River’s End

“But right now I’d like to know what it was like being her sister. More, her twin sister. Tell me about that, about when you were kids.”
    “It was a good childhood, for both of us. We were close, and we were happy. We had a great deal of freedom, I suppose, as children often do who grow up outside of the city. My parents believed in giving us responsibilities and freedom in equal measure. It’s a good formula.”
    “You grew up in a fairly isolated area. Did you have any other friends?”
    “Hmm, a few, certainly. But we were always each other’s best friend. We enjoyed each other’s company, and liked most of the same things.”
    “No squabbles, no sibling rivalry?”
    “Nothing major. We had spats—I doubt anyone can fight like sisters or aim for the weak spots with more accuracy. Julie wasn’t a pushover, and gave as good as she got.”
    “She get a lot?”
    Jamie nibbled on her cookie, smiled. “Sure. I wasn’t a pushover either. Noah, we were two strong-minded young girls growing up in each other’s pockets. We had a lot of room, but we were . . . enclosed all the same. We sniped, we fought, we made up. We irritated each other, competed with each other. And we loved each other. Julie would take her licks, and she’d take her swipes. But she could never hold a grudge.”
    “Could you?”
    “Oh yes.” The smile again, slightly feline now. “That was one thing I was always better at. With Julie, she’d go her round, aim her punches, then she’d forget it. One minute she’d be furious, stomp off with her nose in the air. And the next, she’d be laughing and telling me to hurry up and look at something, or it would be. ‘Oh come on. Jamie, get over it and let’s go for a swim.’And if I didn’t get over it quickly enough, she’d keep poking at me until I did. She was irresistible.”
    “You said holding grudges was the one thing you were better at. What was she better at?”
    “Almost everything. She was prettier, sharper, quicker, stronger. Certainly more outgoing and ambitious.”
    “Didn’t you resent that?”
    “Maybe I did.” She looked at him blandly. “Then I got over it. Julie was born to be spectacular. I wasn’t. Do you think I blamed her for that?”
    “Did you?”
    “Let’s put this on another level,” Jamie said after a moment. “Using an interest we both apparently share. Do you blame one rose for being a deeper color, a bigger bloom than the other? One isn’t less than another, but different. Julie and I were different.”
    “Then again, a lot of people overlook the smaller bloom and choose the more spectacular one.”
    “But there’s something to be said for slow bloomers, isn’t there? She’s gone.”
    Jamie picked up her glass and sipped, watching Noah over the rim. “I’m still here.”
    “And if she’d lived? What then?”
    “She didn’t.” Her gaze shifted away now, toward something he couldn’t see. “I’ll never know what would have been in store for both of us if Sam Tanner hadn’t come into our lives.”

Fourteen
    “I was madly in love with Sam Tanner. And I spent many delightful hours devising ways in which he would die the most hideous and painful, and hopefully embarrassing, of deaths.”
    Lydia Loring sipped her mineral water and lime from a tall, slim glass of Baccarat crystal and chuckled. Her eyes, a summery baby blue, flirted expertly with Noah and had him grinning back at her.
    “Care to describe one of the methods for the record?”
    “Hmmm. Well, let’s see . . .” She trailed off, recrossing her very impressive legs. “
    There was the one where he was found chained to the bed and wearing women’s underwear. He’d starved to death. It took many horrible days.”
    “So I take it the two of you didn’t end your relationship in an amicable fashion.”
    “Hell. We didn’t do anything in an amicable fashion. We were animals from the first minute we laid hands on each other. I was crazy about him,” she added, running her finger around the rim of her glass. “Literally. When they convicted him, I opened a bottle of Dom Perignon, seventy-five, and drank every single drop.”
    “That was several years after your relationship ended.”
    “Yes, and several years before my lovely vacation at Betty Ford’s. I do, occasionally, still miss the marvelous zip of champagne.” She lifted a shoulder. “I had problems, so did Sam. We drank hard, played hard, worked hard. We had outrageous sex, vicious fights. There was