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‘What about the driver?’ Milly asked in bemusement as the passenger door closed to seal the two women into privacy.
‘I pay him well to keep quiet!’ Brooke fielded, snapping shut the privacy screen between the front and the rear seats. ‘Now help me out of this dress... Oh, yes, don’t forget that I need your passport too.’
‘It has to be against the law for you to travel on my passport,’ Milly muttered uncomfortably. ‘Do youhaveto borrow it?’
Brooke settled furious dark blue eyes on her. ‘I don’t have a choice. I’ll be traced if I travel under my own name. With your name, I’m nobody, and nobody is the slightest bit interested in me or where I go.’
Reluctantly accepting that reality, Milly handed over her passport and proceeded to help her sibling out of her tight dress.
‘Good grief, I don’t see you for a couple of months and you let yourself turn into the ugly sister. Your nails are awful!’ Brooke complained, snatching at one of Milly’s hands to frown down at the sight of nails that were an unpainted and modest length. ‘I’m always perfectly groomed. When you’re checking in, keep them hidden and get a manicurist to come to the room and fix them before you check out again!’ she instructed impatiently.
‘I’m sorry,’ Milly muttered, choosing not to point out that she couldn’t afford to have her nails done professionally. Brooke regarded expensive treatments in the beauty field as essential maintenance and never ever considered the cost of them. ‘When do you think you’ll be back?’
‘Hell...you’re putting on weight again too, aren’t you?’ Brooke said in frustration as she urged Milly to breathe in to enable her to get the zip up on the fitted dress.
Milly had been born curvier and almost an inch shorter than Brooke and she didn’t respond. She knew she wasn’t overweight but since meeting Brooke, who was thinner, she had deliberately dropped almost a stone so that she could fit better into her sister’s clothes. Unfortunately, that had meant avoiding all her favourite comfort foods and reining in her love of chocolate. Beside her, Brooke kicked off her shoes and began to dress in jeans and a long concealing top, bundling her hair up under a peaked cap. Digging into her bag she produced moist wipes and began to wipe off her make-up.
‘It’s like being a spy,’ Milly remarked with helpless amusement.
‘Don’t be so childish, Milly!’ Brooke snapped impatiently. ‘Have you any idea how much is riding on this holiday I’m having? This is too important to joke about. I’m meeting someone while I’m away who may put my name forward for a film part.’
‘Well, it’s exciting for me,’ Milly confided with a little wrinkle of her nose and a look of guilty apology. ‘Sorry. I expect it’ll be pretty boring stuck in that hotel room though, so this is the fun part.’
‘You’ll need my rings...for goodness’ sake, don’t lose them! I may need to sell them somewhere down the road,’ Brooke admitted stiffly, threading her wedding and engagement rings off her long manicured finger and passing them over. ‘Thatbastard, Lorenzo! He could have slung me a few million for the sake of it, but he stuck to the letter of the pre-nup. I’m not getting a penny I’m not due. Still, he’ll just be a bad memory a few years down the road. My next husband will be a fashion icon or an actor,nota banker!’
Disappointed by her sister’s bad mood, Milly donned the rings and slid her feet into the shoes while Brooke passed her bag and jacket over. ‘Do you think that when you come back we could spend an evening together?’ she asked hesitantly.
‘Why would I want to do that?’ Brooke demanded.
‘It’s been ages since we spent any real time together,’ Milly pointed out quietly. ‘I would really enjoy that and maybe talking over things would make you feel better.’
‘I’m feeling fine.’ Brooke snapped open the privacy screens and lifted her make-up kit before pausing to communicate with the driver and telling him to speed up because she didn’t want to check in late for her flight. ‘When I first went looking for you, I was curious about you. But I’m not curious any more. I’ve been very good to you too, sprucing you up, fixing your face. What more can you expect from me? It’s not as though we could ever be friends, not with your mother having slept with my father while he was still married tomymother. Do you realise that my poor mother tried tokillherself over their affair?’
Milly paled at that new revelation and dropped her head. ‘I am so sorry, Brooke, but I’ve been hoping that in time...well, that we could get over that history because we’re still sisters.’
Brooke pushed up Milly’s chin to outline her mouth with lip liner. ‘Smile...yes, that’s the ticket. There is no getting over the fact that your mother shagged my father and I don’t do friends. Friends let you down and talk behind your back.’
‘I wouldn’tever!’ Milly protested.
‘Well, you haven’t so far,’ Brooke conceded grudgingly. ‘And you’ve been very useful to me, I’ll agree. But we have nothing in common, Milly. You’re poor and uneducated and you wouldn’t even be able to talk properly if I hadn’t sent you to elocution classes. You knit and you go to libraries. What would we talk about? I’d be bored stiff with you in five minutes.’
Milly paled and stiffened and called herself all kinds of a fool for running blindly into such abuse. She had closed her eyes too long to Brooke’s essential coldness towards her, hoping that Brooke would eventually accept her as her sister and leave the sins of their mutual parents behind her in the past where they belonged. But for the first time, she was recognising that Brooke was as angry and resentful now about their father’s affair as she had been when she’d first met her. Brooke tucked away her make-up kit and told the driver yet again to speed up, the instruction sharp and irritable in tone.
The rain had got so heavy that it was streaming down the windows and visibility was poor. It was a horrible day weather-wise, Milly conceded wryly, suppressing her hurt at being labelled boring. It was true that she and her sister had little in common apart from their paternity and their physical likeness to one another. Evidently, however, Brooke didn’t feel an atom of a deeper connection to her because of their blood bond. When Brooke had confided in her about her problems, had it meant anything to her at all? Possibly, Brooke had grasped that Milly was trustworthy in that line and unlikely to reveal all to some murky tabloid newspaper. Or maybe Milly had just been there at the right moment when Brooke had needed to unburden herself.
‘This will be the last time I stand in for you, Brooke,’ Milly said quietly but firmly. ‘If I’m honest, I kind of wish I’d never started it.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, why do you have to start getting difficult right now?’ Brooke demanded wrathfully.
‘I’m not being difficult and I’m not about to let you down,’ Milly responded tautly. ‘But once this is over, I won’t be acting as your stand-in again.’
Brooke flashed one of her charming smiles and stretched out her hand to squeeze Milly’s. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve been short with you but this has been such a frantic rush and I’m living on my nerves. We’re almost at your hotel. Make sure you don’t get into any conversations with staff. I never chat to menial people. Stay in your room and eat there too and don’t eat any rubbish. I am known for my healthy eating regime and I have an exercise video in the pipeline. You can’t be seen after you’ve checked in. People will understand. They know my marriage is over and I wouldn’t look human if I wasn’t seen to be grieving and in need of some private downtime...’
Milly was not fooled by that fake smile or the apology. She could see that she was only receiving it because Brooke was scared she would pull out on her at the last minute and it saddened her to see that lack of real feeling in the sister she had come to care deeply for.
Their driver was travelling fast when he suddenly jammed on the brakes to a jolting halt to make a turn. Milly peered out at the traffic. There was a large truck coming through red stop lights towards them and she gasped in fear.
Beside her Brooke was shouting at the driver and as Milly braced herself and offered up a silent prayer she tried to reach out for Brooke’s hand, but her sister was screaming and she couldn’t reach her. There was a terrible crunch on impact that jarred every bone in her body and then she blacked out in response to the wave of unimaginable pain that engulfed every part of her. Brooke...Brooke, she wanted to shriek in horror, because her sister had released her seat belt while she was changing...
