“I just am.” If she was almost sixteen, how come she looked like she was twenty-one?
She finished her surveillance of his apartment and turned to him. “Do you want to do some heartwarming brother-sister activities? We could bake cookies,” she suggested with sarcastic sweetness, “or play Chutes and Ladders.”
“No.”
She stuck her hands in her jacket pockets. “You know, people tell me that we look alike, but I don’t see it.”
Hedidsee the resemblance, and it was unsettling. She was tall, somewhere around five foot nine. Slender and strong, she had a long nose, a sharp jaw. They had the same shade of brown hair, and her eyes were hazel, like his.
“Why’d you come here?” he asked.
“I’m about to get my driver’s license. A year ago, Dad told me he’d match the amount I saved for a car. So I’ve been working at Ingles.”
Their dad had offered Luke the same deal when he’d been that age.
“A month ago,” she said, “we bought a blue 1970 Pontiac Firebird. He’s been trying to help me fix it up, but we’ve done all we can and it’s still not running. I don’t have any money left to pay a mechanic, so I need you to help me get it going.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Because you haven’t exactly been a great older brother. You owe me.”
“I don’t owe you. I did you a favor. I gave you what was better, in your case, than an older brother.”
“What’s that?”
“No brother at all. If anyone owes anyone here, you owe me.”
She swore, kicking his floor with her toe.
“No cussing in front of me,” he said.
“What? You don’t expect me to believe, do you, that you’re as lame and uptight as Mom and Dad?”
The fact that she’d just insulted their parents shocked him more than the cussing. “Our parents are not lame.” He struggled for patience. “If you haven’t recognized that you won the parent lottery, you’re a fool.”
“They’re lame.”
She was a fool. Blair hadn’t survived an earthquake. She hadn’t had to live through the death of her sibling because she hadn’t been born when Ethan died. Blair was a very fortunate girl, raised in a secure home by loving parents.
Yet, she’d come here, trying to impress him with her toughness. She’d probably have thrown back a shot or smoked a cigarette in front of him if either of those options had been available.
In addition to looking like him, she also reminded him of someone he hadn’t liked at all in high school.
Himself.
“I think you do owe me,” she said. “So. Are you going to help me with the Firebird?”
“No.”
“Shocker. Big surprise.”
“How did you get here?”
“What does it matter?”
“How did you get here?”
“Mom dropped me off at a store a few blocks away while she’s running errands. She doesn’t know that I came to see you.”
