“Billy,” he said when his friend walked away, “whatever plan you come up with, just know I am not divorcing Natalie. It’s not going to happen. I love her and she is my wife, understand?”
“Sure, of course. I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Vincent wanted to believe him, but the glint of anger in his eyes said his friend was up to something, and whatever it was, Vincent wouldn’t like it.
The clock on the nightstand read three, but Natalie couldn’t sleep. Vincent snored soundly beside her, his hand on her thigh beneath the sheets. Coming home yesterday had not gone as planned, and she mentally kicked herself for having such high hopes that this would actually work. Not wanting to wake Vincent, she slipped from the bed, grabbed her sweatshirt and shorts from the floor, and tiptoed quietly downstairs. She flipped on the kitchen light and rummaged through the freezer for a carton of chocolate ice cream—anything to ease her anxiety.
A knock at the back door made her scream. The spoon clattered to the floor, and she pressed a hand to her chest as her heart thundered away. The knock came again, and she grabbed a knife from the butcher’s block. They hadn’t tried to come through the back door, had they? Natalie crept towards the back door, the knife in one hand, and with the other, she threw back the curtain on the door.
“Lana? What the hell?”
Her sister stood on the other side of the door, leaves and twigs in her hair and her eyes red and swollen as if she’d been crying. Natalie unlocked the sliding glass door and dragged her twin inside.
“What’s with the knife?” she squealed.
“Why are you knocking on the back door at three in the morning? Are you crazy?”
“Yes,” she mumbled, and without giving Natalie a chance to set the knife down, her sister leapt into her arms, bawling her eyes out and mumbling incoherently. Natalie cursed and tossed the knife gently on the kitchen table and tried to set her sister back on her feet.
“Get ahold of yourself and tell me what’s going on,” Natalie ordered.
“It’s my fault,” she yelped, hiccupping because she was so upset. “I did it. I’m the reason the article came out. Natalie, I’m so sorry. He talked to me and I had no idea who he was and then I hit him and he walked away and I knew…I knew he was up to something—”
Natalie clapped a hand over her sister’s mouth, her mind. “I’m going to take my hand down and you are going to tell me very slowly exactly what happened,” she told her sister. “Understand? Very slowly, all of it.”
Lana nodded frantically, and Natalie removed her hand. “I was meeting Alex at the florist, and this man in a freaking fedora hat comes up to me. He called me Mrs. Cunningham and I laughed it off, telling him I was your twin sister and not you. He told me his name and that he’d been trying to talk to you,” she said, pausing to suck in a loud breath, “and then he asked if we were mistaken for each other all the time.”
Natalie’s stomach plummeted as she realized where this was going. “And you said yes.”
Lana’s head bobbed, sending a few leaves falling to the floor. Natalie reached up and pulled the rest quickly from her sister’s hair. “I told him we did, but there were subtle differences, like our eyes, and your piercings and tattoo help, of course, and a freckle.”
“What did he say next?” Lana cracked her knuckles, a nervous habit they’d both inherited, and bit her lip, shaking her head. “Lana, just tell me, damn it, what did he say!”
“Natalie?” Vincent’s groggy voice called from the doorway. “Lana? How did you get in? What’s going on? It’s three in the morning.”
Lana broke down in hysterics again and hugged her sister. Natalie shushed her and guided her to a chair. Vincent’s half-asleep look of concern turned into straight up confusion until Natalie narrowed her eyes and motioned towards the front of the house.
“Lana, I need you to finish telling me,” Natalie said, crouching in front of her sister in the chair.
She hiccupped again, and hanging her head, she mumbled, “He showed me my profile from the website and asked…asked why, if I was on the website, Vincent married you? Then he mentioned something about an error on the marriage license. I smacked him and yelled at him to go away. Alex showed up and he took off. Natalie…oh, God, Natalie, I’m so sorry!”
“You didn’t know,” Natalie told her, trying to calm her down. “It’s all right. He was pestering us before he talked to you, sis.”
“He was?”
“Yes,” Vincent growled. “Lana, you didn’t do anything wrong.”
She wiped her nose on her sleeve. “Yes, I did! I ruined everything for you two when it was going so perfectly!”
Natalie didn’t know what to tell her sister, so she patted her on the shoulder and looked at Vincent, pissed at that bastard. Hank Butcher. If she’d been there she would have done more than slap the man. She would have punched his damn lights out for harassing her about her sister.
“Natalie?” Vincent nodded towards the doorway.
“We’ll be right back, okay?” she told her sister. “Wait here and blow your nose.”
Natalie followed Vincent into the living room. She waited for him to get angry and rant about her stupid twin sister, but instead, he hugged her, kissing the top of her head.
“I’m really not mad at her,” he whispered. “I can’t believe that man would stoop so low as to trick your sister into saying all that.”
“You don’t think it all came from her then?”
“No. No, I think one of my rivals hired him to start poking around. All he had to do was dig and ask the right questions of the wrong people.” Vincent sighed, and Natalie buried her face against his t-shirt. “On the bright side, I can tell Billy he can really stop worrying about you or your sister.”
“He still thinks it was all us?” she asked incredulously.
Vincent nodded. “Don’t worry. We’ll get it sorted out. I’m going to wake him up. Try and get your sister calmed down. It really wasn’t her fault.” He kissed her again and went upstairs to the guest room to wake Billy. The man had been unable to leave the house yesterday because of all the press.
Natalie steeled herself and went back to the kitchen. Lana lifted her head to stare at her, and she started crying again. “Oh, would you stop already. We’ll figure it out. It’s fine.”
“No, it’s not. He can’t start his political career with a scandal. Who will vote for him?”
“It’s not a scandal, all right? It was a mistake on a marriage license. It happens. And so what if we met online? We love each other and I think that’s pretty clear to everyone around us.” Natalie held her sister’s hand firmly. “It’ll work out, you’ll see.”
Billy and Vincent joined them in the kitchen a few minutes later, and Lana retold her story. Billy’s face turned bright red, but to his credit, he didn’t start yelling as Natalie expected him to.
“Vincent, make a call to your mother. I’m sure she’s up by now,” Billy said, rubbing his forehead. “She might have a better way to go about this than I can think of at the moment. She dealt with your father’s career for so many years.”
Vincent walked off to call Doris. Billy shifted his gaze to Natalie, but when he smiled, it was not friendly. “Can we talk in private?”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.
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