Taken by Passion
CHAPTER ONE
IT HAD BEEN THE MORNING FROM HELL. Possibly the worst day of her life, but Alice O’Brien was still reserving judgment on that one.
A thick San Francisco fog shrouded the city, perfectly mirroring her dark mood as she stood on the landing outside her apartment door and searched her purse. She’d just climbed the three flights to her apartment, which was above the dim sum restaurant on Grant Street. On the trek up, she had managed to snag her last pair of queen-sized nylons because somebody had left a mop bucket out on the second floor landing.
Damn but she had to get a new apartment and a new landlady.
And before that lovely icing on her day, when she’d made the hike from her ex-job on Market Street, all the way up to Grant, she’d stepped into possibly the deepest puddle in the whole freaking city. And definitely the most polluted.
But of course that hadn’t been good enough. Oh, not by a long shot. Not only had she stepped into the mud puddle, but she’d stumbled and dropped her new cell phone half in and half out of the puddle. Maybe it would work when it dried out, but right now she doubted it. Nothing was working in her favor.
Alice shivered, her toes growing numb in her soaked walking shoes. Now where’s that damn key? After this morning, it would be just peachy if she’d gone and lost her house key.
Normally Alice would be at work right now, efficiently performing mundane secretarial duties for Mitch, that slimeball of an accountant she used to work for. However, when she’d insisted this morning that her name was not Monica and that he was not the president, and that her administrative duties did not include sucking his dick, he’d canned her.
The bastard freaking fired me.
Well, he’d be one dick-less sonofabitch CPA when her twin sister, Alexi, got ahold of him. A dynamic attorney, Alexi specialized in sexual harassment and divorce cases, and Alice fully intended to hire her and make that bastard pay.
Alice gave a cry of frustration and almost threw her purse onto the cracked concrete landing. Where was that damn key?
A splatter landed on Alice’s shoulder. Very slowly she turned to look, knowing what would be on her trench coat even before she saw it.
Pigeon shit.
Alice groaned and banged her forehead against the wooden door of her apartment.
Perfect. Just perfect.
How could the day possibly get any worse?
She banged her head against the door, harder this time. It swung open. She stumbled over the threshold, barely managing to keep from falling on her face. Smells of stale bacon and moldy carpet assailed her.
Damn Jon. Her somewhat forgetful—make that irresponsible—fiancé, had forgotten to lock the door again.
Well, this time it might be the one thing in the whole miserable morning that had worked out in her favor.
Alice ached from head to toe as she dropped her purse next to the old-fashioned telephone on the table just inside the entryway, then closed the door behind her. Who would have thought that being fired, falling into a puddle the size of the San Francisco Bay, probably ruining her cell phone, and shredding her best and most expensive pair of pantyhose—not to mention getting shit on—would be so exhausting?
And all before noon.
After she shrugged out of her soiled trench coat, she let it drop to the cracked black-and-white-checked linoleum. She kicked off her soaked walking shoes and peeled off her sopping wet nylons. Her low-heeled sandals were in her purse—everyone in the City by the Bay made the hike up and down the steep hills in comfortable shoes and carried their heels for work. With its narrow streets and lack of inexpensive parking, no one drove to work in San Francisco. Instead, they walked or took the city buses or rode the cable cars.
Alice gave a weary sigh as she tugged on her short skirt that had somehow twisted around her ample hips so that the zipper was off kilter. Why couldn’t she be slender, with all those thick, wavy, auburn locks like her twin? Alice wouldn’t have minded at all if they’d been identical, so long as they both looked like Alexi. Their turquoise eyes were one of the few things they had in common.
Alice sighed again as she tightened the blue silk ribbon holding her hair back, away from her rounder-than-Alexi’s face. She lifted her fine, long, and very straight blonde hair out of the collar of her blouse. She started toward her purse to get her cell phone out and sighed. Right. Likely ruined.
For a moment she wondered what it would be like to be able to call her mother and tell her about her day. Even her father. But both had left Alice and Alexi when they were young. Their father had cheated and left with the woman he’d been screwing. They took off together and apparently had twin boys. Her father hadn’t looked back and enjoyed his new family now.