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“You’re absolutely certain no one else will be there?”
She kept the look of triumph from her face, but it was easy to see the relief in her eyes. “Positive. Even if they are, it’s been so long since I’ve seen them, they wouldn’t know the difference, but they’re way off in the back-end of beyond, and you know the girl cousins. They don’t like to bother with us. You’ll be in and out before anyone even realizes it.” She leaned back against the wall. “I’ve already made an appointment with a stylist to fix our hair...”
“Our hair?”
“Well, I’m going to have to pass myself off as you, aren’t I? I’m worried about your eyes, though. Mine are green. I don’t remember yours looking quite so brown,” she said doubtfully. “I don’t suppose you can wear contacts?”
“I‘m wearing them. They’re tinted, making my hazel eyes more interesting.”
“Excellent!” she crowed. “Clearly, this was meant to be. We can just get new lenses to make your eyes green, and no one will be able to tell the difference.”
I looked at her doubtfully. I’d drunk too much wine, and the sight of my denuded apartment was as depressing as the gorgeously dressed butterfly across from me. Tomorrow I’d be wiser, tomorrow I’d see another way out of my current, homeless, impoverished mess.
But tonight the answer seemed clear.
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll go.” And I poured myself another glass of wine.
Chapter Two
Settling into my first-class space pod on Iberian Airlines, I had plenty of time to wonder what the hell I was doing. Bella had kept me on a dead run, from hairdresser to spa to eye doctor for colored contact lenses. I went through her matched Prada luggage and tried on her brand-new wardrobe. She favored Spanish designers, names I didn’t know, but I recognized the quality of the clothes and felt them seduce me.
They fit perfectly, which troubled me. Bella and I had similar bodies, though her boobs were smaller and my hips fuller. Clearly she’d been as aware of our differences as I was, for she had to have had the clothes adjusted for those changes. The thought both embarrassed and annoyed me.
But here I was, Isabella Maria Constanza Littlefield Whitehead, granddaughter of Augustin Whitehead, founder and patriarch of the Whitehead industry and the incomparable olive oil and sherry they produced. I was going to face the man who had broken my heart so long ago, betrayed the trust I’d always counted on. No, not the beautiful almost-cousin Marcus, but my grandfather, the epitome of family, who’d turned his back on me and yet always welcomed my doppelganger into his arms.
Though I suppose if anyone was the doppelganger, it was me. Bella was the real thing, I was the shadow version.
If I was going to carry this off, I would have to channel Bella a little more effectively. And in order to do that, I needed to stop brooding about the stupid choice that had brought me here. For three days, I needed to be Bella. Kitty Whitehead had been left behind.
The plane was taxiing down the runway, and I closed my eyes, ready to enjoy the sensation of being coddled for at least the next six hours, when a sudden thought made them fly open again in shock. If Bella’s extravagant ways had gotten her into real trouble, wouldn’t they come after her? And in looking for her, they’d find me.
I fumbled for my seatbelt, but it was too late—the plane was lifting into the air, and I sat back, trying to breathe. No, I was panicking over nothing. Bella was dealing with things—they would be busy with her, not looking for her imposter. And she had sworn it was all fool-proof and completely safe. Even if she wouldn’t tell me what her dire life-and-death problem was, she’d insisted none of it would come anywhere near me, and I believed her. Bella was no saint and never had been—she was perfectly capable of letting someone else take the fall for her mistakes and had when we were young.
But she would never, ever, put me at risk. Childhood games were one thing; life in the grownup world, as hard and difficult as it was, was another. We were sisters under the skin, not just cousins. We were the other side of the mirror, and she would never let me be hurt.
I closed my eyes again, still uneasy. I hadn’t had time to think this through—Bella had been a whirlwind of activity after my tentative “yes,” and even when I’d gone to bed, as the doubts began to insinuate themselves into my brain, I’d fallen asleep before they could coalesce.
Now I had nothing to do but think, and doubt, and worry. I had never been impulsive, and what I’d agree to was madness. When I landed in Malaga, I should turn around and immediately book a flight back home. In all decency I should pay Bella back for the cost of the ticket. The contact lenses. The soft, tawny curls that drifted past my shoulders and had cost five hundred dollars. Where the hell had Bella found a hairdresser who charged that much?
Not to mention the phony passport, the new clothes and shoes that were clearly made for me. Bella was a size seven and a half, I was close to size nine. And even I recognized the red-soled magnificence of Christian Louboutin.
I had no money. Well, barely enough to rent a new apartment, my Subaru was on its last legs, and there was no job on the horizon. Bella had taken over the Subaru, arranged for my meager belongings to be stored, switched cell phones with me, and seen me to the airport, a slim leather wallet full of euros pressed into my hand.
I was screwed.
Deep breaths, I reminded myself. Calmar. The Spanish phrase came back to me. Stay calm.
It was going to be all right. Instead of worrying about Bella, I should concentrate on why I was doing this. I would finally see Granda again, say goodbye. He would hear those words from Bella, but it would be Kitty who said them. I would be the one to hug him one last time, I would be the one to walk through the halls and the olive groves of Mariposa one last time, finding the closure that had always troubled me. I had been snatched from that life, that cocoon of love, without a chance to say goodbye. Now that I could, I would finally be able to move on with my life, no longer in thrall to a place that was no longer mine.
The two glasses of champagne from the flight attendant helped. I wasn’t used to drinking, but deep breathing and rationalization did wonders. What was the phrase from the old movie, The Big Chill? What was more important, rationalization or sex? The answer? When did you ever go a day without rationalizing?
I was rationalizing like mad, and it was working, thank God. This would be all right, and afterward, I would enjoy a few days in my favorite city before returning to reality. I would be homeless and unemployed with a great wardrobe. Things could be worse.
In just a few hours I would finally be back in Spain. I would smell the juniper trees, the roses that grew in abundance around the big old house, I would see the olive groves and the vineyards that stretched down to the sea. I would be home.
Amazingly, I slept in that strange little pod, like an astronaut on a hyperspace journey to Mars. At one moment, I was sipping champagne and forcing away my second thoughts, in another, I was being tapped on the shoulder by a flight attendant, reminding me to sit up and prepare for landing.
We landed hard, which should have been an omen, bouncing over the tarmac until we came to a halt beside Malaga Airport, aka Picasso Airport. I discovered that first-class passengers were allowed to depart ahead of everyone else, and I fought my instinctive Titanic-induced class sensitivity as I negotiated my almost-stiletto heels out of the plane. I had put my foot down, literally, when it came to the shoes. There was no way I could balance on the six-inch needles Bella tried to talk me into, to make up for the one-inch discrepancy in our heights. People were much more likely to notice me tripping and falling all over the place than a scant inch.
