Housekeeper Under The Mistletoe. Cara Colter

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СКАЧАТЬ your own desk right there.”

      Anne grinned at her. “Humor the workaholic, right? I did pretty good this week, though.”

      If you counted phoning the business manager twice a day as pretty good, then she had.

      “You did,” Beth agreed. “And we even found time for shopping.” Her sister had insisted on new clothes to complement Beth’s midvacation makeover at San Diego’s trendiest salon, which had left them looking more like twins than they’d looked since seventh grade.

      “Wasn’t that fun? The waiter just now, I could tell, was dying to ask.”

      Anne always enjoyed fielding questions about what it was like to have an identical twin, and Beth had always been glad to let her sister do the talking. “You can tell him when he comes back with the coffee,” she offered, returning her gaze to the list of pros and cons. “I wish we had another few days of vacation.”

      Sometimes a sympathetic look spoke more loudly than words, and Beth felt a flicker of dismay as she caught Anne’s expression. Her sister evidently suspected that a few extra days of vacation wouldn’t make any difference to the Montoyas’ marriage, but she was too tactful for such an observation.

      “Listen,” Anne offered instead, “you know you can always come visit me. Actually, it’d be wonderful to have you looking out for things.”

      “What, at the office?” That wasn’t Beth’s domain, even though they shared ownership and responsibility for their nonprofit company. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

      “But you could learn. I mean, if you decide you want a change in your life.”

      Regardless of what happened with Rafe, though, she couldn’t imagine trading roles with her five-minutes-older sister. Anne was born to run a Dolls-Like-Me business that had blossomed ever since she took it over, while Beth was happy to work at home, designing look-alike dolls for Down syndrome children.

      “Not that big a change,” she said. “But thanks, anyway.”

      “All right, then, think about your list. You’ve only got three hours to finish it.”

      Three hours to decide whether she wanted her marriage to last? “I can’t decide anything that fast,” Beth protested.

      “You’re not making any decisions yet,” Anne explained, lifting her coffee cup and nodding at the waiter. “You’re just listing the pros and cons.”

      “All right,” she conceded, and as soon as the waiter returned for the kind of conversation that men everywhere seemed to enjoy with her sister, Beth set to work on her list.

      There wasn’t nearly enough space on the page, though, to describe what had happened over the past two years. Ever since she’d turned over the management of her home-based business to Anne, who’d returned from Harvard with an MBA, Beth had been ready to start a family ahead of schedule.

      And Rafe wasn’t.

      Not last year.

      Not six months ago.

      Not now.

      No, all his passion was reserved for the legal clinic. All his fierce energy, all his intensity, all his time was devoted to helping kids escape the kind of life he’d survived with his crusading spirit aglow. The knight-in-shining-armor spirit which had captivated her the first time they’d met.

      Back before she realized that it was far easier to love a knight in shining armor than to live with one.

      “Tell you what,” Anne said, jolting Beth out of her reverie as the waiter departed. “You look like you need a break. Let’s go check out the observation car.”

      They hadn’t toured the train last night, settling into their bunk-bedded sleeper compartment as soon as they’d pulled out of Los Angeles, but a view from the upper level would be a nice change of pace.

      “Okay,” Beth agreed, and folded her list in half. She stuffed it into the side pocket of her suitcase as they passed the luggage area, hoping that’d help her forget the entire problem.

      At least for the last few hours of the trip.

      After all, the whole point of a “Sisters’ Vacation” was to enjoy spending time with her sister.

      “Where shall we go next year?” she asked as they settled down in the observation car’s last pair of up-holstered seats, with a floor-to-ceiling view of the wide open desert. “It’s your turn to pick.”

      “New York,” Anne said immediately. “You’ve never been, and you’re way overdue. Besides, if I’m still in touch with Marc, he’ll get us tickets to any Broadway show we want.”

      Marc was the Italian architect her sister had met a few months ago, the latest in a string of eligible men whom Anne attracted and discarded with astonishing ease. But the idea of him being around next year implied more than the usual duration.

      “You think he might be…” Beth hesitated, searching for the right word. “Is he special?”

      “Not for a lifetime or anything,” Anne said, handing the newspaper on the table between them to a passenger who had evidently been hoping for a seat. “But for a few months, I think he’s a lot of fun.”

      If only she could borrow her sister’s confidence as easily as she’d borrowed her claddagh ring. If only she could view the man in her life as “fun” and nothing more….

      But that was no way to start a family!

      And without a family, she might as well give up on mattering to anyone.

      “You know what we need?” Anne asked, evidently noticing the distress on her face. “Coffee with brandy in it. Make the last part of the trip a little more bearable, what do you say?”

      Coffee with brandy wouldn’t make her homecoming any easier, Beth suspected, but if Anne was dreading the end of the trip, as well, it would be no problem to run down to the bar car.

      “I’ll get it,” she offered, scanning the aisle and realizing there were already passengers waiting for someone to leave. “If you want to save our seats, I’ll be right back.”

      “Well, at least let me pay for it,” Anne said, handing over her wallet-size purse and moving Beth’s handbag into the empty chair beside her as a placeholder. “I’ll be right here unless some better seats open up.”

      Such confidence was typical of her sister, Beth decided as she made her way down the narrow staircase with Anne’s flame-red purse in hand. Some people were born with the kind of certainty it took to make things go exactly the way they wanted…which made them even more attractive to everyone they met.

      And that observation was confirmed as soon as she reached the bar car, where a man with a briefcase looked up from one of the tables and greeted her with an exuberant smile.

      “Anne Farrell! Jake Roth, from Boston. How’ve you been?”

      She hadn’t been mistaken for her sister since high school, and it was as disconcerting as ever. Flattering, yes, but also embarrassing СКАЧАТЬ