Slow Hands

Penny nodded, putting the correct bio cards with the correct faces, clipping them together in case there were any more spills. “I have spent the past five hours looking at archives in the Trib and I’ve found more of our boys. Eligible bachelors apparently get a lot of press coverage.”

Janice threw her arms around Penny and squeezed her. “So we’re down to these last two.”

Yes. Just two. “But we’re out of time. We have less than an hour to get the whole package to the printer’s if we’re going to make the deadline.” No more time to research…no more hesitation.

Penny lifted the two photographs, studying the handsome faces carefully. Both were dark-haired, but that was where the resemblance ended. One had warm brown eyes, the other vivid blue. One’s hair was short and conservative, the other’s a little longer, almost brushing his collar. One had a dangerous glint in his eye, the other a sexy smile on his curved lips.

“One is a paramedic, the other an international businessman,” Penny whispered, knowing their bios by heart. “One of you is Jake and one of you is Sean.”

Janice came closer, looking over Penny’s shoulder. Penny could almost feel her sister’s heartbeat just inches from her arm. She could definitely hear her deep, quick inhalations.

This was the moment—she had to choose. Suddenly remembering that old Lady or the Tiger story from her school days, she drew in a deep breath and pointed to the unsmiling one with the short hair and brown eyes. “He’s got to be the businessman.”

Beside her, Janice immediately nodded, pointing toward the other picture with the smiling, longer-haired guy. “And that’s a strong rescue worker if I ever saw one.”

“So we’re agreed?”

“Agreed. Absolutely. No doubt about it.”

Then it was done. Penny clipped the bios to the back of each picture, glad her sister was just as confident as she was that they’d made the right choice. Then she sat down to finish up the program on her own, older computer. And as she typed away as fast as she could, incorporating the newly recreated graphics, she tried hard to pretend she didn’t hear her younger sister’s whisper.

“I hope.”

1

“OUR STEPMOMMY DEAREST is about to buy herself a gigolo.”

Madeline Turner, who’d been signing a foot-tall stack of documents at her desk, dropped her pen, leaving a blot of black ink on the second quarter Profit and Loss Statement from a major local firm. Looking up, she could muster no surprise when she realized her sharp-toned visitor was her older half sister, Tabitha, looking as enraged as she sounded.

Enraged…but beautiful, as always. The stunning fashion plate had inherited all her mother’s tall and slender genes, blond hair and elegance, which suited her lifestyle to a T. Madeline, meanwhile, had been gifted with their father’s more short and round frame, plus her late mother’s nearly black hair; dark, laughing eyes and dimples. Which did not suit her lifestyle as a nose-to-the-grindstone bank manager to an R or a squiggly S, much less to a T.

Tabitha tossed her designer handbag onto an empty chair and kicked the door shut with the heel of one pointy-toed, five-hundred-dollar shoe. “Maddy, did you hear me?”

“I think the construction workers twenty floors down heard you,” Madeline mumbled, wondering why Tabitha always had to be so damned melodramatic. Something else she’d inherited from her jet-setting mother.

“The money-grubbing witch is going to cheat on our father.”

Considering Tabitha had cheated on one of her husbands and one of her fiancés, Maddy figured her sister had better jump off that moral high ground upon which she was perched before it crumbled out from underneath her. Still she frowned, not happy with the news that their father’s newest wife—his fourth—was already looking around for more adventure than her older husband could provide.

Tabby might loathe Deborah, but Maddy had never had anything against her. The woman wasn’t exactly warmth personified, especially not to her adult stepdaughters, but she was a lot better than some of the alternatives. Their father could have married a twenty-five-year old…someone younger than Maddy or her sister. At least Deborah, aside from being in her forties, was well-spoken, graceful and successful. She had once run her own successful ballroom dancing studio—that’s where she’d met Maddy’s father—and seemed to make him happy, first as a dance partner, now as a wife.

So she really hoped Tabby was wrong. “How do you know this?”

“I got it straight from Bitsy Wellington.”

Their stepmother’s best gal pal. “Why would she tell you?”

“Well, you know Bitsy. She can never resist causing trouble.”

True. The woman was completely toxic.

“Besides, she wants the man for herself. He’s some European gigolo being auctioned off at that Give A Kid A Christmas charity gig at the InterContinental tomorrow night.”

A gigolo being sold to benefit a children’s charity. There was some serious irony in that. Leave it to the Ladies Who Lunch of Chicago to come up with the idea of buying a stud to raise money for a worthy cause. And then, to compete over him.

Tabitha lowered herself to one of the chairs across from Maddy’s broad desk, sniffing slightly at the messy files strewn across it. Her big sister liked the money that came from the bank their great-grandfather had founded several decades ago. She just didn’t particularly like the stench of work that came along with it.

Sometimes Maddy wondered if one of them had been adopted. Or found on a doorstep. They had so little in common with each other, physically as well as everything else.

In personality, she was told she was a lot like her mother, Jason Turner’s second wife, who’d died when Maddy was four. Supposedly, though he never spoke of her, Jason had mourned her greatly. Which could explain why her sister always harassed Maddy about being their father’s favorite.

Maybe it was just that they had more in common. Aside from looking more like Jason than Tabby did, Maddy was also blessed with his quick mind, one fascinated by banking and finance. She also had the work ethic to run the business that had been in the family for generations.

That didn’t mean Tabitha hadn’t gotten something from their father, too—his fickleness. Maddy seemed to be the only Turner who didn’t fall in and out of love as frequently as the networks changed their Friday night lineup.

“We have to do something.”

“About what?”

“About the little cheater, that’s what!”

Maddy sighed, lowered her pen, and leaned back in her chair. “But she hasn’t cheated yet, has she?”

“No…and we’re going to make damn sure she doesn’t.”

Frankly, her sister’s attitude came as a surprise. Considering how strongly Tabitha disliked their father’s new wife, Maddy would have figured Tabitha would want Deborah to cheat, and get caught. Her father would tolerate a lot when it came to his wives—spending money, demanding attention and throwing tantrums. But he would never tolerate being cheated on. As a few of his former loves could certainly attest. Tabitha’s mother included.

“I’m surprised you haven’t hired a detective to follow her and get the goods yourself.”

Tabitha frowned, shifting her pretty blue eyes away to study her perfectly manicured nails.

“You have? Jesus, Tabby…”

“Look, it was stupid, and I changed my mind almost right away. I don’t want to catch the bitch cheating.”

“You don’t?”

Her sister finally lifted her eyes, and in them was a hint of genuineness, an emotion Tabitha didn’t often let the world see, but which Maddy knew lurked beneath her sister’s polished, shiny, brittle surface. “He loves her, Mad. Really loves her and she makes him so happy. It’s like he’s twenty years younger.” She swallowed, murmuring, “I don’t want him hurt. Again.”

Wow. That stunned her. So much that she couldn’t reply for a minute. Because while she completely understood the sentiment—and felt the same way—she wouldn’t have expected it of Tabitha.

Then she remembered the one area where she and her sister were absolutely, one hundred percent alike: in their love for their father.

She lowered her pen to her desk, finally giving her sister her undivided attention. “Okay. What do you propose we do?”

Tabitha dissembled for a moment, glancing around the room, at the few framed photos on Maddy’s bookshelf—all family—at the plants in the corner and the view of the Chicago skyline out the window.

She wasn’t going to like this, Maddy knew. Tabitha had the same look she’d had when they were nine and twelve and her big sister had suggested they “borrow” their new stepmother’s—wife three’s—Dior gowns to play house. And Maddy had the same reaction—the similar twitch in her temple and the sweatiness in her palms she’d experienced on that day.