November Harlequin Presents 2(44)
He thought back. That week! The week he’d come in and found his PA slicking those next-to-nothing stockings up her legs. No wonder she’d looked so shocked. No wonder she’d seemed so different.
She’d looked the same, more or less. She’d worked more or less the same, tripping over the occasional name or contact, but she’d been a different person entirely.
‘And you thought it was perfectly acceptable to get your twin to stand in for you?’
She swallowed. ‘I didn’t want to, but I had no other choice. Tegan agreed to fill in for me to look after my job—’
‘What job?’ he roared. ‘Do you honestly think you’ve got a job any more? You must be out of your mind.’
The woman he’d thought of for the past seven weeks as Morgan, only to discover now that she wasn’t, bowled forward and wrapped an arm around her sister’s shoulders. ‘There’s no need to yell! Can’t you see she’s hurt?’
‘And you,’ he said, ‘should stay out of this.’
‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘Yes, it was Morgan’s job, but I’m the one who agreed to pretend to be her for a week. So get stuck into me, not her.’
‘You should have told me that first day.’
‘Don’t you think I wanted to? Do you think I enjoyed putting up with you? I wanted so badly to tell you where to shove your job, but I couldn’t. For Morgan’s sake, I couldn’t.’
‘For Morgan’s sake. What about the job’s sake? Did you ever spare that a thought?’
‘I did the work. And I did it well, you can’t deny that, can you?’
‘While all the time,’ he argued, preferring to let that question slip conveniently aside, ‘you were pretending to be someone else.’
‘And yet if you’d agreed to Morgan’s request for one week’s leave—one lousy week’s leave, while you weren’t even supposed to be there—to enable her to go to her best friend’s wedding like she wanted, then I wouldn’t have had to stand in for her, and none of this would have happened!’
‘It wasn’t convenient.’
‘What—not convenient to you? And that’s all that matters? Forget that she’s going to miss her best friend’s wedding?’
Damn her! He wasn’t going to be made to feel like he’d done wrong in this. ‘That doesn’t matter. Because I was there that week, and you did pretend to be her, and it has happened.’
‘And aren’t I damned well living with the consequences!’
He looked at the two of them standing alongside each other, identical features, yet one pale and worried and the other with her colour up, eyes wild and her breathing pumping. He wondered why the difference between the two hadn’t hit him before. Morgan was…well, she was Morgan. The same as she’d ever been in the eighteen months she’d worked for him—meek and mild and restrained. Whereas Tegan had been full-on from the day she’d arrived in the office.
He should have picked it.
He prided himself on being savvy. So why hadn’t he realised she wasn’t who she said she was?
Why hadn’t he stuck to his vow never to get involved with the staff?
The answer hit him like a blow to the gut.
From the moment he’d seen those legs pointing skywards, he hadn’t cared enough about the differences, and he’d been prepared to overlook the fact she was his PA—he’d simply been way too occupied about how he’d been going to get her into his bed.
Before he could respond, Tegan’s arm withdrew from her sister’s shoulders. She clamped the other hand over her mouth, and with a muffled cry bolted from the room. He looked at Morgan. ‘What’s wrong with her?’
The remaining woman looked sideways at him. ‘Maybe you should ask her that yourself.’
The noise in his ears grew to a roar. The colour he saw when he closed his eyes was red—blood red. The colour of fury. The colour of deception.
It was Tina all over again, she of the French-polished talons and cunning mind, who’d cold-heartedly planned both her marriage and her abortion with the same meticulous eye for detail. Ambitious Tina, who’d used an inconvenient pregnancy and an error in judgement on his part as a way out of her nine-to-five life and a meal ticket for life.
And he’d sworn it would never happen again!
‘Morgan!’ he yelled after her, realising too late but beyond caring that he’d called the wrong name, following the sounds of her distress to what had to be the bathroom, testing the handle and finding it locked, banging on the door. ‘What the hell is going on?’