“Now?”
“Yes. Just let me get the damned wig. I wouldn’t want that goon in room five to get smart about us.”
“Phil?” Sophia pulled a face.
“Yeah, that’s the one. Dabrowski.”
Sophia actually grinned, a glimmer of her old self shining through. “Smart? Not a chance.”
“You call him ‘Phil’ now?”
“He told me to.”
“Yeah, but you never told me.” Shit! That was the problem. Sophia was getting sloppy, and people were getting suspicious. Several people at the inn had looked at her strangely, and Willow had certainly begun to figure out that something was up with Sophia. It wouldn’t be too long until someone—possibly the damned cops or even James—realized what was going on. And what would happen when Sophia actually married James? Was there a chance she would betray Julia, turn on her? Convince James that Julia was the true, the only bad seed? What would happen when the “we” became “I”? That would never work. “We have to keep our stories straight,” Julia reminded Sophia. “To make sure that when we talk to someone, we let the other one know. Otherwise, this will never work.”
“I do! With James, at least.” But there was something in her voice that gave the lie away. Sadly, Sophia was becoming a liability.
“Good. Remember. I need to know. Everything.” Julia was already walking to the bathroom to grab her wig, glasses, and fat suit. She only had one outfit that worked with the larger size, but it didn’t matter, because she had the coat that she always wore and that seemed normal with the winter weather. “I’ll drive,” she said once she’d slipped the glasses over her face and the disguise was in place.
“Of course.” Sophia slipped on her own coat. “Aren’t you always in charge?”
“Always.”
From habit, Sophia tucked her hair into her silver knit cap, exposing the freckles on the back of her neck. Those damned freckles! Though Julia and Sophia were born identical twins, their twenty-odd years of life experiences had made them different. Sophia had freckles from sun exposure, Julia did not. Sophia had broken a toe, and it hadn’t healed properly, Julia had not. Sophia had never had female problems, Julia had. But the freckles—how many times had Julia warned her sister to wear makeup over them and cover them with her hair. Right now, they were exposed and visible. Jesus! What a huge mistake. Was Sophia a moron?
Julia scooped up the keys she’d left on the kitchen table; then they were out the door. While Sophia was slipping into the passenger side and adjusting her seat belt, Julia double-checked her pocket, her fingers brushing something hard and cold and ready.
Perfect, she thought. It was finally time to deal with her suddenly holier-than-thou sister. This day had been bound to come, she thought, backing out of the parking spot and spying Dabrowski and that miserable, growling Larry in her rearview mirror. She just hadn’t thought that it would come this soon.
CHAPTER 47
“Megan’s been up here all this time?” Sophia asked as Julia drove along a rutted lane that wound, snakelike, through the forest. The sun had set, darkness slipping through the firs that towered overhead, wind rushing noisily through the boughs. They’d been in the car nearly an hour and now drove through a locked gate to a clearing high on a hill, where a tiny house sat, unique and out of place.
“Uh-huh.”
Sophia knew that this had been the plan all along: set up Megan’s mercurial temper, make her so jealous she’d go off on James, have a massive blowup and run, as the sisters had learned was Megan’s MO. Then they’d planned to kidnap her and take her to a remote spot, where they would, Julia had said over and over, keep her until James had gotten her out of his mind. Julia had been insistent that Megan would eventually go along with them in ripping off the Cahill fortune, but, as Sophia saw it, that was the weak link in the plan.
One of them.
“You worry too much,” Julia had told her. “Trust me, we’ve got this,” and Sophia, so longing to be close to her sister and, in truth, to get her hands on a little of the Cahill estate, had gone along with the scheme.
Now, though, she wasn’t convinced that they could pull it off.
Or that she wanted to.
Her feelings for James had changed all of that. Even though she was more than a little morose, as after him telling her he needed “a little space to process what was going on,” she’d actually seen him with Rebecca—twice since Sophia had told him about the baby.
What kind of father would do that?
It pissed her off and made her sad and messed with her already volatile hormones. And here it was, almost Christmas. All of her dreams about them sharing the holiday together seemed to be crumbling. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. Not with a baby on the way.
She hadn’t told Julia about the baby, didn’t know how her sister would take the news. She would confide in her, of course, but later, when Julia wasn’t so damned uptight.
Julia parked a few yards from the front door, and as Sophia climbed out, the wind slapped her in the face, stinging her eyes. She noted the small windows running along the front of the home.
“No electricity,” she thought aloud.
“It runs on propane from a propane generator.”
But she didn’t hear it running.
“Plumbing?”
“Water tanks collect the rain and snow. The house has all been retrofitted,” Julia said. “It’s mobile and compact, kind of an all-in-one home.”
“Where’d you get it again?”
“A friend of a friend’s estate when the owner died suddenly.” Sophia understood; the paperwork was tangled up in red tape that was yet to be untangled. “And this land?”
Julia actually smiled, her eyes twinkling mischievously. “Well, that’s kind of cool, really. This is all part of James Cahill’s property. He bought it years ago, for expansion. But no
