"Yes."
"You're crazy about me."
"I most definitely am."
"We fell in love the moment we were introduced."
"Let's not get carried away."
"Pretend. You're a man; I'm sure you won't have any trouble faking it."
"She'll never believe we're in love."
"She will. She's too self-absorbed. She won't notice that you barely know me."
"Who is she?" he inquired, but Pamela had huffed up to them, so Amy didn't have time to reply.
"I hate this town," Pamela complained as a particularly vicious gust of wind rippled down the canyon. "Let's have coffee in the diner so my toes can thaw."
"She doesn't want any coffee," Dustin said. "I already asked."
"Why would you listen to her? She never had the sense God gave a gnat."
Pamela spun and stormed inside, while Amy stood, biting her lip and fuming. She was like a boiling pot and the lid was about to blow.
"You don't have to go in," Dustin whispered.
"Yes, I do. She'll pester me until I break down and talk to her."
She looked so young and forlorn, and he wondered how old she was. Twenty-three? Twenty-four?
He felt very sorry for her, which was unusual. He never felt sorry for others, because he never grew close enough so that another person's feelings would matter.
Why was he bothering with her? He should have simply strolled on down the sidewalk, but he was bored, and she amused him. He was happy to waste part of the afternoon, playing the role of the hapless boyfriend, Rick.
As she headed into the diner, he followed. Pamela was seated at a booth and shucking off her coat. He and Amy slid in across from her.
She was a few years older than Amy, and very beautiful, but in an icy way. They had a facial resemblance, with the same pouty lips and big green eyes, so he supposed they were related. But Amy had a girl-next-door wholesomeness and was wearing clunky snow boots and bulging parka. Pamela was attired in a form-fitting black sheath, chains of gold around her neck, diamonds in her ears. She was all stark cheekbones and plucked brows, an exact copy of the females he typically dated.
She thoroughly assessed Dustin, checking out his expensive clothes and watch as she tried to calculate how much he was worth.
On deciding he was probably loaded, she smiled a sexy, flirtatious smile.
"Have we met?" she purred.
"No."
"This is my boyfriend," Amy offered. "Rick."
"Your…boyfriend?" Pamela smirked. "How cute."
"Rick," Amy started, "this is my—"
"—sister," Pamela finished for her.
The two women exchanged a heated glare, then Pamela extended a slender, manicured hand.
"Hello." Dustin gave her fingers a light squeeze, then sat back to enjoy the show.
"Amy," Pamela said, "I hadn't realized you were seeing anyone."
"I'm not a teenager. I don't have to tell you everything."
"But a new
boyfriend
. My goodness."
"We met on June second," Dustin fibbed.
"June second?" Pamela simpered and laughed. "You're not serious."
"We've been madly in love ever since," he added.
Her cell phone rang, and she rummaged in her purse, then yanked it out. "Hello? Hello? Chad?" Apparently, she couldn't hear an answer, and she tossed it into her bag. "I repeat: I hate this town."
"Cell phones don't work up here," Amy said. "I don't know why you can't remember."
"I was just talking to him a minute ago."
Her phone rang again, and she scrambled to retrieve it. She tipped the screen back and forth, trying to read the name and number of whoever was calling.
"Yes, it's Chad," she ultimately mumbled. "I've got to see if there's better reception outside."
She threw a few bills on the table to pay for coffee that hadn't been ordered. Then she jumped out of the booth and grabbed her coat and purse.
"We're having supper tomorrow night." She hurled it like a threat as she hurried out. "At seven. Don't forget."
"I told you I'm busy," Amy replied. "I'm not coming."
"You're coming," Pamela insisted. "Bring Rick."
"He's busy, too."
"Stop being such a baby," Pamela chided.
"I hate Chad, and I'm not eating supper with him."
"It was four months ago, Amy. Grow up. Get over it."
And she was gone.
Dustin felt as if a hurricane had blown through. Amy sighed, took a deep breath and let it out.
"I don't like her," Dustin said.
"I don't, either."
"We have something in common."
"Good thing—considering that we're madly in love."
"Who's Chad?"
"Her boyfriend."
"He's an asshole?"
"Yes."
"Sounds like a match made in heaven."
"They deserve each other."
"What happened on June second?"
"Actually, it happened on the first. I had been dating Chad, and I caught him in bed with her."
"You…what?"
"Don't make me discuss it. It's too humiliating." Her cheeks flushed bright red. "She's hoping they get engaged."
"Wow."
"Yes, wow, but now, I'm having a little revenge. She'll tattle to Chad that I began dating you the day after he hooked up with her. He's so vain; it will drive him nuts to think that I didn't care about what he did."
"You must have some very interesting family dinners."
"We try not to get together too often."
"I'll bet you don't."
They stared out the window where they could see Pamela twisting and turning on her heels as she struggled with the reception.
"Give her another minute," Amy advised. "She'll leave, then we can go without having to speak to her again."
They watched in silence, and evidently, Amy knew Pamela well. Precisely a minute later, she stomped off, alternating between punching buttons and jamming the phone to her ear.
Even after she disappeared, Amy gazed at the spot where she'd been, as if an old movie was playing in her head.
"Wanna tell me about it?" he gently inquired, and to his astonishment, he was genuinely curious.
She peered at him with those poignant emerald eyes of hers. They were so expressive, and he could read every emotion lingering there: hurt, exasperation, rage.
She seemed to be perched on the edge of a grand confession, as if a lifetime of sorrow was about to spill out, but the moment passed. She smiled, but sadly.
"No, I don't want to talk about it." She stood, abruptly eager to leave, too. "Thank you for letting me accost you. Thank you for letting me drag you into my wacky family drama."
"I enjoyed it."
"You're a nice man."
"I try to be," he lied. He never tried to be
nice
. It simply wasn't in his nature.
"Goodbye."
She hustled out, and she had on sensible, flat-soled boots, so she was quicker than her sister had been. She was at the corner and across the street before he could scramble out onto the sidewalk.
"Amy!" he called.
She paused and glanced back.
"I want to see you again," he shouted.
The wind was howling, and she made a motion as if she couldn't hear him. He didn't know if she really couldn't or if she was pretending. She shrugged and waved, then whipped away and ran up the hill. In an instant, she was at the crest, then she vanished down the other side.
He nearly chased after her, and he just caught himself so he didn't race off like a crazy person. Who was she? Why had he wasted any energy on her ridiculous intrigues?
He had business to attend. He had gorgeous, glamorous Chantal waiting for him at the hotel. The autumn days were very short, the sun dropping behind the mountain peaks, and he was anxious to get on the road to Denver.
He turned the other way from where she'd gone and headed to the newspaper office.
CHAPTER TWO
"Did you talk to Pamela?"
"Just for a minute."
"Was she crazy as ever?"
"Of course."
Amy Dane walked to the kitchen table and set plates of jam toast in front of her twin half-sisters, Jessica and Jennifer. They were only ten years old, but in a world where Pamela was the axis at the center, there were no secrets.
At twenty-six, Amy was used to Pamela's idiocy. As to the twins, from a very young age, they'd been aware that Pamela wasn't normal. And Amy refused to sugarcoat or excuse Pamela's behavior.
"If she marries Chad," Jessica asked, "will we be invited to the wedding?"
"Ew!" Jennifer protested. "I hate Chad. He's so obnoxious. We wouldn't have to go, would we, Amy?"
They gazed up at her with green eyes that were an exact copy of Amy's. Unfortunately, they'd been born with her unruly brown hair, too. Rumor had it that Pamela had once had the same mop of riotous curls, but she spent a fortune on hairdressers to make her hair blond and straight and to wipe away any trace of what she really looked like or who she really was.
"We wouldn't be invited to the wedding," Amy assured them.
"Why wouldn't Pamela want us there?" Jess inquired.
The answers were so tragic and so conflicted that Amy couldn't begin to explain. She took the easy route.
"I'm betting they'd fly to Vegas or something like that. They wouldn't have a ceremony where we could attend even if we wanted to."
"Which we
don't
want to," Jennifer decreed, and she glared at Jessica.
Of the two of them, Jennifer was more like Amy, tired of Pamela's antics and unwilling to ignore them. Jessica was more tenderhearted. She yearned for all of them to get along—despite Pamela's disregard. Jessica craved a large family, parents and grandparents and cousins and Christmas dinners where everybody was smiling and happy.
But with Pamela as their mother—Amy's mother, too—their options were limited.
Pamela was a frivolous creature, an orphan and runaway who'd become pregnant with Amy when she was much too young. She'd had big dreams, had hoped to be an actress or model, so there had been no place for a kid in her life. She'd left Amy with their neighbor, Marge Beasley, and had never come back for her.
She'd had the twins when Amy was sixteen, and kindly Marge had taken them in, too. By the time Amy was twenty, she was their sole parent, paying rent on an apartment and working to support them, while Pamela was off pretending—as she always had—that she had no children.
She'd already had three husbands and was scheming for Chad to be number four. Although she was forty-two, she claimed to be thirty, and she insisted that Amy tell people they were sisters. She was convinced that no man—especially a rich, vain one like Chad—would have her if he knew her real age.
A fool and a liar, she flitted into town when it suited her, and Amy avoided her like the plague.
"Let's hit the road, guys"—she grabbed parkas and scarves from the hooks by the door—"or you'll be late."
"Do I have to wear a hat?" Jess asked.
"Yes. It's supposed to snow."
She helped them bundle up, zipped her own parka, then they headed out to school, clumping down the four flights of stairs to the street.
They lived in one of the old Merriweather mansions, the one built by George Merriweather for his favorite mistress. Over the decades, it had fallen into disrepair, had been maliciously chopped into tiny apartments.
Amy and the twins were on the top floor, in what used to be the attic. The small rooms had pitched roofs and oddly-shaped windows, and the pipes clanged and pinged, but it was cheap and quiet and cozy.
She ran her hand down the oak banister, unable to imagine how Lucas Merriweather could sell it to a developer. The house was a Merriweather heirloom. It was part of their history. Didn't he care about anything? His lack of sense boggled the mind, and she never quit haranguing about it at her job with the Gold Creek Gazette.
It wasn't much of a newspaper—it came out once a week—but it paid the bills and left her in a perfect position to fight Lucas Merriweather and win.
They reached the sidewalk and huffed up the street to the school. She watched through the fence until the twins went inside, then she proceeded to the newspaper office.
As she approached, Marge—the paper's only other employee—was locking the door, appearing very much as if she was leaving instead of opening for the day.
Marge was in her sixties and had never married. She'd been born in Gold Creek. She'd raised Amy, had given her her first job—emptying trash cans at the paper—when she was a kid. For the past forty years, she'd lived in a ground floor apartment in Amy's building, and she served as grandmother to the twins—a role Pamela would never fulfill.