Sisters Found. Joan Johnston

someone else.”

      “You’re only marrying Miss Carter because you don’t think you can have me. But you can!” Hope insisted. “There’s nothing stopping us from being together except your own stubborn bias against my age.”

      “Your youth,” he corrected.

      She snorted. “Eighteen years isn’t that much. Lots of men marry younger women.”

      “You need to go to college. You need to find out what you want to do with your life. Maybe you’ll decide you want more out of life than simply being some rancher’s wife. If I were to marry you now, the day might come when you decided marriage to me wasn’t fulfilling enough, that you needed to go find yourself.”

      “Is that what happened with your first wife?” Hope asked, her eyes wide.

      “I’ve seen it happen,” Jake said without answering her question directly. “You’re too young to know what you’d be giving up, Hope. Go to school. Get an education. Find out what you want to do with your life.”

      “If I do that, if I go to college, will you wait for me?”

      She saw the struggle before he answered, “In four years I’ll be forty. I—”

      “Wait for me,” she said, stepping out of the van. “Don’t marry Miss Carter. Promise you’ll wait for me.”

      “I can’t promise anything, Hope. There’s another person in this equation you’re not considering. I’ve proposed to another woman, and she’s said yes. Unless Amanda breaks the engagement, I’m honor-bound to marry her.”

      “Even if you don’t love her?”

      “Who says I don’t?”

      The shock of his words held Hope speechless. “How could you love her and want me like you do?”

      He shoved a frustrated hand through his hair. “I respect and admire her. And she loves me. We can have a good life together.”

      “You don’t love her,” Hope accused.

      “I don’t know what I feel anymore,” he retorted. “You’ve got me so damned confused—”

      “Wait for me,” Hope said. “There are such things as long engagements.”

      “That wouldn’t be fair to Amanda,” Jake said stubbornly.

      “It is if you don’t love her. Don’t you think she’ll notice? Don’t you think she’ll miss being loved?”

      Jake stared at the ground, then back at her. “I’ll go this far,” he said. “I won’t press her to get married. But I’m not going to walk away if she sets a date.”

      “Thank you, Jake,” she said. “At least that gives me a chance.”

      Hope had finished college in three years, waiting with bated breath the entire time for news of Jake’s wedding. But it had never come. She’d seen as much as she could of the world in her two summers off, traveling once to Australia and once to Europe. She’d kept her eyes wide open, absorbing as much of life as she could, trying hard to catch up to Jake.

      She’d come home in September, still in love with him, still wanting to spend her life with him, only to discover that Amanda Carter had at long last set a date for their wedding—Christmas Eve.

      Which gave Hope only two more weeks to find a way to stop it.

      CHAPTER ONE

      FAITH

      FAITH BUTLER HADN’T SEEN HER twin sister Hope since shortly after they’d arrived at the party celebrating Jake Whitelaw’s impending marriage to their former English teacher Miss Carter. Not that Hope’s entrance hadn’t been noted by one and all.

      The afternoon gathering that was supposed to be held inside Miss Carter’s two-story frame house had been moved into her backyard when a warm Chinook wind came through, making the mid-December afternoon feel like a summer day.

      Hope had stepped out onto Miss Carter’s back porch dressed in a tight black skirt barely long enough for decency and a form-fitting, V-necked black cashmere sweater cut low enough to raise a man’s heart rate. Ruby-red lipstick emphasized her full lips, and she wore enough mascara and eye shadow to dramatize a dozen dark, smoldering eyes.

      Faith knew her sister’s outrageous behavior only stemmed from desperation and determination. Because the man Hope loved was about to marry someone else.

      Nonetheless, Hope’s get-up had done the trick. She’d managed to attract the one pair of eyes she’d been hoping to snare. Jake Whitelaw hadn’t been able to stop staring at her. Or maybe it was more honest to say glaring at her.

      Faith sighed loud enough to catch her boyfriend’s attention.

      “What’s wrong?” Randy asked.

      Faith reached for Randy’s hand without noticing that she did so with the prosthetic device on the end of her left arm, where a hand was supposed to be—but had never grown. Randy Wright’s total devotion over the past three years had made it possible for Faith to forget sometimes that she wasn’t perfect, like her twin.

      “I wish Hope would give up and accept reality,” Faith said. “Jake Whitelaw might be physically attracted to her, but—”

      “Might be?” Randy said with a snort. “He practically paws the ground every time he lays eyes on her.”

      Faith lifted an expressive black brow. “All right, he’s got the hots for Hope. But he’s going to marry Miss Carter.”

      “It sure looks that way,” Randy said, eyeing Jake, who stood with his arm around Miss Carter’s slender waist. “Unless somebody does something fast.”

      “Hope has done everything she can to make herself into a potential wife for Jake. She raced through college in three years to get her degree in computer science from Baylor this past summer. And she’s spent the past two summers traveling the world and experiencing as much of life as she can. But—”

      “But she can never catch up to him, because he’s lived too much longer than she has,” Randy finished for her.

      Faith sighed again. Jake Whitelaw might be only eighteen years older than Hope, but he was ages older in life experience. She didn’t understand her sister’s attraction to the older man, but Hope had fallen head over-ears for Jake years ago, and was still tumbling even now.

      “So what are you going to do to help her out?” Randy asked.

      “What can I do?”

      Randy grinned. “You might have acted like the shy sister growing up, but I know better. Whenever you want something and go after it, you get it. So, I ask again, how are you going to help Jake discover that he belongs with Hope?”

      “Do they belong together?” Faith asked skeptically.

      “Look at Jake,” Randy said. “His gaze is constantly searching out Hope. And his behavior with Miss Carter is anything but loverlike.”

      “Oh,” Faith said as she watched Jake’s eyes scan Miss Carter’s backyard, even though Hope was nowhere to be seen in the crowd. His arm was linked around Miss Carter’s waist, but they stood a good six inches apart. And although they were physically together, Miss Carter seemed to be talking to everyone except Jake.

      Faith watched as Hope appeared at one of the five entrances to the gazebo in the center of Miss Carter’s backyard, laughing and flirting with one of Jake’s hired hands. When Hope looked toward Jake to see if he’d noticed her, Jake quickly and carefully averted his eyes. Oh, Jake was attracted, all right. But it looked like he’d be damned before he’d let Hope know it.

      “There’s something else you may not have noticed,” Randy said. “Check out Jake’s younger brother Rabb. Look who has his eye.”

      Faith