The Real Father. Kathleen O'Brien

      “Mom, Tommy and Mr. Forrest are going fishing. They invited me along. Is that okay?”

      Molly couldn’t miss the glow on her daughter’s face. She hadn’t ever been fishing before—and Liza was an adventurer at heart. She loved nothing better than trying something new.

      “What about homework?”

      “Just math. I can do it after dinner.” Liza pressed her hands together imploringly. “Mom, please?”

      How could anyone resist that smile? And yet, Molly felt herself hesitating—her mind scanning for excuses. The thought of her daughter spending all afternoon with Jackson made her nervous. Suppose he started asking Liza questions? Molly hadn’t prepared Liza—though she’d been perfectly willing to lie herself, her conscience had balked at the idea of rehearsing her daughter in perjury. Liza knew only that her father had died before he’d been able to marry her mother. Molly had promised to tell her all about him when she was a little older. But that information might be enough….

      Jackson was no fool.

      The Real Father

      Kathleen O’Brien

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      To Laura Shin,

       who always makes my work so much better. And who always makes it so much fun.

      Dear Reader,

      When I was a little girl of three or four, the family lore goes, I climbed comfortably onto my father’s lap and snuggled there for several minutes. But then, chattering happily, I chanced to look up. Openmouthed, I looked again. It wasn’t my father at all. It was my uncle, my father’s identical twin.

      Even today, everyone laughs at the memory of my panicked, poleaxed little face. With one violent shove, I wriggled down and fled—not because I didn’t love my uncle, who was a gentle, darling man, but because I had been so thoroughly deceived.

      Later I learned that I was just one of many such victims, both innocent and deliberate. Confusion followed wherever they went: “I saw you at dinner the other night,” a wounded friend would complain. “Why didn’t you say hello?” The tales of their early years were legendary—including nights when, midevening, the young men would trade dates, their lady friends never aware of the switch.

      And the most amazing case of all… One day, when they were little boys, my uncle Matt ran down the hall and slammed into a full-length mirror. His mother, comforting him, was moved to ask, “But Matt, dear, why on earth did you do that?” To which my uncle replied, “I thought it was Mike, and he ought to get out of the way.”

      I felt less foolish when I heard that one. After all, if even they couldn’t tell the difference, how could I?

      Perhaps, since I’d been brought up on such wild—and possibly a tiny bit embellished—stories, it was inevitable that someday I would want to explore the plot and character possibilities of twinship.

      Jackson and Beau Forrest, the twins at the heart of The Real Father, are purely fictional creations. However, the trials they endure are not, thank goodness, based on any real events in the lives of my father and his brother.

      But in building Jackson’s personality—in understanding his guilt, his grief and the intensity of his loss—I did draw on what I had witnessed at home: the love that was more than love, the connection so profound, it approached the mystical, the communication that ran along lines buried much deeper than words.

      My father and uncle had the luxury of growing old together. Jackson and Beau did not. As I tried to comprehend what such a loss would mean to an identical twin, as I asked myself how such an emptiness could ever be filled, I realized that it would take more than the perfect heroine.

      It would take at least two.

      And that’s how I found Molly and Liza Lorring. A landscape architect and her daughter—or the Most Royal Queen and Beauteous Princess of the Planet Cuspian…depending on who you ask. Between them, they’re quite equal to the task of slaying any dragons that might be plaguing a hero.

      I hope you enjoy their story.

      Warmly,

      Kathleen O’Brien

      CONTENTS

      PROLOGUE

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      CHAPTER TWELVE

      CHAPTER THIRTEEN

      CHAPTER FOURTEEN

      CHAPTER FIFTEEN

      EPILOGUE

      PROLOGUE

      HE COULDN’T DECIDE whether to pass out or punch something.

      Jackson Forrest hung on to the dresser with the heels of both hands, using its mahogany bulk to keep him standing erect until he made up his mind. He didn’t look into the mirror. The first glimpse of his reflection had shown him two bleary-eyed silhouettes weaving sickeningly in and out of each other, and he’d lowered his head quickly. Right now he couldn’t bear the sight of himself once, much less twice.

      Instead he stared at the ring, which lay on the dresser like an accusation, winking aggressively in the lamplight. The Forrest ring. Eighteen-karat gold forged into a pattern of interlocking leaves—the metal so soft and precious, the design so intricate that it was hard to imagine the thing surviving even one owner. Yet it had been worn by every first-born Forrest male since the Civil War.

      His brother’s ring.

      “Damn you.” He spoke aloud. His voice was husky and slurred. “What a snake you are, Forrest….”

      His voice trailed off. Who was he talking to? Beau? Or himself? He wished he hadn’t had so much to drink—it limited his vocabulary. But maybe there wasn’t a word in the entire English language that could sum up the disgust he felt for the both of them tonight.

      Clenching his teeth against the stale memory of Michelob, he raised his head. “Jeez,” he muttered to the haunted man that stared back at him. “You are one pitiful son of a bitch.”

      The ring winked its golden eye again, and a new wave of nausea rolled over him.

      How could he stand it? How could he live with what he’d done? With a slurred curse he swept his hand across the dresser top, sending everything spinning to the floor. Coins, cuff links, keys—they all fell in a discordant metallic jangle along with the ring.

      As the noise echoed hollowly through the large, high-ceilinged room, the door opened. Somehow Jackson managed to look up without losing his balance. It was Beau. At the sight of his brother, one lucid fact finally pierced Jackson’s mental fog. He didn’t want to punch something. He wanted to punch somebody.

      He wanted to punch Beau.

      And he wanted Beau to hit him back. He wanted a fierce, primitive battering that would draw blood or tears or both. He wanted to hurt and be hurt. To punish and be punished. As if that alone could cleanse him now.

      But Beau wasn’t interested in Jackson’s fury. He wasn’t even aware of it. He didn’t notice the mess on the floor. He was, as usual, entirely focused on his own emotional