Jace was early. That was usually a better plan. Gave you a chance to evaluate the situation. He leaned against a wall in the echoing, nearly deserted Kalispell Airport and watched the status indicator change overhead.
On Time.
On Approach.
Landed.
Five minutes. Ten. And a weary straggle of after-midnight passengers coming through the gate, headed out the glass doors to the parking lot or over to baggage claim. One more stop, and then home and to bed.
He didn’t even pick her out at first. Clunky athletic shoes, jeans that were nothing in the world like “trendy,” a blue-checked flannel shirt hanging loose over them, and a khaki baseball cap pulled low over stubby blonde plaits.
The cap didn’t even match the shirt.
She didn’t look around, just made for the baggage carousel with the crowd. They didn’t need a meeting here that anybody might notice and comment on later, so Jace stepped out of the terminal and did the rest of his waiting with the sole of one boot planted against the concrete wall, gazing at a nearly empty curbside and a couple of hopeful taxis, and kept wide awake by the midnight-cool air here at the base of the Rockies.
She came out pulling a single medium-sized suitcase. Black. He pushed off the wall, still keeping it quiet, and said, “Lily.”
She whirled, dropped the handle of the suitcase so it banged to the pavement behind her, and lifted a hand to her heart. “Oh,” she said on a gasp. “You scared me.”
“I see that.” He picked up the suitcase and said, “We won’t hang about. Probably best.”
“How’s Paige?” she asked. Instantly, the same way her sister would have.
“Doing well. No worries. Wait until we’re at the truck, though.”
Paige would have argued, or at least have looked like she wanted to. Lily didn’t. It wasn’t far, and he tossed the case into the bed of the ute, opened her door, and watched her climb into it. Looking everything like Paige, and nothing like her. How did a woman climb into a truck in a feminine way? He couldn’t have said, but however it was, that was how she did it, unfashionable jeans or no.
When he’d started the engine and had the doors locked, he said, “Your sister’s good. I left her asleep in your bed.”
“Thank you,” she said. “For coming to get me, and for helping her. I never would have let her switch with me if I’d thought this would happen. Never. It’s not worth it. It was never worth it.”
“And if she’d known it would happen,” he said, pulling out onto the road and starting north with no company but the streetlights, “she’d never have done anything else.”
“Oh.” He could feel her gaze on him. As keen as Paige’s, but looking somewhere completely different. “You know that.”
“Yeah.” He didn’t say anything else, because he didn’t know her, however familiar her face was.
“I was worried once I got to the gate in San Francisco,” she chose to say next, “that somebody from Montana would know me on the flight, but nobody did. It’s a big state.”
“The ugly clothes worked as well,” he said. “I had to look twice.”
She laughed. “You realize these are Paige’s.”
“Oh. Crikey.”
“Exactly. Exactly. I keep telling her. All right, to be fair, these are some of the worst. But still. Right out of her terrible closet.”
“The uniform’s an improvement, that what you’re saying?”
“Well, no. The uniform’s terrible, too. So I guess she really has been dressing like me, if you don’t know that. Normally, she’d go through my whole closet for the plainest thing and wear that.”
“The first time I saw her,” he said, “she was wearing a pink apron and tackling a goat. I don’t think she’s enjoyed your wardrobe as much as she might have.”
“Why would she be wearing an apron? The apron’s for cooking. And why was she tackling a goat?”
“Both excellent questions. I thought she was mad as a cut snake in a sack.”
“But you talked to her anyway, or you wouldn’t be here.”
“Seems I like women that way. So why am I the scary neighbor?”
“Oh, dear. Did she tell you that? You look very handsome now,” she hurried to add. “You were just a little… ah…”
“Hairy?”
She laughed again. It was Paige’s laugh, clear and bright, and it wasn’t. He reckoned that laughter came more easily to her than to Paige, too. “Maybe just a little. Also, you glared a little bit.”
“Oh. Sorry. I was thinking, probably. That’s my Resting Killer Face, I hear. It’s effective at times.”
“You don’t like to talk to people. Except my sister. She doesn’t like to talk to people, either, so that’s good. And I’ll bet she glared back.”
“She did more than that. I think she threatened to kill me at one point. At least, it was strongly implied.”
“She’s been on edge lately,” Lily said. “But I guess you know that.”
He sobered. “I do.”
“So how is she, really? I’m asking you because she’ll tell me she’s fine. She’s ten minutes older. She thinks it’s ten years. And how did the meeting go? I’ve been scared to ask. I guess you can tell that.”
“She hurts,” Jace said, “but she’s healing. And the meeting was… interesting. I reckon Paige will want to tell you all about it. I’ll just tell you not to worry, because I think we’ve handled it.”
Lily sighed. “You sound just like her. All right. I’ll wait and make her tell me. I have my ways. But thank you for keeping her safe. She’s pretty special to me, you know? She’s pretty… she’s special. This month has been… it’s been… She says that leg thing was minor. It wasn’t minor. I felt it. I know. It took six units of blood. I’ll bet she didn’t tell you that. Or how many guys in the department donated blood for her. And she deserves so much better than what she’s had. She deserves everything.”
He said, “I know that, too.”
“She told you?”
“No. But I know all the same.”
When they got to the house, it was quiet and dark, except for the motion-sensing lights he’d installed at three places along the winding drive, which came on as advertised, one after the other. When he got down from the ute, Tobias let out his deep, slow welcome-bark, and Jace said, “That’s the all-clear signal,” then pulled Lily’s suitcase out of the bed and carried it up to the house.
She ran up the steps in front of him, then stopped and said, “Oh. I don’t have my keys. It’s always so weird to switch.”
“Do you do this often?”
“Not anymore. That’s why it’s weird.” She was all but dancing, and Jace got the keys in the lock fast. Lily had the door open almost before he’d finished, was flying into the house and up the stairs, and as Jace followed behind with the suitcase, the light went on in the bedroom. Paige was at the top of the stairs, and Lily was calling out something indistinct. Something that came from somewhere deep down. And rushing into her sister’s arms.
He brought the suitcase up and turned to leave, and Lily tore herself away enough to say, “Don’t go. I want to hear it from both of you. If Paige can tell me. Oh, sweetie. Oh, I’m so sorry. Do you need to go back to sleep right now? Or can you—”
“I can tell you,” Paige said. “It’s worse than it looks.”
“You always say that.” Lily had her shoes off, was on the bed, urging Paige back into it. “And it never—”
“Yes, it is,” Paige said. “It was bad last night. Ask Jace. It’s better now. Come sit,” she told him, and he did. He was now officially a man in bed with beautiful blonde identical twins. It wasn’t much like he’d have imagined it.
Paige eyed Lily. “You say I look terrible. How do you think you look?”
Lily gasped. “I look like you. Exactly like you. That’s what Jace said! And I didn’t say you looked—”
“Yes, you did. Or you thought it.” Paige turned to Jace. “Really? Because those are my—”
“Your clothes,” Lily said. “That’s what I said. I don’t think he cares. Really. He doesn’t. OK. Now tell. About the meeting. About Brett Hunter. Everything. If you can.”
It was interesting, was what it was. As a twin observation, it was downright fascinating, and maybe a bit eerie, too. Finishing each others’ sentences, seeming to finish each others’ thoughts. They went through the meeting, through Hunter’s proposal, through Hailey and the broken window and Jace’s stalker, with minimal input needed from him. It was that mirror image in the training room again, and it wasn’t. It was two halves, and it was two wholes.
Lily exclaimed, nodded, frowned, and laughed, as animated as Paige was careful, and Paige? She wasn’t quite as careful now. She was all the way herself.
After a bit, Jace went downstairs and made tea, found a tray—flowered, of course—and brought it up, and the women on the bed barely noticed he’d been gone. Except that Lily must have realized, because she’d changed into a nightdress and dressing gown in his absence, and had found some sort of soft jacket-thing for Paige as well. Lily was curled up on the end of the bed again, though, one hand on Paige’s calf as if she had to be touching her twin. With the baseball cap off, her plaits undone, and in a soft blue dressing gown, the resemblance was more uncanny than ever.
Paige broke off from a description of Jace’s stalker’s fiction efforts—a description that, to be honest, Jace could have done without—and told him, “Thanks for the tea. We should talk about what to do next. How I can keep on being Lily until we match again. Where it’s safest for me to do that. I should have talked about it with you already. I should have made a plan.”
He said, “I have some ideas about that, but it’s nearly two. I’m thinking they’ll keep until morning. Meanwhile, I have a plan, no worries. I’m sleeping on the couch tonight and keeping Tobias beside me as well in case there’s any fallout from our escapade. In the morning, we’ll do something else, and we’ll publicize it.”
Paige said, “But what about your house? You didn’t get it alarmed yet.”
“I told you,” he said. “My house will keep. I’ve got what I need.”
Lily hopped up and said, “The couch folds out. I’ll help you do it, and get you some sheets, too. And thank you. Paige…”
“I already said ‘thank you,’” she said. “You don’t have to remind me.”
She was closing down. Jace could see it, but he couldn’t see why. Why now? The reason was there, hovering just out of reach. He just couldn’t quite grab it. “I didn’t ask you to sleep with me,” he told her. “I said I was sleeping downstairs, and I am. Nothing more than that, but it isn’t negotiable.”
Lily said, “Paige. Sweetie, wait.” She saw it as well, then.
Jace told Paige, “Talk to your sister. Be with your sister. Be whatever you want. I’m going to sleep.”
“And you won’t…” Paige said, then stopped.
Oh, he thought, and then, Really? There was a woman throwing up barriers, and then there was this. He said, “Ah. The penny’s dropped. You’re saying I’m working from my lizard brain here. That it was all about you before, but now that I’ve seen you with your sister, it isn’t.” He took in a slow breath, let it out again, and stood up. “You’ve had a head knock, it’s the middle of the night, and you’re feeling more emotional than you’re comfortable with. That’s why I’m going to turn around and go downstairs and let you think again before you say any more. I don’t need to fold the bed out, Lily. Couch is good.”
Lily was staring at her like she was crazy. Paige knew she wasn’t. “Don’t patronize me,” she told Jace. “I was married. Believe me, he let me know. But he didn’t have to. I’ve heard it all my life. So has Lily. She just doesn’t like to think about it.”
“Which is another topic for tomorrow,” Jace said. “For today, that is. I’m going to take a wild guess that your ex showed you his ugliest side at a time when it hurt the most to hear it. That he told you he’d always thought about being with both of you, and how every man you’d ever know would think about it, too. Planting that seed for later, because hurting you now wasn’t enough. And that identical or not, your sister was hotter than you could ever hope to be, and every man you’d ever know would also think he had the wrong twin. And now you’ve shown me too much, been too vulnerable. You’re sitting on a bed with your sister, both of you in your pretty nightdresses, so I must be thinking about that. I’m thinking something, yeah. I’m thinking you should ask yourself—why is it occurring to you now?”
Lily made a protesting motion with one hand like she wanted to shut this out. Lily never wanted to believe the hard things. Paige knew that they were worse if you didn’t face them. And that the more you wanted something, the more that realization hurt when it finally came.
“Yes,” she said. Lily looked like she wanted to say, Why? Paige had said it, so she had to live with it. “Identical twins are hot. I get it. It’s not a tricky concept to grasp. I probably shouldn’t have said it. You’re right about that. But I did.” She was trembling a little, because she was too tired. Too stressed. Too… everything. She’d let herself get too comfortable with him, and it… Anyway. What was he, a mind reader?
“And yet,” Jace said, “no. The thought occurred to me, and I let it go.” He offered up the rueful smile that deepened those lines around his eyes and reminded you how much life he’d seen. “Like a butterfly, you could say. Touching down on that flower and flying away again.”
“Oh,” Lily said, “that’s beautiful.”
“He’s a writer,” Paige said. She told Jace. “I’ve read your books, though. I don’t remember any butterflies.”
He wasn’t smiling now. “Because there weren’t any. Because I thought that up just for you. Am I going to be insulting your sister if I say that I know which one you are, and I’ve always known, even when I didn’t? That I’d be willing to bet I’ll always know?”
“It’s easy to see which one I am,” Paige said. “I’m the beaten-up one.”
“Well, that’s true,” he said. “You are. Should I make my push for Lily now, or wait until you’re actually out of the room? You do realize that I see what you’re doing here.”
“You see it,” Lily said, “and I see it, but Paige… Honey, no. Don’t. Not every man goes there.”
“Well, yeah,” Jace said, “we probably do. Hardwired. But we don’t have to stay there. And if you want to push me away,” he told Paige, “you’ll have to wait until morning. But if you do? Don’t pretend I’m the one leaving.”
It was those eyes. They were too blue. Too intense. It was the way he made her feel, too. What had he said? Precious. Cared for. Even when she was grumpy. Even when she was mean. Her eyes filled with tears, to her horror. Lily made a noise, and Jace said, “Oh, baby. No.” He sat on the edge of the bed again, took her in his arms like she was made of glass, and held her.
She might have had to haul in a few more breaths, and wipe away those treacherous tears, too. “Sorry,” she said. “Long day. Lots of… feelings. My sister. You. And you’re right. It’s me. Having a hard time. With, uh…”
That hadn’t been too coherent, but maybe he got it, because he said, “Yeah. Believing takes some doing. And maybe it’s better to bring it up. If you didn’t, how would you know?”
“Now you’re just being perfect,” she said, and tried to smile. “Perfectly imperfect. Admitting your imperfection. Really? Every man?”
“I reckon. Sorry. Soldiers have heaps of spare time, and only a few subjects of genuine common interest. They play too much poker, get too competitive over ping-pong or whatever naff thing there is to get competitive about, and talk too much about sex. Put it that I’m fairly clued in on the fantasy life of the young Aussie male. And that some things are universal.”
Lily said in a faint voice, “You guys. I did not need to know this. Every man wants to have sex with twins?”
“No,” Jace said. “But most of the men I’ve known have probably thought about it. And I just told you that I’m not doing it. Am I thinking that Paige can be bloody annoying? Maybe. But that’s as far as I’m prepared to go.” He got off the bed. “Tobias and I are going to sleep. We’re busy men. Got goats to milk, and morning’s coming.”