A Question of Trust Read Online Free PDF Page A

with her, he was enjoying her company just like this. Enjoying it a lot. Did Gabe get this much pleasure from spending time with her?
    “Did you know I have a sister?” Maddie asked him.
    “No, I didn’t.” He didn’t know much about her at all, other than the bits and pieces Gabe had shared, but now he found himself wanting to discover as much as he could. “Tell me about her.”
    She gave him a cheeky smile. “She’s the same age as me. In fact we were born on the same day, to the same parents. But you know what?”
    Maddie had a twin? There were two of her? “No, what?”
    “We’re not twins.”
    “Huh?”
    “Yep. We’re not twins. Go figure.”
    Connor frowned. “What are you talking about?”
    She snickered. “Explain it. We’re born on the same day—the same hour even—to the same parents, but we’re not twins.”
    And then it struck him. She wasn’t sharing bits of herself with him, she was giving him a lateral thinking puzzle. He grinned at her. No worries. He’d solve this and then find out the real facts about Maddie Jones. He looked forward to it.
    “Do you look the same?” he asked.
    “Oh, yes. Identical. You can’t tell us apart.”
    Holy crap. He had a sudden picture of himself caught between two Maddies. Two naked Maddies. “Oh, Christ,” he muttered to himself. “A Maddie sandwich.”
    Maddie’s fork dropped to her plate with a noisy clatter.
    Conversation stopped as everyone turned to see what the commotion was. Gabe shot Connor a questioning look.
    Connor shook his head.
    Maddie’s cheeks flamed. “Sorry. Clumsy me,” she said by way of explanation. “Dropped my fork. No biggie.” But as soon as the talk around the table resumed, she hissed at Connor. “What did you just say?”
    “I was thinking about the possibility of there being two of you. I called you a Maddie sandwich. Why?”
    “I…oh…no reason.”
    She was flustered. Interesting. He was flustered too, but that was because the idea of two Maddies made his jeans feel like a new form of Chinese torture. He decided not to question her further. His dick couldn’t take the agony.
    “There are three of you,” he told her instead.
    “In the sandwich?” she asked, her voice squeakier than usual.
    “No sweetheart. In your puzzle. You’re a triplet.”
    His answer broke the tension. She smiled. “You’re right. Well done.”
    “I guess I should have told you before you mentioned your sister that I too am an expert lateral thinker.”
    “There anything else I should know about you that you’re keeping secret?”
    “Well, I don’t have an identical twin sister if that’s what you’re asking.”
    She laughed out loud. “And brother?”
    “I have one. But we’re not identical either. He’s five years younger than me. How about you?”
    “Two sisters. One older, one younger, and nope. Not identical either.”
    By the time the dishes had been cleared from the table and all that was left were coffees, Connor had learned that Maddie’s parents had recently celebrated their thirty-fifth anniversary. Her sister, Claire, was twenty-nine, and two years Maddie’s senior, and Julia was twenty-four. The older sisters ran a small children’s bookshop in East Sydney, and Julia would join them as soon as she completed her studies. They planned to turn the one bookstore into a chain of three or four over the next few years, and Maddie was excited by the prospect.
    He also learned that Maddie loved cats but was allergic to them, had a compulsive need to buy nail polish (her collection currently sat at ninety-three bottles), and she detested Desperate Housewives .
    He also learned that whenever she smiled her eyes crinkled up and a tiny dimple teased her left cheek. He noted that laughter made her plump breasts jiggle appealingly and when she frowned only one corner of her mouth tilted downwards.
    Alas, by the time dinner was finished, the desire to kiss her had not receded the tiniest bit. He wanted to kiss more