“CAN YOU BELIEVE he actually showed up at the hospital?” Standing in the garden of her grandmother’s cottage, Fliss updated her sister on the phone. “I mean, I came here to avoid him, and I’m seeing more of him than I did in Manhattan.”
“I think it’s adorable.”
“It’s not adorable! It added another layer to my totally craptastic day.” Fliss rubbed her fingers across her forehead. “All right, maybe it was kind of him, but it was also inconvenient.”
“Why?”
“I’d already told him I was you, and then there was Grams coming toward us in the wheelchair and—”
“No! You let Grams think you were me? Fliss, you promised!”
“And at the time I meant it! But then Seth showed up right at the wrong moment and I was trapped. This is what I mean. Not at all adorable.” The phone crackled and Fliss paced to the top of a sand dune, trying to get a better signal. Her toes sank into the soft sand, and long grass tickled her ankles. She wondered what it was about this place that nudged her toward the impulsive.
“If you’d told him the truth when you bumped into him, you wouldn’t have been trapped.”
“I know. And I didn’t intend to lie to him, but my mouth took over and said I was you before I could stop it and now the whole thing is getting out of control. Are you mad at me?”
“No, but I’m not good with all this deception. I wish things weren’t so complicated.”
“Me, too.”
“Are you sure Seth didn’t recognize you?”
“Positive. He hasn’t seen me in ten years. I guess that worked in my favor.” And while part of her was relieved about that, another part was a little hurt, which made no sense at all. She’d known him without even turning her head to look at him. How could he not know her? “Having told him I was you, I didn’t have any choice but to keep pretending I was you. It’s just for a couple of weeks. What can possibly go wrong?”
“A million things! Fliss, if you keep pretending you’re me, this thing is going to snowball.”
“Are you kidding? It’s sweltering here. No snowballs in sight.” Her attempt at a joke fell flat. “Maybe you can come for a visit in a week or so and we can swap identities and Grams will never know.”
“She’s going to know. For a start we don’t dress the same way.”
“I’m dressing the way you’d dress if you were at the beach.” She stared down at her flip-flops. “I’m wearing shorts and a tank top.”
“I’m more likely to wear a sundress.”
“I’m not wearing a dress. And I’ve seen you wear shorts.”
“Are you keeping your shoes on?”
“Most of the time.”
Harriet sighed. “Maybe you’ve fooled Seth, but do you really think Grams can’t tell the difference between us?”
“She was expecting you. People tend to see the person they expect to see.”
“You have to tell her.”
Fliss rolled her eyes to the sky. Yet another problem to solve. Usually life sent the boulders, but in her case she seemed to manage to throw them into her own path. “I will. Soon.”
“How is she? I’m worried about her.”
“Well, apart from the fact I almost died of shock when I saw her because ‘a few bruises’ turned out to be a massive bruise that covered pretty much the whole of her body, she seems remarkably like herself.”
“And they’re sure nothing was broken?”
“So they said. We’re using ice on the bad parts.”
“Which are the bad parts?”
“Actually, they’re all bad. It’s finding some body that isn’t bruised that’s the challenge. And talking of which, I should go and help her. We’re doing it every few hours to reduce the bruising and swelling.”
“You won’t be coming home soon, then?”
“No.” And now she was trapped here with Seth. The irony didn’t escape her. “Poor Grams.”
“Yes. Tell her the truth, Fliss. She’ll understand that it feels awkward with Seth.”
Would she? How could her grandmother understand something she didn’t understand herself? It shouldn’t be awkward, should it? Not after ten years.
Brooding on it, she ended the call and wandered back into the house. She removed ice packs from the freezer and then lifted a jug of iced tea from the fridge and took it to her grandmother, who was resting in the living room.
Sunlight spilled through the large windows, illuminating the soft, overstuffed sofas that faced each other across the room. The pale blue fabric was worn in places, but they were soft and comfortable—built for snuggling. Her grandmother had believed in the importance of reading time, and Fliss had spent many hours curled up with a book. She’d pretended she’d rather be outdoors on the beach, but secretly she’d enjoyed the quiet family time that was absent at home. Harriet had preferred Jane Austen or Georgette Heyer, but Fliss had veered toward adventure stories. Moby Dick. The Last of the Mohicans.
“Grams?” She paused in the doorway, and her grandmother turned her head, a smile on her face.
Fliss felt a stab of shock. “The bruising on your face is bad. Is it worse?”
“Just changing color.” She held out her hand for the tea. “Don’t fuss.”
“I don’t fuss.” And then she remembered that if she was Harriet, she’d be fussing. “Poor you. Let me help you ice it.”
She put a thin cloth between the ice pack and her grandmother’s skin as the doctor had demonstrated. “I’ve never seen bruising like this.”
“It will fade.”
“Maybe you should stay out of the garden from now on.”
“Nonsense. I was looking out of the window a moment ago, worrying about what’s happening to my plants while I’m trapped here immobile.”
“If you tell me which plants, I can do whatever needs to be done.” Fliss poured tea into a glass.
“You’re a good girl.”
Fliss felt like a fraud. She wasn’t a good girl. She was a liar and a fraud.
She had a sudden urge to blurt out everything to her grandmother, but she couldn’t face seeing disappointment on her face. Or finding ways to dodge the inevitable questions about Seth.
“Anything you need,” she murmured, and wandered back into the kitchen to throw together a salad for supper. As long as she didn’t actually have to cook anything, she could keep this up for a while. Even she couldn’t burn salad.
She was chopping tomatoes, focused on trying to make each piece as neat and uniform as Harriet would, when there was a knock on the door.
Her heart sank. She hadn’t factored in visitors. This deception was spreading before her eyes, like a drop of ink spilled into water.
She tipped the tomatoes in with the lettuce and hoped whoever it was would go away.
“Harriet?” Her grandmother’s voice came from the living room, and she bowed to the inevitable.
“I’ll get it.”
Hopefully it would be one of the neighbors with a casserole. At least then she’d only have to reheat. She was a champion reheater. And accepting a casserole could happen without worry about anyone suspecting her identity.
She opened the door, replacing her “why are you bothering me?” look with what she hoped was a reasonable imitation of Harriet’s wide, welcoming smile.
The smile died on the spot.
It was Seth, standing shoulder to shoulder with another man she’d met only once before in her life. At her wedding.
Chase Adams.
Holy crap, she was totally and utterly screwed.
It didn’t help that Seth leaned his arm against the doorjamb, all muscle and male hotness.
“Hi, Harriet, we just wanted to drop by and say that if you need any help, all you have to do is ask. You already know Chase, of course. He has a whole team of people who can fix anything that needs fixing in the house.”
“We haven’t met in person, but my wife, Matilda, talks about you a lot.” Chase shook her hand. “It’s good to finally meet you, Harriet. I’m sorry for your grandmother, but her misfortune is my fortune because it brought you here and I need a favor.”
A favor?
Right now she wasn’t in the mood for favors.
She just couldn’t seem to catch a break.
“Good to meet you, too.” More lies, all piling one on top of the other. She wondered how long it would take for the weight of them to topple the pile. With luck, they’d knock her unconscious when they fell. “How can I help you?”
“You know Matilda is due in four weeks, and you also know Hero is a bit of a handful. As you’re going to be walking your grandmother’s dog, I wondered if you’d mind walking Hero, too, while you’re here. You can drop in and see Matilda at the same time. I know she’d be thrilled to see you. She hasn’t had a chance to meet that many people here, so she’d be pleased to see a friend, and you already walk Hero back in Manhattan, so you know all his little quirks.”
Fliss stared at him.
She didn’t know any of that.
All she knew was that she was doomed.
“Sure,” she croaked. “I can’t think of anything I’d like more.”
Except perhaps sticking her head in a bucket of freezing water and inhaling.
* * *
SETH STROLLED TO the car. “Thanks for your help.”
“You’re welcome.” Chase paused by the car. “Matilda talks about Harriet all the time. The two of them have become friendly.”
“And that’s a problem because…?”
“It’s not a problem. It’s just that—” he turned to look at the house, a frown on his face “—Harriet didn’t seem too enthusiastic at the idea of meeting up with Matilda.”
Seth unlocked the car. “That’s because that wasn’t Harriet. That was Fliss.”
“Excuse me?”
“You were talking to Fliss.”
“So why did she say she was Harriet?”
“Because that’s what she wants me to think.”
“But—wait a minute. You’re saying she’s pretending to be her twin?” Chase stared at him, bemused. “Why? What possible reason could she have for doing that?”
“Me. I’m the reason. She’s avoiding me.”
“Avoiding—?” Chase shook his head. “But you’re here anyway.”
“Let me put this another way—she’s avoiding having to have a conversation with me as herself.”
“I’ve deciphered tax returns less complicated than this. You were married! Why would she think she can fool you?”
“We haven’t seen each other in ten years. She probably thought I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. That I wouldn’t know.”
But he knew. He knew her. Every detail.
“How long did it take you to work it out?”
“About ninety seconds. I mentioned cookies, and she panicked.” It had been fleeting, but he’d seen it. It had been enough to convince him that he was looking at Fliss.
“She has a phobia about cookies?”
“No, but she is a terrible cook. They had to call the fire department after one of her attempts.”
His friend grinned. “Does her grandmother realize?”
“I would imagine so. She’s a pretty smart woman.”
“So are you going to tell Fliss you know?”
“No. I’m going to let her carry on being ‘Harriet’ until she decides to tell me the truth.”
“Why?”
Lulu rolled onto her back hopefully, and Seth crouched down to rub her belly. “First, because if we keep up the pretense then she has no reason to avoid me.”
“None of this makes sense. If she was avoiding you, why would she be here in the first place?”
“She knew I was in Manhattan and didn’t realize it was temporary. She came here to reduce the chances of running into me.” And he wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Was it a good thing or a bad thing? It was good that she was unsettled enough by his presence to go to those lengths. Not so good that she was so afraid of facing him she was prepared to conceal her identity.
Chase unlocked the car. “You have one hell of an effect on women, Carlyle. Next you’ll be telling me she pushed Grandma down the stairs to give herself a reason to come here.”
Seth laughed. “No, but I suspect she grabbed that excuse like a drowning man might grab a life preserver.”
“So if Grandma is the life preserver, what does that make you? The big bad crocodile waiting in the water to eat her alive?” Chase paused by the car. “And tell me what the ‘second’ is.”
“Second?”
“You said first you’d keep up the pretense so that she has no reason to avoid you. That means there’s a ‘second.’”
“Second is that while she is ‘Harriet,’ I hope to be able to tackle some issues she wouldn’t discuss as Fliss.”
“Are you going to kiss her?” Chase looked intrigued. “Maybe she’ll be the first woman in history to break up with a guy because she’s jealous of herself.”
“I’m not going to kiss her. And we won’t be breaking up because we’re not dating.”
“How long is this going to carry on?”
“Until she tells me who she is.” Seth rose to his feet. “Do me a favor—play along, will you?”
“I’m no good at subterfuge. I almost wish you hadn’t told me.”
“You’re going back to Manhattan. You won’t see much of her anyway.”
“What do I do about Matilda? Do I tell her the truth?”
“I think you should leave that up to Fliss.”
“I don’t want Matilda hurt.” There was a steely edge to Chase’s tone that only ever appeared when he thought someone was trying to take advantage of his wife.
“Fliss won’t hurt her. I suspect right now she’s on the phone to Harriet trying to work out a way to unravel this.”
“I can’t believe she came up with such a complicated plan.”
“I don’t think there was a plan. I don’t think she came here intending to emulate Harriet. I think she came as herself, but then she met me on the roadside, panicked and said the first thing that came into her head.”
“That doesn’t seem strange to you?”
“No. It’s classic Fliss. She puts the imp in impulsive.”
Chase gave him a long look, the steel in his eyes giving way to amusement and sympathy. “I guess that keeps things interesting.”
“It certainly does.”
Chase slapped him on the shoulder and slid into the car. “You have one hell of a complicated love life, my friend.”
Seth glanced toward the house. “Not yet, but I’m working on it.”