The Right Woman. Linda Warren

just upset at what’s been done to you and your life. You’re still his little girl.”

      “No, I’m not.” Brooke pleated the sheet with her bruised fingers. “I’m not a girl anymore. That’s been taken from me. I’m different now. Daddy knows it and I know it.”

      “I’m not going to lie and sugarcoat what’s happened to you. Life will be different and it’s up to you how different it will be. I can see you have enormous inner strength, that’s why you fought so hard to live, and that strength will see you through. You have two parents who love you, which will be a tremendous help in the days ahead.”

      “Did your parents help you?”

      “No. My parents were dead. They died the day I was born.”

      “Oh. What happened?”

      “It’s a long, complicated story, Brooke.”

      “Tell me, please,” Brooke begged. “Just keep talking. You have a nice voice and if you’re talking, I can’t think.”

      Serena was the only one who knew her full story. Talking to people, sharing her feelings, had never been easy for Sarah and she knew it was because she and Celia, her adoptive grandmother, had moved around so much while she was growing up. She’d never had a chance to form lasting friendships. It had always been her and Celia against the world.

      “I have an identical twin sister,” she found herself saying.

      “That had to have been fun when you were growing up.”

      “We didn’t grow up together. I met her for the first time five years ago.”

      “Oh,” Brooke murmured. She was falling asleep, so Sarah kept talking.

      “When our mother, Jasmine, was eighteen, she fell in love with an older man, John Welch. He’d dated Jasmine’s mother, Aurora, in high school. Since Jasmine and Aurora had a tumultuous relationship, her dating John only added to the discord in the family. Finally, Jasmine ran away to be with John, who separated from his wife Celia. Then Jasmine got pregnant.”

      She paused, thinking Brooke was asleep, but the girl opened her eyes. “What happened next?” she asked.

      “Jasmine lived with John above his mechanic’s shop, but as the babies started to grow inside her, she became miserable and wanted to go home. John always talked her out of it. In her ninth month, she called Henry Farrell, her father, to tell him she was coming home. But she never made it. When she’d told John, they’d argued and he managed to get into the car with her. They crashed not far from their apartment.”

      “And they died?”

      “Not right away. Jasmine lived long enough to deliver my sister and me. John was able to talk to his wife, Celia, and ask her to raise his daughters. Jasmine agreed, signing papers to that effect before she died.”

      “Why did they want Celia instead of Jasmine’s parents to have you?”

      “As I said, the relationship was not good between Jasmine and Aurora, and Jasmine felt that her mother couldn’t truly love her daughters since John was the father. John felt the same way.”

      “Did it happen that way?”

      “Partly. Henry, Jasmine’s father, couldn’t live with that decision so he went to talk to Celia and they made a deal. Henry and Aurora would raise one twin and Celia would raise the other.”

      “Who raised you?”

      “Celia. Aurora and Henry raised Serena.”

      “You never saw each other after that?”

      “No. Celia and I never stayed in one place long because she feared Henry and Aurora would hire an attorney to try to take me, too, since they were the biological grandparents. And the Farrells worried that Celia might change her mind and want Serena back since she actually had custody. For over thirty years they avoided each other and Serena and I never knew of the other’s existence until…”

      Brooke was breathing heavily—she was finally asleep. Sarah started to get up, but the story kept running in her head. Until Ethan Ramsey saw me stripping in one of Boyd’s clubs. That one night had saved Sarah’s life.

      Ethan, a private investigator, was now Serena’s husband. That night he’d come to Dallas to try to persuade his brother, Travis, to come home for a visit. Travis played in a band and liked the nightlife. Ethan hated that lifestyle, but went out to a strip club hoping to persuade Travis to come home.

      Two months earlier Sarah had fallen madly in love with Greg Larson, a narcotics cop, while she’d been working on her Masters in psychology. She’d worked as a waitress when she wasn’t in school. She’d met Greg at the restaurant and the attraction was instantaneous. At the time she’d been deep into her thesis on the lives of strippers, what made them do it and why. She’d felt it was bland and needed more—she’d wanted up-close-and-personal experiences. When Greg had told her about the undercover mission he was about to undertake, she’d thought it a great opportunity for her research. He’d resisted at first, but had eventually agreed because they hadn’t wanted to be apart.

      She’d gotten a job as a waitress in the strip club without a problem, but she’d been unprepared for the seedier side of life. The job was degrading and disgusting and nothing like working in a restaurant, as she’d thought it would be. But as long as Greg was there, she’d felt safe. Then Rudy Boyd, the owner of the club, had taken an interest in her. When she’d rebuffed him, it had made him angry.

      She and Greg had decided it was time for her to leave, to go home to Celia. The night she was packing, Boyd and two of his men had shown up at the apartment. Boyd had somehow found out that Greg was a cop out to get him. He’d shot him without a second thought, right in front of her. She’d never been so scared or horrified in her life. Holding Greg’s limp body, she’d waited for the sound of a bullet to end her life, too, but Boyd had had other plans.

      He’d also learned of her thesis work and had taken the disks from her computer, telling her she was about to get a real first-hand look at a stripper’s life. She’d said she would never strip. He’d laughed, and put a knife to her throat, and said she had a choice—death or stripping.

      She’d kept thinking that if she could stay alive, she might manage to get away and go to the police to tell them what had happened to Greg. As days turned into weeks, she hadn’t known how much longer she’d be able to continue to do something so humiliating, so repulsive. It had taken all her strength to go on, but that strength eventually waned. Then a miracle happened.

      Ethan Ramsey had come to the club. Seeing how nervous she was on stage, he’d sensed something was wrong, though he hadn’t thought much about it at the time. The very next day he’d met Serena in Fort Worth. Looking suave, polished and beautiful, he couldn’t help but recall the familiar, distraught face of the woman of the night before. He’d given Serena his card, telling her that if she needed help, to just call him.

      Serena had thought it a come-on line. But Ethan’s story about the stripper that looked just like her, had haunted Serena’s mind. She’d eventually hired Ethan to find the stripper—and he had. Serena and Sarah had found each other, too, learning they’d been deceived by the people who’d raised them.

      In the end it had all worked out. Sarah now lived with her grandmother, Aurora Farrell, forming a relationship they should have had years ago. Sarah finished her degree and Rudy Boyd had been convicted of capital murder. The best part was that Serena and Ethan had fallen in love, gotten married and now had a three-year-old daughter, Jassy, named after Jasmine, their mother.

      The connection between her and Serena was unlike anything Sarah had ever experienced. They were identical—looking at Serena was like looking in a mirror. It was as though they were the same person, yet different. At times, they could read each other’s minds, which was scary to Sarah, who had always been a private person. It was also wonderful to have someone who knew her so well. There wasn’t anything she couldn’t tell Serena and vice