One Night, Two Secrets

He hadn’t been back to Cole’s Hill since the fiasco where he’d posed as his twin brother, Mauricio, to accept a humanitarian award on Mo’s behalf in Houston and—damn. He’d had the night of his life with Scarlet O’Malley. But there’d been no way for him to contact her again. He’d tried to come up with a plan where he’d go to New York and just casually run into her, but then he kept coming up against how to tell her he wasn’t Mo. He knew straight off that no woman liked being lied to like that.

At least he’d spoken on the phone to Mo’s girlfriend, Hadley Everton, and cleared things up with her. After initially thinking it was Mo in the tabloid photos with Scarlet from that night, Hadley had been able to sort it out with him. And now they were engaged. That made their mom so happy she’d almost been okay with Alec missing all those brunches.

But she knew he was back in town and she wanted answers. Given that Hadley and Mo were engaged, everyone knew it was Alec who had hooked up with Scarlet O’Malley. Around town, the gossips referred to her as “the heiress.” And unless he wanted to deal with the full force of his mother’s temper, he’d be at brunch.

He sat down at his laptop and looked at the email to Scarlet he’d saved in his drafts folder. He kept changing it but every time he read it he knew he couldn’t send it to her. He should be happy they had one night together and let it go.

He heard the ding of his security system and suspected it might be his twin brother, who had texted him that they could ride together out to the polo grounds where brunch was being held today.

He hid the email window on his computer and stood up just as his brother entered the room. The walls of Alec’s home office were lined with leather-bound volumes of books; the interior designer had thought they would make the study look more elegant. But Alec had insisted that the books all be ones he’d read. So there was an entire shelf of Goosebumps and Harry Potter, all leather-bound, right below the Shakespeare and Hemingway.

“Morning, bro.”

“Morning,” Alec said. They did the one-arm bro hug and then he stepped back. “Where is your better half?”

“There was some sort of emergency with Helena’s wedding and she had to go see Kinley this morning to solve it,” Mo said. Hadley’s sister, Helena, was planning a wedding to her high school sweetheart, Malcolm. They had faced a rough patch recently when Mal had gambled away their wedding fund. But the couple had come back together stronger than ever.

Kinley Quinten-Caruthers was a sought after wedding planner working for the famous Jaqs Veerland. Kinley was a hometown girl who’d moved back to Cole’s Hill a few years ago to open a Texas branch to service high profile clients including former NFL bad boy Hunter Caruthers, who became her brother-in-law after she married Nathan Caruthers, the father of her child.

“What kind of emergency? It’s a Sunday.”

Mauricio shrugged and shook his head. “I have no idea. I’m told it’s better not to know.”

“Indeed,” Alec said. “I guess we should be heading out.”

“Before we do...”

“I knew it.”

“Knew what?”

“That you were here for something other than to carpool,” Alec said.

“Well, you’ve been shifty recently.”

“Shifty?” Alec asked, arching one eyebrow.

“Mom’s words. She suggested I use our twin connection to find out what’s going on with you,” Mo said, pacing over to the bookshelf. “I didn’t want to tell her that it’s probably a girl problem because that would activate her matrimony radar and you’d never have a moment’s peace today.”

“Thanks for that.”

“You need to come up with something I can tell her,” Mo said.

“Yeah, we don’t want a replay of what happened when we were kids and you told Mom that I skipped soccer practice to talk to a girl.” Alec smiled at the memory.

Harking back to their childhood provided a momentary distraction, but he knew that Mo wasn’t going to let this go that easily. While neither of them believed in a psychic twin sense, they’d always been able to perceive when the other brother was in turmoil.

“And still it’s a woman causing you problems—wanna talk about it? We have some time before we are due at the polo grounds.”

Did he want to talk about it? Hell, no. He wasn’t a touchy-feely sort of guy, and to be fair, neither was Mo.

“Not really.”

“Okay.”

“Okay? Mom would be so disappointed,” Alec said.

“No she wouldn’t. I suspect that Bianca is going to be the next one to try to figure out what’s going on with you.”

Alec groaned. Their sister would be a lot more persistent. Even though she was a year younger than the two of them, she’d always had a way of getting what she wanted from all of the Velasquez men.

“I don’t think there’s anything that can be done about this,” Alec said. “It’s Scarlet. I can’t stop thinking about her but I can’t contact her because she thinks I’m you. If I say, ‘Hey, I was pretending to be my brother,’ I don’t think she’s going to want to see me again.”

There, he’d said it. And saying it out loud made him realize how ridiculous the entire thing was. He and Mo were thirty years old, almost thirty-one. The time for switching places with his twin had long passed.

Mo clapped Alec’s shoulder.

“That is a tough one. But if I learned anything from my relationship with Hadley, it’s that if you want a woman badly enough, you go after her. Apologize for your mistakes, tell her the truth and then tell her how you feel.”

“Ugh. That’s a lot of telling.”

“Maybe you could write an app that would do it for you,” Mo said sarcastically.

“Screw you.”

But Alec felt better after talking to Mo. Maybe he would call Scarlet or even take the jet to New York and see her. It wouldn’t hurt. And then he’d have an idea if this obsession was simply because she was out of reach or if it was something else.

When they finally arrived in Cole’s Hill, Siobahn decided to stay at the house but Scarlet was eager to find Mauricio right away and talk to him about the pregnancy. She had Lulu in the large bag that she carried her in when they were in a new place and Billie by her side as they drove into town for coffee.

She wasn’t sure what kind of man he was; after all they’d spent only one night together and they’d both been drinking and dancing and laughing. When she’d woken up the next morning, he’d been gone, and she didn’t blame him after she’d seen the paparazzi pictures from the night before that had ended up on TMZ.

Her life wasn’t for everyone, but she’d gotten used to it. Tara used to say they’d been born a goldfish bowl and like good little guppies they’d learned how to preen for the press. There were times when Scarlet wished for a simpler, less public life, but to be honest she loved it most days.

In this town, though, no one seemed to pay her the least bit of attention. She could get used to this. When she stopped into the coffee shop to get her coconut milk latte, everyone left her alone.

“Do you know the Velasquez family?” Scarlet causally asked the barista after ordering.

“Everyone knows them. They’re legends in Cole’s Hill. I think they’ll all be out at the new polo grounds today. I don’t follow the sport but there’s a former professional scheduled to play today... Dee, do you remember his name?” the barista asked the woman at the espresso machine.

“Bartolome Figueras. He’s also a model. Oh, my, he’s good-looking,” Dee said.

“He is,” Scarlet agreed. She had met him and his sister at a polo match in Bridgehampton earlier in the summer. She might even have his number. “I love polo. Do you think that we could attend the match?” Scarlet said, turning to Billie, who smiled.

“I’m sure you could. They’ve been doing monthly matches to raise money for a housing charity that Mauricio Velasquez runs,” the barista said. She pushed a button on her register and some receipt paper came out. She ripped it off and jotted down a website.

“I think you can get all of the information from here,” she said, handing the paper to Scarlet. “Have fun.”

When they had their orders, Scarlet and Billie walked out of the coffee shop toward the parking lot.