Sister Swap. Lilian Darcy

Чтение книги онлайн.

      Chapter One

      “So, Mom, she’s been stuck in that hotel room for two days, until you could get there,” Roxanna said, “because she’s been too scared to leave it on her own?”

      “This is going to ruin her career, Rox!” Roxanna’s mother answered, over the phone. She was calling from London, a hotel near Heathrow Airport, but she sounded clear enough to be in the next building—and clear enough that every bit of her distress came through.

      “Mom, it’s going to ruin her life! She needs treatment. This is a major anxiety disorder, and it’s getting worse. She has to see that.”

      “You have to fly to Italy and cover for her at the Di Bartoli family estate. This is a big project, and she needs it on her résumé. She can’t have it turn into a disaster, after all the work and study she’s done.”

      “Oh, right! Cover for her, because I know everything there is to know about antique roses and historic garden restoration? You can’t be serious!”

      Rox knew almost nothing about the subject, as Mom was well aware. She was a singer…well, a waitress with a music teaching degree she’d never used, but she didn’t want to examine that issue right now.

      “Cover for her, because I’m one of the few people in the world who can tell the two of you apart,” Mom said.

      “I weigh eight pounds more than she does, and I have way stronger lungs.”

      “Nobody notices that. Especially if they don’t even know that Rowena has an identical twin sister.”

      “True. She hasn’t mentioned my existence to the Di Bartoli family?”

      “No, she says she definitely hasn’t. Honey, Rowie has promised that if you do this for her, she will get treatment. Yes, even she can see how much she needs it now.”

      Rox closed her eyes, seeking inner guidance.

      How could she say no? As Mom had just reminded her, she and Rowena were identical twins. Their bond was deep and life-long and complex, and it was important to both of them. They’d developed in such different ways, thanks to Rowena’s much greater frailty at birth and beyond, but the bond hadn’t lessened or changed.

      Rowena, in particular, tugged on it a lot. This wouldn’t be the first time Roxanna had bailed her out when she’d been seized by one of her increasingly severe and increasingly frequent attacks of paralyzing anxiety. The one difference was that this time, thank heavens, Row had conceded she needed professional help.

      Okay, there were a couple of other differences, too. Firstly, Rox had never been required to cross the Atlantic Ocean to impersonate her sister before. Secondly, her schedule was…um…unusually light right now, so she couldn’t plead a previous commitment.

      She’d lost her job last Friday—her waitressing job—because her singing audition had run three hours late. Fortunately, this wasn’t going to send her into major debt, because her expenses were currently low. She’d moved into her parents’ house in northern New Jersey after her divorce late last year, taking care of it for them while they tried out a retirement move to Florida.

      Footnote—she’d lost out at Friday’s audition, hadn’t even made the final cut, because the stress over the divorce was still affecting her voice.

      Or maybe her voice just wasn’t good enough.

      That had been listed as Reason Number Seventeen on the twenty-one-item list her ex-husband Harlan had given her as to why it was her fault, not his, that he’d started an affair and left her. “Your voice isn’t half as good as you think it is.”

      “So you’ll fly Rowena back from London and find a therapist for her in Florida?” Rox asked her mother. There was no point in getting treatment for Rowie if they didn’t do it right. “You’ll take care of her until she’s made some progress? You’ll make sure she doesn’t run away from the therapy?”

      “That seems like the best plan. The only plan. It was all her mixed-up feelings about Francesco Di Bartoli that triggered this panic attack, but it’s gone beyond anything rational, now. If she can’t even leave the hotel room on her own, she can’t possibly go back to Italy.”

      “So what has she told the Di Bartoli family about all this?”

      “That she’s been delayed in England, ordering the roses, but she should be back in Tuscany within a few days. Nothing about the underlying problem. So of course you’ll have to fly to Rome via London, so Signor Di Bartoli isn’t meeting you off a flight from the wrong continent.”

      “I can’t pull this off, Mom. Surely Francesco will guess?”

      “You can pull it off. You have to. He won’t guess. He doesn’t know you exist, and he hasn’t known Rowena for that long. As an impersonation, being your sister is not that big a stretch for you. Rowena is on her laptop right now, collating her notes for you and printing out every detail you’ll need, on top of all the books and notes still in Italy. And you can phone each other. You always left it till the last minute to cram for exams. This will be no different.”

      Mom was probably right.

      Harlan had mentioned it, too. Reason Number Twelve. “You always leave everything till the last minute.”

      “Okay,” she told her mother. “But only because she’s promised to get treatment. I’ll call the airlines and get on the first flight I can.” Being someone who left things until the last minute, she was comfortable with traveling at short notice.

      “Tonight?” Mom asked. It was currently Monday morning in New Jersey, Monday afternoon in Europe.

      “I’ll try.”

      “Call me back with the details. Then I can make plans for Rowie and me. We’ll need to connect with you in London on your way through, so she can give you the information on the garden project.”

      Two days later, Roxanna touched down in Rome, wearing her twin sister’s neat, professional clothes but feeling totally like herself inside. Scatty (Reason Number Five), imperfectly groomed (Number Fourteen) and, as previously discussed in Reason Twelve, ill-prepared.

      “Pia, stay close to Papa,” Gino said in Italian to his four-year-old daughter.

      She strained at his hand, avid to explore the crowded airport terminal. He held her tighter, knowing only too well what would happen next, not having the slightest idea what to do about it.

      I can’t deal with one of her tantrums here.

      Pia pulled harder, her СКАЧАТЬ