The Right Twin (Times Two Book 2)

by Laura Marie Altom

  Sarah had known all along that no good could come from having lied about so many details of her life, but throughout the past weekend she’d prayed Shane would be the understanding type. That he’d see her switch with Sadie not as deceitful but as more of a lark.

  Now she snorted at the likelihood that Shane, who’d made it clear how much he despised liars, would take a sudden shine to a woman who’d pretended to be someone else. And judging by the way he’d stormed off Sunday afternoon, it must not have occurred to him that she could be a twin.

  Determined not to waste her free time feeling miserable, but instead, getting past this bump—okay, this crater—in her personal road, she pushed herself up from the window seat, checked her hair in the mirror, then headed down to help her sister in the kitchen. Based on her less-than-stellar culinary track record the odds were good that she’d soon be kicked out. But, hey, at least then she’d be close to the inn’s library and she could grab a good murder mystery.

  She’d just dragged herself down the stairs and into the entry hall when the bell over the front door jangled. She glanced that way, expecting to see one of her sister’s new guests.

  Wrong.

  What she did see stole her breath and what precious little remained of her sanity.

  “No,” she said, hand over her heart. “No way.” Standing in the inn’s open door, backlit by the late-afternoon sun, was not one Shane Peters but two.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Which one are you?” the nearest Shane asked.

  Notching her chin higher, Sarah retorted, “Which one are you?”

  The guy chuckled? Her guy?

  Why was it that even when she felt she’d been wronged that her heart swelled at the ridiculous notion all might still be forgiven? Why did she even care, seeing how she’d never forgive him for having pulled the same stunt on her that she’d pulled on him? Whomever he was!

  Crossing to meet her at the base of the stairs, the man extended his hand for her to shake. “Pardon my rudeness. I’m Hale Brown.” Gesturing to the man behind him, he said, “This is my brother, Heath.”

  Heath? “Who’s Shane Peters? Are you triplets?”

  The man calling himself Hale winced. “I’m afraid Shane’s my alter ego. He’s a, um, character of sorts I use to maintain my anonymity.”

  “Anonymity?” Sarah all but shrieked. “From what? For what? What kind of sick games have you two been playing?”

  “Funny you should mention game-playing,” he said, rubbing his stubbled jaw. “You see…”

  “Sarah? Oh, I…” From out of the dining room Sadie emerged, and upon seeing the two men, she nearly tilted backward from the force of putting on her brakes. “I wasn’t aware we had company. Which one of you kissed me in front of my fiancé? My still peeved fiancé?”

  The man who’d been introduced as Heath said in a bitter tone, “That would be me.”

  The man who’d tried to shake Sarah’s hand said, “As for why my brother made a reservation under an assumed name—my assumed name—that would be because as a reviewer for Zodor’s, it would be—”

  “What?” both Sarah and her twin said in unison.

  “B-but I thought Gretchen was the reviewer?” Sadie said to Sarah.

  “I thought she was,” Sarah replied. Slowly turning to the man she’d thought she loved, she said, “And yet all the time it was you doing the review? How could you?”

  “And how could you?” Sadie asked Hale. “Zodor’s is a world-renowned publication. You have a reputation for giving the most thorough, comprehensive reviews. Yet you had the audacity, the gall, to saddle my inn with someone who might not have known the difference between a sandwich and a soufflé?”

  “Hey!” Heath interjected. “I’m not that dumb when it comes to food. Besides which, any fool could see Sarah here can’t cook her way out of a paper bag.”

  “E-excuse me?” Sarah said. “You told me you loved my food. Was even that just another of your lies?”

  “You and I need to talk,” Hale said to Sadie. “Preferably somewhere quiet. Away from these two—who somehow managed to foil both of our ill-conceived plans.”

  Raising her chin, Sadie asked, “How do you know I even had a plan?”

  “Oh, come on,” he said with a sarcastic snort. “As a fellow twin, cut the BS. Let’s you and I get down to business. Namely, giving your inn the excellent review I still suspect it deserves.”

  Once her sister and Hale had left them alone, Sarah clung to the stair banister so hard that her knuckles turned white. Almost biting a hole in her lower lip, she launched a desperate search for the right thing to say, to do. Less than twenty-four hours earlier she’d nearly been naked in this man’s arms, no secrets between them—aside from hers—but now…

  Seeing how she hadn’t even known his name, he was pretty well a stranger in every sense of the word. Sort of. If she didn’t count the fact that she felt as if she knew every inch of his body. Just nothing when it came to his soul.

  “After all we shared,” she finally said, “how could you not even tell me your real name?”

  He cleared his throat. Looked everywhere else, but wouldn’t return her freezing stare. Was it her imagination or had the temperature dropped a good twenty degrees?

  “Well?” she demanded, hands on her hips. “Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?”

  His slow, sarcastic round of applause spoke volumes. “Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. I poured my heart out to you. You knew what I’d been through with Tess, and yet obviously you didn’t care.”

  “And you did care about what Greg put me through? Did it bother you enough to make you even think about telling me your true name? Or the whole time we were together were you laughing inside, thinking it hilarious that once again I was getting played for a fool?”

  At the top of the stairs a guest room door creaked open. “Do you mind?” a professorial-looking type with horn-rimmed glasses and a bushy goatee asked, a thick leather-bound book in hand.

  “Sorry.” Sarah cringed and shot her mystery man a glare. “We’ll take our conversation outside.”

  Storming past Heath, out the front door and toward the gazebo, all she could focus on was how acutely uncomfortable she felt with the man hot on her heels.

  “As my brother already told you, my name’s Heath. And don’t you dare act all high and mighty when I had real feelings for you.”

  Had?

  “Dammit, woman.” He gripped her arms, turning her to face him and then giving her a gentle shake. “I thought everything about you was perfection. Then, of course, your sister came home, and I realized all those times I’d wondered about your skills you really had been clueless in the kitchen.”

  “Don’t you dare say a word about my cooking, when you heard me go on and on about how nervous I was about the inn being reviewed and all the time you were doing the reviewing. I made private, heartfelt confessions to you, and—”

  “Oh, right, confessions like how the inn made you feel trapped? Saturday afternoon I even bought you this because the color reminded me of your eyes and how sad you’d looked talking about being tied down.” He handed her the paper bag that held her tissue-wrapped necklace and earring set and then he laughed. “That’s rich, seeing how it’s not even your inn! What other supposedly heartfelt confessions were lies?”

  Shoving the small bag into her jeans pocket, it took every ounce of Sarah’s willpower not to slap Heath. “Yes, I’m a lousy chef. And, yes, everything that could go wrong with the inn did go wrong. But what the two of us shared was real. I adored you. For the record, I’m sorry for having deceived you. It was never planned. It just…happened. And now, for you to stand here and accuse me of…” The pain of it hurt too much to allow Sarah to continue.

  First Greg and now this.

  How could fate be so cruel?

  Heath stood there in the burning afternoon sun, listening to those damn swans carry on down by the lake and pretending Sarah’s obviously well-
rehearsed speech didn’t cut to his core. Even though he knew what kind of lies she’d told, his fingertips ached from the effort of not reaching out to her. Of not pulling her hard against him, massaging away her pain. Hell, the pain they both felt. He was hurting, too. Worse than he’d ever imagined possible.

  What if the tears he’d assumed were solely for effect were genuine?

  Right. He’d assumed as much about Tess, and look where that’d left him. She’d not only stolen a fortune from his business, but she’d transformed him into the hard-nosed cynic he was today.

  “You know,” Sarah said, visibly trembling and issuing a runny-nosed laugh, “the whole time we were together, I felt guilty for not coming clean with you. And now I see how misplaced all that negativity was. You’re obviously not worthy of the guilt.”

  A muscle popping in his jaw, Heath asked, “How do you figure that?”

  “Simple. In order for me to feel sorry for hurting someone, I need to believe they’re human enough to feel pain. You, Mr. Heath Brown, are obviously so far evolved that not only do you not recognize sincerity but you don’t even want it.

  “Impressive,” he said with a whistle, glancing off toward the lake. “Almost as if you’ve been practicing that line for a while.”

  “You’re impossible,” she said, storming away from him and heading back toward the house.

  “Oh, that’s good—run away. Real mature.”

  “Don’t you dare talk to me about maturity,” she called over her shoulder, fury flashing from her green eyes. “I, at least, admitted I was wrong. You, on the other hand, have just stood there looking all high and mighty while assigning blame. But before you get too deep into your own self-pity, you might look in the mirror. Because from where I’m standing, there’s more than enough blame to go around.”

  “WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?”

  “Wrong with me?” From the passenger side of his brother’s red Jeep, bulleting down eastbound I-44, Heath laughed. “I’m good.”

  His twin snorted. “Which must be why you haven’t said more than two words this whole ride home?”

  A semi whizzed by, thankfully—at least for the moment—occupying Hale’s attention. Allowing Heath a moment to wallow in the misery that filled his head.

  Where did Sarah get off talking to him like that? Just like Tess, she’d played him for a fool, and this time he wasn’t taking it. He might’ve fallen for her smooth lines once, but it would never happen again.

  “You know she seriously loves you?”

  “Huh?” Heath glanced his brother’s way.

  “Sadie’s sister? Your Sarah?”

  “She’s not mine,” Heath bristled.

  “Yeah, well, regardless, according to her sister, Sarah fell for you—hard.”

  “Her loss.” Dying a thousand deaths inside, Heath swallowed the knot in his throat. How could the woman lie to her own twin? Had she no conscience?

  “Not that it’s my business,” his brother rightfully pointed out, “but why are you being such a jerk about all this? Just like we were conning them, they were conning us.” He chuckled. “Kind of funny if you think about it.”

  The hell it was funny!

  Oh, sure, Hale could sit there laughing, but he wasn’t the one who was torn up inside. He wasn’t the one who’d opened himself emotionally only to discover the woman he thought he loved hadn’t existed outside his mind. The Sadie he’d met had been some odd amalgam, a cross between her homemaking sister and a woman whose profession he didn’t even know.

  “I’M BETTER OFF WITHOUT him,” Sarah said Wednesday night, serving herself another heaping scoop of Sadie’s homemade blueberry ice cream. It’d only been an hour since she’d helped Sadie and Helga clean up after dinner, but for some reason she was ravenous again.

  The necklace and earrings Heath had given her were safely, secretly tucked in her pocket. The vintage crystals were gorgeous—an exact match to her eyes. How could a man who’d known her such a short time recall a detail like that?

  “You keep up this pace, you’ll turn into a blueberry,” Sadie said, snatching the ice cream tub and snapping on the lid. “Although it might be good advertising. I could make a special curved bench for you on the front porch. Sell tickets so that little kids could come and stare at you.”

  After swallowing her latest bite, Sarah stuck out her tongue.

  Helga bustled in from the dining room. “I tell her that man no good.”

  Gaping, Sarah said, “You were the one throwing us together. Telling me, ‘Relax. Go ahead and spend time with him.’ Your eye said we were a perfect pair.”

  “You must not have understand. I said no to that man.” Tapping her forehead, she added, “Yes, I have the all-seeing eye, and if you would have listened, it said he was no good. Bubbka agrees.” Helga snatched her battered brown purse and a sweater, then gave both Sarah and Sadie hugs before humming her way out the back door.

  Sarah said, “You do know that woman’s nuts, don’t you?”

  “She means well.”

  “In Nuttyville.”

  “Seriously, sweetie—” her twin curved her fingers around her forearm “—I’m worried about you. And in her own way, so is Helga. According to Hale, Heath’s crazy about you. Literally. The man’s reportedly worse off than you. Hasn’t been to his office since Monday.”

  “And?”

  “I take this as a clear sign he’s being pigheaded and that eventually he’ll come around.”

  “Just in time for a double Christmas wedding?”

  Smoothing her hand along the stainless-steel counter, her sister’s expression turned wistful. “Wouldn’t that be the ultimate in dreamy?”

  Laughing, Sarah said, “Oh, it’d be the ultimate in something. No doubt something of a disaster.”

  “Stop,” Sadie said. “Trust me, any day now Heath will realize what a fool he’s been and he’ll come begging you to take him back.”

  “What if I don’t want him back? He said horrible things.”

  “According to Hale, Heath’s been put through the ringer when it comes to romance.”

  “And I haven’t? And since when are you and this Hale so chummy?”

  “Since we both care about our respective twins. Sweetie, I know Greg put you through hell, but maybe you’ve had longer to adjust. Plus, I guess Heath lost not only his heart but a huge amount of money—which might’ve worsened the blow.”

  “I know,” Sarah said on her way to the cracker cabinet, fishing out a box of Wheat Thins.

  “As an upstanding member of the Royal Order of Cookie Thieves,” Sadie softly said, “I have to ask, is there anything I can do to make you feel better?”

  “Thanks, but no. I can handle this on my own.”

  Can you? her conscience nagged.

  Could she somehow forget the smell of him? The taste? The way he’d made her feel whole. The silly way she didn’t want to try on the necklace he’d given her unless he was the one slipping it around her neck, brushing the tender skin with the backs of his fingers, giving her pleasurable chills while kissing the sensitive spot behind her right ear. She didn’t know if she could forget all of that or not. But for sanity’s sake, she was sure as heck going to try.

  THURSDAY AFTERNOON, when a knock sounded on Sarah’s open office door, she looked up, expecting her next client. The last person she’d expected was Heath. At least she thought the man in front of her was Heath. Wasn’t he?

  “Hey,” he said, standing in the doorway, hands in his pockets. He wore sharply creased black slacks and a cobalt button-down that made him even more handsome than usual.

  “Yes?” she asked, hoping she came across as cool and unaffected even though her heart felt perilously near to beating right out of her chest.

  “Do you have a second? I’d like to talk.”

  Had he always had that faint scar on his chin? They’d been so intimate. How could she not have noticed?

  “Sarah?”

  She tensed. The man’s words had stung.
Hard. Maybe she didn’t want to talk to anyone ever again. “I thought we’d said all that we had to say?”

  He swallowed hard, gestured to her ivory leather guest chair. “May I?”

  “If you’d like.”

  “You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”

  “Should I?”

  “Honestly? No.” After a sad laugh, he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. Fingers steepled, he set his chin on them and sighed. “I said some bad things to you, Sarah. Made completely unfair accusations. And for that I’m sorry.”

  “Th-thank you.”

  He nodded. Flashed a faint smile that in her heart of hearts looked nothing like the one she’d thought she remembered so well. Could that be another sign she’d never really known him at all? “Not that it excuses my actions, but falling for Tess, a woman who stole almost everything I had and was…” He patted his chest. “It changed me. I’m no longer happy-go-lucky like Hale.”

  “Did anyone say you had to be?” Sarah longed to reach out to him, soothe the battered lines around his eyes.

  “Anyway.” He cleared his throat, pushed to his feet. “That’s all I had to say. I just thought, at the very least, I owed you the same apology you gave me.”

  “Okay.” She stood, too, holding out her hand, wishing for a hug but settling for a brief kiss of their palms.

  What had happened between them?

  At the inn they’d talked for hours, and yet now it felt as if they’d become strangers.

  “Take care,” he said, releasing her hand as abruptly as he’d taken it.

  “You, too,” she said past an ache the size of New Hampshire in her throat. So this was it? They wouldn’t be bitter enemies, but he no longer wanted to discuss that future they’d been so excited to launch?

  With one last lingering look, he was gone.

  And inside, where it mattered, a piece of her disappeared. God help her, but she loved him. Maybe now, after having been given that gentle glimpse of his humanity, even more so. He was human, suffering. Just as she was. Only maybe worse, seeing how he apparently refused to release the pain in order to make room for love.