Barbara Dunlop - The Twin Switch

“What are you drinking?” I asked.

“Vodka martini.”

The bartender arrived, another cute guy. “Can I get you something?”

His smile was friendly, definitely flirtatious. And he was classically handsome, probably thirty or so, with intelligent gray eyes.

I certainly had nothing against bartenders, except when you met them at their work. There they flirted with everybody. Like the valets out front, their shift was made or broken by their tips.

“I’ll take one of those,” I said, pointing to Sophie’s glass.

I smiled at him, but made it brief. I didn’t want to spend the evening chatting with the bartender. I wanted to spend it with my girlfriends.

Across the lounge, a very handsome profile came into my view, distracting me.

Okay, this guy wasn’t a bartender, or a valet, or a public school teacher of any kind—that was for sure.

His perfectly cut suit was draped over a perfectly sculpted body. His haircut was shaggy-neat, that kind where you paid the earth to look like you’d rolled out of bed and had every hair fall naturally into place.

Even as I mentally mocked the style, I liked it.

He turned, and I caught his handsome face full-on. He could have just walked off a magazine cover. He should have walked off a magazine cover with that chiseled chin and those startlingly bright blue eyes.

He caught me staring, but he didn’t smile. I felt heat hit my cheeks, anyway.

And then it was over. He turned and kept walking like our eyes meeting had never happened. And maybe it hadn’t. Maybe he hadn’t been staring at me at all. Maybe it was just the fevered musing that took flight in my head when I saw a good-looking guy lately.

I’d read a statistic last month that said sixty-seven percent of women met their husbands before they graduated from college. So I was already in the bottom thirty-three percent.

When you added that to the twenty-one percent of women who never married at all, my odds looked grim. I had a twelve percent chance of meeting Mr. Right.

Don’t get me started on the fifty percent divorce rate because that left me at six percent. And six percent was truly demoralizing.

“Earth to Layla,” Sophie said.

I gave myself a mental shake. This was a girlfriends’ weekend.

“Did Brooklyn come down already?” I asked, focusing on the here and now.

Brooklyn and I were sharing a room, while Sophie and Nat were staying together one floor up. We had ended up with a view of the bridge, while they looked into the building next door. We’d offered to trade, but nobody seemed to care about the view.

The rooms had enormous soaker tubs, steam showers and beds that felt like you were floating on a cloud. Nothing else much mattered.

“I haven’t seen her yet,” Sophie said.

I glanced around but didn’t see her, either. “I have eight pillows,” I said to Sophie.

“You counted?”

“I counted.”

“Did you take the square root?” she asked, grinning as she bit the olive off her blue plastic skewer.

“If I include the gold throw pillow, the square root is three. I considered applying the quadratic formula, but—”

“Layla.” It was Brooklyn’s happy voice in my ear and I felt her arm go around my shoulders. “I thought you’d never get out of the shower.”

“It’s a great shower.” There was something sensual and indulgent about endless hot water.

“What are you drinking?” Brooklyn sounded overly cheerful.

“Vodka martini,” Sophie said. “You?”

“I had a Sunburst Bramble across the lobby there. I wouldn’t recommend it.”

She wore a short, mauve halter dress with a full skirt that swirled around her toned thighs. Her ankle-high gladiator heels were mottled purple and silver. As always, she looked trendy and stylish.

The bartender seemed to magically appear. “The Sunburst Bramble wasn’t to your taste?” he asked Brooklyn, obviously having overheard her comment. “Would you like me to replace it with something else?”

“Would you?” Brooklyn responded. “That’s so sweet of you.”

He slid a slim, leather-bound cocktail menu in front of her.

“Why don’t you pick,” she said, sliding it back with a swish of her shoulder-length blond hair. “Something sweeter, maybe with strawberries or a little Irish Mist?”

I did a mental eye roll. This was the Brooklyn who’d gotten us free milkshakes at the beach all summer long. Only that Brooklyn hadn’t been engaged to be married.

“How many drinks have you had?” I asked her, wondering if she’d hit the minibar while I was in the shower.

“Just the one. But I’m about to have another.”

I told myself to quit worrying. She was in a good mood, and that was great. This was her weekend, after all. I didn’t know why I was borrowing trouble.

The bartender brought me my drink.

“I’m off to the ladies’,” Brooklyn said. “When my drink comes save it for me.”

I turned my head to call after her. “Will do.”

I saw three different men follow Brooklyn’s progress as she walked to the lobby. It was always that way with her. I wasn’t sure she even noticed anymore.

“I think Nat really wants to see exotic dancers,” Sophie said to me.

I refocused my attention on Sophie. “No way.”

Nat was the most straitlaced of the four of us. She was James, only in female form. She was literally a librarian.

“I think she might be ready to burst out of that shell.”

“That would be entertaining,” I said, thinking it really would.

Nat’s long-term boyfriend had split with her a few months back. I knew she hadn’t dated anyone since. I also knew Henry had been hard on her self-esteem.

Sure, Nat wore glasses. But they were cute glasses, and she had the sweetest spray of freckles across her cheeks. Her brown hair might not be the most exotic of shades, and she wasn’t glam like Brooklyn, but she had the most beautiful smile that lit up her pale blue eyes.

“She’s chatting up a guy right now.” Sophie inclined her head.

I turned to surreptitiously follow Sophie’s gaze.

Sure enough, Nat was at a corner table, head leaned in talking to a guy in a nicely cut suit jacket and an open-collared white shirt. He looked urbane attractive, but more fine-featured than appealed to me. But then I wasn’t Nat.

Something banged above us.

I reflexively ducked as my adrenaline surged.

The room suddenly turned black, garnering audible gasps and a few high-pitched shrieks from the crowd.

It went quiet.

“Whoa.” I blinked to focus.

“What was that?” Sophie asked into the darkness.

“Something broke.”

“It sure did.”

My eyes adjusted, and I could see the candles now, little dots of light on the tables illuminating the faces closest to them. They reflected off the windows. Beyond, across the bay, I could see the lights of ships and sailboats in the distance.

“Nothing but a power failure, folks.” It was the bartender’s hearty voice. “It happens sometimes. Please sit tight and enjoy the ambience. I’m sure the lights will come back on soon.”

“At least we’re not waiting on our drinks,” Sophie said, lifting her glass to take another sip.

“I wonder if Brooklyn will be able to find us.” I looked around, but I couldn’t see much of anything beyond the candlelight.

“Hey, guys.” Nat appeared and hopped up on the stool next to Sophie.

“What happened to your man?” Sophie asked.

“When the lights went out, he squealed like a little girl.”

“That’s disappointing,” I said.

Sometimes I wondered if there were any good men left in the world. I had a list of qualities. I mean, it wasn’t a long list, mostly to do with integrity and temperament. But squealing like a little girl was definitely not on it.