“Do I look like Elda?” she demanded abruptly. There were only a few family pictures at the Abbott house, and none of Ridley’s wife. The Elda Susan had dreamed about was small, dark, brittle and sophisticated. The antithesis of Susan.
“Not likely,” Mary said. “Elda was my father’s second wife. My stepmother. There’d be no reason for you to resemble her.”
Susan felt suddenly chilled. “You never told me that.”
“Didn’t I?” Mary said vaguely. “I would have thought I’d mentioned it And no, you don’t look like her at all.”
“What did she look like?”
“Elda died over twenty years ago, Susan. Why would you care?”
“Humor me. She was in my dreams.”
“Then you know what she looked like.”
“Mother!”
Mary sighed. “She looked a little like Joan Crawford, actually. She was dark and tiny and very polished. And she always wore orange lipstick. Odd, I almost forgot about that.”
Susan could see her so clearly it shook her—Elda’s thin, chilly smile, painted in orange.
“I’m going out,” she said abruptly.
“You can’t! It’s after ten o’clock.”
“I need to...to talk with someone.” She had no idea who she could turn to, she only knew she had to get away from her mother.
“Susan, you’re getting married at four o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Unless you’ve changed your mind?”
“Why do people keep asking me that?” she demanded. “Why shouldn’t I marry Neddie?”
Mary turn pale. “Edward,” she corrected her in a shocked voice. “You’re going to many Edward.”
“Maybe,” she said. Thinking of Neddie Marsden and Jack and Jake, the two of them so different and yet so alike. Maybe, she thought.
Maybe.
Sixteen
Jake Wyczynski was in a foul mood. One of the worst he could ever remember. He kept trying to think back to. some time in his thirty-five years when he’d felt this cantankerous. There was the time in Singapore, when he and his uncle Jack had gone drinking at some waterfront dive. Uncle Jack had had one of his rare fights with Louisa, and Jake had felt like raising a little hell.
A broken hand and seventeen stitches later, he’d felt a little more mellow, and Uncle Jack had been inordinately proud of himself. There weren’t many seventy-two-year-olds who could still hold their own in a barroom brawl.
And then there was the time in Kenya, when Jake had run afoul of a local official and barely escaped with his. skin intact His uncle hadn’t been with him that time, though he’d bemoaned that fact later.
But now Uncle Jack was dead, and Jake was still getting into trouble. It had been years since he’d gotten himself into such a mess—Aunt Louisa used to
tell him he was getting positively staid. All he needed was a wife to make him as conservative as a banker.
He’d laughed at her, of course. She was just needling him—there was no way he’d ever settle down, not completely. And he certainly didn’t need anything as ordinary as a wife. Not the same woman, day after day, year after year, through good times and bad. Not unless she was someone like Louisa.
But that was before he’d met Susan Abbott.
Funny, but she reminded him of a younger Louisa, and he wasn’t quite sure why. They were both tall, though Louisa was stooped with age. They had different eye color, but there was something similar in their expression. A sort of a vulnerable, to-hell-with-you bravado that was both infuriating and enchanting. He’d spent half his life with his uncle Jack and aunt Louisa, and now he’d fallen for her clone.
No, she wasn’t a clone. It would be easier to ignore her if she was. He’d always had a kind of crush on the magnificent Louisa—what young kid wouldn’t have, and finding a youthful version of her was tempting. And he was so damned tempted he was going nuts.
The doors on the old garage were ridiculous—giant French doors with filthy glass. He shoved them open, letting the air rush into the place. It was late, the heat of the day had faded, and the wind was picking up, riffling through the trees. It felt more like home now—his tumbledown house in Spain, or the ruined palazzo in Venice. He wanted to be home now. But somehow the thought of it seemed empty.
