Chapter 1

Cecelia? Did you hire a fortune-teller?" Jack asked.

Cecelia was glad she was sitting because if she weren't, she would have fallen into the artichoke dip.

"A gypsy?" Jack tried again, as Cecelia hadn't yet managed to speak.

Amy is here. Here, in her apartment, at her engagement party. Cecelia knew it as surely as she knew that she was going to vomit into the vase of black tulips if she didn't get a hold of herself.

Okay. She had to calm down. Maybe it wasn't Amy.

The lights of Baltimore's Inner Harbor twinkled thirty stories below. Jack, Cecelia's fiancé, knelt in front of her, his face blank and innocent. Behind him, their living room was packed with distinguished doctors (her hospital) and lawyers (Jack's firm) sipping champagne and nibbling stinky cheeses. Everything was okay. Okay, except, of course, for the fact that she had gone numb with shock.

Jack was waiting for an answer.

She took a deep breath. "No, of course I didn't, hon. A fortune-teller! Why do you ask?"

"There's a gypsy at the buffet. With no shoes." Jack leaned in and lowered his voice. "She's eating caviar out of the serving bowl." He looked around to make sure no one was within earshot. "With her index finger."

"Amy." The name slipped out before Cecelia could stop it. Cecelia shivered. Okay, there were only two reasons Amy would come back after ten years: she was broke, or someone was dead.

Cecelia prayed it was death. A distant cousin maybe. A long-forgotten aunt. After all, death was final. Amy appearing out of the blue with a mouth full of fish eggs meant trouble.

Jack looked over Cecelia's left shoulder. "Cel, she looks just like you only-" He paused.

"-only dressed up for Halloween?" she tried.

"Well, dressed up for something."

Cecelia swatted his shoulder. She knew Jack well enough to know when he was talking about sex. All right, so Amy crashed her engagement party and she was sexy as ever. Worse yet, Jack had noticed. Cecelia was starting to feel her fingers and toes again. She had to take control immediately. After all, she had been preparing for this moment for ten years. She could handle Amy.

"So, who is she?" Jack asked.

Cecelia still hadn't looked behind her to the buffet. Her voice was flat but firm-the voice she used to deliver a dire prognosis to her patients. "She's the one with twenty dinner rolls stuffed in her purse."

Jack looked past Cecelia again. "Her purse is huge!"

"She's the one who swiped all the silverware."

"The spoons! They're gone!" Jack looked as if he might draw a sword. Cecelia put her hand on her valiant knight's arm. Jack may have been second in his class at Harvard Law, the captain of his undergrad crew team at Yale, the best-looking man in the room by a long shot, but he didn't have a chance against Amy.

Cecelia took a deep breath. "She's the one who ruined my life." She spun around and looked right at her little sister.

A rush of affection and joy welled up inside her.

Damn, that was definitely not a good sign.

"Put down the quail egg and step away from the buffet," Cecelia said in her best bad-cop deadpan.

"Celia!" Amy cried. She licked each of her fingers, then wiped them on her burgundy peasant skirt. "Hell, Sis, you look old."

"You too." Cecelia tried not to stare at the tiny lines that etched her sister's face. Ten years made Amy twenty-eight to Cecelia's thirty-two. It didn't seem possible.

The two sisters embraced awkwardly, then stepped back to stare, each shaking her head in disbelief.

No wonder Jack had thought Amy was a gypsy. From her silver toe rings to her embroidered, belly-baring shirt, to her kohl-lined eyes, Amy dressed the part. All she needed was a tambourine. Actually, she didn't even need that as her silver jewelry jangled and clinked with her every move.

Of course, Amy was part gypsy. Cecelia was part gypsy too; one-quarter gypsy, three-quarters anti-gypsy, Amy used to say. Cecelia spread her gypsy thin, until it was barely detectable: a hint of the exotic in her almond eyes; a touch of the old country in the grace of her fingers; a shade of something mysterious in her olive skin. But with her black shift, her shiny black hair imprisoned in a French twist, and her understated gold jewelry, her ethnicity was interpreted as Italian or Greek or Jewish. No one would ever mistake Cecelia for a party entertainer.

Cecelia inhaled the familiar scent of cinnamon and cloves that surrounded Amy like a cloud. "What are you doing here?" Cecelia asked, shaking off a bout of nostalgia.

"Nice to see you too." Amy touched the exquisite silk of Cecelia's dress and nodded appreciatively. "I had no idea you were having a party." Amy turned back to the buffet and scooped a finger of caviar into her mouth.

Copyright © 2006 by Diana Holquist

Tags: Relationship Fiction