“I’m not sure what game you’re playing, pretending to be your sister, but you’re Neva, all right.”
“No proof.”
“None needed. You two are different in countless number of ways. But I’ll start with this: your scent is completely different. Carla’s scent is nice—a little sharp and pungent, but sweet, like a key lime. You, on the other hand, smell like lilies of the valley. A crisp and bright scent with a delightful floral overtone.”
“You sound like you’ve been talking to Chessie Gibson about one of her Sweet Meadow Scents products.”
“Just sniffing around.”
“Peter…”
“What’s going on, Neva? Why the charade?” He needed to know before he bared his soul. When she opened her mouth to speak, he shook his head. “Never mind. Not now. I have things I need to tell you, but now is not the time or place.”
The crowd jostled and someone shoved Neva. Peter glanced over her shoulder, ready to growl at whoever had set her off-balance. He frowned. “Carla?”
Neva turned, gaping at her sister. “I thought you were too busy to come.”
Carla swept her gaze up and down her sister’s body. “You look good in that…um…dress. Then again, you look good in anything, so there’s that.”
“I agree,” Peter said, wrapping an arm around Neva’s shoulders.
Carla no longer wore her trademark haughty expression. Instead, her eyes seemed soft. Caring. “I see the plan didn’t go as expected,” she drawled.
“Carla…” Peter’s voice held a warning tone.
Neva glanced between the two, confused.
“Why don’t you just tell her?” Carla asked Peter. “Confess what you’re doing. Explain about the—”
“Now’s not the right time,” Peter said, tightening his grip on Neva’s hips.
“Talk to her,” Carla argued.
Peter did his best to ignore Neva’s inquisitive and concerned expression. “I think all of us should head out,” he said.
“Look,” Carla interrupted. “Something happened years ago between you two that you both buried underground. Why the hell can’t you just ask her what went wrong?”
Neva couldn’t figure out why Peter’s expression had gone from sweetly seductive to stressed-out and tense. She didn’t know why he’d dropped his hands from around her waist and backed up. She did know, though, her sister had caused this change in him. There was an unclear subtext in their conversation. As Peter’s face flickered with changing emotions—tension, confusion, anger, worry—Neva felt acid rise to the back of her throat and her neck twinge as a muscle there tightened.
Whatever Carla was doing to Peter, she needed to stop.
“Peter. Talk to my sister,” Carla continued, determination heavy in her voice. “Tell her what’s really going on. Confess to her about your utterly lame attempt at seduction.”
That was it. Neva had heard enough. She knew her sister—Carla was manipulative and conniving and would do anything to get the guy. And right now, she was playing some sort of sick game with Peter. No way would Neva let that happen. Whatever Carla was up to had to stop. “Don’t say that stuff to Peter. Don’t you dare tell him he’s lame,” she ground out between clenched teeth. “Don’t hurt another man I care about.”
For a long moment, Carla simply stared at her. “What on earth are you talking about?”
Neva crossed her arms over her chest and glared. “You and Mom were always mean to Dad, insulting him behind his back about his upbringing and lack of class.”
“I’m still confused.” Carla’s face was full of what had to be fake confusion.
“Mom would say Dad got elected because of his money, not because of his trailer-trash breeding.”
“Those were Mom’s words, not mine.”
Neva didn’t care that her sister’s eyes suddenly glimmered with tears. This was all an act—everything with Carla was an act. “Then you made out with Peter just to steal him from me. And you seduced my fiancé. So yeah, you hurt my men. And I won’t have you hurting Peter. Not again.”
Carla’s expression shifted…morphed…but slowly, turning from disbelief to pain to anger. “You never wanted the truth, did you?”
“I knew the truth,” Neva snapped out loudly enough to capture the attention of a few bystanders. “You use men. But you won’t use mine.”
“Neva,” Peter interrupted, putting a hand on her arm. “How about we take this discussion home before—”
“You think I had no loyalty to you? To my own sister?” Carla interrupted before Peter could finish his sentence.
“When we were young, sure you did,” Neva argued. “But later? No. No loyalty at all. You made that very clear by your actions.”
Carla reached out and grabbed Neva’s right hand. She thumbed the ring on Neva’s finger. “Remember when I bought these for us?” she asked, her voice shifting from angry to soft in the space of a second.
The noise and gentle chaos of the fundraiser fell away and all Neva could hear was the beat of her own heart in her ears. She tried to rip her hand out of her twin’s grasp, but Carla wouldn’t let go.
“What did I tell you when I gave you this ring?” Carla demanded.
“Let go.”
“Not until you repeat what I said.”
“Carla. Now’s not the time.” Neva glanced over at a perplexed Peter.
“Say it. Say the words.”
“They weren’t true, though.”
“Say it,” Carla demanded. “Say it or I’ll make such a huge-assed scene in front of your new community that you’ll never be able to live down. Say the words.”
The words choked Neva’s throat. The first night Carla had come to visit Neva and her fiancé in Portland, Carla had excitedly given Neva a ring that matched her own. A real emerald, set in white gold.
That was the last time Neva had heard her sister say those words. The last time she’d said them back.
“Say them,” Carla said, determination seeping from every pore. A few people turned their attention to the sisters, and Neva wanted to cringe and hide, but Carla ground out, “Tell me what I said. Tell me what is inscribed inside of our rings.”
“I love you. Always have, always will.” The words flew from Neva’s mouth as if something had reached in and ripped them out of her throat. She swallowed. “That’s what the inscription reads.”
“I love you. Always have, always will,” Carla repeated softly. She dropped Neva’s hand and stared into her eyes. “I meant those words, Neva. Now, you and Peter need to talk. Both of you, deal with the past.”
And then she turned on an expensive high heel and strode out of the auditorium, leaving a shaking Neva alone in the middle of a crowd. Alone, except for Peter. Although plenty of people had turned to watch the scene.
He took her hand in his and held it tight. “We’re getting out of here,” he said. “Now.”
Peter took the curves of the road fast but in control as he drove his truck home. From time to time, he’d glance over at Neva, but she remained quiet during the ride. She didn’t even say anything when he bypassed her driveway and headed for his. When he pulled up to his house, she got out on her own and made her way up the steps in the near-dark, stopping suddenly when she reached the wrap-around porch.
“I smell Brat,” she said.
At least she was finally talking.
“I’ll take a look around. See if I can roust him from wherever he’s hiding.” Peter reached around Neva and unlocked the front door. “Go on in and make yourself comfortable.”
“Do you have anything to drink?”
“I’m assuming you don’t mean water. There’s a bottle of merlot in the cupboard over the fridge. If you want something stronger, you’ll find Jameson’s next to it.”
“Should I pour you something?” She paused in the doorway.
“Yeah, the Jameson’s. Make it a double. Tonight feels like an Irish whiskey sort of night.”
She nodded, then went inside.
>
It took him a few minutes to locate the porcupine underneath the porch and convince the squatter to waddle off, down into the orchard. “Go sleep in a tree,” Peter ordered. “Don’t eat the apples. And stay away from the house. You’re a nuisance.” The youngster grumbled and chittered but continued on, and Peter headed back into the house.
“That was all really weird back at the fundraiser,” Neva said when he entered the living room. She sat on the leather couch in the near-dark, a glass of whiskey in each hand. She held out one glass. “Here. We both get doubles.”
He crossed over the room and sat heavily next to her, taking the drink from her hand.
“We might as well cut right to the chase. What was it Carla was trying to get you to tell me?” Neva asked.
Peter sighed. He downed a gulp of whiskey, made a face, then held the tumbler in his palm, rolling the liquid around. The light danced across the surface. “I wanted to prove to you that I no longer wanted Carla. That I want you.”
“That makes no sense. You were the one who came up with the whole How To Charm A Beauty Queen plan. How on earth could that be proof of anything other than you’re crazy about her and would do anything to get her attention?”
“I made a plan. A very bad plan. One I tried to implement at the fundraiser. And Carla was in on it.”
“My sister. In on this very bad plan of yours,” she said with disbelief.
“Your sister knows the truth.”
“Which is?”
He looked up at Neva, who was nibbling on her lower lip. “The truth is this: I want you.” He watched her reaction to his clear statement, pleased to see the disbelief disappear. Trust wasn’t yet there, but at least there was a question in her eyes. “I’ve asked you out, but you don’t—or won’t—believe my intentions are sincere.”
“You don’t want me, though, not really,” she argued halfheartedly. “You only think you do because you rescued me from the canal. You wanting me the other night must be a reaction to the hero complex. I read about that on the Internet.”
“I call bullshit.”
She frowned.
He placed the tumbler on the side table and placed an arm along the back of the couch, toying with her hair. “It’s you, Neva.”
“How could I believe that, anyway? You’ve always wanted Carla.”
Good. They were finally getting someplace. Time for the truth, even if it was ten years too late in coming.
“Total and complete bull crap. Neva, I stopped having a crush on your sister three months before high school graduation.”
She gaped. “What?”
“Why do you think I kissed you the night of the Senior Party?”
Neva’s eyes went round. “What are you talking about? You didn’t even know you were kissing me that night—you thought you were kissing Carla.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
She swallowed. “No. Not kidding.”
Shock hit him hard. “This isn’t a joke? But then…that means—”
“I was pretending to be Carla that night.”
“Yeah, I know. I knew it back then, too. Of course I knew I was kissing you, not your sister. God, Neva—” How could the two of them have mucked up that night so badly? “I always thought you knew I knew you were pretending to be Carla.”
“No…” Neva looked down at her feet.
“All these years,” Peter said quietly, “you’d believe what you wanted to believe. You never gave me a chance.”
“You were so in love with her for so long. It was an easy assumption to make.”
Peter closed his eyes, taking back on the memory of that night. A memory he had tried to forget but never seemed to succeed. The night of the Senior Party, Neva had called him and told him she planned not to attend. She said she’d gotten new job that started early the next morning and she wanted to get a good night’s sleep.
His heart had hit the floor. He had been gaining the courage for a couple of months to tell Neva how he felt—that he was done having a crush on her sister and instead wanted to be with Neva—in all ways possible. For months, he’d been thinking of Neva, dreaming of Neva, fantasizing over Neva the way he once had about Carla. But he couldn’t risk their friendship. Being best friends with Neva was something he never wanted to lose.
Being best friends with Neva was the only thing that mattered.
But they would soon graduate, and that would change everything. She’d already been accepted to private college in Oregon and he was planning to get his firefighter certification in Sacramento in order to make money to get himself through college. He couldn’t let Neva move away without telling her how he really felt.
It was time to take the risk.
For some reason he’d thought it would be more romantic if, at the Senior Party, he took her up to the roof and kissed her and then pour out the truth—about his feelings, his hopes, his dreams…his desire to share his future with her. And how scared he was to risk their friendship.
But when she told him she wasn’t going to the party, he took it as a sign that he shouldn’t take the risk. No sense in changing things, right? He’d gone anyway, because what else was he supposed to do? He arrived late, and when he walked in the door, he saw Carla in the corner, talking to a giggling group of girls. Normally he wouldn’t have looked twice at the Tipton twin who had given him so much grief over the years, but something was different with her that night.
It struck him, practically sucked the breath right out of his chest, that the girl wasn’t Carla. That was Neva, pretending to be her sister. He didn’t think to ask why, just felt himself go lightheaded as excitement spiraled through his body. He’d been wrong—now was the time to make a change…the time to take a risk.
His mind focused on the present and he glanced over at Neva, who still swirled her glass and stared at the amber liquid as if it held the answers to all of the problems in all of the world, throughout all time.
“So why were you impersonating Carla that night?” he asked, his voice thick with emotion.
She sighed. “Our mom told me to. I was all set to go, so excited to hang out with you that night, but then Carla got a bad case of hives and she looked horrible. Not even the best makeup job could hide the blotches all over her skin. But one of Carla’s cheerleading friends had invited the daughter of French diplomat and my mom wanted the Tiptons to make a connection.” She rolled her eyes. “Clearly I was out. Our mom needed Carla.”
“So your mom made you pretend to be your sister.”
Neva nodded. “That’s the last time I ever did the twin swap thing. Never again. Well,” she laughed harshly, “not until tonight, at any rate.”
Peter could remember catching Neva’s eye from across the crowded room. He’d jerked his head toward the staircase where he and Neva used to climb to escape other school events. She grinned and nodded, and then excused herself from the group of girls and met him at the stairwell. Without speaking, he entwined his fingers in hers and headed up the stairs. Once on the roof, they stood and gazed at the lights of the city twinkling against the dark night.
She’d started to talk—and in retrospect, he clearly should have let her—but he’d been so into his romantic fantasy that he’d grabbed her and kissed the hell out of her.
After, she pulled back and gaped at him. He started to tell her about how Carla wasn’t who he wanted anymore, that he was in love with her, Neva, when she suddenly ripped herself out of her arms and ran off, not saying a word.
That was the last time they’d been together… until two days ago when he fished her out of an irrigation canal. “After the kiss, you ran off before we could talk. Before I could explain,” he pointed out.
“You said ‘Carla.’ I thought you were saying her name.”
“I was trying to say Carla wasn’t who I was interested in. That you were who I wanted.”
Neva slugged back a good half of her drink. She coughed furiously and took a moment to catch her breath. “I’m an idiot.”
>
“You could say that again.” He closed his eyes and let his head drop to the back of the couch. “That was my first kiss, by the way.”
“Mine, too.”
“For a first kiss, it was damned amazing.”
She chuckled, then sobered. “I don’t get it, though. Why didn’t you find me later and explain?”
“I wanted to, but after your dad died, you wouldn’t talk to me. So I gave up. My biggest fear in telling you how I felt was that my confession would muck up our friendship. I figured I’d screwed things up kissing you.”
“This debacle is like something out of a Shakespearean play.”
He flopped a hand over his eyes. “At least Shakespeare let his characters figure out who was pretending to be whom by the time the play ended. But us?” He swore. “I can’t believe you thought I kissed your sister.”
“Sorry?”
“Not good enough.”
“Super duper sorry?”
A brief chuckle escaped from his mouth. “You and your twin love each other so much, but you have such a screwed up relationship.”
“True.” Neva suddenly let out a hollow laugh. “Oh, god. So that means you weren’t making out with her at the park the day my dad died, either.”
“Neva!” Peter practically exploded. “How can I get it into your brain that the actuality of that happening then—of ever happening—is zero to none? I. Did. Not. Make. Out. With. Your. Twin. Ever. End of story.”
“I get it now,” she said hastily. “You really were comforting her.”
“Yes. She was in your house when the cops showed up to explain your dad had been in a fatal car accident. You were still at work, but Carla heard everything. She couldn’t handle it, so she ran. I came across her on the swings. I was on my way over to talk to you about us kissing the night before.”
She dropped her head in her hands. “And when I saw the two of you, I was an idiot and thought you guys were making out.”
“That about sums things up.”
Charming the One: (Meadowview Heroes # 3) (The Meadowview Series Book 7) Page 14