Downhome Darlin' & The Best Man Switch

by Victoria Pade

  Memories of last night temporarily blocked his senses. They’d necked by the light of the moon like two kids at summer camp, and he was ready for more. Much more. But he felt a gnawing discomfort around her, and he knew why. He hadn’t been completely honest.

  He wondered whether she would forgive him for having pulled the switch at the wedding. But then, why wouldn’t she? Certainly he had to come clean at some point. The trick was finding the right moment.

  Of course, there was no time like the present. Grant took her hand. “Mitzi, there’s something I have to tell you.”

  Mitzi froze as she stared into Grant’s dead-serious eyes. Here it comes! The big letdown. For some stupid reason, she’d relaxed her guard, and had forgotten that all good things came to a speedy end. “Don’t tell me, I think I can guess.”

  Grant’s eyebrows arched dramatically. “You can?”

  She sighed. “You have another girlfriend hidden away somewhere.”

  He looked surprised. “No.”

  “A model, maybe,” she guessed, hoping to cut the bad news off at the pass.

  “Of course not.”

  “You’re quitting your job and running off to the Himalayas to join a monastery.”

  “No.” He laughed, completely perplexed. “Excuse me, but what are you talking about?”

  At the risk of sounding like a neurotic, she confessed, “I’m talking about all the excuses men use to avoid commitment, at least to me.”

  His smile faded. “Those things happened to you?”

  She nodded. “In the past three years.”

  “Good heavens,” he exclaimed. Then he tilted his head and asked, “A monastery?”

  She nodded miserably. “That was Tim. Brother Tim now. Yes, I drove a man to celibacy.” It was a longer, more humiliating story than she cared to relate in detail, but in her defense, she felt compelled to add, “He never even mentioned India to me. Or Buddhism. He was a stockbroker! The only thing I ever saw him follow religiously was the NASDAQ.”

  Grant shook his head in commiseration. “Something like that could make you lose faith in men.”

  “Maybe you can understand now why I value honesty above everything else.”

  His gaze locked with hers. “Of course.”

  “There’s nothing more contemptible than dishonesty, or leading a person on.”

  He gulped. “Well...”

  Mitzi gathered her courage. “Whatever you had to confess, Grant, I’d rather you just spit it out now than when I’m stepping on the plane back to New York.”

  His blue eyes were full of doubt, and for a moment Mitzi knew it was all over. Another one bites the dust, she thought, trying to hold on to some shred of humor. “You can be absolutely brutal,” she assured him. “If nothing else, my dismal romantic past has served as an inoculation against real heartbreak.”

  Grant did feel heartened by her pleas for honesty. After all, what was a little twin switching when the woman had been abandoned three times in three years?

  Then again, maybe his and Ted’s deception would be the straw that broke the camel’s back. “You must have had one romantic triumph,” he said. “Nobody’s that unlucky.”

  Mitzi thought for a moment. “I almost pulled off a romantic coup in high school. Barry Delaney, captain of the basketball team and all-around heartthrob, asked me to the prom. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.”

  Grant was so accustomed now to her tales of woe that he was on the figurative edge of his seat, waiting for the custard pie to be lobbed.

  The wait wasn’t long. “But halfway through the prom, as we were dancing to my favorite Boy George song, I realized that I wasn’t dancing with Barry Delaney, heartthrob, but Larry Delaney, head case.”

  Grant stopped in midstride. All the blood rushed toward his sneakers.

  “They were twins,” she said.

  He felt sick.

  “Larry was just out of juvenile detention, where he’d served three months for causing a disturbance during a pep rally.”

  “Wasn’t that sentence a bit severe?”

  “He’d caused it by using concentrated hydrochloric acid from the chemistry lab, and a torpedo.”

  “Oh.”

  She sighed. “After he was released back into society, he developed a fixation on me, and his brother—I guess he was trying to help in his twin’s rehabilitation—helped set it up so that I went to the prom with him. After that, Barry didn’t seem any more of a heartthrob than Larry.”

  Grant swallowed past the boulder-size lump in his throat.

  “Well, so much for another stroll down memory lane.” Mitzi laughed and turned to him. “Now, what was it you wanted to tell me?”

  Mitzi obviously found telling these disaster stories a purging experience. But Grant’s confession remained firmly lodged in his throat. How could he possibly come out with his tale of twin deception now? Chances were, the moment he even mentioned having a twin she would start flashing back to prom trauma and gymnasiums in flames.

  Her eyebrows came together in an anxious bridge. “Is something wrong?”

  There was. Mitzi could tell. She looked into Grant’s troubled blue eyes and steeled herself for the worst.

  But instead of coming out with some sordid confession of being secretly married or wanting to devote his life to beekeeping, he smiled at her reassuringly. “I don’t know why we’re getting all serious. I was just going to confess to you that I...”

  Barry and Larry...Barry and Larry...Barry and Larry...

  He swallowed, then looked into her adorable green eyes and felt his anxious thoughts melt away. Why borrow trouble? “I never cared so deeply for anyone before, Mitzi,” he confessed.

  She frowned. “What?”

  He stumbled on, “I know how you feel about dates—about stepping into doom, and all that. But I want us to go out when we return to Austin. You know, for a real date—dinner clothes, a fancy restaurant, candlelight, the whole bit.”

  As what Grant was telling her sank through her thick skull, Mitzi wanted to kick herself for being such a paranoid. Not to mention such a blabbermouth.

  “Of course, I’d love to,” she said, joy quickly overtaking chagrin at having spilled out the most embarrassing moments of her love history. Someday, she would have to tell him about the good things about herself, like that she was valedictorian of her kindergarten and a very competent canasta partner. But for now, she decided to keep quiet. She didn’t want to overwhelm the man, after all.

  He smiled and took her in his arms for a long, searing kiss.

  GRANT DANCED into his office humming “Call Me Irresponsible” and reached for the phone. The first thing he did was order a dozen pink roses to be delivered to Mitzi’s. Romance, once you got the hang of it, was a cinch. All you had to do was what he’d avoided his entire life—go with the flow.

  Last night after getting home from the lake, he and Mitzi had ordered out pizza and rented a silly action movie that had featured about thirty car chases and twice that many exploding buildings. Never mind that the pizza tasted like cardboard and he hated mind-numbing movies with explosions. The real pyrotechnics had been going off in his heart.

  In fact, he could swear he was falling in love. Love! In less than four days, his whole life had been turned on its ear. The thought made him laugh out loud as he hung up the phone.

  Ted appeared in the doorway, scowling, his arms crossed. “So! You’re back!”

  Grant grinned. “Don’t worry about that beautiful boat of yours, brother. I left you with a full tank of gas.”

  “Beautiful boat? Good grief!” His brother crossed to the leather captain’s chair across the desk, sat down and leveled a stern gaze at him. “Grant, are you feeling all right?”

  “Never better!”

  “Then do you have any idea how important this week is?”

  “You’re telling me,” he said. “Did you know what Mitzi’s favorite book is?”

  Ted’s eyebrows knit in confusion at the mental
leap he was being asked to make. “No...”

  Grant laughed. “To Kill a Mockingbird. Same as mine. Isn’t that amazing?”

  “Incredible.” Ted cleared his throat officiously. “I don’t know if you’ve forgotten, but we’ve got a problem on our hands here.”

  Grant lifted his palm to stop him. “Wait, let me show you something.” He opened the top drawer of his desk and pulled out a little velvet jewelry box that contained a gold camera charm to go on the dangly bracelet Mitzi always wore. She said it had been her grandmother’s. “I bought this yesterday.”

  Ted covered the box with his big hand before Grant could open it. “You’ve lost your marbles, Grant. You have responsibilities here that you’ve been completely ignoring,” he lectured. It was given in the same how-can-you-be-so-irresportsible? tone that Grant had used on him a million times.

  He even looked a little like Grant. The old Grant. Today, Ted was wearing a somber dark brown suit, while Grant had shown up in a pair of jeans and a pale-blue polo shirt.

  Grant laughed. “Amazing, the place hasn’t fallen apart in my absence.” For years, he thought the old stone building would collapse in a heap of rubble without his presence.

  Ted tapped his fingers impatiently. “Do you realize that while you’ve been running amok with that bridesmaid, Mona’s been out to dinner twice with Moreland and that daughter of his? Mona’s ready to sign on the dotted line, Grant, and the Moreland people have taken Uncle Truman to every golf course within a hundred-mile radius.”

  Grant chuckled.

  “This is no laughing matter,” Ted huffed. “We’ve got to start doing some sharp maneuvering here. Yesterday, in your absence I circulated a memo informing the staff of casual day.”

  Grant blinked. They had never had casual day before. “When is that?”

  “Every day until further notice, i.e., until the Moreland s leave. I thought you’d found out, considering that hobo getup you’ve got on.”

  Grant shrugged. “I just felt like being comfortable.”

  Ted looked at him accusingly. “And you didn’t notice Fred the doorman was wearing cutoffs and a ZZ Top T-shirt?”

  In fact, Grant did remember that everyone looked a little out of the ordinary, but his mind had been elsewhere. But he saw where Ted was going with the idea. Moreland, with his military love of spit-and-polish, would be as repulsed by employees in shorts as he would by Herman Little’s one-man picket line next to valet parking.

  “Casual day. Very clever,” he said.

  Ted basked in fraternal praise only for a moment. “These gimmicks will only carry us so far. It’s time to let the man know we’re going to hang tough. It’s time for the big dinner.”

  “You’re telling me,” Grant agreed, his memory jarred pleasantly by the phrase. “Mitzi and I have a date tonight.”

  Ted looked as if he might have a heart attack. “Tonight? But tonight you’re supposed to have dinner with Moreland and his people at the Sunset Grill!”

  Grant shot him a level glance. “Or you could.”

  Ted’s eyes widened, and his voice ratcheted up a full octave. “Me? Oh, no!”

  “Come on, Ted, it’s just this once.”

  His brother shook his head emphatically. “That’s what you said the last time, and the time before that.”

  “You don’t know what tonight means to me,” Grant pleaded.

  Ted looked down at that little square velvet box and squirmed uncomfortably. “What about what tonight means to the store, and our future?”

  Grant crossed his arms and aimed his most desperate glance at his brother. “I’m talking about the future. You remember what kind of shape I was in before I met Mitzi. I was sleepwalking, living on caffeine and Zantac. This past year, the future was something I didn’t like to think about, and when I did, it just seemed like a grim parade of work and duty stretching ahead as far as I could see. But now that I’ve met Mitzi, I feel like I’ve come back to life again.”

  As he listened, the lines in Ted’s face collapsed, and his blue eyes began to go suspiciously watery.

  “For the first time since Janice left, I feel like I’m on solid ground again.”

  As always, mention of the name Janice caused Ted’s jaw to work back and forth. His face darkened, and a fierce protectiveness shone in his eyes. “I’m sorry, little bro. I didn’t realize how serious this had all become.” He stared at the jewelry box, then looked pityingly at Grant. “All right. I’ll do it.”

  Grant stood and walked him to the door. “I really appreciate it, Ted.”

  Ted shrugged and let out a sharp laugh. “Hey, I’ve got a news flash for you. I’m not all that bad at running this place myself. Did I tell you that yesterday I handled four phone calls?”

  “You’re someone I can really rely on, Ted,” he told him, sending him off to his office with a light push.

  He went back to his desk and started sifting through the mail in his in-box. When a sharp knock sounded at the door, he didn’t even look up. “Come in,” he said, expecting his secretary, Georgia, or Ted again.

  It was long seconds until he noticed no one replied, and before he could look up, a now-familiar hand slapped a photograph on the desk blotter in front of him.

  The picture was clearly taken at the restaurant he and Mitzi had gone to for brunch last Sunday. Sun shimmered off the lake, obscuring the left side of the picture with a sunburst reflection off the glass of the window. But in the corner of the frame was Ted, out of reach of the sunburst, leaning back in his lounge chair, smiling, with his blond friend sitting next to him, leaning close. It was a beautiful photo. Mitzi’s talent with a lens was obvious.

  So was the fact that Grant was now, officially and undeniably, in a pickle.

  He took a gulp of air before looking into Mitzi’s face. Her dark hair cascaded down her shoulders in dramatic waves, framing the anger in her beautiful green eyes. “I just got back from the developers,” she told him in a clipped voice. “Imagine my surprise when I found that in the roll!”

  “Mitzi, I can explain.” But he stopped, wondering exactly how he should begin. Remember your prom night? would be one way.

  “Don’t!” she said, the hurt evident in her eyes. “I don’t want you to explain in detail how I was fooled.”

  “It’s not how it looks,” he told her, but the words had a flaccid thud to them.

  She began pacing furiously. “I thought it was strange that you arrived so late, and out of breath. Now I get it—too many women were running you ragged! You probably had a whole harem hidden away in that restaurant.”

  “Don’t be absurd,” he said. “It was just that woman, and—”

  “Who was she?”

  Grant’s mind raced, trying to remember. “Veronique?”

  Her face fell, and she let out a squeak of dismay. “Veronique? The supermodel?”

  Grant had wondered why the woman looked familiar, but he hadn’t given the matter much thought. “I guess.”

  Mitzi slapped her cheek with one hand and shook her head in disbelief. “Well! At least that’s a step up from the Sears catalog.”

  Grant shook his head, trying to keep up with her. “It’s not what you’re thinking, Mitzi.” He rose from his chair and crossed to her, but she darted away from him, toward the door.

  “I thought you were different, Grant. For one day I dared to think that you were the man who was going to turn my luck around. But now I’d just as soon not see you again!”

  She ran out and down the hall, leaving Grant so stunned, and his emotions so disordered, that he felt as if a tornado had just torn through his office and his heart. He wanted to sprint after her, but one thought stopped him. She was right. He had been dishonest with her from the start. He could have told her the truth, many times, but he’d been afraid of losing her. And now, the very thing he’d been afraid of had happened anyway.

  Ted ducked his head inside the door. “Was that streak of human being I saw running down the hall who I think it was?”


  Grant sighed. “That was Mitzi.”

  “Yeah, that’s about how I remember her.”

  Grant sank into his chair again and tossed the picture across his desk to Ted. “She brought me this. She thought you were me.”

  Ted pointed to the tree behind his table. “But there you are, see? That’s your elbow sticking out behind the ficus. Couldn’t you have pointed that out to her?”

  “Somehow, I doubt she would have been comforted by the sight of an elbow behind a bush.” Grant buried his head in his hands. “She was too sidetracked by the blonde you were sitting with. You never told me she was a model.”

  “Look on the bright side,” Ted said. “If she’d snapped the picture fifteen seconds later, she might have caught you necking with the blond model.”

  For a bright side, it was pretty gloomy. Grant gathered a breath and looked up at his brother. “Well. This solves one problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Dinner. I guess I’ll be able to make it, after all.”

  Ted shook his head. “Grant, don’t be a dope. Go after her and explain. She’d have to be pretty unreasonable not to accept that it was me.”

  “She doesn’t know about you,” Grant said.

  Two blond eyebrows poked up in surprise. “You never told her you have a brother?”

  “Worse. I didn’t tell her I have a twin. I couldn’t.”

  Ted was shocked. “Why not, for heaven’s sake? You were with her for two whole days. What happened?”

  Grant groaned. “Barry and Larry.”

  Ted shot him a dubious look and picked up the jewelry box from his desk. He tossed it in his palm and watched his brother wallow in despair. He felt terrible. After all, it was his big mouth that had made Mitzi so mad to begin with. Then he’d shown up at the restaurant when he should have stayed around longer with Mona and Truman. He wished he could do something to make it up to Grant.

  And then it occurred to him. He could make it up to him.

  Strange, last week he never would have attempted it. But the past few days had taught him something. Namely, that Grant wasn’t the only can-do type in the Whiting clan. Casual day had been his own idea. Imagine! He’d never had an idea before, especially one that would be essential to saving the family business.