Duplicate Daughter

Nick Pierce stood on the tarmac gazing upward, though he knew from experience the high mountain air of Frostbite, Alaska, meant he'd hear the single-engine plane before he actually saw it.He was anxious to get this over with. He was anxious to get back home. There was nothing he could tell the woman flying out of her way to talk to him. He would have made that clear when she called, but like an ostrich hiding its head in the sand, he'd figured if he ignored her she'd go away, and he'd never actually taken one of her calls himself.It hadn't worked. Hell, that approach to problems never worked, but he always seemed compelled to give it a try anyway.To top it off, the weather was changing. He could feel the cold bite of an approaching storm on his face, sweeping over the inlet, up the Panhandle, bringing snow and ice. Winter days were short this far north and at two-thirty in the afternoon, there was only about an hour of daylight left. Oh, face it -- he was sorely tempted to drive away and forgo the meeting before he got stuck at the airport.And then he heard a drone overhead and realized the time to leave had come and gone. A few minutes later, Toby Macleod's aqua DeHavilland Otter came to a stop a few yards away from Nick's four-wheel-drive truck, the wheel skis making slide marks in the accumulating snow. Nick stamped his feet to get his circulation moving, waiting for Toby to turn off the big turbo engine, then walked around to the far side of the plane, waving at Toby as he did so.The sole passenger making the long climb out of the plane was bundled up to her ears in black boots, jeans and an olive-green parka, her head wrapped securely in a pale blue wool scarf. When she looked around to survey her surroundings, flaming red tendrils escaped the folds of wool, snapping like scarlet ribbons against the increasingly white environment. Reaching up and taking her ungloved hand, he helped her step down.She stumbled as her right foot touched the ground, immediately straightening herself. Her head barely came level with his shoulder. She struck him as small, delicate, and out of place as she shoved her hands in her pockets and shivered."You're Nicolas Pierce," she said through clattering teeth, looking up at him with eyes as deep and blue as a fjord. She was extremely pretty and extremely young, at least to his world-weary eyes. He'd be thirty-eight in a few months and this woman looked about eighteen, though he guessed she was actually in her early twenties.Taking her arm, he ushered her around the plane toward his truck."Call me Nick," he said, the weather clock ticking in his head. "And you're Tess Mays," he added.He felt her flinch through her padded coat. "No, my name is Katie Fields.""I don't understand," he snapped, suddenly suspicious. Helen, his housekeeper, had said his father's new stepdaughter had called a few times, the last to announce the fact she was on her way. The stepdaughter's name was Tess. He turned to look down at the woman beside him. "Who?" he snapped."Katie Fields. I'm Tess's sister." She glanced up for a second, her breath a cloud of icy vapor, a few sparkling ice crystals sticking to her cheeks and brow."I don't understand," he repeated, but he resumed ushering her forward as she appeared about ready to freeze in place. The limp grew more pronounced as she hurried beside him."It's a little complicated," she told him as he opened the truck door for her, struggling for a second as the heavy metal met the resistance of the quickening wind.Gripping her shoulders, he leaned down to talk close to her ear so she could hear him. "It's too cold to stand around discussing things. Stay inside where it's warm while I talk to Toby. I'll be right back."With his help, she made the high step up into the cab of his truck, hunkering down in the leather seat with a sigh of relief, covering her lower face with her bare hands, breathing into them in an effort to defrost her noSharpe, Alice is the author of 'Duplicate Daughter', published 2006 under ISBN 9780373887033 and ISBN 0373887035.