Double trouble (8 page)

Kayla's head shot up. "Let's get one thing straight, Kristina. I don't want to straighten things out with Matt Minteer. I don't want to have anything to do with him. I—I don't want/z/m.^"

"It didn't look that way a few minutes ago," Kristina said archly. "In fact, it looked as if you were on the verge of leaving with him. If that pesty brother of his hadn't interfered, I'll bet the two of you would be on your way to Matt's place right now."

Kayla flushed scarlet and shook her head vehemently. "No."

"If only Matt would've said 'to hell with party polls and state funding, I have personal business that comes ahead of everything!'" Kristina lamented.

Kayla gave a scornful laugh. "You know as well as I do that politics supersedes anything and everything in a politician's personal Hfe. Not that it matters to me what Matt Minteer does. I have an aversion to the man, Kristina. I still can't understand whatever possessed me to—" she paused, flushing and breathless ''—to be with him that night but-"

"You were drunk," Kristina interrupted baldly. "And so was he. So was everybody there. What went on at that fundraiser is the worst-kept secret in Harrisburg."

As they drove back to her apartment, Kristina explained what she'd heard about WINDS and their beverage-and-food spiking tactics. Kayla was shocked, horrified, humiliated and infuriated—all at the same time.

"I want to press criminal charges. I want to sue!" she raged. "I was drugged, my constitutional rights were violated and—"

"And WINDS is long gone," Kristina said flatly. "From what I've heard, they'd all left the state by Monday morning, and they didn't give a forwarding address. The consensus among the powers-that-be is to simply pretend that the whole mess never occurred. The official party line is that Matt Minteer's fund-raiser went as planned, without a hitch, although I've been getting quite a few sidelong, speculative looks and more than the usual number of propositions,"

"Oh, Kristina, it's so unfair. You were with Boyd the whole time and I was the one who—who—" shuddering, Kayla forced herself to say the words "—behaved like a slut."

"I don't believe that and neither does Matt," Kristina said firmly.

"Oh, but he does! He-he-"

"Matt came to my office on Monday afternoon, Kayla," Kristina cut in. "That was the first inkling I had that something, uh, out of the ordinary had occurred at the fund-

raiser. Unfortunately, he caught Boyd and I in the middle of a very passionate kiss."

"And?" prompted Kayla, curious about his reaction in spite of herself. "What did he say? What did he do?"

"Keep in mind that he thought I was you. In his eyes, the woman he'd—cr—been with on Friday was now in a hot cHnch with another man on Monday."

"He acted as if you were the town tramp!" Kayla surmised hotly. "He didn't bother to conceal his contempt."

"But before that, before he put up his guard, I saw his face, Kayla. I saw the look in those gorgeous blue eyes of his. He looked.. .crushed. I knew I had to let him know that you weren't me and that I was someone else entirely." Kris-tina loosed an exasperated sigh. "Oh, it sounds ridiculous but you know what I mean."

Kayla grimaced. "I know you meant well, Kristina. But I just want to put the whole thing behind me. Maybe pretending that nothing happened is the best way to handle this, after all. Now tell me, is there really an Elena Teslovic or did you invent her just to get me to Harrisburg this weekend?"

Kristina brightened. "There really is an Elena Teslovic and you really do have an appointment with her on Monday. Taking her on as a client is going to be well worth your time and effort."

"I certainly have the time to take on a new client," Kayla said wryly. "My roster isn't exactly growing by leaps and bounds. I believe in substance over style and too many candidates opt for the reverse and go with agencies like Dillon and Ward. It's like Penny always says—"

"Kayla, please don't quote our stepmother to me. An advice maven, she isn't."

"But she is one, Kristina. For pessimists and cynics. If she ever decides to get out of the real estate business, she could write viewpoint-affirming books for the chronically downbeat."

*'I have the perfect title for her first one," said Kristina, getting into the spirit of the game. "How about How to Achieve Success and Have a Perfectly Miserable Life in Spite of ItT'

''The book could be divided into four parts," Kayla suggested. 'The four Z)'s by which Penny lives—Distrust, Disbelief, Disappointment, Disillusionment."

"We've adopted those four D's and lived by them too, Kayla," Kristina said, suddenly serious. "For far too long. We expect things not to work out for us and we expect people to let us down. It can be a self-fulfilling prophecy."

"We're both successful professionally," Kayla reminded her, but she knew her protest was a weak one. It wasn't professional success that had been a problem for her or Kristina. Or for Penny, either. It was in their personal lives that the four Z)'s reigned supreme.

The twins were silent for a while, each lost in her own thoughts as Kristina steered the car along the highway. And then she turned to Kayla and said brightly, "We're letting Penny's gloom-and-doom philosophy get to us again. It's Friday night and we're together. Let's do something fun. Care to sample some of Harrisburg's nightlife?"

"Is there any?" Kayla asked droUy.

"Spoken with true big-city condescension!" Kristina pretended to be indignant. "I'll prove that there's life after dark in Harrisburg. I'll take you to Bootleggers. It's a club right on the riverfront that has this great reggae band. Are you game?"

Kayla shrugged. A night on the town in Harrisburg was not high on her list of priorities, despite Kristina's attempts to make it sound appealing. She was tired from the long day and left emotionally battered by her encounter with Matt Minteer. The horrifying revelation that she'd been drunk when she'd slept with him had come as a profound shock. She'd never gotten drunk in her life and to do so at this late date and wind up in bed with a stranger...

Perhaps the knowledge should have eased her guilt. After all, she now had the ultimate excuse: / didn't know what I was doing. Except that it didn't work for her. No amount of alcohol could induce her into doing something she didn't want to do, she knew that. Consequently, that meant she'd wanted to go to bed with Matt Minteer! And with her inhibitions and defenses conveniently obliterated, she'd done exactly that.

Kayla swallowed hard. She had to stop thinking about that night, to stop thinking about him/ ''Sure, let's go," she said with determined cheer.

Five

Bootleggers, a club on the shores of the Susquehanna River, had wall-sized glass windows that looked out on the dark waters and a dock that enabled boats to pull right up to the club. Inside the wide main room, decorated in hot shades of coral, yellow and turquoise, a six-piece band known as Chill Factor played reggae to the lively crowd.

The Afro-Caribbean rhythm was impossible to resist. While Kristina table-hopped—she seemed to know three-quarters of the people in the place—Kayla sat enjoying the music. It energized her and lifted her spirits. As the drums throbbed and the singer sang a lively calypso tune, Kayla felt herself begin to unwind. She decided she was glad that Kristina had insisted on coming here.

**Luke, I'm beat. All I want to do is to go home and hit the sack." Matt frowned as Luke forged ahead of him, ignoring his older brother's protests, just as he'd been doing since their departure from Rillo's.

**C'mon, Matt. It's time for a little celebration," Luke called over his shoulder. *'You just won that grant for the district. Think of the jobs the new steel plant will bring, not to mention the trickle-down effect on the rest of the city's economy."

"It's premature to celebrate," Matt, ever-cautious, reminded him.

"It's in the bag. You sold them tonight," Luke said, grinning with brash confidence. "Now it's time for a little fun. You're going to love Bootleggers. The sax player and the bassist unleash licks that will drive you wild and the percussion sets your blood drumming. I can't believe you've never been here. It's one of the hottest spots to—"

"Meet girls, I suppose," Matt cut in reprovingly. "I've heard all about your adventures, little brother. You have an encyclopedia of pick-up lines and you make every attempt to proceed directly from introductions to bed. Since Steve Saraceni got married and discovered fidelity and fatherhood, you've taken over as Harrisburg's fastest zipper."

"I know you meant that as a big brotherly reproach, but I'll take it as a compliment." Luke was cheerfully unabashed. "And it's women, Matthew. Women. Girls get testy when you call them girls, unless they're under eighteen or over seventy. And yes. Bootleggers is a good place to meet women, although I really dig the music here too."

Matt was struck by a swift, sharp sense of deja vu. ''Now everybody in the place knows that you're my girl, " he had said as he held Kayla on his lap at the fund-raiser last Friday night.

* ' Woman,' ' she had corrected.

He'd heard her but had been far more interested in the feel of her, warm and soft and feminine on his lap, than in what was politically correct. He remembered what an irresistible temptation she had been, how desperately he'd wanted to slide his hand upward those few crucial inches and cup her breast in his palm, to take her soft ripe mouth in a

kiss that was as hard and hungry as his body. Later in the dark privacy of the hotel room he'd done all that and more—

The flashbacks had a visceral effect on him. His body hardened, fast and sharp, and he had to slow his pace and gulp for breath. He blindly followed Luke inside the club and then to a table where the music filled the room, primal and hot and sexy.

The beat of the drums seemed to be throbbing inside him. Matt sank into a chair, ignoring Luke's attempt at conv^-sation. Kayla McClure. He turned the name over and over in his mind, hearing it instead of the song lyrics being sung. Her full name was Michaela but she preferred the shortened version of Kayla. He decided he liked both names, that either fit her better than '*Kristina."

And it struck him that right now her name was one of the few things he knew about her. While convincing the governor's chief of staff and the state secretary of commerce to invest in his district, he'd successfully banished the Kayla/ Kristina conundrum from his mind, but now there was nothing to keep him from rehving the profound shock of seeing the McClure sisters side by side. And knowing, without even being told, which woman had stirred his senses and taken him to heights he'd never believed existed.

And she loathed him. She'd made that perfectly clear tonight by the way she'd looked at him, by the things she'd said. 'I never want to speak to you again. I never want to see you again!'' left httle room for interpretation.

"And Dave Wilson wants you to do some campaigning for him in his district," Luke's voice filtered through Matt's troubled reverie. It was a welcome interruption; he hated raminating and he seemed to be doing a lot of it this past week. Entirely too much of it. He forced himself to concentrate fully on his brother.

''Seems Uke Dave is starting to sweat out his chances for reelection," Luke continued. ''Everybody in the legislature

knows what a dirty-dealing, double-crossing arrogant SOB Wilson is, but the voters in his district have been unaware of it...until now. There's this tough-talking nurse who's been stirring up the voters by telling them how and why their man in Harrisburg isn't working for them but against them. People are listening to her and Wilson's running scared. I told him you'd make a few appearances on his behalf and-"

"But I hate the guy, Luke," Matt interrupted, frowning. *'Everybody in Harrisburg hates him. He's two-faced, bad-tempered and suspicious. He's managed to stab everybody in the back at least once, from the governor on down. I can't blame the voters for wanting to turn him out of office. He's alienated everyone so thoroughly that he can't get support for any project he proposes. He's actually hurting his district by being in office."

Luke shrugged. ''But he's in the party, Matt, and his district borders ours. That makes him a neighbor and a political ally. He endorsed you when you first ran for the state senate and he's backing you for the congressional seat. He could've chosen to fight you for the nomination and run for that seat himself, you know. It encompasses his territory, too. But he stepped aside for you."

"I don't think it was loyalty or altruism that caused him to step aside and leave the field clear for me, Luke. Wilson; knows I can beat him."

Luke shrugged. "Motivation doesn't count. Party loyalty is the name of the game, Matt, you know that as well as I do. Anyway, we don't want some renegade nurse who's a complete political neophyte to take—w/z-o/z.^"

Matt tensed. "What's wrong?" He turned in his chair to follow Luke's line of vision—and saw a McClure sister sitting six tables away from them.

"I don't know which one she is, but I recommend you stay away from her, from both of them," Luke gritted out. "You're obviously not yourself when you're around either,

one of them and what we don't need is another Httle scene like the one at Rillo's eariier tonight."

Matt wasn't Kstening. He knew which twin she was and he was already on his feet, heading toward Kayla's table. She didn't see him coming; she was lost in the music, swaying to the rhythm and marveling at the band's ability to dance as they played their instruments.

*'Do you mind if I join you?"

Kayla knew who the voice belonged to without turning around to look at the speaker. She'd recognize that husky, deep male tone anywhere. For the past week, it had echoed in her head every night—and much too often during the day as well. Her chest tightened and something hot and wild surged through her. It was rage, Kayla decided. Definitely not excitement and certainly not desire.

"As a matter of fact, I do mind," she said, her frozen tones belying the heat blazing inside her. She kept her head high and straight, refusing to turn and look at him.