Heather made an obvious bid for composure. "I…"
"Mom, what's going on?"
Ash felt everything in her freeze. She spun out of Nikos' grasp to face the newcomer whose voice was so like her own. She'd already been fighting tears and now her eyes burned with them as she furiously blinked, trying to keep some semblance of control. "Emma…"
Emma was staring at her as if she was seeing a ghost. "Who are you?"
"I'm…"
"She's your sister," Heather said, her voice wobbling only a little.
"My sister?" Emma shook her head, frowning at all of them. "No. That's not possible." Her gaze shifted to her mom. "You didn't give birth to twins. I checked. I always felt like something was missing, you know? So, I checked and there wasn't another birth record. I was the only baby born to Heather and Ryan Grant."
Ash knew her sister was shaking inside, even though her chatter and uncracked composure gave nothing away. She was a master at hiding her emotions herself.
Nikos seemed to sense the hurricane of emotion under the surface because he took a step toward Emma, his hand out as if to help her. "Miss Grant, perhaps you should sit down."
"Who are you?" Emma demanded, taking a step back.
"I am your sister's fiancé, Nikos Petronides."
"The shipping tycoon?"
"You read the financial pages?"
"Sometimes. When I'm bored on a shoot. And you're Rachel Hemsworth," she said to Ash's mom, still sounding very much in command of herself.
But Ash saw another story in the eyes that could have been her mirror. Her sister's worry for Heather Grant was there, as well as confusion and anger that these strangers had brought obvious upset into her home.
"Yes, I'm Rachel Hemsworth."
Heather sat up, wiped at her tears and then dried her hands on her jeans and put her arms out. "Come here, baby. I have to tell you something."
Emma walked slowly toward her mother, her eyes fixed on Rachel Hemsworth as if she was a snake prepared to strike. She stepped back, moving to sit in a chair close to the sofa. It was so like how he always sat with Ash that she felt a twinge in her heart. They were a family even if they didn't all know it yet.
Emma let her mother pull her down to sit beside her. Her gaze jumped from Ash to her mom, back to Nikos and then finally came back to rest on Ash. "You look just like me."
"Almost."
"Your hair is darker. You don't highlight it at all."
"No."
"It's shorter, too."
"Yes. And my eyebrows have their natural shape and I weigh at least ten pounds more than you. I don't dress as trendily and I'm not fond of running," she said, naming a pastime Blade said that Emma spent a lot of time engaged in. "But I love old movies, we wear the same size shoe and I prefer silver over gold jewelry as well."
Heather Grant made a sound of distress.
Emma took her hand and held it. "What's the matter, Mom?"
"Please don't hate me, Emma. I deserve it, I know I do, but I can handle anything except that."
"No one is going to hate you, Mrs. Grant. We're going to work through this," Rachel Hemsworth said in a firm but kind tone.
Ash was so proud of her.
"I could never hate you," Emma vowed.
Heather shook her head, her expression turning both resigned and determined. "Before you came into the room, Mrs. Hemsworth asked a question. She wanted…" She stopped, seemed to collect herself and went on. "She wanted to know why I'd stolen her daughter."
"What?"
The shock of the traumatic words reverberated through Emma to the room around her. Ash could feel the shock wave hit her with physical force as her sister's whole body went stiff. Then Nikos was there, wrapping both arms around Ash, pulling her with him to a love seat, where he tugged her down right next to him. He kept her locked tight in his protective embrace while Heather blinked back tears and took several deep breaths.
"When I did it, I didn't think I was stealing anyone. Please believe me. I-I thought you were mine." Heather brushed the hair from Emma's temple. "I love you so much." She swallowed and then went on. "I'd lost my baby after the horrific accident that took Ryan's life and caused me to go into premature labor."
She looked at Rachel Hemsworth then, as if trying to explain what she herself found inexplicable. "Some teenagers high on pot ran a red light and plowed right into our car. I barely survived the accident. We were living near Boston at the time. They life-flighted me to the hospital from our smaller town. When my daughter died, I started haunting the baby nurseries at all the hospitals. I was there the night your you and your husband were brought in. Everyone was running around talking about the accident. It was so much like mine. If it hadn't been so identical, I don't think it would have happened, but it was as if I was reliving it all over again.
"Everywhere around me, doctors and nurses were saying the exact same things they'd said the night of my accident. It's hard to explain, but something snapped inside me. It was as if I was living out what had happened all over again, but with a different result. I created a whole new set of memories that I could deal with better than reality. You went labor and your husband into a coma, but your babies lived. I lived, but my baby died. In my mind that night, my baby lived and she was Emma."
Ash's mom nodded, as if she understood such a thing. Again, she felt a spurt of pride for her.
Heather turned back to Emma. "Don't ask me how I managed to get you out of the hospital because I don't remember. When I got you home, all the baby stuff was still there, I thought you were my little Emma." Her voice cracked. "I loved you so much and you were all I had left."
Emma put her arm around her mom's shoulder. "It's okay, Mom."
"It's not okay. I lived the fantasy and believed it completely for five years . Except for recurring nightmares of losing my baby, everything was so good. I had this overwhelming urge to move across the country, though. I thought I wanted to get away from the painful memories of your fath…I mean my husband. Later, I realized my subconscious knew that I was running from something much worse than painful memories. We moved here when you were less than a year old."
"But something made you remember," Emma said gently, her tone so like Rachel's had been minutes before that Ash found herself blinking back more tears.
Heather nodded. "I saw an article on Rachel Hemsworth in a business weekly." She looked around at the rest of the people in the room. "I'm a financial analyst."
"We know," Rachel said quietly.
She swallowed convulsively and nodded. "Of course." She took another deep breath and clenched her trembling hands together. "The article mentioned the disappearance of your daughter and suddenly I knew . I couldn't remember taking her, but I remembered my baby dying and knew that the little girl who I loved more than my own life belonged to someone else."
"I don't understand…you would have taken me back. Mom, I know you…"
"Yes. I tried." She was looking at Emma again, her hazel eyes filled with appeal. "But when I arrived in Boston with you, I had to research Rachel Hemsworth. I couldn't give my baby over to just anyone even if she was your biological mother. I was frightened of what would happen to me, but even more terrified of losing you. I was going to plead for mercy…I hoped…" She swallowed a sob. "I hoped that she would let me visit you. But when I researched her, I discovered she was a merciless businesswoman. The article had said something about how even personal tragedy had not slowed her down businesswise. She acted as if she'd never lost a daughter and didn't notice the one she still had.
"I knew the woman described in the articles I read about her and by the employees I managed to talk to would press charges and I would end up in prison. I would have faced that…but learning how she treated the daughter she still had was something else altogether. She ignored her. She was raised by nannies and servants and hardly ever saw her."