Double Trouble (22 page)

The wind bit at my face, the air salty from the sea. There were a thousand stars in the sky and a million lights in the city. It was magical, it was perfect, it blew the old skin of me away and buffed the new me to a sheen.

“Faster,” I whispered.

I don’t know whether James could hear me but he kicked it up on the straightaway. I could feel his heartbeat beneath my fingertips, my breasts were pressed against his back. I tightened my legs around him and leaned into the curves with him, loving the sense of moving together toward a common goal.

And when we rolled to a stop in front of my building and I got off the bike, it seemed perfectly natural to catch his chin in my hand and kiss him hard. I think at first I just meant to thank him, thank him for picking up the slack, for bringing me home, for blowing away the dust and giving me a new view. For not asking questions or making demands, for understanding that I just am the way I am.

And maybe for liking me that way.

But he kissed me back with a hunger that I knew was mine alone. This wasn’t about my twin, it wasn’t about loneliness, it wasn’t about anything but the lightning bolt that hit every time his lips touched mine.

“You should bring the bike up to the loft,” I said when we finally parted, our breath steaming the spring night. “It might get ripped off around here.”

James looked at his watch. “An hour and a half, max,” he said, his voice tight. “The boys will be getting up for school.” His gaze searched mine, trying to read my response to that, letting me see how much he wanted to come up.

But I knew James had kids and I knew that he took his responsibilities seriously. It was one of the things I admired about how he’d handled all of this. It was hardly a news flash.

“What’s the matter? Did your sexual performance really peak at twenty-one? Is it really going to take that long?” I taunted, then kissed him again. He pulled me into his lap and there were no performance issues, I’ve got to tell you.

I don’t know how we got upstairs, really. We were kissing the whole way—no, we were just about devouring each other—I was half on the bike and half off of it. The helmets rolled across the loft floor, my shirt was undone and James had his tongue underneath the lace edge of my bra. He whispered my name, then teased my nipple as he picked me up, cupping my butt in his hands. I had my fingers in his hair and my tongue in his ear, my legs wrapped around his waist.

And things only got more enthused from there. The first time was frenzied and demanding, it culminated in a mutual orgasm that left us both shaking.

The second time, we took it slow, savoring each other, peeling of the last of our clothes and tasting every increment of each other’s flesh. We shared a long slow kiss as we came, James cupping my jaw in his hand, and my orgasm lasted at least a week. We fell asleep then, and lo, my girly girls, I was pretty much glowing in the wake of the best sex I’d ever had.

Oh yes, Captain V was definitely out of a job. There ain’t nothing like the real thing.

----

Subject
: what am i doing wrong?

aunt mary -

all my friends are getting married but i’m not. even the ones not getting married have found mr. right. i’ve looked high and low and can’t find him.
:-(
what now?

lonely

----

Subject
: get a grip!

Dear Lonely -

Change your world view. No woman needs a man to make her life complete. Marriage only works when someone (i.e. the woman) sacrifices their life at the feet of their partner. You can be married and miserable, or single and self-determining. There are no Mr. Right’s in our post-modern world - just (if you’re lucky) a long line of Mr. Right Now’s. The old rules no longer hold true.

You wouldn’t make yourself choose just chocolate or vanilla for all the rest of your life, would you? So, with men. Take the man of the moment, enjoy, then move on. Work your way through all thirty-wonderful flavors, then start over again.

Aunt Mary

***

Uncertain? Confused? Ask Aunt Mary!

Your one stop shop for netiquette and advice:

http://www.ask-aunt-mary.com

----

I
woke up when James’ weight shifted on the bed. The light was heading to pearly, that grey of a morning thinking about dawn. I had been sleeping on my stomach and James kissed between my shoulder blades, then the back of my neck. He shoved a hand through my hair, letting his fingers linger.

“Evening Aubergine,” I mumbled, hearing the silent question.

He laughed beneath his breath. “Purple to the rest of us.” He lay on top of me, lacing his fingers with mine. I could feel his chest hair against my back and something else a little further south. I smiled into the pillow.

His whisper was warm against my neck. “What color is it really?”

“I don’t know.”

“How long since you’ve had a look?”

“Mmmm, I’ve been coloring it since forever.”

James ran his tongue along my earlobe. “I’ll bet it’s the exact color of melted chocolate. Bittersweet chocolate.”

It was, more or less, but there was no need to tell him as much. I turned into James’ kiss and took a chance. “You must have been hell on wheels when you were twenty-one.”

His eyes gleamed, a split second warning that I had miscalculated. “You should know.” He winked and slipped quickly from the bed, whistling as he headed for the bathroom.

I sat up, fully awake now. “What?” I actually squawked. It wasn’t a pretty sound. That’s what I get for invoking the wrath of Bolivian cockatiels by naming their species in vain.

“You know what.” The man sauntered, untroubled, dead certain that I would follow him.

I swore. I hate being predictable.

Then I bounced out of the bed and ran after James. “No. NO! You
tell
me what it means.” I swung around the bathroom door, the only door in the place, and gripped the frame so tightly that my knuckles went white. I was breathing hard. “What exactly did you mean?”

James took his damn time. I did take a small look, just because I was there, and had all my earlier suspicions confirmed. It had been dark in bed, too dark to
look
. He was in good shape, great shape really, and completely comfortable in his own skin. He moved with a kind of grace that was imminently masculine. Sure, he was thicker around the waist than he had been in his younger days, but the jeans had told no lie.

He slanted me a glance now as he washed his hands, one so bright that I jumped a little.

Or at least my heart did.

Then he reached out with one fingertip and touched the mole beside my left nipple. The nipple tightened like a raspberry and I tried not to shiver. He looked me in the eye and spoke too softly. I knew he’d say something dangerous as soon as I got a hint of that tone.

“I’ve been looking for that mole for twenty years, Maralys O’Reilly. You’re not going to get rid of me now.”

My heart stopped. I felt the blood drain from my face, but then I chided myself for being surprised. I always knew he was too damn smart. “When did you know?”

“I suspected for a long time, but didn’t know for sure until now.” He washed his face with that methodical thoroughness that only men can show in a time of total crisis. I was having a meltdown of my defenses and he was checking the growth of his whiskers. “Remember that theory of mine?”

“This was your theory?” I could have started shrieking like a harpy here. I was furious that he had taken so long to say anything, that he’d hidden his suspicions so well from me even though I’d been trying desperately to hide the truth from him.

Okay, I wasn’t at my best. Imagine Scotty, down in the hold: “She’s crackin’ up, Cap’n. I dinna know how long I can hold her together.” Chunks were falling off my walls, the moat was being drained, the portcullis was suddenly rusted right clear through.

James
knew
.

James had always suspected.

The game was up.

“I didn’t suspect at first, not until it was too late.” He gave me another hard look. “And when you finally came home, I thought we’d get it straight. But you made sure that what I saw had nothing to do with what I was looking for, didn’t you? You’re as responsible for this as me.”

My anger found an outlet. “This is not my fault!” I shook a finger at him, enraged by his attitude. “You are not going to lay this at my door! You’re the one who married my sister.”

“Only because I was looking for you!” James turned and propped his hands on his hips, his snapping eyes revealing that he was far more angry than I had suspected. “Perhaps you’ve noticed that you two are
twins
.”

“Liar. You were not looking for me.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I gave you my phone number.” I spat the accusation I’d held back for twenty years. “You
never
called. Not once.”

“I took the wrong coat from the bar. I never got it back.”

“A likely story.”

“A true story.” James shoved a hand through his hair in exasperation. “Do you know how many weeks I spent prowling campus, hoping to catch some glimpse of you?”

That non-existent Twinkie in my gut was thinking of heading north again. “And you found my sister.” Oh, it was just too horrible to be true.

“Except I didn’t know that she had a sister, not then. I thought I’d found
you
.”

“What a bunch of self-serving crap,” I said, feigning indifference even though my heart was racing like I’d been running a hundred miles an hour. “You’re the one who keeps saying that no one could mix us up.”

“What did I know about you then, Maralys? I didn’t even know your name, or else I didn’t remember it.”

“We were so drunk.” I dropped the lid of the toilet and sat on it, burying my face in my hands. “It’s ancient history, James. It’s got nothing to do with anything.”

It has everything to do with everything, Maralys.” James squatted in front of me and pulled my hands away from my face, his unexpected gentleness making me want to cry. Wouldn’t that be slick? “I was looking for you when I found Marcia, and I thought she was you. I courted her and married her because I thought she was you.”

“Ooops.”

I peeked just in time to see his expression harden. “You did nothing to persuade me differently. You hid out until after the wedding, then you showed up years later looking like a punker queen and pretending not to know me from Adam. What was I supposed to think?”

“What did you think?”

His gaze was rueful. “Just what I suspect you wanted me to think. That you were the family slut and you didn’t even remember sleeping with me.”

Our gazes held and I had the urge to hide from his searching look. “But you should have known,” I whispered, clinging to my ridiculous romantic assumption. “You said it stunk, right from the start.”

“It did.” James sighed. “I couldn’t reconcile how she was with what I remembered of you. I rationalized it a thousand ways. We’d been drunk that night, but she wouldn’t drink when we were dating. I thought maybe she was embarrassed -” he laced his fingers with mine again “- because I remembered how shy you were once we were alone. She wanted to wait for our wedding night and I thought it would be fine then. I thought I would get her drunk the next night if it wasn’t. I was sure I could make it work. I was sure that it would all be fine in the end.”

“But it wasn’t.”

“Marcia never liked sex, which was a whole lot different from what I remembered of you.” His quick glance made me blush. “I knew she wasn’t faking but was dumb enough that I didn’t figure it out right away.” James grimaced. “It didn’t help when I asked why she had her mole removed.”

“Oh Jesus.” I hung my head. Marcia knew damn well that I had a mole there—we used to play compare-and-contrast when we were little, maybe because we were both so desperate to find a hint that we weren’t exactly the same. I put my head between my knees and begged the nonexistent confection to stay put. “If it sucked, then why were you so determined to marry her?”

James shook his head. “Because I was enough of my father’s son—or so I thought at the time—that I was determined to make things right. I thought I was supposed to marry her. You were a virgin, Maralys. I thought it was my responsibility to marry you after what we’d done.”

“That’s a lousy reason to get married.”

“It’s been good enough for a lot of other people through the ages. And there was something between us that night.”

“Your dick.”

“Besides that. A lot more besides that.” He squeezed my fingers so tightly that it hurt but I didn’t so much as flinch. I sure didn’t look up because I knew I couldn’t hold his gaze. “Where the hell were you? If you’d made one single appearance while Marcia and I were dating—one show, Maralys—everything would have been resolved.” His voice rose slightly. “Why the hell did you have to run away to Japan?”

I sighed, all my careful reasons of the time now seeming as substantial as dust. “I’d been thinking of going anyhow. And then you never called and I never saw you again. I figured that the cliché had come true for me, that you’d only wanted one thing from me and disappeared once you’d gotten it.”

“I would never do that.”

“How was I supposed to know that?”

“It’s the kind of man I am.”

I cast off his grip and pushed him away, getting to my feet with undisguised impatience. “Puh-leese! We were
drunk
! We barely knew each other! We didn’t even know each other’s
names
!”

Now I was getting angry again. Thank God I have no neighbors because if I had, they would have enjoyed overhearing this show.

“What was I supposed to think when my sister showed me a picture of her dream date? What the hell was I supposed to think when she rhapsodized about the special bond between you? What was I supposed to do when she insisted she was going to marry this guy and live happily ever after?”

“She had a picture of me.”

“Who the hell else? There it was, in living Technicolor. You and my sister were as happy as two clams, holding hands and the whole nine yards. It was, if you must know, sickeningly sweet.”