Hired to impersonate another man, John had his own agenda. Convincing Cindra to sign papers to divorce the man who deserted her five years before, the job he was hired to do, didn’t suit his purpose. If the family was willing to pay to have his face reconstructed to be Curt, then there was more involved than the slippery lawyer claimed. Cindra, however, turned out to be an unexpected problem. She wanted the divorce she thought she already had and suspected every word he said.
To Cindra, he looked, sounded and felt like Curt, but something was off. Despite little things he did to remind her of the past, he didn’t know things he should and was too nice to be the over-controlling and abusive Curt. Confused and then frightened by his insistence that she was in danger, she found herself with no one to turn to. Trust him again, believe him or maybe find herself dead.
Excerpt: PG
“Are you going to slam the door in my face?”
Cindra snapped her hanging jaw shut and jerked up straight, her hand still on the door, looking ready to do just that. “Not yet,” she murmured.
Nor was she going to invite him in. That was obvious. Curt—his name for the time being—didn’t expect more. He hadn’t even expected as much as he was getting. Curtis Wellborn the Third walked out on her and their three-year marriage five years ago. She had every reason to slam the door in a face carefully constructed with surgery to look like Curtis.
“You let your hair grow out,” he commented, knowing only because the provided pictures of her included one from five years ago as well as the present. The short, sophisticated style of then had altered to well past her shoulders in a long, wavy, slightly wild, dark-haired gypsy look.
He knew instantly he had said the wrong thing.
Cindra’s slender body stiffened even more under the conservative business suit she wore, one at odds with the carefree look her hair and bare feet gave her. Her voice morphed to icy. “It’s how I like it.”
“I wasn’t criticizing,” he told her in puzzlement.
“You never open your mouth that you aren’t criticizing.”
Curt, the name he had to get used to, tried again. “It’s pretty that way.”
“Pretty? That’s different.”
Hoping he’d received the opening he needed, he told her, “I’ve changed, Cindra.”
“If you’re here for the things you ordered me to keep for you, they’re gone, two weeks after you left.”
“I don’t even remember what it was. I just want to talk. Maybe we could pick some neutral place and have dinner.”
“Talk? I’m sure you said all you wanted to say the day you left, and you never gave me a chance to say anything. It wasn’t macho.”
“I was twenty-one years old and a long way from being as smart as I thought I was or afraid I wasn’t. I never had much of a role model, and—”
“Oh, please, not the ‘it was all my daddy’s fault’ excuse.”
“It was my fault,” he stated, moving a step closer.
Cindra backed, and her hand tightened on the door, with her arm tensing to give it a shove.
Curt retreated, careful not to crowd her. Looking like a deer posed to run, she obviously didn’t believe him and wasn’t going to, he feared, at least not soon. Prepared for distrust, he talked faster. “I was a punk with my priorities all screwed up. Let me take you to dinner and talk about it, really talk, you and me.”
“No.”
The door shut. She didn’t slam it, but it was definite.
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