Twice Kissed - Lisa Jackson [150]
Tears burned behind Maggie’s eyes and she rubbed her arms, trying to keep the chill of betrayal at bay. “Why? Why would Mary Theresa do this…keep something like this from you?”
“Because it would interfere with her career! For Christ’s sake, Maggie,” he said, advancing on her. “Haven’t you learned anything about your sister? Don’t you know how low she’d sink, how many people she’d manipulate just to further her damned career?”
“But…but I would have known about it. She would have told me.”
“Like the way she told you that she had seduced your lover?”
The words cut cruelly, bringing back old, raw wounds that had never quite healed. “Don’t,” she ordered. Marquise was missing, could possibly be dead, she couldn’t, wouldn’t think these horrid, sick thoughts—
“Give it up, Mag Pie,” he said as if reading her thoughts. His voice was so low it startled her and her head snapped up.
“Marquise was pregnant seventeen years ago, Maggie. You were in college—you didn’t see her. She managed to stay away from anyone who knew her during the last months when her condition was undeniable.”
Denial swam through her head. “I—I think she would have confided in me. She wouldn’t have kept something as big, as important, as a pregnancy a secret,” Maggie said, but even as the words passed her lips she knew she was kidding herself. What did she know about her chameleon of a sister—Mary Theresa who had turned into Marquise? Didn’t she have a past history of deception? In the past few days Maggie had learned so many devastating facts about the woman who was her twin, the sister with whom she shared so many physical characteristics and yet from whom she seemed to have an opposite soul.
“As I said, the last time I saw her, the night I wanted to strangle her, she threw it in my face that she’d had our boy, given him up for adoption, and that I’d spent all of his life not knowing one damned thing about him.”
“So you haven’t met him?”
“Haven’t found him yet.”
“Then how do you know he exists?” She could hardly trust her own voice. “If Mary Theresa is such a liar, how do you know?”
“I hired a private detective. He found the birth records at a small private hospital in Southern California, not far from the Mexican border. Now he’s tracking down the adoptive parents. I expect to hear from him anytime.” His smile twisted without a trace of humor. “He’s got some leads.”
“So your interest in finding Mary Theresa is for more than clearing your name,” she said, finally understanding why Thane seemed so totally and irrevocably tied to her sister. “You want her to help you find your son.”
“Obviously now that I know she wasn’t lying, yes. I have questions for her; questions only she can answer.”
“So do I.” Maggie considered the past week, the hours of being alone with Thane, the days spent driving in the truck, or searching for clues in Denver, or the few precious minutes of making love to him. All that time she’d fought her feelings, telling herself that she wouldn’t let herself fall for him again, that she wouldn’t allow him to walk all over her, that she was smarter than she was when she was seventeen and she wouldn’t let any man, Thane Walker in particular, use her.
Because of Mary Theresa.
Because of the betrayal.
Because, deep in her heart, she’d never really let go of him.
It looked like she’d been wrong about so many things. So very wrong. But she couldn’t trust Thane, for even though he’d bared his soul, he’d revealed the all-too-painful truth that he’d searched out Maggie, that he’d spent time with her, that he’d seduced her, as always, for his own purposes. Because of Mary Theresa and their son. His life was and would forever be entwined with her sister’s. Just as it had always been. Before they had been lovers. Now, Maggie thought, aching inside, Thane and M.T. had a son together, shared a life.
Help me. Maggie, please. It was Thane. He did this to me. Maggie, please. Don’t let him get away with it. Mary Theresa’s painful plea echoed through Maggie’s memory.