The Right Twin

He glanced at the menu over the grill. “A grilled chicken sandwich sounds good.”

“Shelby, why don’t you serve Aaron something to drink while I cook his sandwich?”

He requested a lemonade, which Shelby fetched swiftly from a pitcher behind the counter. “I’ve been trying to prepare everyone for seeing you,” she informed him as she set the plastic tumbler in front of him. “You’ll probably still get a few double takes.”

He shrugged. “I’m used to that.”

She studied his handsome face from beneath her lashes. “I’ll just bet you are,” she murmured.

His eyebrows rose, and he studied her speculatively.

Giving him a friendly pat on the shoulder, she said, “Enjoy your dinner. Mom will take good care of you. I have some things to wrap up in my office, but I’ll see you later.”

She heard his stool squeak when he turned to watch her stroll toward the exit. She added a little extra pop to her walk—just because.

She hadn’t flirted this way with Andrew, she remembered, her amusement fading. Because of Pete, maybe. Or maybe the circumstances. But she couldn’t resist drawing those lazy grins from Aaron that made him look so different from his brother. And now she sounded like Mimi, she thought with a wry shake of her head.

It wasn’t as if she expected anything to happen between her and Aaron. He was here for vacation, and he’d agreed to do a favor for her only because she’d given him little choice. She wasn’t the type to sweep a good-looking adventurer, which she considered Aaron to be, off his feet. She wasn’t the “pretty one” in the family—her cousin Hannah held that title. Nor was she the summer-fling type. She’d had plenty of opportunities for that sort of thing, had she been interested, but that just wasn’t her style. Still, she enjoyed a little harmless flirtation as much as the next girl, especially with a man as attractive as Aaron Walker. Those sexy smiles of his were definitely rewards in themselves.

Half an hour later, after finishing the few work tasks she’d had left to do that day, she wandered back downstairs—only to find Aaron still in the diner, now sitting at a table surrounded by members of her family. Maggie sat next to him, with Mimi on his other side. All three of them were eating her mom’s homemade chocolate pie. Uncle Bryan and Aunt Linda sat across the table with cups of coffee. With no one waiting to order at the moment, Sarah sat on a bar stool near the table, participating in the lively conversation.

Shelby noted that Aaron didn’t seem to be saying much—as if anyone could get a word in edgewise with her family—but he appeared to be enjoying himself. She moved toward the cheery group. “Looks like a party going on in here.”

Her aunt motioned her over. “We were just telling Aaron some funny stories about raising you kids in the resort. He said he and Andrew always had family around when they were growing up, too.”

Aaron chuckled. “We could never get away with much. Which doesn’t mean we didn’t try. The terrible trio got into more than a few scrapes, despite being watched almost constantly by our parents, aunts and uncles. Not to mention older cousins who thought it was their job to report on our activities.”

“The terrible trio?” Shelby asked, pulling up a chair.

He nodded. “That’s what they called my brother, our cousin Casey and me. I can’t imagine why,” he added with a humorous attempt at innocence.

Mimi tsked her tongue. “I bet you boys were a handful.”

“Yes, ma’am, we surely were.”

Maggie propped her chin on her hand and studied Aaron with a smile. “For some reason, I can picture you getting up to mischief, but it surprises me that your brother was part of it. He seemed so proper and conservative.”

“I guess he is. Now,” Aaron murmured, and once again Shelby would have liked to know what was going on between the twins.

“Oh, here’s Pop,” Shelby’s mom commented, glancing toward the doorway. “I don’t think you’ve met my father-in-law, Aaron.”

“No, I haven’t.” Aaron started to rise, but the older man waved him back into his seat, peering intently at Aaron’s face.

Shelby sat back to enjoy the show.

Pop scraped a chair on the floor and dropped into it, never taking his gaze off Aaron. A sun-weathered, work-hardened eighty, Carl Bell Sr. had a ring of thin gray hair around his brown-spotted scalp and silver-framed glasses through which he peered with intense gray eyes. His nose was crooked and his thin mouth firm. He had hunched a bit with age, softened around the middle, and moved a bit more slowly, but he was still in full possession of his faculties. The thing was, Pop had always been eccentric, a quirk that grew more pronounced each year.

“So you’re Aaron.” He didn’t quite make air quotes with his fingers, but the gesture seemed to be implied.

Aaron nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Humph.” Pop narrowed his eyes, while everyone else watched with poorly suppressed smiles. “I imagine a P.I. might need to use a different name when he goes on vacation. What they call incognito.”

“If he was incognito, why would he come to a place where everyone would recognize him, Pop?” Bryan asked.

Pop had never been overly concerned with logic. “Probably because he’d know he’d be among friends who wouldn’t give him away if anyone asked. You got a picture of yourself with Andrew?” he asked their guest.

Aaron seemed amused. “No, sir, not with me.”

“Humph,” Pop said again and gave the others a somewhat smug glance.

Laughing, Linda stood. “I’ve got to go take care of a customer in the store. I’ll let the rest of you try to convince Pop that identical twins do occur in nature.”

“Pop tends to let his imagination get away with him. And most of us think Shelby is just like her grandfather,” Shelby’s mom confided to Aaron with a smile that was both affectionate and wry. Maybe it even held a bit of a warning, Shelby thought with a frown.

Was her mother actually cautioning Aaron that he couldn’t take everything Shelby said seriously? Well, gee, thanks for the support, Mom, she tried to say with her expression.

If she received the subliminal message, Sarah ignored it serenely, moving to wait on an elderly couple who’d just come in for dinner. She greeted them by name. For almost as far back as Shelby could remember, the Hendersons had traveled in their motor home from Shreveport, Louisiana, at least a couple times a year for weeklong stays at the resort.

Lori drifted in through the diner doors, pausing to look with surprise at the group of relatives gathered there. “What’s everyone doing in here? Oh.” She pushed a fringe of blue-streaked black hair out of her eyes and studied the man everyone had gathered around. “You must be Andrew’s brother. Mimi told me about you.”

“Says he’s an identical twin,” Pop said with a grin and a broad wink, causing everyone to shake their heads in exasperation. “We’ve been instructed to call him Aaron.”

Lifting a thin, arched brow, Lori glanced at Shelby, who shrugged. “Lori, this really is Aaron Walker. Aaron, my sister, Lori.”

They exchanged greetings, and Shelby wondered idly what Aaron thought of Lori, who looked so different from the rest of the family—a deliberate effort on her part. Taller and thinner than Shelby, twenty-year-old Lori wore her colorful hair short and shaggy, tumbling into blue eyes lined in dark, smoky gray. She sported bloodred lipstick and black nail polish, and favored filmy, smoke-colored garments that seemed to float around her when she walked. She refused to call her style “Goth,” saying the term was outdated and inaccurate. She liked to call her taste “ethereal” instead.

However it was defined, the style somehow worked for Lori. Shelby thought her sister looked striking and interesting, especially in comparison to her own wardrobe, which consisted primarily of easy-care shorts and T-shirts chosen for ease of movement and comfort in hot Texas summers. In the winters, she swapped the shorts for jeans, wore long-sleeved tees and donned sneakers rather than flip-flops. Glancing from Lori’s ethereal chic, to Maggie’s pretty, fitted wrap top and cropped khakis, Shelby wondered if maybe she should start paying a bit more attention to her own wardrobe.

Aaron pushed his chair back from the table. “It’s been great meeting everyone, but I should probably unpack and make a few phone calls.”

“Did you walk over?” Shelby asked.

When he nodded she stood. “I left my car here earlier. I can drop you off at your cabin on my way to my place.”

She was aware that everyone watched them as they walked out. Did they think she was chasing after Aaron? She frowned, her ego piqued at the thought. She was going to have to think of a plan that would let her collaborate with Aaron while still preserving her feminine pride.

“So I’ve met everyone in the family except your father and brother now?” Aaron asked when they were in her car.