From Seduction To Secrets. Andrea Laurence
shouted at one of the men his parents had hired to manage all the cars at the wedding. “This wasn’t going to take long. Especially with those goons seeing me out after less than a minute.” She nervously glanced over her shoulder, and that was when she spied Sawyer standing at the top of the stairs.
“Do you normally wear black to weddings?” he asked. Asking why she’d slapped him seemed like jumping ahead in a conversation he wasn’t ready to wrap up so quickly. “Isn’t that against the rules or something?”
She sighed and crossed her hands over her chest. “It was the only nice dress I had that still fit. No offense to your sister. Anyway, don’t mind me,” she said. “Security has made it clear I’m not welcome, so I’m leaving. Go on back to your hot blonde. You’ve obviously moved on.”
Sawyer took a few steps down the stairs to get closer, but out of arm’s reach of the woman. He wasn’t getting hit twice in one night. “I’m sorry, there’s been some kind of mistake, I think. Do I know you?” The stinging welt on his cheek suggested that he did, but he was certain he’d never laid eyes on her before. She was stunning, even in the plain strapless black dress and simple makeup she was wearing. Her red hair shimmered in the moonlight, and fat curls cascaded over her bare shoulders.
No, he would remember meeting her.
“Are you serious?” She rolled her eyes, which were a dark shade of green like antique emeralds, and shook her head. “You ignored me for weeks after we got together, then when I finally track you down, you act like you have no idea what I’m even talking about. What? Are you going to tell me your evil doppelgänger slept with me, not you?”
Sawyer opened his mouth to argue, then stopped cold. Now it all started to make sense. Why hadn’t he realized this sooner? Women slapped his brother all the time. Or at least they should. It might help things. “I think you’re actually looking for my twin brother, not me.”
“That’s an even better excuse,” she said.
“It’s not an excuse. Ask anyone in the party and they’ll tell you I have an identical twin brother. Most people can’t tell us apart.”
She narrowed her gaze at him for a moment. “So you’re saying you’re not Sawyer Steele?”
Sawyer stopped as he opened his mouth to answer. It was one thing for her to confuse him with his brother, but this was different. “No, I am Sawyer Steele. But I think you’re looking for my twin, Finn Steele.”
The woman turned to him with her hands curled up in fists at her sides. “Are you implying that I’m some kind of slut?”
His eyes grew large with surprise. Sawyer was usually pretty good with people, very diplomatic at handling bad situations, but he couldn’t say the right thing to this woman for some reason. Her hair was as fiery as her temper, it seemed. “What? No, of course not.”
“You just told me I don’t know the name of a man I had sex with,” she said, pointing at him accusingly.
“That’s not what I meant.” He held out his hands in surrender and slowly came down the stairs to stand on the brick patio where she was waiting. He hoped that she would take a minute to breathe and calm down. “People get my brother and me mixed up all the time, is all. I’m telling you I’ve never seen you in my life, so that’s the only explanation that makes sense. What is your name?”
“Katherine McIntyre.” She said it with an insulted tone, as though he should know her name. “I go by Kat, if that helps jog your memory.”
Sawyer frowned. To be honest, the name did sound familiar, but he was certain he’d never seen her before, much less had sex with her. He glanced down over the tightly fitting black dress, which clung to her curves and stopped just above the knee to highlight her shapely legs. He was decidedly disappointed that she’d spent the night with his brother and not him. He wasn’t entirely sure that he had a type, but Kat set off all the right bells and whistles. She was a bright red Lamborghini if he’d ever seen one.
When his face didn’t light up with recognition, she continued speaking. “We met at the Charleston’s Best awards at the aquarium about three months ago. We had a lot of champagne, we talked, and when we got tired of looking at fish, we got a hotel room and got…better acquainted.” Kat looked at him with a pointed expression.
Sawyer didn’t remember going to an event at the aquarium. Actually, he was certain he hadn’t, although he remembered something was being held there a while back. That was it—he hadn’t been feeling great that day. He’d gotten a stomach bug, but he was supposed to attend as the Steele family representative to accept their award while his parents were wrapped up in finalizing wedding details. He hadn’t gone. In fact, he’d bribed his twin brother to go to the event in his place. Finn hadn’t wanted to attend, either. Sawyer had been forced to give him his new Jet Ski in exchange for going to the party.
Damn it to hell.
The realization of what really happened washed over him like a wave. Sawyer brought a hand to his face and rubbed furiously at it in frustration. It had been years since Finn had done something like this. Maybe even since college. Back then, he’d liked to meet girls at bars and give them Sawyer’s name instead of his own. He was never sure if his brother just did it for a laugh, or to keep the girls from tracking him down, but Sawyer had earned quite a reputation on campus without doing a single thing to get it. But now they were in their thirties. Thirty-three, to be exact. Way too old for this kind of childish bullshit.
“I think I know what the problem is.”
“The sex was so amazing you blocked it from your memory because you knew you’d never experience anything that good again?”
His jaw dropped open for a moment, then he shook his head. He’d never been so jealous of Finn in his whole life. “Uh, no. I was supposed to attend that event, but my brother went in my place. Apparently he didn’t bother to tell anyone he wasn’t me.”
“He was wearing a name tag that said Sawyer Steele,” she argued.
Sawyer wasn’t surprised. “Yeah. Knowing Finn, he just went with it and pretended to be me so our father wouldn’t know I bailed on the party.”
Kat stopped for a moment, her mind visibly racing to process what he was telling her. “And when he kissed me? When he got a hotel room? Wouldn’t that have been a good time to mention that he wasn’t really you?”
“A perfect time, and I have no idea why he didn’t. Listen, I’m really sorry about all this. My brother is…the trickster of the family. If he were here right now, I’d drag him outside and make him apologize for lying, but he’s actually in Beijing for business. He’ll be there a few weeks more, but I’ll be sure to pass along your message, slap included, when he gets back.”
The redhead’s bravado seemed to deflate as she listened to him talk. With her anger no longer aimed at Sawyer, she seemed smaller somehow. Almost petite compared to a moment ago. “So you’re saying that the man I met was actually Finn Steele? I can’t believe, after everything that happened, that he wouldn’t tell me his real name.”
Sawyer could believe it. Masquerading as his brother gave Finn free license to do what he wanted without consequence. “If you don’t mind me asking, was it just a one-night thing between the two of you?”
She looked at him with conflict in her eyes. “Yes. That was the plan, at least.”
That was his brother’s style. Love ’em and leave ’em, regardless of what name he used. “Then I doubt he would bother to correct you if you thought he was me. In the end, what would it matter? It’s just a one-night stand.”
Kat’s expression softened for a moment as she glanced down at the ground, her eyes hidden beneath her thick auburn lashes. “It does matter, Sawyer. That’s why I’ve crashed this party even though it’s obvious he doesn’t want to see me again. It matters because I’m pregnant with his child.”