Manhattan's Most Scandalous Reunion by Dani Collins, Caitlin Crews

CHAPTER THREE

REVEDIDN’TBOTHERunknotting the garbage bag. He tore it open and left it on the floor, plucking her cheap red suitcase out of it.

“Get whatever houseplant you’re supposed to keep alive and let’s go.” He was breathing through his mouth so the musty smell of this place wouldn’t drag him into all of his worst memories.

Nina clenched her fists and tightened her mouth with stubbornness.

“I’m serious, Nina. I was used for publicity once before. Once. Never again. So you’re coming with me and we’re going to put a lid on this.”

“Oh—” She whirled into the bathroom and came out with a yellow toiletry bag in one hand, a damp bra and underwear in her other. She shoved everything into her shoulder bag, picked up the romance novel off the coffee table and pulled a charger from the wall. She pulled a pink denim jacket off a hook and shrugged it on over her dress.

Minutes later they were back in the town car. Reve texted his publicist that he would be in touch with a statement shortly.

Then he texted his “date,” telling her he wouldn’t make it. Nina was right: a politician’s daughter was under way too much scrutiny for his tastes. He hadn’t planned to take things beyond drinks, but he texted that he would have his people call her people, not so subtly relaying a message that he had no interest in a more intimate connection.

“Why involve me?” He clicked off his phone. “If you want to capitalize on this look-alike thing, that’s your business. There was no reason to bring me into it.”

She was slouched in her seat, hugging herself, face forward, chin set at a belligerent angle. “I told you what happened. If you don’t want to believe me, that’s your choice.”

“You running back into my life the day reporters start harassing you is just a huge coincidence? That’s what you want me to believe?” Did she think he was born yesterday?

Her hand was crushing her denim sleeve. She made a noise of annoyed defeat.

“Okay, I walked by your building on purpose. I wasn’t planning to come in. I didn’t even know whether you were home.”

“Then why come by at all?”

“It’s called closure, Reve. I was supposed to get the job I wanted. I was going to mentally flip you the bird and fly to London to get on with my life.”

“How’d that go?” he asked facetiously, aware of a gritty sensation in his middle as he imagined that plan playing out. He wouldn’t have known she was right outside his door. It shouldn’t bother him, but it did. “I didn’t realize you were holding such a grudge. Is that what all of this is? Retribution for the way things ended between us?”

“What? No. Oh, my God.” She sat up and glared at him. “I am sorry that your old girlfriend made a sex tape of you without your permission and posted it online. I didn’t do that to you.” She flopped back into her seat. “I would love it if you would stop blaming me for it.”

“I don’t,” he growled, stung that she would even bring it up. The humility of it never went away, no matter how well his lawyer’s takedown notices worked at keeping it from being shared. The exposure without consent was bad enough. The you have nothing to be ashamed of snickers turned the knife, but the worst was his own stupidity.

Reve closed his fist on his knee, hating that video for existing and hating himself even more for being gullible enough to think himself in love when it had been made.

“You don’t trust me, Reve. You never have.”

“I don’t trust anyone,” he shot back. “You’re not special.”

“Oh, I’m well aware of that,” she said with a laugh that was a jagged scrape of sound. “She broke you. You’re afraid to reveal a single thing about yourself that might be used against you. Here’s news, though. We all get hurt. You’re not special, either.”

He drew in a breath that burned his nostrils.

This was something he couldn’t stand about Nina. She had this way of turning things around on him, forcing him to self-examine. He hated it. He wasn’t broken. He wasn’t a psychopath. He was a law-abiding citizen who was considerate enough to let an old flame take refuge in his home. He’d walked her into that dive of an apartment and refused to let her stay there, hadn’t he? He was capable of basic human compassion.

He wasn’t broken.

“I take calculated risks, not stupid ones.” That made him smart. His entire fortune was built on careful gambles. He made exactly as many bets as he expected would pay out. “So tell me what your game is and I’ll decide if I’m willing to play.”

“I’m not even good at games,” Nina said with exasperation. “You’re giving me way too much credit if you think I could put together some elaborate scheme against you. I can’t win a hand of Go Fish against my niece. It’s a family joke how obtuse I am. All of this is because of how slow I am to see the obvious.” She turned her face to the window.

Her hand came up to her cheek, and he thought she might be wiping under her eye.

His heart twisted in his chest.

The car darkened as they came into the underground lot beneath his building. It stopped by the elevator and the driver came around to open Nina’s door, then moved to the trunk to get her suitcase. Nina sat there unmoving, even when Reve came around to look at her through the open door.

“Are you going to be stubborn about this?”

“No. But I’m only coming up because I’m too exhausted to figure something else out. I haven’t slept since I got here Sunday.”

“Why not?”

“You saw the place. I was petrified.”

He swore and held out a hand, helping her from the car.

She swayed slightly and he realized exactly how strung out she was. He wanted to draw her into himself, support her. Hell, he wanted to hold her.

Since when was he Mr. Affection? Since never. Touching during sex was great, but that’s where cuddling and fondling belonged.

He made sure she was steady, then turned to punch in his code. The driver set her case inside the elevator and asked if there would be anything else.

“We’ll have dinner from Antonio’s,” he decided.

“I’ll cook,” Nina said in a dull voice.

“You just told me you’re tired.”

“Would you please let me earn my keep this much at least?” Her tone shot up to a strident pitch.

“Fine,” he muttered, and dismissed his driver.

They rode upward in thick silence.

He hadn’t realized how often she had cooked until she was gone and he’d been stuck eating takeout again. Nina was damned good at throwing a meal together and had seemed to like doing it, but he’d always thought it was her way of playing house, pushing him toward domesticity and reliance on her. He wondered now if it had been her way of contributing.

I owe you thousands and feel sick about it every day...

A teetering sensation rocked behind his sternum. “You know I don’t expect you to pay me back for—”

“Don’t start that fight, Reve.” The doors opened into his foyer and she shoved her suitcase out of the elevator. “I’ll burn your dinner, and maybe the entire building to the ground.”

Nina banged through the cupboards, taking a quick inventory and deciding she could manage some rice and peas and empanadillas.

She was tired, but there was something very soothing in making one of Abuela’s standby dishes. It grounded her when she was otherwise completely adrift.

Reve appeared when she was wrist deep in dough. He had changed from his suit into tailored Bermuda shorts and a polo shirt. He looked casual, but tension radiated off him.

He had brought a bottle of red wine, which he opened, pouring two glasses and setting one within her reach.

“Thanks.” She set the dough in the refrigerator and washed her hands before she sipped. It hadn’t even breathed properly yet, but a small explosion of currants and black cherry and pepper hit her taste buds.

She had missed drinking wine that cost more than a pair of shoelaces. She had missed a lot of things, especially this little ritual of theirs.

Reve lowered onto one of the stools at the island the way he often had when she’d cooked. Invariably, they would have already made love and were mellow and pleased to get a little loose over a bottle of wine, bantering and squabbling over the nonsense of everyday life.

Tonight, there was a cloud of animosity rolling off him. A sense that whatever she said would be weighed and measured and examined for signs of deception.

She moved to start the rice, saying, “I was born in Luxembourg. Did I ever tell you that?”

“That’s a long way from Albuquerque.” He screened his thoughts with his spiky lashes. “Close to Germany. Isn’t there an airbase there?”

It was almost laughable how much quicker he was than she could ever hope to be.

She nodded. “Dad was stationed there and my m-mother—” This was the part that was really, really hard.

“Nina.” He set down his glass, speaking in the quietest, most careful tone she’d ever heard him use. “If this is going places you don’t want to go, you don’t have to tell me.”

“No, it’s fine.” She didn’t want to imagine what he thought she was saying. “You’re actually the only person I can tell. Maybe the best person, because you have no emotional investment. You’re so cynical and blunt, you’ll recommend a psych evaluation, which is probably what I need.”

She turned away to get everything simmering on the gas flames and turned back to see him staring holes into her back.

“What?”

“Nothing.” He blinked and whatever impression she’d had was gone. “Continue.”

“This is how the story was always told to me.” She began to chop peppers. “Our mother was feeling cooped up in the tiny flat they had near the base. She wanted to take my brother and sister to a cuckoo clock factory for a day trip, but they got lost. She accidentally crossed into Luxembourg and stopped at a café to ask for directions. She collapsed with an aneurysm.”

He swore softly.

“Yeah.” She flattened her lips. “The people in the café didn’t know that’s what happened, but she was super pregnant—a couple of weeks from being due. There was a private clinic nearby, one of those places for Europe’s elite to dry out or get plastic surgery on the down-low. She was rushed there for treatment. My sister has this vivid memory of sitting in the café holding my brother’s hand, terrified and confused. A man brought them cheese and crackers and hot chocolate. He asked where they were from. He was trying to find out how to get hold of Dad, I guess, because Dad showed up a while later. He took them to the clinic, where they got the bad news that Mom was gone. They were all crying until a nurse brought me out and put me in Dad’s arms. Then they all stopped crying and smiled.”

Nina had to take a drink to keep her throat from closing. Her chest was scoured with emotion, her eyes hot. “I’ve always felt loved because of that part of the story. Always.”

A muscle in Reve’s cheek twitched, and his gaze dropped into his glass.

He had never told her much about his childhood. He played his cards close to his chest, never spoke fondly of a brother or sister or a father or mother. He never, ever spoke about love.

“Your father didn’t ask for blood samples or anything?” He was a man of facts and computation, and had a natural skepticism of any information presented to him. He would never take on faith that the baby placed in his arms was his own.

“Dad was completely distraught. We shipped home and Abuela moved in with us. Dad was absent a lot until he was discharged, but he was home permanently by the time I was going to school. I graduated, saved for college, got my degree, then came here to work.” She shrugged. “It was all pretty normal.”

“Until you learned there was a model who looked just like you.”

“Yes, but then I met you and didn’t think about much else.” She tossed him a flat smile before she turned away to check everything on the stove. He had consumed her. Had he realized that?

“Do you believe you were sent home with the wrong family?” he asked quietly.

“No,” she said without hesitation. “They are the most loving people in the world. I’m very lucky to have them.” Her eyes welled, and she had to use the back of her wrist to clear her vision.

“You know what I mean.”

“I do.” She brought the dough from the fridge and floured the surface of the counter. “People used to ask me if I was adopted. It upset me, but Abuela said I took after her sister. She told me that was why I struggled in school, that it was a family thing to have dyslexia. She didn’t use that word, but that’s what she meant.”

“I didn’t know that about you.”

“It doesn’t matter.” It did. It mattered a lot. It had impacted her self-esteem, but she had developed strategies to pass her assignments and graduate. Her fine arts degree majoring in fashion was one of her proudest achievements.

She had gone through life wondering why her brother and sister found basic things like reading and math so much easier than she did, though. It had set her apart from them, and now she felt like a complete idiot for not seeing she’d been different in a far more profound way.

“I never had any reason to question whether my family was related to me by blood, not until I offered to have my sister’s baby.”

He paused in reaching for the bottle to top up his glass. “What do you mean you ‘offered to have’?”

“Carry it. As a surrogate.” She found one of the wide-mouthed glasses she liked to use to cut circles in the dough.

“Why the hell would you do that?” His eyes flashed with astounded disbelief.

“She’s my sister.” It was all the reason she needed. “She and her husband have had fertility struggles for years. That’s one of the reasons I went home. Dad told me over dinner that Angela had miscarried again. She was heartbroken.”

“You never told me that about her.”

“Because it’s none of your business. I’m only telling you now because it’s relevant.” She filled a few pockets of dough and sealed them, then set them into the frying pan to begin cooking while she filled the rest.

“They’ve talked about using a surrogate on and off, but aside from the cost, it’s a really personal thing. I offered once before, but I was still in college. Angela said it would be too disruptive to my education. She was so heartbroken this time, I was desperate to help. And I wanted to do something that would make me feel like my life had some sort of meaning or purpose.”

“Nina.” There was admonishment in his tone, but a man like him must know there was a huge difference between pursuing a goal and achieving it.

She crumpled up the scraps of dough and rolled it out again, leaning in hard.

“Surrogacy sounds simple, but it’s a big undertaking. Most agencies won’t let you do it until you’ve had a successful pregnancy of your own. Some people do it in private arrangements, and my doctor wasn’t exactly encouraging about our doing that, but he was willing to at least screen me—”

“Blood tests,” Reve said with dawning understanding.

“Yes. He sat me down with the results and said it wasn’t uncommon for siblings to have different blood types, depending how your body puts your parents’ chromosomes together, but I was enough of an outlier that he suggested I have a chat with my dad.”

“Did you?”

“No. I told Angela I was anemic—which is true. I’m taking iron now.” She gulped a mouthful of wine and turned the empanadillas in the pan. “Then I took one of those ancestry tests. I wanted to prove the doctor wrong.”

“But?”

She released a shaky sigh. “My brother did one a few years ago when his wife didn’t know what else to get him for Christmas. My results should have been in the same ballpark as his, right? If we both come from a Puerto Rican mom and a white American father? Marco’s report said he was Spanish with some African and Taíno, which is the indigenous people in the Caribbean. Plus English and German, which lines up with where Dad’s family is from.”

“And yours?”

She felt a great pressure in her breastbone. “Some English. Mostly South Asian and Scandinavian.”

“Scandinavian?” Reve snorted and searched her features as if looking for the evidence of Nordic blood.

She shrugged and emptied her glass in one gulp, then pushed it toward the bottle.

He refilled it. “Have you tried contacting the clinic?”

“The building has changed hands more than once. It’s a spa resort now.”

She checked the rice and turned it off, then prepared a couple of plates. She left a fresh batch of empanadillas frying in the pan as she took a stool next to Reve.

“The connection to Oriel wasn’t on my radar when I got my results. I mean, there were photos of her with Duke Rhodes in the magazines at my sister’s salon—What’s wrong?”

Reve was staring at the plate she’d set in front of him.

“Nothing,” he mumbled, seeming almost self-conscious. “It smells good.” He shoveled a forkful of rice into his mouth and took a small breath around it because it was hot, but he didn’t cool it with wine. He chewed and swallowed. “It’s good. Thanks. Keep talking.”

He proceeded to eat as though he hadn’t been fed in a week.

She filtered her words carefully as she said them aloud for the first time.

“I wasn’t thinking, I wonder if she’s my sister. Not until her story broke about being Lakshmi’s daughter. Then I read that she was born in Luxembourg the day before me. My time of birth is fourteen minutes after midnight.”

He snapped a look at her. Then he finished chewing, swallowed and asked, “Have you reached out to her?”

“You’re supposed to tell me I’m out of my mind, Reve!” She made herself eat because otherwise she’d have that bottle of wine for dinner. “You’re supposed to say, Save that imagination for the sewing room. Say, There’s an obvious explanation, then tell me what it is,” she pleaded.

“It is obvious. She’s your twin.”

“Would you stop?”