Hello, Dolly!
This one’s for you.
I love you.
One
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Nine
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Eleven
Twelve
A Biography of Mary Kay McComas
THREE WAS THEIR lucky number.
When Katherine and her sisters were young, everything came in threes. Three dresses. Three apples. Three coloring books. You took one and gave one to each of your sisters. They were expected to share. That’s the way it was.
They shared the family television. They shared the upstairs bath. A lone, used automobile did triple duty during their high school years. And there was only one face—which was, perhaps, the most annoying of all the shared items.
As they grew older, they didn’t share everything. They didn’t share their clothes, as their tastes ran in opposite directions. They didn’t share a personality; they were as different as day and night … well, dusk, dawn, and high noon, let’s say. And they never ever shared their men …
“I can’t believe we let her do this to us again,” Katherine said, shimmying into a too-tight black sheath dress that was cut too low on top and too high at the hem. “Why couldn’t we have worn our own clothes? She dresses like a ten-cent hooker.”
“She does not. That’s a beautiful dress,” Quinlyn said, pulling Katherine’s angora sweater down over her head and tucking it into tailored slacks. “I felt positively sexy in it. I kept wishing Robert were here.”
“I wish he were here too. He never would have agreed to let you do this, and then I wouldn’t have had to,” she said, stepping into three-inch heels and picking up a brush to rearrange her dark, shoulder-length hair. “You let her get away with murder, Quinn. And then I always end up cleaning up the mess. Why is that? It’s time for her to grow up and take some responsibility. She can’t keep getting herself into these messes and expect us to get her out of them all the time.”
“All the time? She hasn’t asked us to do this for her in years.” Not too reluctantly she admitted, “Actually, I’m having a great time.”
Katherine sent her a look that would have freeze-dried a peach.
“Corrie would do this for you,” Quinn reminded her patiently, trying the guilt approach, which always worked so well with Katherine.
“Oh, right. She’d love this. It’s stupid, immature, and wrong. Right up her alley.” She turned from the rest room mirror to study the part in her sister’s hair, then she set about matching it. “The thing is, I’d never arrange two dates with two different men on the same night and ask her to fill in for me. She’s unorganized, rude, and totally irresponsible.”
“We can’t all be perfect.”
She rolled her bright blue eyes in her sister’s direction.
“I’m not perfect and you know it. But I can keep an appointment, my checks don’t bounce, and I can remember to put gas in my car.” She pulled her hair away from her face on the right side. “I need the barrette.”
Quinn removed the silver barrette from her hair and handed it to Katherine. “Give it up, Katherine. Accept it. You’re the wired, uptight one. Corrie’s the flake. And I’m the easygoing, normal, and incredibly beautiful triplet. It’s been that way for thirty-two years, and I suspect it always will be.”
Quinn also had the best sense of humor of the three. The chief ruffled-feather smoother, she was happily married, and the mother of three.
“You’re also a pain,” Katherine said, grinning at her. “And we’ll be thirty-six next fall.” She picked up a gold pin shaped like a cow with freshwater pearl teats and pinned it to the dress. It was … udderly suggestive. “Tell me about the guy. Is he really as dull as wet cardboard?”
“Actually, I’ve been wondering about that. Corrie must have met him at a bad time. He’s not like she described him. He’s very good-looking, like she said, but he isn’t all business and he isn’t at all bossy. He’s completely charming and there’s … I don’t know, this energy about him. He’s really very … well, I have my Robert, of course, but there’s something very attractive about this man. I like him.”
“Does he speak in complete sentences?”
“Yes. He’s an architect. Seems very bright.”
“There’s the hitch. Corrie likes the stupid ones she can wrap around her finger.”
“Joey wasn’t stupid.”
“That’s why they’re divorced.”
“Katherine. Shame on you. She’s your sister.”
“You don’t need to keep reminding me,” she said, taking a final glance between the two of them in the mirror. She looked exactly like the Quinlyn/Corene who’d excused herself from John Wesley’s table minutes earlier to visit the powder room. Quinn now looked like the Katherine who’d been waiting for her there. “If this man is so charming, why don’t you let me go pick up the kids while you stay and finish dinner?”
“I would, but I told you before, Trevor’s going through that separation phase, and I hate leaving him anywhere for too long a time. I trust Molly completely and she always has him settled down by the time I get back, but the whole time I’m gone I feel as if he’s thinking I’ve abandoned him.” She shrugged. “It’s a crazy mother thing, I know, but I can’t help it. And an hour and a half is about all I can take. You’ll have to finish the dinner. Besides, if we take the time to change clothes again, he’ll think Corrie’s constipated or something.”
“Why do I find that a temptation?”
“Because you’d like everyone to think you’re a poop instead of the good, caring soul you are. Now hurry up and get back out there. We were talking about the River Vista Project when I left.”
“I thought you said he wasn’t all business? What do I know about the River Vista Project?”
“As much as I know, which is what Corrie told us. Just look interested and ask him a lot of questions. It’s just this one night, and it’s an important account for her.”
“Then she ought to be here.”
“And she would be,” Quinn said calmly, pushing Katherine toward the door. “But her relationship with Michael is a little unsteady right now, and going to his business dinner with him is a little more important, don’t you think?”
“What would she do if she didn’t have two look-alikes to fill in for her? What would any other woman, including you and me, do in this situation?”
“Seems to me, you’ve asked me that question before. About a hundred times. And I still don’t know the answer. I’m not Corrie.”
“Well, I’m not either, and look at me. Lord, I hate the way she dresses, and I don’t want to talk about some river renovation project I know nothing about with some man I’ve never met before. I really hate this.”
“I know,” she said sympathetically, holding the door open for her. “And next time, I’ll stand firm. I promise. I won’t back down, no matter what sort of mess she’s gotten herself into. She’ll have to take care of it on her own.”
“I want that in writing.”
“Lord above, you legal types are all alike. Get going,” she said, giving her sister a little shove. “And smile. Look friendly. Enjoy your dessert.”
“Dessert? You ate all the food?” She looked dejected beyond description. “I’m starving.”
“So was I.”
Katherine watched Quinn scurry around the partition toward the exit before she forced herself to turn in the opposite direction.
“Pssst. Katherine.” Quinn was back.
“What,” she whispered.
“I’m thirty-two.”
Katherine walked across the elegant French restaurant to the cozy booth her sister had directed her to earlier.
God knew, she more than loved her sisters, but would a face of her own have been asking for too much? she wondered.
She was fully aware of the male gazes that followed her as she passed table after table. And where Corrie might enjoy having her cleavage ogled and her legs gawked at, Katherine found it demeaning and thoroughly embarrassing, and couldn’t wait to be seated safely behind a table. She stepped up her pace, then had to slow down a bit for fear of falling off Corrie’s ridiculously high heels.
Then, like a messenger from a kind god, a waiter appeared out of nowhere. He stepped forward and pulled the table out, allowing her to slip straight into the booth without having to stand on display as she waited.
Unconsciously, she released a marathon runner’s sigh.
“Well, that didn’t take too long,” John Wesley said, smiling.
She glanced at him, ready to simper and bat her eyes in the usual Corrie fashion. Instead, she felt her mouth fall open and her eyes grow wide. Her stomach did a backflip. Fireworks exploded in her head. Her heart jumped into her throat. Was she breathing? Yes. Yes, she was, but a little too fast. She felt dizzy.
“What is it?” he asked, concerned. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. Yes, of course,” she said, her breath gaspy. Dear Lord of the earth and the moon and the stars and the heavens above! He was gorgeous! “I … I must have sat down too quickly. I … I’m fine. Really. I’m okay.”
“Are you sure? You look flushed.”
She giggled, though she hadn’t meant to. Giggling was so … so … Corrie. And Corrie was the last person she wanted to think of just then.
“Lower altitude,” she said, words spilling from her mouth from an unknown and obviously unbalanced source. “These heels are too high.”
He chuckled, but still looked anxious for her.
“Maybe we should check into the nearest hyperbaric chamber. Anton’ll slit his wrists if you get the bends in his restaurant.”
“No, no. We can’t have that. I’m fine. Really,” she said, dragging her gaze from his exquisite features to take a sip of water. Breaking contact with the deep dark intensity of his eyes was like getting a boost of air from an oxygen tank. She could breathe again.
“Seriously, if you need some air, we can leave,” he said kindly.
“No. I’ll eat something and feel better in no time. Really.”
“Dessert, then,” he said. He was astonished, but hid it well as he politely summoned the waiter to their table. She’d already eaten enough to keep the members of a French lumber camp from starving for a week.
“Dessert for the lady, please,” he said, addressing the waiter as if the man hadn’t noticed his companion had ordered twice the number of side orders usually considered adequate for a meal at Anton’s, then proceeded to wolf the meal down.
The server glanced from Katherine to John, masking his thoughts with long practice. “Can I get you anything else, sir?”
“No, thank you, I’m fine with this,” he said, tipping the half-full glass of wine in his hand.
“Very good.” He turned and with a flick of his wrist had the dessert cart delivered to him by an underling. “What is your desire, Ms. Asher?”
Ms. Asher? She’d forgotten it was Corrie’s favorite restaurant, and that she was well-known there.
“Mmm … is that crème brulée?” she asked, inspecting the selection with care.
“Yes, miss.”
“And what’s this?”
“Riz à l’impératrice, miss.”
“Rice?”
“Yes, miss.”
“And this one?”
“Boules sur chocolat, miss. Your favorite.”
“Hmm …” Her stomach was pinched tight and rubbed raw with hunger. She was sure that if she put something filling in it, she could look at John Wesley without sending her innards into orbit again. It all looked so good, but …
Well, hell, they all thought she was Corrie anyway!
“I’ll take all three, please,” she said, smiling innocently at the startled waiter. She waited for the laughter at the back of her throat to subside before she looked at John and said, “I have a little sweet tooth.”
It was more like a fang, he suspected, but Corene Asher was a willowy knockout who elevated eating to an art form. She could wrap her lips around a fork full of food like nothing he’d ever seen before. Slow. Sensuous. Erotic. What she’d do with a spoon and something soft had him shifting his weight with anticipation.
“I like women with healthy appetites,” he said, wondering if all her appetites were equally as robust.
Katherine caught the play on words but didn’t look up. She swallowed hard and picked up a silver spoon.
She started with the thick cream and rice first, taking small bites off the tip of her spoon, licking the bottom with her tongue, indulgently caressing the top with her upper lip.
John bit gently on the rim of his wineglass. He cleared his throat and tried to cross his legs under the table. Her next bite had him vowing to sample the texture and consistency of those lips, the flavor and composition of that tongue, sometime very soon. Hopefully, before the night was over.
“So, tell me what you have in mind for our campaign,” he said, leaning back, stretching his arm across the back of the seat behind her. “We’re going to need plenty of good press on this one.”
“I’m still thinking,” she said per Corrie’s directive, not quite able to look him in the eye yet. “Tell me more about the project itself, so I can get a good feel for it.”
“I don’t know what else I can tell you,” he said, frowning as he searched his mind for more details. “We’ve pretty much covered it.”
“Have we?” She wished she’d gotten more details from Quinn. “Then tell me again how you want the press handled. Cleaning up the riverfront doesn’t sound like a project that will need much manipulation of the press to generate a positive public response.”
“Generally speaking, it shouldn’t. But my brother, Jo— Peter …”
“Your brother’s name is Jupiter?”
“No, ah, it’s Peter. Peter. Anyway, we’re concerned about those last two apartment buildings. I told you about them, remember? They still have tenants and the owner is refusing to sell?”
“Oh, right. I remember now. And how much are they holding out for?”
He frowned. For an obviously intelligent woman, her memory was surprisingly short. He wondered if it had anything to do with the amount of food she’d consumed.
“No. I told you earlier, money didn’t have anything to do with it. We could have handled that. It’s sentimental.”
“Sentimental can be very tricky sometimes,” she said, reaching for the crème brulée. She took a bite, savored it, then waved her spoon back and forth in the air. “Is it the people or the buildings?”
“Both, I think.”
She glanced at him, then quickly back to her food. His dark eyes were focused on her chest—her overexposed chest.
She felt hot all over.
He was hesitant. “You know, I think we had this same conversation about thirty minutes ago.”
This might have unraveled the average imposter, but the Asher triplets had been stepping in for one another since they were in kindergarten. In that time, they had developed a small book of rules and pat answers.
“Of course, we did,” she said. “But I like to go over things a couple of times to be sure I have them straight.”
People who knew the Asher sisters well could always detect their true identities because their body language, like their personalities, was so very different. Also, Corrie had a minute scar above her left eyebrow from a bicycle accident when they were seven. Quinn’s hair went one step beyond curly to frizzy. And Katherine bit her nails. But to an unsuspecting stranger …
“Fair enough,” he said. “But let’s let it soak in for a while and go over it again some other time. Frankly, I’d much rather talk about you.”
“Me?” She made the mistake of looking at him again. He drew his gaze from her décolletage to meet hers, and the impact was enough to curdle the thick creamy custard in her mouth.
“Did … didn’t we talk about me earlier? Before we talked about the project?”
Quinn had more in common with both Katherine and Corrie than the sisters had with each other. Katherine and Corrie were polar opposites, and Quinn was like a healthy mix of the two. She always did all the personal stuff during a switch because she didn’t have to pretend to know what she was talking about and was less likely to trip the other two up with a lie.
“Let’s talk about you,” he suggested eagerly, resisting the temptation to look down at her chest. She could fill the bodice of Corrie’s dress as well as Corrie, and knew that her bosom was at least covered. She had no idea why he couldn’t seem to keep from looking at it. It was as if he were confused or puzzled by it—which didn’t seem likely in a man who wore his own sexuality as easily as other men wore jeans. “Your life must be terribly interesting, what with all the traveling you do. I think I remember reading about the renovations your firm did in St. Louis. You must have wonderful stories about the people you’ve met and the places you’ve been to.”
“I’ve already told you the good ones, and the rest aren’t fit for lively dinner discussion. A lot of legal hocus-pocus that’d bore you to tears.”
This was where a switch could get complicated, and why there were rules.
No sister, acting on another’s behalf, will inject her own likes or dislikes into a conversation if it isn’t in the best interest of the original sister.
Katherine was a lawyer, but Corrie thought the American justice system sucked beans. It took too long, it cost too much, it wasn’t fair and equal … How many times had she had to listen to her sister’s democratic drivel on the subject?
“Probably,” she said, enjoying the boules sur chocolat that wouldn’t exist if there were no just desserts, so to speak, for those who worked for them—like herself. “But your life can’t be all business. Surely you must see and do fun things in the cities you work in. I mean, I don’t think big cities are all alike, do you? Don’t they all have their own special flavor and personality? It has to be fun for you to get to know each one.”
“Actually, that’s part of the job, too, though I admit it’s not the worst part. We have to get to know the city, its history and customs, in order to blend our projects into the existing community. Something sleek and modern designed for Seattle would stick out like a sore, ugly thumb in New Orleans. And everything in the Southwest might as well come from a foreign country if you try to stick it in New York. You’re right, though, the differences are interesting. Someday I’d like to have the chance to settle somewhere and put down roots.”
“So, you don’t like to travel,” she said, feeling an instant link between them that the flighty Corrie wouldn’t have.
“Well, it was okay when we were younger, when we first started out, but … no. I’m tired of traveling. I’d like to settle down, I think.” He paused. “I built a house a couple of years ago. Outside San Francisco. It’s just sitting there empty, waiting for me.”
“Why can’t you live there?” she asked, looking him straight on for the first time—and enjoying it tremendously. His hair had a shiny, healthy glow to it. It was cut conservatively, but had a natural wave that lent him a sort of wild, reckless air, which appealed to her—though wild and reckless weren’t normally what she looked for in a man. “Couldn’t you make San Francisco a home base or something? Go to wherever your next project is, check it out, then go home and plan it?”
“If I were married with children, I might. But that’d be tough. Each project can last up to five or six years, depending on the size of it, the support we get, the financiers … We oversee the construction, too, so that would mean flying back and forth constantly. Right now it’s easier just to move and then pack up and leave when it’s over.”
She could hear the dissatisfaction in his voice, and she sensed a deep loneliness in him that pulled at her heart.
“If you’re unhappy with the way things are now, does that mean you might be planning a change?” She smiled. “A smaller firm maybe? Smaller projects?”
He smiled back, causing a wonderful disturbance directly below her breastbone. Then he shook his head. “Not really. I like what I do, and I do have my brother to consider.”
“He likes to travel.”
“He likes the excitement of a big project. He’s the gung ho type. The bigger the better, you know? And no one city is going to have enough big jobs to keep him happy.”
“I’ve heard that you can be a little gung ho yourself,” she said, recalling Corrie’s complaints of the pushy, arrogant, all-knowing, all-powerful, all-business man who couldn’t possibly be the same man sitting next to her. “In fact, I’ve heard you can be down right … obnoxious, I think was the word.”
He laughed. “Me? Obnoxious?” he asked. “Nah. I’ve been known to get a little steamed up about something, and once in a while I have to kick a few tails. But I’m never obnoxious.” He paused, then added, “Now, my brother’s the one who can get wired real easy, and he can be … oh, let’s say abrasive, now and again.”
She laughed, too, and said, “We have something in common, then. I have a sister like that, and people are constantly getting the two of us mixed up.”
“Let’s make a deal, then,” he said, crossing his arms on the table and leaning toward her. “Don’t believe everything you hear about me, and I won’t believe everything I hear about you.”
“Why? What have you heard about me?” she asked, ready to take notes and report it to Corrie.
“Not much.”
“Come on. Tell me. I can take it.”
“I heard that despite the fact that you have an incredible imagination and do the best PR around, you’re also something of an emotionally disturbed space cadet.”
“A what?”
“Someone who constantly screws things up and then has a fit when they aren’t going her way. Overbearing and scatterbrained at the same time, which I don’t think describes you at all.”
No, but it fit Corrie like a wax mask.
“Thank you,” she said, and because she liked him she added, “but I think I should warn you, I can be difficult at times.”
“Well, if you get too difficult, I’ll chalk it up to your artistic temperament.” And sugar consumption, he thought as he watched her finish off the last dessert.
“You do that,” she said, hoping he could, once he’d gotten to know Corrie better. She wished Quinn had thought to order coffee.
“Isn’t it strange the way first impressions can be so wrong?” he said, glancing downward, well below her chin again. “I was dreading meeting you—meeting with you, I mean—again. But I’m really glad I came. I think we got off to a bad start in your office the other day.”
If her sister was any judge, it couldn’t have been a truer remark. Which meant Corrie would owe her sisters big time for rectifying his initial—and probably correct—judgment of her. Payback would be sweet, Katherine decided, never having enjoyed her sister’s escapades.
“I think we did too,” she said. “And I’m sorry about that.” She grinned. “And I’m really glad you came tonight, because I’d have looked very strange sitting here eating three desserts all by myself.”
“You wouldn’t look strange eating anything,” he said. Sexy as hell, but not strange, he thought. His eyes lowered fleetingly to her chest and back again as he spoke. “I don’t know where you put it all.”
She couldn’t stand it anymore. His dark sweeping eyes had her lifting a self-conscious hand to her breast as a hot crimson flush rose up her neck and into her cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” he said, looking truly contrite. Then he laughed. “Really. It’s just that … well, I could be losing my mind, but I’d have sworn that pin was on the other side of your dress earlier.”
Shaken a bit by his astute powers of observation, her fingers crawled to the golden cow with the provocative udders.
“Oh,” she said, relieved and strangely disappointed that he hadn’t been fascinated by her cleavage after all. “No. You’re right. It was on the other side, but I changed it in the ladies’ room. I thought it looked better on this side.”
He sat back and considered it openly, much to her discomfort.
“It looks good on both sides,” he said, raising his gaze warmly and suggestively to hers. “You’re well balanced.”
Corrie would have loved it. She’d have slapped her knee and come back with some snappy, lewd rejoinder that would have pleased him. Quinn would have laughed it off and let it go, maybe even taken it as a compliment. Katherine wanted to disappear. Pooph! Just like that.
Not because of what he’d said. She wasn’t naive or prudish. She knew men. But because of the way he’d said it; because he clearly liked and wanted her body—which was never what she wanted a man to want or enjoy first about her. She knew of at least two other people with the exact same body, so it wasn’t that big of a deal.
She wanted him to see and know and be attracted to the differences in her; to the way she felt, the way she thought, what she liked, what she dreamed about.
Hold it. She gave herself a mental shake. She wasn’t Katherine; she was Corrie for all intents and purposes. And Corrie didn’t care whose body she had so long as men liked it and it got her from one place to the next when she wanted it to.
“You’re too kind,” she said in a low, husky voice, forcing a cheeky smile as she fought off the resentment welling inside her. She wanted to be herself with this man. She wanted him to see her, know her, like her.
“I can be kinder,” he said suggestively. “I know you’d rather jump out of airplanes or fall off bridges with rubber bands buckled to your ankles than do anything as dull and sedate as go boating, but I’ve had my baby shipped up from Texas and I’d love to take you out on her sometime. Boating can be very exciting.”
“Like during a hurricane?” she asked, pretending to consider the adventure under certain circumstances. “Aren’t those a little hard to special order just to impress a woman?”
He set his wineglass aside and leaned forward again. His head bent close to hers as he watched his index finger gently caress the warm, soft skin of her upper arm.
“I don’t need a hurricane to impress a woman,” he said, his voice low and intimate. The scent of his spicy aftershave tickled her nose. She breathed deeper and deeper until it filled her mind with pleasure and faraway thoughts. Chills of delight ran up and down her arm, heralding the promise of raptures soon to come.
“I know you don’t,” she murmured, already impressed. “But what about professionalism? You are a client of mine, you know. And lots of people advise against getting … too impressed by their clients.”
No sister, acting on another’s behalf, will commit the original sister to becoming sexually or emotionally involved.
It was a rule. One Katherine was glad to adhere to in this instance. Selfishly, if she couldn’t become involved with John Wesley, she sure didn’t want Corrie to.
“Are you saying you don’t date your clients?”
“Pretty much.”
“No exceptions?”
“A few exceptions.” Michael had been a client at first. “But never important ones.”
He took a brief break from the ardent study of her face to consider her value as a public relations manager versus firing her on the spot. He sighed deeply, smiled, and leaned back into the seat, gracefully admitting temporary defeat. He’d need her brain more than her body for a while, but once the project was underway …
“Okay,” he said, grinning in a way that had her heart racing like the pistons in the engine of a getaway car. “But I want you to know that I don’t give up easily, and that guy you told me about earlier isn’t going to phase me.”
Her brows rose with interest. Quinn had told him about Michael, and he was still coming on to her?
“Well, what if he phases me?” she asked, more intrigued than insulted by his arrogance.
“He doesn’t. Not the way he should, anyway.”
True. Katherine wasn’t in love with Michael, but Corrie wanted to be. She needed to proceed with some caution.
“Well, that’s neither here nor there, and it’s certainly nothing two professionals like us should be discussing, I think,” she said, groping for her purse. “Look. I want to make something very clear before I go. I’m really excited about your project. It’ll be good for the city, good for you, and good for me. I’m eager to work with you on it. But that’s all I’m going to do with you. I … I may have done some things and said some things tonight that led you in the wrong direction, and I’m sorry. You’re an interesting, intelligent, and very good-looking man, but I’m involved elsewhere. I shouldn’t have let you think anything else.”
He nodded affably. “That’s the second time tonight you’ve given me that speech. I’m beginning to wonder who you’re trying to convince, me or yourself.”
“I know who I’m trying to convince, Mr. Wesley.”
“I thought we’d settled on John. Me John, you Corrie, remember?”
That last comment had all the markings of a Quirky Quinlyn Quip. She cringed inwardly at his misconception that she, Katherine, would ever say such a thing.
“Okay, John. I just don’t want to leave you with any misconceptions. I’m involved with someone.”
“You live with him?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to have his baby?”
She gasped. “What?”
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” he said. There was a light in his eyes that scared her. Not the way a maniac’s might scare her, but … well, it was hard to explain. She felt trapped. She felt as if he knew she was an imposter, as if he knew she was Katherine and he wanted her. Her, not Corrie, not Quinn. Her. Her throat grew tight as he continued to speak. “You’re a puzzle, Corrie. A Chinese puzzle. Intricate, ingenious, obscure. I plan to put all the pieces together.”
“All the pieces?”
He nodded, narrowing his eyes.