Blood and Bone (Blood and Bone Series Book 1), page 1
BOOKS BY TARA BROWN ALSO WRITING AS T. L. BROWN, A. E. WATSON, ERIN LEIGH, AND SOPHIE STARR
The Devil’s Roses
Cursed
Bane
Witch
Hyde
Death
Blackwater
Midnight Coven
Redeemers
The Born Trilogy
Born
Born to Fight
Reborn
The Blood Trail Chronicles
Vengeance
Vanquished
The Single Lady Spy Series
The End of Me
The End of Games
The Light Series
The Light of the World
The Four Horsemen
The End of Days
Imaginations
Imaginations
Duplicities
The Lonely
The Lonely
Lost Boy
The Seventh Day
My Side
The Long Way Home
First Kiss
Sunder
In the Fading Light
For Love or Money
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2015 Tara Brown
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake Romance are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781477829509
ISBN-10: 1477829504
Cover design by Kerrie Robertson
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014958169
CONTENTS
1. MISTAKEN IDENTITY
2. LOVE IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES
3. MISTAKEN ME
4. CRAZY CAT LADY
5. AGENT BARNES
6. A MAGIC COCK ON A MADMAN
7. GOING ROGUE
8. SEE JANE RUN
9. BAD JUJU
10. SEE SAM LIE
11. SEE JANE DIE
12. WHAT WHIP MARKS?
13. THE VIEW FROM BELOW
14. SEE JANE KILL
15. MAGICAL KEY OF DOOM
16. I WILL FREE YOU
17. ALL THE PRETTIES IN A ROW
18. THE BACKSTORY
EPILOGUE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
1. MISTAKEN IDENTITY
Samantha! Sam! Hey, wait up! Samantha Barnes! Wait!”
My footsteps quicken as I sigh, annoyed at the guy who is shouting behind me. It’s amazing his voice has carried through the crowd on the street for as long as it has. It’s also amazing he hasn’t caught Samantha Barnes yet, whoever she is.
I have to assume it’s one of two scenarios—either he’s slow as molasses on a cold day or she’s a gazelle and is way ahead of him.
“SAM!
“SAM!
“SAM, WAIT!”
Finally, I turn back to tell him he needs to run a lot faster or give up the chase, but the guy shouting is looking at me. “Sam, seriously, how fast do you walk?” He huffs and puffs like he might blow down the store next to me. He’s slight, sort of a teaspoon of a man. He looks like he’s going to take a knee or maybe just pass out altogether. His slim face is red and flushed.
I glance behind me, noticing no one else is stopped.
“I was running—for three blocks!” he gasps. He points and wheezes, “I knew—it was—you—whew! You walk—fast!” He has a slight overbite and spit on his bottom lip from the huffing and puffing. My nose wrinkles involuntarily at the heinous sight of the spit bubble.
I’m lost on whether or not he’ll wipe it away or if I’ll have to stare at it whilst he gets me mixed up with whomever he is looking for.
“You—walk so—fast.” His breathing is still labored, and his face seems to be getting redder. For a small guy, he’s awfully out of shape. After a moment, he runs his hands over his face, wiping away the sweat from his brow, and yet leaving behind the spit.
Lovely.
He does a huge sigh before speaking with the labored gasps. “I knew it was you when I saw you at Menchie’s. How are you? It’s been so long. Since what—second year, right?”
I shake my head, still mesmerized by the spit. Surely he feels it. Should I pull out a tissue and wipe it for him? How is it so bubbled and frothy?
He sighs. “It’s me, Ronald Armstrong. We were at Berkeley together a few years ago.” I cock an eyebrow, about to tell him he is mistaken, but he assumes it is an answer to his remark. “I suppose you’re right, it wasn’t a few years ago. Jesus, it was twelve years ago. That’s right, you missed the reunion. I didn’t go either. I saw your name on the list of people not attending.”
I am drawing a huge blank. I never attended Berkeley, and I have never met him.
He smiles wide, flashing that overbite. “The year you left in the middle of the second semester, I heard you went FBI. You still with them?”
I nearly laugh, right in his frothy spit bubbler. “No.” Whoever Sam is, she is clearly smarter than I ever was. I offer him a weak smile. “I’m really sorry, but I never went to Berkeley. I never went to college. You must have the wrong person.”
His eyes narrow, and I can see the wheels turning, but he doesn’t believe me. He relives every moment that in his mind we have spent together and then shakes his head. “No, I remember you. You sat in front of me. We weren’t exactly friends, but I remember you. Is this an FBI thing?”
“Sorry. No.”
“We always called you Sam, and you were really smart, sort of an activist, if I recall.”
I shake my head again. “Jane. My name is Jane.” My yogurt is melting, but I can’t eat it while I stare at the white frothy spit bubble on his thin lower lip. I ponder the possibility that he will run after me if I just bolt and eat my yogurt in an alley.
He pauses a second as if processing the statement before he chuckles, rolling his eyes. “Oh shit. You’re messing with me. Jesus, you almost had me too. You look so serious. Man, I forgot what a joker you were. That’s crazy. Jane! Good one.” He uses his hands to make movements like his head has exploded. He has thin fingers. They bother me.
He laughs, and something about him does seem familiar. But I think it’s more that he has one of those faces—those rat faces that seem very similar. He points. “So how have you been?”
I give up and play along. “Good, and you?” I hope it will go faster and I can just get this over with.
“Good.” He nods, finally wiping his lips on his sleeve and saving me from the horror of the white spit. “Great, really good. I got a resident position in France, actually. I’m heading there in a few weeks. It’s just outside of Paris. They even have a residence for me so I can live for free while I finish my PhD. I’m so glad I switched my major. It means longer in school, but this opportunity is just such an affirmation that I made the right choice. Such a score.”
He might as well be speaking German.
I nod along. “Wow, that’s amazing.” Is it? I don’t know. I don’t care. I don’t give a shit. I just want to eat my frozen yogurt before it’s no longer frozen.
He laughs. “Yeah. I feel pretty lucky. What are you doing?”
“I work in a shop.” I point. “Just around the corner. I’m late, actually, from my coffee break. It was nice to see you—”
He smiles. “Ronald.”
“Of course. Have a nice day and enjoy France.”
“You want to get a coffee and catch up sometime?”
I shake my head. “I have to get back to work.”
He looks like he might say something but he doesn’t. He waves and watches me walking backward, desperate to escape him. His eyes bother me. Something about it all bothers me.
I turn and disappear into the crowd, taking the sneaky way back to work, and end up being really late from my break. The rest of the day sort of flies by. I don’t even know where it goes, just that I look up and it’s over. I close the shop and head home.
But Samantha Barnes never leaves my head. Who is this doppelgänger I apparently have? And why in the gods did she attend Berkeley? Unless, of course, she’s actually an activist, then Berkeley makes perfect sense.
I round the corner home, lost in thought. Derek has the door open for me before I even stand a chance at turning the knob. “There she is, the most beautiful girl in the world.” He smiles, but I scoff because between the two of us, it’s more likely he’s the most beautiful one. And a doctor to boot. Why he’s with me is the mystery. He pulls me in, breathing an entire lungful before kissing the side of my face. “God, I love you.”
I don’t know how I got this lucky. I don’t know why a magical man like him would ever have picked me.
Truth be told, I don’t remember when we met.
I don’t remember why it was me who got lucky with a man like him. That time is on the other side of my brain, the side I cannot reach.
He sweeps me into his arms, nearly crushing me, and murmurs, “Was it a great day?”
I nod against his soft cheek, staring at the open door to our house as a scent wafts out at me. “Did you make chicken Parm?”
“Of course. I always aim to please, milady.” He pulls me back, offering one of those smiles I’ve seen make the girls at work melt. I don’t melt, but I know if I were a normal girl I would. If any boy in the whole world could make me melt, it would be him. His eyes are dazzling green, with a hint of gray that only shows depending on his moods. It’s the strangest color combination. His smile is sexy and lopsided because he has a larger incisor on the left than the right, making one side of his lips stick out a little. I like the fang-like tooth, though. It makes him look like a vampire in the right light. I have no idea why I find that sexy.
Clearly I was a freak before I lost my mind in the fog. He dips and kisses me again, pressing our faces and bodies up against one another.
“You made that just for me?” He hates chicken Parmesan, which is crazy. I love it. I don’t think I love anything else, but I love it. It and the feel of my cat, Binx. He’s soft and fluffy and mean. I adore his meanness the most.
Derek brushes a large and yet perfectly groomed hand through his dark-blond hair. “Baby, I’ve got an OR time. I have to go. Which is why I made your favorite dinner. So when I’m doing my surgery, I’ll know you’re thinking about me.”
“I always think about you.” The words are plain, not meant to be charming or schmoozed. I don’t do that. I don’t know how to be charming.
He kisses my lips again but this time so delicately that it makes my stomach growl for more than the dinner he’s prepared. “I love you,” he murmurs into my cheek before brushing past me, waving as he runs to the car.
Watching him head off makes me smile, even if I didn’t get to tell him about my weird day or about my melted yogurt. My world and my news are never anything compared to the stuff he does. He saves lives, creates hope, and heals the sick. I wish I had gone to college and become something amazing like him.
He honks and blows me a kiss from the Mercedes. I wave back and head inside, excited for my meal. He always makes it extra saucy so that when I drag my garlic bread through it, the sauce soaks into the bread. He’s a wizard, I swear.
I can’t help but grin like an idiot when I see the table is set with a pink rose placed across my plate. They’re my favorite.
Dinner is in the oven, making the entire house smell of his skill. He is an amazing chef.
He’s amazing at everything.
One day I am going to wake up and realize this was all a dream, a wonderful dream but a dream nonetheless. There is no way he’s real and mine.
I pull out the casserole dish and place it on the table. He’s picked out the wine—he does that every time. I love the way he orders for me and picks the wine and makes everything work together to bring me the best.
He’s a twelve, and I’m at best a seven. If you took my crappy job into consideration, I’m a five. His job makes him a fifteen or seventeen.
The cooking is like icing on the awesome cake.
He’s tall, six foot two, and almost no body fat. He runs and lifts and eats low carb. He lives like he wants to live forever. His dark-blond hair is always styled nicely, but he doesn’t look too groomed. He has that California glow, regardless of being from the East Coast. He drinks weird infused waters and always takes his vitamins. It’s annoying.
We are polar opposites. My dark hair and puffy lips make me look like I might be a touch ethnic, but I’m not. My father was English, and my mom was Scottish. I’m short, five four, and curvy. My body fat is probably near the low twenties, and when I run, I cramp up. I never run, I hate it. And by some small miracle, he doesn’t care. He kisses every curve and loves every inch, and I never feel like I’m not enough. I know I’m not enough, but he would die if I told him I thought that. He loves with every ounce of himself whereas I don’t know how to give any part of me. He doesn’t even care that I don’t know anything that has happened beyond three years ago. He reminds me who I am and what I like, and helps me find myself.
It’s much more like dating a nun or a saint. Only he’s sexy and likes giving oral sex too much to go in either of those directions. I do love that man, though. I love his heart and his way of giving me everything without my ever asking for a single thing.
I lean my face over the plate, closing my eyes and taking a deep breath. The first bite is incredible. The basil and Parmigiano-Reggiano swirl in my mouth, enhancing the slightly sweet marinara sauce against the perfectly crisp chicken. I am in food heaven.
When I finish, the name Samantha Barnes is still bouncing around in my head like a Ping-Pong ball. Drumming my fingers against the mahogany table, I push myself back and walk to the computer to Google her. The name comes up a hundred times on Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace. I click on “Images” instead of words, scrolling past all the different varieties of Samantha Barnes there are. There’s a chef, a celebrity, a model, and a schoolteacher. The most intense has to be the bodybuilder Samantha Barnes—she’s so ripped. I rub my food belly, gawking at how hardcore and rippling with muscle she is. I scroll down, stopping the moment I see the reason Ronald stopped me on the road. It’s so shocking my eyes are torn from the bodybuilder chick.
I click on the black-and-white thumbnail photo of me as my jaw drops.
She can’t be me—she grew up in Alabama, in a town I have never heard of. She went to Berkeley but it doesn’t say graduated, and she died in some place called Fairhope. The resemblance is so uncanny I cannot believe I’m not looking at a picture of me with blonde hair.
The fact that an identical girl named Samantha Barnes exists is one crazy moment for me, but that’s not the craziest part. For me, the most peculiar aspect of it is that she died six years ago in a fiery car crash. I was in a fiery crash three years ago. How odd!
I click on the newspaper article to read more.
Sunday night as the sun was setting on Fairhope, the owner of the Simple Pleasures Book Shop, Samantha Barnes, died in a car accident described by witnesses as horrific. Police Chief Langley speculated that her SUV was being driven too fast for the wet road conditions. He mentioned the car might have slid on a newer section of asphalt.
It took fire crews several hours to get the blaze under control as the flames incinerated the car and several trees nearby, including the large oak that the car struck.
The mayor of Fairhope had this to say: “It is a sad and tragic day. Sam was one of the upstanding citizens of our quiet town. She will be missed and always remembered fondly.”
Barnes leaves behind a cat named Binx that her friends have adopted.
A cat named Binx?
A car accident?
A girl with my face and eyes?
I don’t know what to say, and even if I did, my throat is tight with confusion. It’s so parched it feels as if I haven’t drank in a month. I click on the next link, finding comments from local townsfolk about the tragedy. Many people still sought answers as to who the other person in the car was. Some comments mention a man from another town. Reading it all makes me oddly uncomfortable, like I am bothered by the loss of a look-alike of me. The interviews with the townspeople make it seem as if she didn’t have any family. She was single and died with a stranger who is still unidentified, even though it’s six years later.
I Google her more, obsessed at the similarity in looks and life. I find a picture of her outside of a restaurant with several people. She looks uncomfortable. I know that face. I make it when people take my picture too.
I can’t help but wonder if we are related, regardless of knowing my history. My parents died a year apart when I was eighteen and nineteen, hence the no college. Sam’s parents must have been dead when her accident took place or they would have been interviewed or at least spoken of in the article. It’s weird we were both alone. It’s even weirder that we both had car accidents, though mine was only tragic to my brain. The rest of me has healed nicely. The name of the cat is creeping me out the most. I can’t deny the odds are stacked way against us both picking a name as unusual as Binx. It’s completely unlikely.
It’s strange. Coincidental is the word I want to use, because I don’t believe I ever had a long-lost sister. But the name of the cat is too much to be coincidence. It doesn’t add up.
I open our pictures on the computer, scrolling through them, looking for one that might be the right angle to match her picture. When I get one, I just sit and stare. It’s uncanny.
Eventually, I have to turn the computer off, as my eyes feel like they have crossed from staring too long at the same pictures of her and me. The pictures prove her face and my face not only match, but blend—seamlessly. Even the slight lift of the right side of our mouths when we half smile is the same. Our eyebrows arch in the exact same spot. The puffy lips have the same creases in them, and our eyes have the same laugh lines.
