Windfall by Rachel Caine Read Free Book Online Page A

hours later to a banging on the apartment door. I was halfway to the door before I realized I was stark naked. Back to the bedroom to throw on a floor-length silk robe, belted in front, and jam my feet into slippers.
    â€œComing!” I yelled, and hustled back as the knocking continued to thunder. I started to rip the door open, then hesitated and used the peephole.
    It took me about ten seconds—long, full ones—to realize who I was looking at, because she didn’t look like herself at all.
    Oh. My. God.
    I unlocked the dead bolt and flung the door wide. “Sarah?”
    My sister was standing there. My sister from California, my married, nonmagical sister who, the last time I’d seen her, had been wearing the best of Rodeo Drive and sporting a designer haircut with fabulous highlights. Sarah had been one of those annoying girls who’d spent all her time scheming to catch a rich man, and . . . amazingly . . . had actually done it. I hadn’t expected her to be happy, but I had expected her to hang on to her French millionaire husband with both hands and emotional superglue.
    Lots had obviously changed. Sarah was wearing baggy, wrinkled khaki shorts and an oversized Sunshine State T-shirt; the haircut had grown into an unkempt shag, and the remaining, faded highlights looked cheap as tinsel. No makeup. And no socks with her battered running shoes.
    â€œLet me in,” she said. She sounded tired. With no will of my own I stepped back, and she came in, dragging a suitcase behind her.
    The suitcase—battered, ugly, and bargain-basement—gave me a bad, bad feeling.
    â€œI thought you were in LA,” I said slowly. The door was still open, and I reluctantly shut and locked it. There went my last chance for a decent escape. I tried for a pleasant interpretation. “Missed me, huh?”
    She plumped down on my secondhand couch in an uncoordinated sprawl, staring down at her limp hands, which hadn’t seen a manicure in weeks. My sister was a good-looking woman—walnut brown hair, blue eyes, fine, soft skin she’d worked hard to keep supple—but just now she looked her age. Wrinkles. My God. Sarah had wrinkles . And she hadn’t been to a plastic surgeon and Botoxed them out of existence? Who are you and what have you done with my evil sibling?
    â€œChrêtien left me,” she said. “He left me for a personal trainer! ”
    I felt behind me, found a chair, and sank into it, staring at her.
    â€œHe divorced me,” she said. Her already-tense voice was rising like a flood tide. “And he enforced the prenup. Jo, he took the Jag! ”
    That came out as a true, raw wail of grief.
    My sister—who’d always made me look like a piker when it came to composure, style, and taking care of herself—blubbered like a little girl. I jumped up and found some Kleenex, which she promptly used with enthusiasm, and fetched a trash can from the bathroom to catch the soggy remains. I was not picking those up.
    Finally, she was blotched, swollen, red-nosed, and done crying—for a while—and gave me the rest of the tired, familiar story. Chrêtien and personal trainer Heather (Heather? Really?), meeting every Tuesday for a really intense private session. Sarah getting suspicious because his workout clothes never seemed overly worked out. Hiring a private eye to follow them. Dirty pictures. Screaming confrontation. Chrêtien invoking the dire terms of the prenup, which had taken her house, her car, her bank account, and left her with her second car, an old Chrysler she’d let the maid use for errands.
    And no place to live.
    My once-rich sister was homeless.
    And she was sitting on my couch with a suitcase, blubbering, looking at me with pleading, swollen eyes.
    I silently returned the look, remembering all those childhood grievances. Sarah, yanking my hair when Mom wasn’t looking. Sarah, telling all my friends and