Read Online One Winter's Night by Brenda Jackson - Free Book Online Page A

been ready to do so herself.
    “I know it’s hard for most people to understand, Al, but for me it was nothing more than a job—a job I needed while going through that rebellious period in my life. I don’t want to think about where I’d be or what I’d still be doing if Marlon hadn’t come along. He reminded me of who I was before I made those decisions, and he was willing to love me, no matter what.”
    Alpha loved her brother-in-law because she knew he loved Omega, no matter what her past had been. He didn’t give a damn what others thought. He treated her sister like his queen.
    Omega had been out of the business less than a year when she met Marlon. Alpha knew Omega was happy and could hear it in her voice every time they talked. The only dark cloud in her sister’s life was their parents and their holier-than-thou attitude.
    “The only thing I regret,” Omega was saying softly, “is hurting you and the folks. Maybe one day they will forgive me. You never turned your back on me, even when the folks tried getting you to do so...and even when I cost you the man you loved because you wouldn’t choose him over me.”
    Alpha nearly dropped the phone. “Who told you that? How did you know?” she asked, going back into the bedroom to sit on the edge of the bed. “I told you—”
    “I know what you told me, and you lied. You and Eddie didn’t just decide to call off the wedding because the two of you felt like you were drifting apart. I ran into Eleanor Sloan, in New York of all places, when Marlon took me there on a shopping spree. She approached me, thinking I was you, and you know Eleanor,” Omega said of their high school friend. “She told me how sad she was for you now that Eddie had made you call off your wedding because of me.”
    Alpha tilted her head back and looked up at the ceiling. “When was this?”
    “Last Christmas.”
    Alpha brought her head back down to gaze out the window and frowned. “And you’ve known all this time and never mentioned it,” she accused. “Why didn’t you mention it?”
    Omega paused a minute before responding. “I couldn’t say anything because I was feeling your pain. After the way I had lived those three years, here I was, about to marry the best man any woman could have, and there you were, you who’d always been the good girl and did everything the folks told you to do...even going to college for a career you didn’t want to please them. I was the one who ended up with the fairy-tale marriage and getting a real prince and you ended up with a toad. It didn’t seem fair. Life sucks.”
    A smile touched Alpha’s lips. Life did suck at times, but a part of Alpha wouldn’t change a thing. Because thanks to Marlon, things were the way Alpha had always dreamed they could be for her twin.
    Determined to get her sister back in a good mood, mainly because she didn’t want Omega feeling sorry for her, Alpha said, “Yeah, must have been rough being a porn star.”
    “Oh, Alpha, you didn’t have to go there.”
    She knew she’d succeeded in changing the mood when she heard the giggle in her twin’s voice. Alpha laughed. “Yes, I did. Besides, had I been married to Eddie I wouldn’t be having this fling and doing the no-climax-control thing.”
    Omega chuckled. “Okay, sis, you got me there. Is this Riley Westmoreland as hot as you make him out to be?”
    Alpha remembered how he’d looked when she’d been to his office earlier that day. Yummy. “Trust me, he is. And I’ll find out just how hot he is soon enough.”
    Omega went silent for a moment and then asked, “Will you tell him about me?”
    She could hear the seriousness in her sister’s tone. She had tried doing that with LeBron and Eddie and both men had ended up showing their true colors.
    “Why would I tell him anything? It’s not that kind of relationship. It’s about sex and nothing more. Besides, at the point when we begin sleeping together, I doubt we’ll have time for much pillow