped the cell phone into a pocket. Few people had a private helicopter and pilot, always ready to make life more convenient. If his brother wasn’t such a great guy he’d be really obnoxious with all that money.
Not that Patrick had always appreciated the way that Kane had tried to fill their father’s shoes. Rebellious teenagers sometimes weren’t the smartest people in the world, and he’d been a “rebel without a pause,” leading with his chin and begging for trouble. A lot had changed since then, except he still tended to lead with his chin.
Carrying his bunch of flowers, Patrick headed toward Maddie. He felt foolish, but putting women and the O’Rourke men together frequently resulted in that emotion.
He cleared his throat when he was ten feet away, and Maddie’s head shot up. Her eyes widened and she took a step backward, which made Patrick’s own feet freeze. He looked down at the flowers and back at Maddie.
The flowers had been a really stupid idea.
“I realize how this looks,” he said slowly.
“No, you don’t.”
He sighed. “Okay, I don’t. It’s just that my sister-in-law arrived after you left and was really excited when I told her about you. She wants to be sure you’ll come back to meet her.” He let the arm holding the flowers fall to one side so the bouquet of yellow and russet mums wouldn’t be so obvious. “So, how is the search going?”
Maddie scrunched up her nose and looked at him for another minute, then shrugged, apparently deciding he was harmless. “I found the graves, but they’re really old. If these people are my relatives, they’re pretty distant.”
“It can be tough tracking down birth parents,” he said. “What do you know about them?”
She sighed. “Not much, except that my mother’s last name was Rousso, and she was really young. My adoptive parents met when Dad was attending the University of Washington. They knew ahead of time they couldn’t have kids, so they decided to adopt. It was a private arrangement through a church.”
“You seem comfortable about being adopted.”
“Why not? I had a great childhood.”
“Then why look for your birth parents?”
She gave him an exasperated frown. “I told you.”
“You told me you wanted to know about their health history in case you decide to have children.” Patrick lifted an eyebrow. “Then you promptly announced you weren’t having any kids.”
“Oh.”
Maddie’s teeth sank down on her lip and Patrick regretted ever bringing up the subject. It was somewhere between babies and adoption that she’d started crying the first time.
“Not that I blame you,” he said quickly. “Who wants to get tied down with a bunch of rug rats?”
Her eyes narrowed. “I thought you were pleased your sister-in-law is pregnant. Children are wonderful.”
Damn it all, he knew better than to get into a discussion about kids with a baby-hungry woman. “Let’s go see Beth,” he said quickly. “Who knows, maybe you’re sisters. She was adopted, too.”
Maddie hesitated.
Her first instinct was to say “yes,” but her instincts weren’t all that great when it came to men, so she needed to th
ink it over. On the other hand, Patrick wasn’t asking her for a date, he just wanted to visit his sister-in-law. How much trouble could she get into, especially since she’d already planned to go see the other woman?
Besides, it wasn’t her business if the man didn’t want a family. She didn’t even know why his dedication to bachelordom was so annoying.
“All right,” she murmured. “Do you want to go now?”
“Sure. You’d better follow me in your car.”
She made a face. “You think I’m going to get lost?”
“We’ve got a lot of twists and turns around here.”
“I’ll be fine.”
She turned on her heel and headed back up the hill to the parking lot. When she didn’t hear footsteps behind her, she looked over her shoulder in time to see Patrick put his bouquet on one of the graves, right next to the flower she’d left.
Her heart skipped a beat.
It was obvious he’d been embarrassed about those flowers, but instead of throwing them away, he’d left them on someone’s long-forgotten grave. Carefully. With respect.
Darn.
She didn’t want her pulse jumping over Patrick O’Rourke. Her life had just gotten completely scrambled, and he was completely the wrong sort of guy for her, even if she hadn’t sworn off romance.
Right?
Chapter Two
Despite Maddie’s assurance that she knew the way back to town, Patrick arrived ahead of her. He got out and leaned against the Blazer as he waited. A few minutes later she drove up, one eyebrow raised in challenge.
He suppressed a smile as she slammed the door closed. “I know a few shortcuts,” he said.
Apparently, Maddie couldn’t stay annoyed, because she grinned at him. It was the most relaxed she’d seemed since he’d made the mistake of kissing her, and Patrick had time to notice the six small freckles on her nose, which were adorable.
Adorable?
He rolled his eyes and tried to think of something—anything—else.
Maddie Jackson was as cute as a baby kitten and had an appealing vulnerability beneath her colorful dress and the defiant tilt of her head. But he wasn’t in the market for appealing vulnerability, he kept his socializing to sophisticated women who didn’t have any interest beyond the here and now. Besides, his tastes ran to cool, classy brunettes, not impulsive, scatterbrained blondes.
“Are you ready to meet your double?” he asked.
Maddie gulped down a flutter of nervous excitement. She shouldn’t expect too much. Patrick was probably wrong and she didn’t look that similar to his sister-in-law.
They walked inside the Mom and Kid’s Stuff clothing store and Maddie stared at the woman behind the service counter. She swallowed again.
They really did look like each other.
“Beth, this is Maddie Jackson,” Patrick said. “Maddie, this is Beth O’Rourke.”
“Oh, it’s like seeing myself in a mirror,” the other woman gasped.
“Exactly,” he murmured.
Shockwaves rolled through Maddie’s already unsettled nerves. First she’d found her fiancé in a clinch with the punch girl, got kissed by a stranger and now…this. She felt an irrational desire to move closer to Patrick, as if he was a safe harbor in the middle of chaos.
Beth seemed to recover first, because she smiled and walked forward. “Welcome to Crockett. I understand you’re looking for your real mother and father.”
“My real mother and father are in New Mexico,” Maddie said, automatically sticking out her hand. “I’m just looking for my birth parents.”
“I see.”
They stood awkwardly until Patrick intervened. “Why don’t you start with your birthdays?” he suggested.
“July twentieth,” they said simultaneously.
Maddie swallowed and took an involuntary step toward Patrick. She didn’t know what she’d thought she would find when she left Slapshot, but it wasn’t seeing a woman with her same birth date and eyes and face.
“That’s interesting,” said a voice from behind them. “You were both born on the same day.”
“Kane!” Beth turned, her face transformed at the sight of a tall, dark-haired man with a striking resemblance to Patrick. She threw herself into his open arms.
“That’s my brother,” Patrick murmured. “You’d think they hadn’t seen each other in years, instead of hours. Of course, they’ve only been married for six weeks, so I guess we can excuse them for getting carried away.”
The wry, humorous tone of his voice was lost on Maddie, and her restlessness deepened as the couple shared a lingering kiss. She didn’t begrudge them their happiness, but it was hard seeing them at the same time her own life had fallen apart and she didn’t know how to fix it. Besides, there was something so…luminous about Beth O’Rourke when she looked at her husband.
When was the last time she’d looked at Ted like that? Certainly not the morning she’d found him with the punch girl’s D-cup bra hanging from his pocket.
Darn him, anyway. She could accept they’d both been having second thoughts. She could even accept he’d never been unfaithful before. So why did he have to make that comment about neither of them doing any comparison shopping…then make it clear what part of the feminine anatomy he was interested in comparing?
Honestly. She didn’t understand why men were so hung up about the female body. It wouldn’t matter to her if Patrick was short or tall or anything in between.
All at once Maddie frowned.
Patrick?
No. That was wrong.
Patrick O’Rourke was a temporary acquaintance, even if he did have a nice smile. She didn’t have any interest in his body.
At least, not much.
Though she had to admit it was a great body. The kind that inspired fantasies.
“Are you okay?” a quiet voice murmured.
She glanced upward and saw a concerned expression on Patrick’s face. Beth and her husband still hadn’t come up for air, and a sigh rose from Maddie’s chest.
“They really seem to love each other,” she said, hating the forlorn tone in her voice.
“I should hope so,” he said humorously. “What with them having a baby, and all.”
“Yeah.”
Patrick groaned silently. He didn’t have a clue how to console an upset woman, particularly when he didn’t know why she was upset. All he knew was Maddie had that quivery look to her bottom lip again, and it made him feel awful. He came from a family accustomed to physical displays of comfort and affection, so his first thought was to give her a quick hug. On the other hand, his desire to hug Maddie wasn’t entirely altruistic; maybe it was smarter to keep his hugs to himself.
Another long moment passed before Beth and Kane could drag their attention away from each other.
“Did I hear right, you both have the same birth date?” Kane asked at last, his arm snugly planted around his wife’s waist.
“July twentieth,” Maddie said. “It could be just a coincidence.”
“But we look so much alike,” Beth protested. “I was born at the old Crockett General Hospital at 12:25 a.m. What about you?”
Maddie squirmed. “Uh, same hospital, at 12:35. My birth certificate doesn’t say anything about it being a multiple birth.”
“Neither does mine, but they reissue the certificate when you’re adopted to make it look like you were born to your new parents. Twelve thirty-five? That makes me the eldest. I’ll bet we’re twins.” Beth smiled.
“It’s too soon to know that,” Maddie said. Judging by the way she lifted her stubborn chin, it didn’t look as if she was eager to find a twin sister. “Maybe we’re cousins. Cousins can look alike and be born close to each other.”
Beth shook her head. “It’s too big a coincidence. There was talk when I was a kid, but you hear so many wild rumors when you live in foster homes, I stopped paying attention. Wouldn’t it have been wonderful to grow up together?”
Maddie didn’t say anything fo
r a long moment, but her mouth was set stubbornly. “Twins usually aren’t separated when they’re adopted. Mom and Dad would have taken both of us, so we can’t be sisters.”
Realization dawned as Patrick remembered Maddie’s firm declaration that her real mother and father were in New Mexico. She obviously loved and respected her adoptive parents; to accept the possibility of a twin was to accept the Jacksons might have chosen to split them up.
“Hey,” he said, lightly tugging a lock of Maddie’s sun-streaked hair. “You mentioned it was a private adoption. Your birth mother could have decided she could make two childless families happy by separating you guys. I bet your parents didn’t even know there was another baby.”
“Tell us about yourself,” Beth urged. “What do you like to do? Are you married? Do you have children? Kane and I just got married and we’re already starting a family.”
Patrick groaned.
Married?
Children?
Both were topics destined to upset Maddie again. Things were going from bad to worse.
“I’m not married,” Maddie said, but her voice shook. “I was…that is, I was going to be, but it didn’t…Oh, dear.”
Sure enough, a fat tear rolled down her right cheek. If Patrick hadn’t been so fond of Beth, he would have glared at her. Never mind that his sister-in-law didn’t know that marriage and kids were sensitive subjects, she’d upset Maddie again and he was thoroughly put out about it.
Besides, the last thing he wanted to know were the details of Maddie’s broken romance. She’d probably talk about it with Beth at some point—if they actually turned out to be sisters—but he wanted to be miles away when it happened.
He liked Maddie, he just didn’t want to…like her. He’d learned years ago that he wasn’t some gallant knight on a snowy-white charger. Hell, he’d gotten into more trouble than the rest of his eight brothers and sisters combined.
“I’m sorry,” Beth said, looking equally distressed. “Is there anything I can do?”
Maddie shook her head, grateful for the warmth of Patrick’s fingers clasping her own. She wasn’t sure how their hands had met, but he had a strong, firm grip. It was comforting. A man ought to have hands that did hard work and had the calluses to prove it.
The Right Twin For Him (O'Rourke Family 2) Page 2