Nathan's face was streaming with sweat, and with a sinking feeling, Jake sat down again. "Even if I wanted to help you," he said, and as he spoke, he knew it was definitely the wrong thing to say, "there's nothing I could do-"

"There is, there is." Nathan didn't wait for him to finish before breaking in. His eyes blazed now with a frantic light. He grasped his brother's hand. "You could do it. You could go to England on my return ticket. You could use my passport. No one would know you weren't me!"

Jake pulled his hand away and pressed himself back in his seat. He stared at Nathan as if he'd never seen him before, and although they'd never been close, something intangible died inside him. This was what Nathan had really come for. Not to see him, not to talk, not to share anything except this dirty secret. Nathan was prepared to make Jake an accessory to a crime, uncaring that if he was caught, he could go to prison in his place.

His distaste showing in his face, he said simply, "No."

Nathan's eyes narrowed. "You refuse?"

Jake shook his head. "Didn't you expect me to?"

"Frankly, no." Nathan gazed at him with bitter eyes. "After all, it's what you did when you came back from Vietnam, isn't it? I don't recall you having any crisis of conscience because you tried to beat the system then."

Jake bit back the ugly retort that sprang to his lips and made to get up again, but this time Nathan stopped him. "Please," he said imploringly, the veins standing out on his forehead. "Please, you've got to help me. If-if I screw up, they'll involve Cat, and it could kill Pa. I know you don't care about him, but he's not as tough as you think."

Jake's contempt was plain. "You son of a bitch," he said harshly. "You'd do anything, say anything, so long as you saved your own rotten hide! My God, you disgust me. Well, tough, but I won't do it. Find some other nut to screw!"

"What have you got to lose?" cried Nathan, hanging on to his wrist and preventing him from moving away. "I'm not asking you to deal with this guy. Just take the case to London and leave it where I tell you. Then check into a hotel in London. I'll meet you there. I'll be on the next flight."

"No."

"Why not?" Nathan groaned. "It's so simple. You use my ticket, and I follow you. We'll switch passports at the hotel, and you can fly home."

"No."

Jake was adamant, and realising his persuasion wasn't working, Nathan let him go. "All right," he said, dropping his face into his hands. "Go, then. But don't think I don't know why you're doing this." His voice became muffled, but his words were still audible. "You want to get back at me. You've always been jealous of the fact that our father chose me instead of you."

"Jealous!"

Jake knew he shouldn't respond to Nathan's desperate accusations, but that one was too close to home. He couldn't deny that there had been times when he'd envied his brother. But it was years since he had thought of it, and he certainly didn't envy him now.

"Yes, jealous," insisted Nathan, sniffing. "You've always resented me. Resented the fact that I had a better life."

"No-"

"Yes. You're not telling me you were happy, being stuck with that moron, Connor? God, it wasn't me who came looking for you, big brother. It wasn't me who used to stand outside of your house, spying on you, wanting for us to be friends! Remember?"

Jake's jaw compressed. "You were glad enough to see me when I pulled those punks off you," he reminded him tightly, recalling their first meeting with an unwilling sense of pain.

It had been just before he left for Vietnam. He'd been in a camp not far from Prescott, and he'd had the crazy notion that he might not be coming back. He'd decided he wanted to speak to Nathan at least once before he embarked for the Far East, so he'd ducked out of camp and hitched a ride to town.

He'd trailed Nathan and one of his pals to a bar in the sleaziest part of town, and then been beaten up for his pains when a couple of thugs had cornered the two rich youths by the jukebox. He'd jumped in to help them, and his uncanny likeness to his brother had caused some confusion. In the ensuing struggle, Nathan and his companion had gotten away.

He knew Nathan had recognised him. He'd found out later that Jacob had never hidden the fact that he had a twin. But Nathan hadn't cared what happened to Jake, so long as he wasn't injured. He'd saved his own skin, and that was all he'd cared about then. Hell, it was all he cared about now.

It was one of those occasions when Jake wondered if he wouldn't have been better off not knowing he had a brother. Although his mother and Fletch had been reconciled before she died, he doubted she'd ever truly forgiven him and Nathan for being born. He'd always reminded her of Jacob-and of the way he'd betrayed her. Her life hadn't been easy before, but it had been a damn sight harder after Fletch found out.

Nathan combed his hand over his hair and looked up at his brother with cold, accusing eyes. "Okay," he said. "Forget it. Forget I ever came here. Forget I ever asked you for help. It was a crazy notion anyway. We're not really brothers. We just share a likeness, that's all."

"That's all it means to you, maybe," muttered Jake harshly.

Right now, he wanted nothing so much as to put this ugly scene behind him. He wasn't totally convinced by Nathan's story, even if his brother's cowardice was plain enough to see. What did Nathan really want, and did he, Jake, really care? It sounded as if his brother's future was as shaky as his marriage.

"What do you mean?" Nathan demanded now, and Jake winced at the sudden hope that had appeared in his brother's face. For once Nathan wanted a brother, so why did it sound so surreal?

"Get the case," said Jake at last, telling himself it was the lingering loyalty to his mother's memory that made him say it. He had plenty of free time due to him; hell, he never took a holiday, and he was making no promises. But perhaps there was something he could do to ensure that Caitlin wasn't hurt...

2.

The hospital was teeming with people. Many of the accident victims had been brought to St Anselm's, and the doctors and nurses were working round the clock in an effort to keep up with the load. The lobby resembled nothing so much as a train station, with would-be passengers dashing from desk to desk, desperate for news, desperate for information.

Caitlin wasn't one of them. She didn't feel like one of them; she didn't look like one of them. The anxiety she could see mirrored in their faces was not her anxiety; the fear that some loved one had perished in the crash was not what had brought her here.

Yet, as she pushed her way through the press of bodies, she couldn't help an unwilling twinge of concern. Nathan might be all kinds of a bastard, but he was her husband, and for all her avowed indifference, she would not wish to see him dead.

And he wasn't dead. He was injured, but he wasn't dead. When the authorities had contacted her, to tell her that her husband had been one of the passengers on board the transatlantic flight that had crashed on take-off, they had instantly informed her that Mr Wolfe was one of the survivors. Like many of those who were injured, he had been taken to St Anselm's hospital in New York City, and if she required any further information, Caitlin should contact the hospital direct.

It had come as a complete shock. Caitlin hadn't even known Nathan was flying back on that plane. He'd left for New York over a week ago, ostensibly to visit his father in Prescott, New Jersey. He hadn't told her why he was going, and she hadn't heard from him since.

Not that that was unusual. These days, they rarely discussed personal things at all. It was only because her father expected it that they continued to share the same flat. But they had their own lives, their own friends; they might as well have lived apart.

Caitlin wondered if Nathan had really been to see his father. She knew pathetically little about his background, and what she did know was hardly up to date. She knew his mother was dead and that his father was virtually a recluse-at least, that was the excuse he'd given her for Jacob Wolfe not attending their wedding. And it must have been true, she supposed, or her father wouldn't have encouraged the match.

Weariness descended like a cloud upon her. What was she really doing here? she wondered disconsolately. Why had she let her father persuade her to make this trip? Whatever had happened, Nathan wouldn't want to see her. She should have told her father the truth and made him send someone else.

Marshall O'Brien could have done it. Her father's personal assistant-secretary-henchman-would have handled the less attractive details far better than she. He wouldn't have felt as helpless as she did staring round this vast foyer, with no earthly idea where her husband might be. And no helpful nurse to direct her. She sighed heavily. Just a cacophony of voices, and squealing gurneys, and-noise!

Yet it was she who hadn't allowed Marshall to accompany her, even though her father had suggested it. After living a lie for almost three years, she was not about to expose the travesty of their marriage just because Nathan had been involved in a plane crash. Dear God, when she'd first heard the news, for a second-for the minutest, most shameful second of her life-she had actually believed that it was over. In spite of all the guilt and recrimination she had felt later, for that one fleeting second she'd thought she was free...

A harassed receptionist eventually informed her that her husband was in a ward on the twelfth floor. "Just take the elevator, take the elevator," the woman exclaimed when Caitlin asked for directions. Then turned away almost immediately to answer another query.

She could have been a serial killer and she'd have received the same instructions, Caitlin thought wryly. Any security there had ever been had been eclipsed by the very real demands of the situation. It was no one's fault; there simply weren't enough staff to handle it. In circumstances like these, the most you could hope for was a civil tone.

The lifts, when she found them, were jammed with stretchers and still more people. Everyone seemed to be talking at once, and the mix of sounds and dialects was deafening in the ponderous, clanking cubicle. But they ascended, albeit ponderously, to the upper reaches of the hospital, stopping at every floor to disgorge and take on more passengers.

Caitlin inevitably found herself pushed towards the back of the lift, with the iron rails of a gurney crushed against her stomach. She had never felt claustrophobic before, but the panic of confinement rose sharp and unfamiliar inside her. Only the awareness of the injured child on the gurney kept her silent, the bottle of plasma held high by an orderly providing a steadying focus on which to fix her gaze.

They reached the twelfth floor at last, and Caitlin forced herself to step out onto the vinyl landing. The gurney had swished away to her left, and her fellow passengers rushed off to find the nearest nursing station. But Caitlin took a moment to compose herself, as the smells of the hospital washed around her. Nathan would not expect her to rush to his bedside. In the circumstances, her being here at all seemed out of place.

She should never have married him, she thought again, with a sense of vulnerability. It was a feeling she'd had many times before. But it had been what her father had wanted, and after resisting him for so long, it had seemed the most logical thing to do.

How wrong she'd been...

Another lift stopped beside her, and realising she was causing an obstruction, Caitlin began to walk towards the busy nurses' station. Around her, the tide of humanity continually ebbed and flowed, and listening to the unmistakeable sounds of grief, she wondered how she could be feeling sorry for herself when many of these people had lost friends and loved ones. At least Nathan was alive, and God willing, he'd make a full recovery. She should be glad he'd survived. Not bemoaning her fate...

She waited her turn silently, relieved that she was not obliged to make trivial conversation. It was a huge hospital, with the corridors stretching away to left and right evidently accommodating many wards. The sign, hanging above their heads, announced Neurosurgery and Neurology, and she was just absorbing the significance of this when the busy nurse asked her name.

"Um..." Caitlin looked at her a little blankly. "I-Wolfe. Caitlin Wolfe."

"We don't have any Caitlin Wolfe on this floor," the nurse declared impatiently.

She was already turning to the next inquirer when Caitlin exclaimed, "It's Nathan. Nathan Wolfe." She flushed unhappily. "I misunderstood. I thought you wanted my name."

She glanced at the couple behind her, hoping for their support, but the woman seemed dull-eyed and lifeless and the man looked right through her. Evidently the news they'd received had left them in a state of shock, and once again Caitlin felt guilty for her lack of grief.

"You're Mrs Wolfe, is that right?" the nurse asked with more compassion, and Caitlin nodded quickly. For the first time, she felt a prickle of alarm. The nurse was eyeing her with some sympathy now. How serious could Nathan's condition be?

"I'm going to have to ask you to take a seat, Mrs Wolfe," the nurse declared at last, compounding her fears. "The doctor would like to speak to you before you see your husband. If you'd just wait over there..."

"He's not dead, is he?"

Caitlin blurted the words urgently, and this time even the man and woman behind her in the queue showed some response. But the nurse was professionally reassuring. "He's doing very well," she declared, shuffling the folders on the desk. "The doctor just wants to talk to you. It's nothing too serious." She lifted her hand as if taking an oath. "I promise."

Caitlin wasn't sure how sincere the nurse's promise might be. She was still troubled by those two words: Neurosurgery and Neurology. It must mean that Nathan had injured his head. Oh, God, he wasn't brain damaged, was he? That would be the cruellest blow of all.

But she wouldn't think about things like that, she decided, taking a seat on one of the steel-framed vinyl chairs. She had to be confident, and optimistic. Someone would surely have told her if Nathan was in a coma.

A little girl of perhaps two or three was waiting with her mother a couple of seats away. Although she was obviously too old to do so, she was sucking her thumb, and Caitlin wondered what anxieties she was suffering in her own small way. She had to know something was wrong. Her mother had been crying. Was that why she was seeking comfort in the only way she knew?

Caitlin attempted a smile, but it wasn't returned, and even that effort was too great to sustain. Dear God, she thought, let Nathan be all right. Whatever he'd done, he didn't deserve to be here.

The little girl continued to stare at her, and Caitlin wondered if things would have been different if she and Nathan had had a child of their own. It might not have changed his character, but he might have loved their child.

Her mind drifted back to her own childhood. When had she become aware that her own father had wished she had been a son? Was it when he'd realised her mother could have no more children after Caitlin? When he'd learned the dynasty he'd hoped to found was never to be?

To begin with, it hadn't seemed that important-at least not to Caitlin. All through her childhood, all the time she was growing into adolescence, she had never felt she was a disappointment to either of her parents. She had been given everything a child could wish for, and they had had her love in return.

But she had always been a fairly serious child, never happier than when her nose was immersed in a book. She had satisfied every academic hope her parents could have had for her, and following a successful career at school, she had gone on to gain a brilliant degree besides.

Her aim had always been to work for her father's company. Naively, she supposed now, she had seen herself taking over from him one day and running Webster Development. It was an ambition she had formed when he had first taken her to visit the Webster Building, and it was not until she'd gained her degree that she'd realised how unrealistic her hopes had been. Her father was from the old school, to whom the idea of a woman in a position of total authority was something of an anathema. He was prepared to make her an associate director, if that was what she really wanted. But as far as taking over when he retired...

A man in a white coat was approaching, and Caitlin felt her mouth go dry. Oh, God, she thought, please let it be good news. But the man didn't even look at her. He just walked by, intent on some objective of his own.

Her thoughts returned to Matthew Webster. Not that she could blame her father for her present predicament, she reflected bleakly. Although his attitude might have caused her to rebel, ultimately she had been the one who'd made the mistakes.

And so, much to her father's dismay and her mother's quiet amusement, she had found herself a flat in London. Instead of commuting to the office from her parents' home in Buckinghamshire, as Matthew Webster had expected, she had abandoned her ideas of working for the company and accepted a temporary position in a friend's art gallery instead.

Of course, from her father's point of view, she couldn't have made a more unsuitable decision. The men she met in the course of her work at the gallery were not the sort of men he admired. Mostly, he regarded artists, of any per-suasion, as wimps and losers, and he lost no opportunity to ridicule her chosen career.

But, once her mind was made up, Caitlin had proved to be as obdurate as her father. She liked the idea that people listened to her opinion; that she was treated as an equal instead of being ignored. And the work was easy. She could have done it standing on her head. It was pleasant, it was civilised, and she'd managed to convince herself it was what she wanted to do.

In addition to which, she had a social life at last. Instead of burying her head in a book every evening, she'd started accepting invitations to the theatre, and to parties, and to various exhibitions. She still had no illusions about her popularity, of course. Growing up as Matthew Webster's daughter had made her cynical, and she couldn't throw that cynicism off overnight. She knew she was neither incredibly sexy nor incredibly beautiful, and for all her independence, she was still too willing to accept that her father's wealth was pulling strings.

"Mrs Wolfe?"

A nurse was standing in front of her, and Caitlin jerked her head up so quickly she went dizzy for a moment. "Yes?"

"Dr Harper says he's sorry to keep you waiting, Mrs Wolfe," the nurse explained, urging Caitlin back into her seat when she would have stood up. "He'll be with you very shortly." She paused. "There's a dispenser over there if you'd like to help yourself to some coffee."

Caitlin made a negative gesture, the dizziness receding. Machine-made coffee was usually unpalatable in her experience, and although she'd come to the hospital straight from the airport, her stomach was not yet attuned to the fact that it was only midday here in New York. It was already five o'clock in London, and on any other day she would have been either at the flat, or working.

"It's the pits, waiting," remarked the little girl's mother suddenly, in an accent that Caitlin found harder to understand than that of the nurse. She sniffed. "I guess you're here for the same reason I am. You got someone injured in the crash?"

Caitlin nodded. "My husband." She hesitated. "Did you...?"

"Yeah. Emmy's father was on the same flight," agreed the woman, pulling a used tissue out of her sleeve and blowing her nose hard. "He was on his way to England to see his sick mother. Leastwise, that's what he told me." She grimaced. "Who knows about men?"

Well, not me, thought Caitlin ruefully. She exchanged a wistful smile with the little girl. When David Griffiths had come along, she'd been vulnerable and far too willing to believe what he said.

David was the brother of the friend who'd invited her to work at the gallery, and, for some unknown reason, he had been instantly attracted to her. Had he seen how naive she was? How inexperienced? Or had he sensed what a pushover she'd be?

Whatever, he had certainly made her feel special. The tall, shy young woman, who had come to help his sister sell her paintings, had been transformed into a glowing creature who believed everything he said. She'd sometimes wondered if he'd ever cared about her. Or if she was the kind of person who only saw what she wanted to see.

His sister, Felicity-Fliss-had approved of the alliance. She'd assured Caitlin that she was good for her brother and that he'd never been so happy before.

Sometimes, Caitlin had found him a little impractical. She was still her father's daughter after all, and his attitude to-wards money gave her pause. But he taught her that life was not just a series of balance sheets and that personal fulfilment meant more than being a success.

Their affair had not been a passionate one. In lovemaking, as in everything else, David preferred to take it very much at his own pace. Caitlin doubted he had ever felt strongly about anything that didn't directly affect his own wellbeing. He was selfish and self-indulgent-but he was fun.

The only aspect of their relationship that did trouble her was his moodiness. For all his happy-go-lucky ways, there were days when he was not approachable at all. And because in all the time she'd known him he had never had a job, Caitlin had got it into her head that he had financial problems; that although he seemed quite content to borrow money from either her or his sister, secretly he worried about the future.

She remembered she'd even mentioned her fears to Fliss quite early in their relationship. But Fliss had just dismissed them out of hand. David had always had these cranky days, she assured her carelessly. If she had any sense, she'd just leave him alone and he'd come round.

And she had, until that fateful day when she'd entered the small flat he'd occupied above the gallery and discovered him unconscious on the floor...

Looking back now, she could quite see why Fliss had been as angry as she was when Caitlin burst unannounced into her office. She had been dealing with a client at the time, and Caitlin's hysterical belief that David had suffered some kind of stroke had not helped the proceedings. "My God," she'd said later, after David had been carted off to a drug rehabilitation centre, "if you hadn't recognised my brother's little habit for what it was, you must have been living on another planet!"

And Caitlin supposed she had. Or in another world anyway, she conceded ruefully. But afterwards, she'd found it impossible to forgive him, or Fliss, for deceiving her as they had...

"You're English, aren't you?"

Emmy's mother was speaking again, and guessing she needed the comfort of a shared confidence, Caitlin conceded that she was right.

"I flew in from London this morning," she admitted as Emmy left the shelter of her mother's skirt long enough to touch the glossy sable fur that trimmed Caitlin's cashmere coat. "Um-how about you? Do you live in New York?"

"Can't you tell?" The woman was philosophic about her accent. "Yeah, Ted and me, we live on Staten Island. I don't suppose you've ever been there. Believe me, you've missed nothing."

Caitlin smiled. "I'm afraid this is my first trip to New York," she said, grimacing at her ignorance. "I've been to Florida and California, but I've never been to the Big Apple before."

"The Big Apple." The woman repeated the words as if she liked the sound of them. "Yeah, well, I've never been to London. But Ted-he was born there, see."