The Secret Sister

Manhattan Friday morning

Call Jo-Jo.

Urgent.

Christy McKenna looked at the date on the message call slip. Three days old. Just one of the many notes that had built up during her two-week vacation. But reading this note made her stomach feel as though the bottom of the world had just fallen out.

She hadn't heard from her younger sister in twelve years. It had been bad news then.

It would be bad news now.

Christy felt the old familiar mixture of love and guilt and unease wash through her. Jo-Jo couldn't help that she'd been born with the kind of beauty that literally made people stop and stare. It wasn't Jo-Jo's fault that most people tripped over themselves in their rush to please her. Against an everyday setting, the kind of beauty she had was stunning.

As a result, Jo-Jo thought the universe revolved around her perfect body.

You like people because of certain things, Christy reminded herself wryly. You love them despite certain things. Like a beauty that's equaled only by her selfishness.

For better or for worse, Christy loved her dazzling younger sister. She always had. Twelve years couldn't change that. Nothing could.

But Christy really wished she could like her sister.

As she flipped through more telephone messages the cool breath of the past chilled her spine. After twelve years of silence, Jo-Jo had called five times in two weeks.

What's gone wrong in my baby sister's life that a smile and an extra swing of her fabulous hips can't fix?

Nothing answered Christy's silent question but the equally silent slips of paper clenched in her hand. She had a gut-deep certainty that something was very wrong.

Something Jo-Jo would expect Christy to fix.

"Shit," she muttered.

Nobody responded to the unhappy word. She was alone in her office with the door closed because she didn't want to be interrupted while she did triage on the work that had been piled on her desk while she was gone.