Excerpt of Sister Swap by Lilian Darcy

"So, Mom, she's been stuck in that hotel room for two days, until you could get there," Roxanna said, "because she's been too scared to leave it on her own?"

"This is going to ruin her career, Rox!" Roxanna's mother answered, over the phone. She was calling from London, a hotel near Heathrow Airport, but she sounded clear enough to be in the next building — and clear enough that every bit of her distress came through.

"Mom, it's going to ruin her life! She needs treatment. This is a major anxiety disorder, and it's getting worse. She has to see that."

"You have to fly to Italy and cover for her at the Di Bartoli family estate. This is a big project, and she needs it on her résumé. She can't have it turn into a disaster, after all the work and study she's done."

"Oh, right! Cover for her, because I know everything there is to know about antique roses and historic garden restoration? You can't be serious!"

Rox knew almost nothing about the subject, as Mom was well aware. She was a singer...well, a waitress with a music teaching degree she'd never used, but she didn't want to examine that issue right now.

"Cover for her, because I'm one of the few people in the world who can tell the two of you apart," Mom said.

"I weigh eight pounds more than she does, and I have way stronger lungs."

"Nobody notices that. Especially if they don't even know that Rowena has an identical twin sister."

"True. She hasn't mentioned my existence to the Di Bartoli family?"

"No, she says she definitely hasn't. Honey, Rowie has promised that if you do this for her, she will get treatment.Yes, even she can see how much she needs it now."

Rox closed her eyes, seeking inner guidance. How could she say no? As Mom had just reminded her, she and Rowena were identical twins. Their bond was deep and life-long and complex, and it was important to both of them. They'd developed in such different ways, thanks to Rowena's much greater frailty at birth and beyond, but the bond hadn't lessened or changed.

Rowena, in particular, tugged on it a lot. This wouldn't be the first time Roxanna had bailed her out when she'd been seized by one of her increasingly severe and increasingly frequent attacks of paralyzing anxiety. The one difference was that this time, thank heavens, Row had conceded she needed professional help.

Okay, there were a couple of other differences, too. Firstly, Rox had never been required to cross the Atlantic Ocean to impersonate her sister before. Secondly, her schedule was...um...unusually light right now, so she couldn't plead a previous commitment.

She'd lost her job last Friday — her waitressing job — because her singing audition had run three hours late. Fortunately, this wasn't going to send her into major debt, because her expenses were currently low. She'd moved into her parents' house in northern New Jersey after her divorce late last year, taking care of it for them while they tried out a retirement move to Florida.

Footnote — she'd lost out at Friday's audition, hadn't even made the final cut, because the stress over the divorce was still affecting her voice.

Or maybe her voice just wasn't good enough.

That had been listed as Reason Number Seventeen on the twenty-one-item list her ex-husband Harlan had given her as to why it was her fault, not his, that he'd started an affair and left her. "Your voice isn't half as good as you think it is."

"So you'll fly Rowena back from London and find a therapist for her in Florida?" Rox asked her mother. There was no point in getting treatment for Rowie if they didn't do it right. "You'll take care of her until she's made some progress? You'll make sure she doesn't run away from the therapy?"

"That seems like the best plan. The only plan. It was all her mixed-up feelings about Francesco Di Bartoli that triggered this panic attack, but it's gone beyond anything rational, now. If she can't even leave the hotel room on her own, she can't possibly go back to Italy."

"So what has she told the Di Bartoli family about all this?"

"That she's been delayed in England, ordering the roses, but she should be back in Tuscany within a few days. Nothing about the underlying problem. So of course you'll have to fly to Rome via London, so Signor Di Bartoli isn't meeting you off a flight from the wrong continent."

"I can't pull this off, Mom. Surely Francesco will guess?"

"You can pull it off. You have to. He won't guess. He doesn't know you exist, and he hasn't known Rowena for that long. As an impersonation, being your sister is not that big a stretch for you. Rowena is on her laptop right now, collating her notes for you and printing out every detail you'll need, on top of all the books and notes still in Italy. And you can phone each other. You always left it till the last minute to cram for exams. This will be no different."

Mom was probably right.

Harlan had mentioned it, too. Reason Number Twelve. "You always leave everything till the last minute."

"Okay," she told her mother. "But only because she's promised to get treatment. I'll call the airlines and get on the first flight I can." Being someone who left things until the last minute, she was comfortable with traveling at short notice.

"Tonight?" Mom asked. It was currently Monday morning in New Jersey, Monday afternoon in Europe.

"I'll try."

"Call me back with the details. Then I can make plans for Rowie and me. We'll need to connect with you in London on your way through, so she can give you the information on the garden project."

Two days later, Roxanna touched down in Rome, wearing her twin sister's neat, professional clothes but feeling totally like herself inside. Scatty (Reason Number Five), imperfectly groomed (Number Fourteen) and, as previously discussed in Reason Twelve, ill-prepared.

"Pia, stay close to Papa," Gino said in Italian to his four-year-old daughter.

She strained at his hand, avid to explore the crowded airport terminal. He held her tighter, knowing only too well what would happen next, not having the slightest idea what to do about it.

I can't deal with one of her tantrums here.

Pia pulled harder, her face getting its stubborn look, her lungs building up a full head of steam, ready to start screaming and kicking and throwing her compact little body about. Miss Cassidy, Pia's English nanny, spent hours riding out the tantrums. She refused ever to give in, getting stricter and stricter the louder Pia screamed, until finally Pia would exhaust herself and fall asleep.

And I don't have the time for that, or the patience, Gino knew. Lord help me, what is wrong with my child?

How could a woman as perfect as Angele — serene, cool, competent in everything she did — have given birth to such a difficult little girl?

Abruptly, with his decision made before he even knew it, he released his grip on his daughter and watched her dart between the spring coats and business suits of those waiting to meet the London flight. Passengers had begun to appear. As long as Rowena Madison wasn't one of the last off the plane, he should be able to keep a rough eye on Pia's whereabouts and not lose her.

He'd only met Rowena a few times, but he was confident he'd recognize her right away. Based in Rome and with a senior executive role in the Di Bartoli family's multinational cosmetics corporation, he'd organized the initial interview with her regarding the garden restoration and had sat in on a couple of subsequent meetings to discuss her plans. The day-to-day liaison and supervision on the Di Bartoli estate itself he'd delegated to his thirty-three-year-old younger brother, Francesco.

Apparently Francesco had taken the liaison element way too seriously, however. Francesco had a perfectly charming and exceptionally suitable fiancée in Rome, and yet that hadn't stopped him from begging Rowena for an affair in Tuscany. According to Francesco, Rowena's trembling hesitation had only increased his desire.

Yes, well, so it would, Gino thought cynically. Francesco had always wanted something all the more when he found he couldn't get it too easily. He wasted large chunks of his life this way.

And Gino wasn't going to let him waste the prospect of a very good marriage on a stupid little affair with an American horticultural expert who didn't seem to know whether she wanted him or not, even if she was entitled to call herself Dr. Madison, thanks to her doctoral dissertation on seventeenth-century European garden design.

Where was Pia?

His heart thudded suddenly and he looked around in a panic. He couldn't see her. He should have dressed her in something brighter this morning. There weren't many bright outfits in her closet, however. As Angele had, Miss Cassidy favored exquisitely made French children's clothing in the same neutral colors — navy, gray and cream — that most of the adults in the airport were wearing. She was camouflaged as effectively as —

Ah. There she was. Safe. Intently watching a woman struggle with the jammed wheel of her suitcase.

And here was Rowena Madison.

She hadn't seen him yet. She was scanning faces with her eyes narrowed, and her teeth scraping across her lower lip, as if anxious that he might not have come. She wasn't to know how much he prided himself on his reliability.

He raised his hand and gestured, smiled and called her name. She saw him, and a strange series of expressions crossed her face, almost as if someone were trying out a series of different screen savers on a computer.

He had no idea what Francesco saw in her, despite how pretty she was with those deep blue eyes, the pale, creamy skin, the long dark hair loosely swept back. To Gino, she always seemed so prim and tame, like pasta cooked to mush instead of al dente — quite edible, yes, but not at all appetizing.

She pushed her way through the crowd toward him, a little breathless, with her wheeled and long-handled suitcase trundling behind her. She wore a neat beige pantsuit with a white silk blouse beneath. The blouse wasn't as neat as the suit. One of the middle buttons had come unfastened, showing the lower part of a white lacy bra and a shadowed stretch of the skin between her ribs. "Francesco...?" It wasn't quite a question.

"...couldn't come," Gino answered in his near-perfect English. He didn't apologize on his brother's behalf, since it wasn't his brother's fault.

He'd virtually ordered Francesco to stay in Rome to cool his head, while he himself took over the role of working with Rowena Madison on the garden. He could manage Di Bartoli business for a few weeks while based on the family's Tuscan estate, and he desperately wanted to get Pia out of Rome.

To see if that made a difference to the tantrums.

To find out how she behaved without the presence of the English nanny whom Angele had always praised to the skies.

To get to know his child. "Francesco couldn't come," Rowena echoed. Her voice sounded a little throaty, deeper and richer than he remembered, as if it had gotten strained by the poor-quality air during the flight. Or maybe she had a cold.

"Sorry," he said, about Francesco's absence.