Lexie searched for somebody to question.Someone to blame.Someone at whom she could yell.
A big guy with a scruffy face and a muscle shirt was working on a light fixture.He’d do.
She made a beeline for him, and he looked down from his perch atop a chair when he heard her.“Sorry, we’re closed.Oh, hey.I didn’t know you were…”
His voice drifted off as he stared at her.He did a quick sweep down her body, and Lexie braced herself.She knew she wasn’t their normal clientele.In her suit and four-inch heels, she had to stand out like a sore thumb.Yet the man’s expression was more confused than anything.
“What’re you doin’?”he asked.
“I’d like to speak with the person in charge.”
His look only turned more befuddled.He stood atop the chair, holding the light bulb in his fist as if a flash of insight would turn it on.“You mean Charlie?”
“Sure.Charlie.Where would I find him?”
“In the kitchen, like always.”
Like always.“And that would be…?”
The man’s face screwed up even more, and he pointed to the swinging half doors to her left.Lexie spun on her heel.She was marching in the direction he’d pointed when the doors suddenly swung open.A dark-haired woman strolled through the archway and into the bar area with her head down as she flipped through the day’s mail.
So Charlie was female.
Lexie stopped and folded her arms over her chest.Out of habit, she rocked her right foot back onto its heel.“Are you the person responsible for the billboard over the freeway?”
The woman didn’t even look up.“No interviews.The moral minority can just sit and spin for all I care.”
“I’m not here to interview.I’m here to sue.”
A sultry laugh left the woman’s throat, and she tossed her long hair over her shoulder as her chin came up.“Oh, really.On what grounds—?”
Their gazes connected, and time stopped.Slowed down Matrix-style and froze.
Lexie forgot to breathe.
So did the woman in front of her.
She knew, because it was like staring into a mirror.The woman facing her was her exact replica, a true doppelganger.The toes of Lexie’s right foot slowly dropped back to the floor.She needed all the balance she could get, because her world was going topsy-turvy again.
She started to shake her head to clear her vision, but she couldn’t look away.She and the woman in front of her were identical in every way.Height.Body type.Even hairstyle.The face gawking at her could have been her own.
Identical.
It took a moment.Longer than that, actually, before the concept sank in.
Identical.
Oh, dear God.No, it couldn’t be.
Oxygen hit her lungs hard, burning them as she inhaled sharply.She’d always known she was adopted.She’d been reminded of the fact practically every day of her life.She’d been a brown-eyed brunette in a family of blue-eyed blondes.She was known as “the adopted one”, yet she’d never considered she might have a sister out there.She rejected the thought almost instantly, thinking of Blaire.A full-blooded sister, she amended.Flesh and blood.
But it was more than that.This woman could be atwin.
Floundering, Lexie reached out and caught the bar for support.
Almost simultaneously, the mail in the woman’s hand slipped from her fingers to the floor.It splattered everywhere, sliding noisily, but nobody in the room paid attention to it.
“Whothe hellareyou?”
