“It wouldn’t have helped.”Roxie looked at their entwined hands and ran her thumb over Lexie’s pale pink nail polish.Her own fingernails were hot-rod red, yet she seemed as fascinated by their differences as she was by their similarities.“Charlie’s doing his best to keep my name out of the press.”
“Yeah, but if any of those snooty reporters would come down here and interview the regulars, they’d have your name like that.”Skeeter snapped his fingers.He scratched his head as he studied them.“It’s like I’ve gone on a binge and I’m seeing double.”
“You’ll be seeing four of them after we drink this.”Charlie came out from behind the bar.He handed out drinks to everybody and chewed on his bottom lip as he stared at the pair of them.“I’ll be damned.”
Reaching out, he caught Lexie’s chin.She lifted it obediently as the man studied her.Finally, he just shook his head.“I take it neither of you knew about the other?”
“No,” Roxie said, following it with a curse.
Lexie swallowed hard.They’d been so close, yet so far away from each other.They’d grown up on opposite sides of the same city.Same city, but obviously very different lives.How much longer would they have remained in the dark about each other if not for that billboard?
Would they have ever crossed paths?
Roxie reached for her bourbon, and Lexie did the same.She took a stiff drink, throwing it back.It burned going down, but she needed it.Badly.If she’d felt like Alice down the rabbit hole before, it was nothing compared to what she felt now.She couldn’t stop sneaking peeks across the table.It was so bizarre to see herself sitting there, wearing those clothes and making gestures that were so familiar.It was like having an out-of-body experience.Anyone looking at Roxie would think it was her, plopped down into the wrong scene.
“Oh!”The drink in Lexie’s hand nearly sloshed out of the glass.“Oh no.”
“What’s wrong?”
“My family… I mean, my adopted family.I thought one of them had…” God, she couldn’t admit what she’d thought.This woman wouldn’t understand her family’s dysfunction.She’d blamed them, while they’d blamed her.In the end, none of them had been right.Rowe had been closest to the truth.He’d been the only one who’d known it wasn’t even her.
Lexie frowned.There he was again, inside her head.
“One of them had what?”Roxie prompted.
“Hmm?Oh, I thought the billboard was a prank.I blamed them.”
Roxie leaned closer, her gaze sharp.She took in the expensive suit, the fancy shoes and the designer handbag.“What are they like?Your family?”
Lexie stilled, guilt stinging her.All the hurt, anger and finger-pointing earlier this morning now seemed petty.She’d been adopted.She’d been taken in and loved.She had others she could turn to for support and advice.Others to play with, laugh with and fight with.Roxie hadn’t been so lucky.“Like any other family, I guess.”
“I wouldn’t know what that’s like.”
Lexie felt even smaller.
Roxie took another gulp of her bourbon.“Tell me about them.Do you have brothers?Sisters?”She ran her finger carefully around the rim of her glass.“Parents?”
Charlie and Skeeter backed away until they were behind the bar.
“Two brothers and two sisters.”Lexie fought not to squirm.She’d been given so much.Things hadn’t always been perfect, but did she really have anything to complain about?She gripped the tumbler and took another fiery drink.“Two parents.”
Roxie frowned.“That’s a lot of kids.What are they, social do-gooders?”
Her parents were big into philanthropy, especially her mother.Of course, if the charity could be tied back into the family business, all the better.
“It wasn’t my parents’ way of giving back,” she confessed.“I came first.They…uh, they didn’t think they could have kids.”
“And then they had four of their own?”
She shrugged.
“But if they wanted a bunch of rugrats, then why?”Roxie didn’t continue, but she didn’t have to.She wanted to know why one of them had been adopted and the other hadn’t.
Only Lexie didn’t know.She’d never known there were two of them.“We must have already been separated.”
“But how could that happen?How old were you when they took you in?Do you remember?”
“Around two, or so I’ve been told.”
