Page 15 of Stolen By the Mountain Man

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Daphne asked.

I blinked in surprise. My sister never cussed. Ever. Neither did I. I’d dropped more F-bombs yesterday than I had in my entire life, combined. If she was speaking like that, she was truly mad.

“Did you come all the way up here and pose as me after I dumped him?”

I shook my head, but the head shake wasn’t to deny things as she might have hoped. Instead, I said, “You never dumped him at all. I intercepted the email. He never got it. As far as he knows, he just spent the night with Daphne.”

She stared at me, her expression not changing. As the silence stretched between us, I found myself longing for her to do anything, even smack me across the face.

The silence was killing me, but I deserved it. I deserved to be punished.

“Why?” she asked.

That question hurt more than anything. There was pain in the word. She was hurt.

“Because I was falling in love with him,” I said. “Iamin love with him.”

“You are?”

The male voice that filled the cabin had me practically jumping out of my skin. Daphne flipped around just in time for Isaac to emerge at the top of the stairs, looking from her to me with very obvious confusion.

“I am,” I said. “But I’m not Daphne.”

“I’m Daphne,” my sister said. “And you must be the guy I was chatting with for a month.”

He returned his gaze to me. An explanation. That was exactly what he wanted, and I wished I had a better one, but right now what was most important was that I spit out the truth.

“What’s going on?”

Isaac spoke directly to me, disregarding my sister completely. Absurd as this whole moment was, this was what I’d waited for my whole life—for someone to see me when my sister was standing beside me. That never, ever happened.

“I’m Helena, Daphne’s little sister.”

“She’s been pretending to be me,” Daphne said. “I changed my mind about marrying you. I sent you an email, but she intercepted it.”

“I decided to step in for her when she backed out,” I said.

His features darkened at my words, and I mentally backtracked. What had I just said? Oh, yeah. Basically, I made it sound like I was just jumping in for a free trip to North Carolina or something. Far from it. I had to rush to correct that.

“I had a huge crush on you from the first time I saw your picture,” I said. “I guess you could say I started falling in love with you. I’d resigned myself to being your sister-in-law, but when Daphne backed out?—”

“Hold up a minute,” Daphne interrupted. “I want to make it clear I wasn’t flaking out on something. Marriage is a big step,and I went into it for the wrong reasons. I’d been dumped. I was hurt. I was thinking more about getting back at my ex than what my actual future was. When I really started thinking it through…well, it was just a bad idea.”

“But I came into it for all the right reasons,” I said, looking at my sister. “I want this. I want to live here in Seduction Summit. I want to work from here and be a mom and a wife. But mostly, I want to be with this man.” I shifted to look at Isaac. “I want to be with you.”

I held my breath. This could be it. He could be so furious, he’d tell me he’d never forgive me. And could I blame him? I had deceived him, after all.

But instead, his features softened. “I feel exactly the same. And you’re going to be a great mom.”

“And a great wife,” I said.

“So that’s it?” Until Daphne spoke, I’d almost forgotten she was standing there. But yeah, she had every right to still be mad. “You’re just going to marry this guy and move here. I can’t even see you without hopping on a plane?”

Was she for real? “You were going to do the very same thing just two weeks ago.”

“Yeah, but that’s different,” she said. “I was going to be here, and you’re leaving me in Philadelphia.”

“Everyone loves you there,” I said. “And I know our parents would be far more hurt over you moving away.”

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