“Is it true?” she demanded when they stood face to face at the edge of the yard.
“Angel, what are you talking about?” he asked guardedly.
Already she could read the truth in his eyes. “You and Aiden. Is it true?” she repeated. She turned away from his stricken expression. “Never mind. You just answered my question.” She pulled the ring from her finger and hurled it toward his chest. For just an instant it was a flashing arc in the moonlight, a falling star, before it dropped to the ground and died.
Drew grabbed her arm as she tried to run away. “Angel, wait. Please, let me explain. It’s not what you think. It was only one night—”
“It only takes one night to make a baby, Drew.”
Even in the moonlight, she could see the color drain from his face. “Oh, God, no—”
“Oh, God, yes,” she mocked cruelly. “And just what are you going to do about it?” She jerked her arm from his grasp and left him, stunned, while she turned and ran back along the path toward home.
The lights were blazing in the house when she got there. Aiden had already spread the news, Angel guessed angrily. She let herself into the house and stood at the open door of her father’s study for a moment. Adam Lowell, his gray head resting wearily against the back of his leather chair, looked as though he’d aged ten years. A glass of Scotch sat untouched on the desk in front of him. Some small movement of Angel’s must have caught his attention, for he looked up. Immediately he stood and opened his arms to her. She fled into them.
He held her for several moments while, for the first time since her mother had died years ago, she wept openly in his arms. He held her and soothed her hair, and then he pushed her gently away.
“The time for tears is over now, Angel. You’ve had your cry. Now it’s time to look ahead. Your sister needs you.”
Angel pulled away in protest. “How can you say that? After what she did to me!”
“What’s done is done,” Adam replied calmly. “I never thought you and Drew were a match anyway. I always expected him to break your heart. Aiden needs him now. Don’t stand in their way, Angel.”
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She and Drew had belonged together ever since they’d met four years ago. She’d only been fourteen and he sixteen, but even then they’d known what they had was special. How could her father even suggest that she was standing in the way. It was Aiden. Always Aiden.
Adam’s position, however, remained firm. Calmly, gently but resolutely, he pointed out how difficult a time Aiden would have if she were to have the baby alone. In a town as small as Crossfield, an illegitimate baby was still very much a stigma. There would be gossip; Aiden’s life would be ruined.
What about my life? Angel wanted to scream. What about me? But she already knew what her father’s answer would be. Angel was the sensible one, the smart one. Angel was always the dutiful daughter and sister. She knew what had to be done, the right thing to be done. In time, she’d get over this. In time, she’d meet someone else....
Angel flew from her father’s study and up the stairs to her own room, slamming the door behind her. She was vaguely aware that the phone started ringing and barely registered when someone picked up, only to have it ring again a minute or two later. She huddled beneath the covers of her bed, feeling devastated, betrayed, and utterly alone.
“Angel? Angel, answer me.”
She could hear Aiden calling to her from the hallway as her sister jiggled the knob on the locked door. “Angel, please let me come in.”
“Leave me alone, Aiden.”
“I’m sorry, Angel. I’m sorry you’re hurt. It happened—”
“Shut up!” Angel barely realized she was screaming the words. “Shut up, Aiden! I don’t want to hear how it happened! I never want to talk to you again, do you hear me? I hate you! I hate you! I wish you were dead!”
Angel pulled the covers over her head, blocking the outside world, shutting out the pounding in her head, the pounding on the front door. Even when she heard Drew downstairs, urgently shouting up to her, she shut him out, as well.
Angel left town the next day. Her father arranged for her to visit a friend in Los Angeles for a while. After a few weeks she decided to enroll in UCLA, eventually completing her graduate studies there and securing a professorship in the history department. For eight long years she’d stayed away, until her father had called her home before he’d died. Even then, his last thoughts had been of Aiden.
“I’m leaving the farm to you, Angel. Aiden would sell the land, squander the money, but I know I can count on you to hang onto it. This place is all your mother and I ever had, all we ever worked for. I promised her before she died the land would be our legacy to you and Aiden. I’m depending on you to see that it stays in the family. With Jack managing her trust fund and you the land, I’ll rest easier knowing Aiden will always be taken care of.
“I know there’s still a rift between you two. Don’t bother denying it, I can see it in your eyes every time her name’s mentioned. But she’s your sister, Angel. There’s no bond stronger than that. I want you to forgive her, as much for your sake as for hers.”
Seeing him lying there, so pale and weak and clinging to her hand, Ann hadn’t the heart to deny him anything.
So she came back home as her father expected her to, and in doing so, she realized that all the changes she had forced upon herself since leaving had only been superficial. She was still Angel Lowell, and changing her name had changed little else.
But at least one part of the promise had been kept. She had held onto the land. Forgiving Aiden hadn’t been so easy.
She’d tried. God, she’d tried, but Ann could never feel the same about her sister. Even when Aiden had started reaching out to her again, Ann had never been able to think about her without feeling resentment and anger, and she could never forget that Drew had chosen Aiden over her.
* * *
“You’re wrong, Drew,” Ann whispered brokenly into the silence of the night. She’d never forgiven Aiden, and now it was too late. What was more, the message Aiden had sent her the night she’d died proved that, even in death, Aiden had still been reaching out to her, and Ann had not been able to help her.
I wish you were dead. How that one hateful sentence had haunted her all these months since her twin’s fatal accident. The jealousy that had festered inside her for so many years had then turned to guilt, an emotion just as destructive and just as binding.
And now Drew was back, reminding her so painfully why she and Aiden had gotten lost from each other in the first place. He’d taken almost everything from her once, and now he’d come back to try and take her home, to try and make her break a vow that had been all she’d had to give to her father.
Impatiently, Ann wiped the back of her hand across the dampness on her cheeks. She could almost hear her father admonishing her—over a scraped knee, a bad grade, a broken heart— “Here now, no more tears. Since when do Angels cry?”
Since she’d met Drew Maitland all those years ago.
Drew clattered down the metal steps outside his room at the Crossfield Motel, then checked his stride as he spotted the figure reclining against the front fender of his Jaguar.
Dressed in faded jeans, a white T-shirt and a used-up pair of tennis shoes, this man was yet another image from Drew’s past. And the look of wary distrust he wore was only slightly more welcoming than Ann’s had been last night.
“’Morning,” the man remarked in a voice that sounded neither cool nor friendly,