Sarah Morgan - Holiday In The Hamptons

“I moved it. I had to put it out of Sunny’s reach. He’s chewing everything he can find.” With the puppy still tucked under one arm, Harriet stood up. She pushed Fliss’s shoes to the side of the room and then walked to the kitchen and scooped up the papers. “There’s a message on the machine. I didn’t get to it in time. New business call.”

“I’ll call them back. I know you hate talking to strangers on the phone.” Fliss grabbed an energy bar from the cupboard and saw her twin frown. “Don’t look at me like that. At least I’m eating.”

“You could eat something wholesome.”

“This is wholesome.” She flicked the button on the coffee machine. “So going back to my plan—”

“I don’t want to spend the night in someone else’s apartment. I like my own bed. We’d have to recruit, and that would be expensive. Could we even afford it?”

“If you’d been paying attention at our last company meeting, you wouldn’t be asking me that question.”

“Was that the ‘meeting’ where we had take-out pizza and I had to bottle-feed those kittens?”

“Same one.”

“Then I don’t think I gave you my full attention. Just give me the top line.”

“It’s the bottom line that should interest you, and the bottom line is looking good.” Fliss poured coffee into two mugs, her head buzzing. With each new success, the buzz seemed to grow. “Better than our wildest dreams.” She eyed her sister. “Not that you’re the wild-dream type.”

“Hey, I have wild dreams!”

“Are you naked in them and writhing on silk sheets with a hot, naked guy?”

Harriet turned pink. “No.”

“Then trust me, your dreams aren’t wild.” Fliss took a mouthful of coffee and felt the caffeine bounce through her system.

“My dreams are no less valid than yours just because the content is different.” Harriet settled the puppy in his basket. “Dreams are to do with wanting and needing.”

“As I said—naked, silk sheets, hot guy.”

“There are other types of wanting and needing. I’m not interested in a single night of sex.”

“Hey, if he was hot enough I’d be willing to stretch it out a few days, at least until we’re both dying of thirst or starvation.”

“How are you ever my twin?”

“I ask myself the same question frequently.” About as frequently as she counted her blessings. How did people survive without a twin? If her childhood had felt like being trapped in a windowless room, Harriet had been the oxygen. Together they’d discovered a problem really did seem smaller if it was shared, as if they could carry half each and make it weigh less. And if Fliss knew, deep down, that her sister shared more than she did, she comforted herself with the knowledge that she was protecting Harriet. It was something she’d done all her life. “It’s because I’m your twin that I know your dreams as well as I do my own. Yours would be a white clapboard beach house, picket fence, a sexy doctor who adores you and a menagerie of animals. Forget it. If you want that kind of relationship, you’re going to need to read about it in a book. And now back to business. I think the Bark Rangers could legitimately offer pet sitting and even possibly dog grooming and obedience training. Think of it as an extension of what we do. We can offer packages where we—”

“Wait a minute.” Harriet frowned. “Are you saying you think romance only exists in books?”

“The type of romance you want only exists in books.”

“You only have to look at our brother to know that isn’t true.”

“Daniel fell in love with Molly. There’s only one Molly. And they’re basically together because their dogs are best friends.” She caught her twin’s eye and shrugged. “All right, they seem happy, but they’re the exception, and it’s probably because Molly is a relationship expert. That gives her an unfair advantage over the rest of us.”

“Maybe instead of expanding the business, you could take more time for yourself. You’ve been working at top speed since we started this business. It’s been five years, and you’ve hardly paused to breathe.”

“Six years.” Fliss grabbed a yogurt out of the fridge. “And why would I want time to myself? I love being busy. Busy is my drug of choice. And I love our business. We have freedom. Choices.” She nudged the door shut with her bare foot and saw Harriet wince.

“I love our business, too, but I also like the parts of my life that have nothing to do with the business. You’ve made a huge success of it, Fliss.” She hesitated. “You don’t have anything to prove.”

“I’m not proving anything.” The lie slid off her tongue while the voice inside her head shouted more loudly than usual. Useless, worthless, never make anything of yourself…

“Don’t you ever want more out of life?”

“More?” Fliss thrust a spoon into the yogurt, deciding it was time she shifted the conversation. This was starting to feel uncomfortable. “I’m young, free, single and living in New York City. What more is there? I have the world at my feet. Life is perfect. I mean, seriously, could life be any more perfect?”

Harriet looked at her steadily. “You didn’t do it, did you?”

Fliss’s heart started to pound. Her appetite vanished.

This, she thought, was one of the disadvantages of having a twin. She could hide the way she was feeling from everyone else in the world, but not from her sister.

She put her yogurt down and decided she needed to work harder at it. She didn’t want Harriet to know that she was terrified. It would make her anxious. “I was going to, I really was. I had the building in sight and I’d memorized what I was going to say—”

“But?”

“My feet wouldn’t go that way. They were glued to the spot. Then they turned around and walked in the opposite direction. I tried arguing with them. I said, ‘Feet, what do you think you’re doing?’ But did they listen? No.” And since when had she been so pathetic? She gave what she hoped passed for a careless shrug. “Please don’t say what I know you’re about to say.”

“What was I about to say?”

“You were going to gently point out that it’s been three weeks since Daniel bumped into him—”

“Seth,” Harriet said. “At least say his name. That would be a start.”

The start of what? She didn’t want to start something she’d worked hard to put behind her.

And she couldn’t blame her sister for pushing because she hadn’t been honest, had she? She hadn’t told Harriet how she felt.

“Seth—” His name stuck in her throat. “It’s been three weeks since Daniel bumped into him— Seth —at the vet practice. The plan was that I’d take control of the situation and go and see him in order to avoid an awkward encounter in the street.”

“You’ve changed the plan?”

“Not officially. It’s more that the plan isn’t working out. It’s awkward.” It was okay to admit that much, wasn’t it? Finding something awkward wasn’t as bad as finding it terrifying. “And I don’t think an encounter in the street could be any more uncomfortable than a face-to-face in the clinic.”

“I can imagine it feels a little awkward, but—”

“A little awkward? That’s like calling a hurricane a light breeze. This isn’t a little awkward, it’s mega awkward, it’s—” She floundered for a description and gave up. “Forget it. No word has been invented that correctly reflects this situation.” And even if it had, she wouldn’t be using it. She didn’t want Harriet to know how bad she felt.

“‘This situation’ being bumping into your ex.”

“You manage to make a highly complex and delicate situation sound simple.”