GINA WILKINS - The Right Twin

“That was before I saw him full-on,” her grandmother answered serenely.

“You asked him if he was sure he wasn’t Andrew.”

Shelby’s mother chuckled, though she swallowed the laugh almost immediately when Mimi gave her a stern look.

“He does look very much like Andrew, but there are quite a few differences.” Mimi slipped her glasses onto her nose and nodded firmly at her daughters-in-law. “You’ll see.”

There were differences, Shelby thought. The longer hair, the more casual clothing—but she sensed that the real dissimilarity between Aaron and Andrew went deeper than physical. She was eager to study those differences more closely. Just for curiosity, of course.

Leaving Shelby sitting at the end of the counter, her mom moved away to take an order from a sunburned couple who’d spent the day on the water and were now hungry for burgers. Seeing some customers entering, Linda headed back into the store, and Mimi went to the office to check on Lori, who was answering phones today. Home for the summer before her junior year of college, Lori was filling in for Hannah. Having grown up working around the resort, Lori didn’t really need supervision in the office, but their grandmother watched over every aspect of the business as if she was the only one who could truly be in charge. “Pop,” as her husband, the patriarch, was known, tended to bark orders and strut around the grounds, but everyone knew Mimi was the one with the real power in the family.

Though it was already after five, Shelby had just a few things to do yet, but she wasn’t quite ready to settle in front of the computer. She wasn’t a rigid eight-to-five type, working whatever hours she needed to put in to get her job done efficiently, and the family didn’t have a problem with her unconventional schedule. They knew she would put in as much time as needed. Like everyone else in the family, she tended to work a good ten or fifteen hours a week over the standard forty. And she loved it.

Twisting on the red-vinyl-topped bar stool, she cast a proprietary gaze around her. Through the open doors of the grill, she could see the entry foyer into the main building. The foyer was decorated with mounted fish, antique lures displayed on wooden plaques and lush, live greenery. At the back of the foyer, facing the main doors, was the reception office where Lori was working. The other offices, including Shelby’s, were upstairs, accessible to family only. Opposite the grill, the convenience store was lined with shelves of groceries, souvenirs, camping and fishing supplies. The store opened at the back into the marina, where Shelby’s dad, with rotating help from his brother and son, sold bait, fuel, motor oil and other marine supplies; rented out fishing boats, ski boats, pontoon boats and personal watercraft; and kept an eye on the boat slips and fishing pier.

The resort had been Shelby’s playground as a child—the campgrounds and pier, the pool and tennis courts, even the store and the grill. She’d scooped minnows for customers by the time she was eight, served ice cream when she was ten, cleaned motel rooms when she hit her teens. Her siblings and cousins could make the same claims, and Steven could have added that he had twice saved children from drowning in the lake.

She remembered Aaron asking if she’d ever thought of leaving the business. She’d been completely honest when she’d told him that she had not. Unlike her brother and sister, she thought with a faint sigh. The whole family had begun to sense Steven’s restlessness, and Lori refused to commit her future to the resort until she’d explored a few other options.

“What are you thinking about so hard?” her mother asked, wandering back to where Shelby sat. “You’re not still fretting about the man in Cabin Seven, are you?” she added in a whisper, glancing around to make sure none of her customers overheard the question.

“Not at the moment.”

Her mother narrowed her eyes suspiciously. Dark blond hair pulled back into a casual twist, blue-eyed, fresh-faced, fifty-two-year-old Sarah Clements Bell had been mistaken more than once for an older sibling to her three grown offspring. She dressed neatly but casually in resort-logo polo shirts and khakis, wore a minimum of makeup, eschewed jewelry except for her watch, wedding rings and simple stud earrings, and refused to fret about maintaining the perfect figure, though she was probably less than twenty pounds over the ideal weight for her average height. Her husband thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world, and her children adored her, but none of them made the mistake of underestimating her.

“Shelby, what have you done?” she asked in a low, firm voice. “You haven’t hired an investigator to check out your suspicions, have you? Is that why Aaron Walker came here?”

“No, Mom, that’s not why he came,” Shelby replied, able to look her mother straight in the eyes because that was, of course, the truth. She saw no need to mention the invitation she’d mailed to Andrew recently. How could she have known his brother would show up instead?

She should have realized she wouldn’t get away with the prevarication. “Did you tell him your theories when you took him down to his cabin?” her mom persisted. “Please tell me you didn’t ask him to spy on the neighboring cabin.”

Shelby cleared her throat.

“Shelby!” her mother hissed in exasperation, darting another quick look around. “We can’t talk about this now, but you can bet we will be discussing it as soon as we’re in private.”

“All I did was ask him to keep an eye out while he’s here,” Shelby muttered, feeling entirely too much like a kid in trouble. “It’s not like I officially hired him or anything. He said he didn’t mind.”

“You imposed on his vacation by—oh, my goodness.”

Her mother was looking beyond her, toward the doorway, and Shelby had a sudden inkling of what had caused the startled expression. She swiveled on her seat, then nodded at Aaron as he slid onto the stool next to her. “Didn’t take you long to unpack.”

“That’s because I haven’t yet,” he replied with a shrug. “I was talking to my brother.”

And it hadn’t been a warm and fuzzy call, Shelby mused, studying Aaron’s expression. Something was definitely going on between the brothers, and she didn’t think it took a P.I. to figure that out.

“Mom, this is Aaron Walker. Aaron, my mother, Sarah Bell.”

“It’s very nice to meet you,” her mother said, shaking his hand. “Welcome to the resort.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Bell.”

“Please, call me Sarah. Can I get you anything?”

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.