Sweet Trilogy. Susan Mallery
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from Claire. The last thing he needed in his life was another useless woman making him crazy and ruining everything she touched.
CLAIRE STARED at the clothes she’d laid across the bed and sighed. Apparently packing was not an intuitive skill. She’d been so careful with everything. Yet here were all her clothes, horribly wrinkled.
Normally Lisa’s assistant du jour would whisk the clothes away and bring them back perfectly pressed. If she wasn’t around, Claire could call the valet service at the hotel herself. But this wasn’t a hotel.
She studied a silk blouse and wondered if it was safe to iron. With another sigh, she reminded herself she didn’t know how to use an iron and if she wanted to practice, perhaps a designer silk blouse was not the place to start.
“Am I really totally useless, or is this an isolated incident?” she asked herself, speaking the words softly aloud. Better to know the truth than pretend. Her goal was to change—to fit into the real world. She needed to know where she was to find out how much work was required to get where she needed to go.
A sound from down the hall caught her attention. Still holding the blouse, she hurried toward Nicole’s room and found her sister coming out of the bathroom. She was bent over at the waist, one arm pressed across her midsection. Her face was drawn, her mouth pulled in pain.
“You should have yelled for me,” Claire said as she hurried to her side. “I’m here to help.”
“If you figure out a way to pee for me, I’m all ears. Otherwise, stay out of my way.”
Claire ignored the snarky comment and rushed to the bed where she quickly smoothed the sheets and pulled back the covers. Nicole ignored her and what she’d done as she slowly, carefully, crawled back in bed. Claire reached for the covers.
“If you tuck me in, I swear I’ll kill you. Not today, but soon and when you least expect it.”
Claire stepped away from the bed.
When Nicole was settled she closed her eyes. After a second, she opened them again. “Are you just going to stand there?”
“Do you need anything? More water? Ice chips? They’ll help you stay hydrated without making you nauseous.”
“How do you know that?”
“I was reading some articles on the Internet.”
“Aren’t you mama’s little helper?”
Claire clutched her blouse in one hand. “They didn’t say anything about surgery making one ill-tempered, so I guess the sarcasm is all you.”
“I wear it proudly, like a badge of honor.” Nicole shifted and winced. “What are you doing here, Claire?”
“Jesse called me a few days ago and told me about the surgery. She said you were going to need my help.” Claire didn’t want to say the rest when it was obviously untrue, but she couldn’t think of a way to avoid it. She’d already told Wyatt and she suspected he had passed it on to Nicole. “She said you were sorry we were still estranged and that you wanted us to be a family.”
She spoke without shaking, without her voice giving away her potential hurt. But it was still there, hidden. Because connecting was the one thing she wanted.
“You believed her?” Nicole shook her head. “Seriously? After all this time, you think I’m suddenly going to change my opinion of you?”
“Your opinion of who and what you think I am,” Claire told her. “You don’t actually know me.”
“One of the few blessings in my life.”
Claire ignored that. “I’m here now and you obviously need help. I don’t see anyone else lining up for the job. Looks like you’re stuck.”
Nicole’s expression tightened. “I have friends I could call.”
“But you won’t. You hate owing anyone anything.”
“Like you said, you don’t actually know me.”
“I can guess.” Claire hated being obligated, too.
“Don’t pretend we have anything in common,” Nicole snapped. “You’re no one to me. Fine, if you think you can help, help. I don’t care. The good news is I don’t think you’re capable of anything beyond being served, so my expectations are fairly low.”
This was so not what she’d imagined, Claire thought sadly. She’d hoped they would be able to find their way back to each other. She and Nicole were twins … fraternal, but connected from conception. Had all the time apart, the anger and misunderstandings really broken that bond?
She was here to find out.
“You probably want to rest,” Claire said. “I’ll get out of your way.”
“If only.”
She ignored that and started to leave, then paused. “Do you have a cleaning service you use?”
“For the house? No. I managed to scrub it all by myself.”
“Oh. Okay. I didn’t mean … Never mind.”
Nicole stared at her. “What didn’t you mean?” Her gaze dropped to the blouse in Claire’s hand. “You mean a service to clean my clothes?”
Claire took a step back. “It’s not important.”
“Yeah, right. Let me guess. A piano princess like you couldn’t possibly be expected to take care of your own clothes. I’d tell you how to use the washer, but that’s probably not going to help, is it? Too much silk and cashmere, I’ll bet. Poor, poor Claire. Never owned a pair of jeans. You must cry yourself to sleep every night.”
Claire did her best to deflect the hurtful darts that jabbed at her. “I won’t apologize for my life. It’s different from yours, but that doesn’t make it any less valuable. You’ve changed, Nicole. I’ve always remembered you being angry before, but I don’t remember you being mean. When did that happen?”
“Get the hell out of here.”
Claire nodded. “I’ll be down the hall if you need me.”
“That is not going to happen. I’d rather starve than deal with you.”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
Ignoring the burning in her eyes and sense of loss weighing her down, Claire returned to her room, determined to fix whatever had gone wrong.
THE ALARM WENT OFF at three-forty-five in the morning. Claire turned it off and then stared at the unblinking red light. What had she been thinking? Who got up this early?
People who worked in a bakery, she reminded herself. She was one of the Keyes sisters. She had an obligation to the family business. As Nicole was in no position to check on things and Jesse had disappeared for reasons still not clear, it was left to Claire.
She got up and pulled on clothes. Wrinkled clothes made only marginally better by their time in a steamy bathroom. She washed her face, applied some light makeup, pulled her long hair back in a ponytail and quietly crept downstairs. Less than fifteen minutes later, she had arrived at the bakery and parked in the back by the other employee cars.
There were lights on in the building. Claire hurried to the rear door and walked inside.
The space was warm and bright, smelling of sugar and cinnamon. Equipment filled counters and lined walls. Huge ovens radiated an impressive amount of heat. There were deep fryers and massive mixers, stacks of flour and sugar and what smelled like the richest chocolate in the world.
Claire paused and breathed in the delicious scents. She’d only been able to fix soup again the previous night, not that Nicole had been all that interested in eating. But three days of a nearly liquid diet had left Claire starving.
A middle-aged man dressed entirely in white saw her and frowned. “Hey,