Free Unauthorized Return (Unauthorized Series Book 4) by Lisa Ladew

he said bitterly, still not able to look Aria in the eye.
    "I never went back to the play, but I fell for Ava exactly the way she wanted me to. I took her out to lunch that day, and tried to pry into her life. She seemed slightly pathetic and needy. I hated feeling that way about her, but I think that's what she was going for. She told me a horrible story about her life. She said she was from Texas and her mother had divorced her father when she was eight years old. Her mother and her father had shared custody of her and her brother but her mother had stolen the two of them and taken off, moving to Florida and changing their names and identities. She said she had no way of contacting her father and by the time she was old enough, he didn't live in Texas anymore and she couldn't find him. She said that when she was sixteen she had gone to court to have herself declared emancipated from her mother and had began to travel all over the country looking for her father. The last word she heard about him was that he had moved to Westwood Harbor but she didn't have the money to head out there and look for him. That was why she was at the play. She said she was reaching out to him in the only way she could afford at that time."
    Aria shook her head and couldn't help but butt in. "How old did she say she was?"
    "Twenty-three."
    "And you believed her?"
    "Sure did. She could've easily passed for twenty-three. How old is she?"
    "We are twenty-nine," Aria said, a twinge grabbing her around the heart and refusing to let go. She remembered twenty-seven years of birthdays celebrated together, having their own special language when they were preschoolers, growing up together and never, ever being apart until she married Jason. And then still seeing Ava almost every night. She could not reconcile this story, this con man story with Ava. Ava, her sweet sister who had always been there ... At least until she ran off with Aria's husband. Suddenly she knew that Coleton's story was going to leave her with no answers, just more questions. She clenched her fists at the thought of it and wished wildly for a paperclip. She stood and began randomly pulling drawers open, looking for anything she could bend and mutilate. She couldn't stand to sit still for one more second. Aria's eyes fell upon the lasagna noodles box in the garbage can and she pulled it out, then sat back down in her chair, ripping it into tiny little pieces that began to collect in a drift at her feet. She lifted her chin at Coleton, wanting him to go on, even though she hated his story like fire.
    As she looked up at Coleton, she saw something in his eyes, something she was unable to identify. He was staring at her with a strange look on his face. Was he surprised that she was twenty-nine? That Ava was twenty-nine? Was he feeling the same thing that she was, that maybe there was some way in the universe that this Ava wasn't her sister Ava? She stared at him intensely, willing him to finish the story, to say something that would make sense to her.
    He seemed to catch her desire and tried to go on. He looked down at his plate and pushed the words out of his mouth. "I asked her where she was staying and she said she had exhausted all of her money in the search for her father and was sleeping at the bus station. I didn't know what to do. She seemed so honest, so sincere. After she said that, I couldn't just tell her okay, see you later then , when I knew where she would end up. I tried to put her up in a hotel. She absolutely would not stand for it. I tried to give her money. She wouldn't take it. So finally I did the only other thing I could think to do. I invited her home with me."
    This information went through Aria like a spear. A blunt and rusty spear that tumbled through her body, tearing and ripping as it went. "You slept with her," she spit out before she could stop herself. She hoped desperately that Coleton saw nothing wrong with her accusation. She knew she had no right to be upset