The Natalie Lana knew, the Natalie all her friends knew, had disappeared three years ago. She lied and told Lana repeatedly the nightmares had stopped, but nearly every night, she saw those flames and heard the roaring of the fire as it crept closer. She had barely survived the crash, bearing the scars to prove just what type of hell she had gone through. Of course, it had to happen right at the peak of grad school when she was showing the world what she could do and the ideas she had locked away in her head. After the accident, they really were locked away in her head. She lost so many memories and struggled, sometimes, to recall faces of people she knew.
“I’m trying,” she whispered, her shoulders sagging. “It’s hard though, all right? I still can’t get into a car without having a panic attack!”
“I know,” Lana said and hurried to hold her sister’s hands, kneeling before her chair, “but you have to keep trying. Please? If not for me, then do it for yourself. You deserve more.” Tears welled up in her eyes, and she wiped them away quickly.
“Don’t start that blubbery shit with me. It wasn’t your fault.”
“No, but I was supposed to be in the car with you!”
Natalie sank to the floor beside her sister as she cried. “I don’t blame you, so stop it. I’m glad you weren’t in the car. They told me the passenger side was completely crushed. You would’ve died, Lana. I can’t lose my twin.”
Lana nodded against her shoulder. “I’m sorry about those assholes.”
Natalie gritted her teeth. “It’s not your fault those guys couldn’t handle scars.”
She briefly recalled the few guys she’d dated after the accident, and each one had freaked at the sight of her back and arms. They were burn scars. She knew they weren’t pretty, but how hard was it to really see past something like that to the person beneath? After her third failed date two years ago, she got the tattoo and decided dating was not in her best interest.
Lana sat up and wiped the rest of the tears from her eyes. “I guess I should tell you why I came here tonight.”
Natalie’s lips twitched with a smirk. “It wasn’t to nag your twin for the thousandth time?”
Lana cringed. “No, actually, it’s about something else and you’re going to hate me for it.”
“You didn’t set me up on a blind date, did you?” Lana’s lips clamped shut tightly and her cheeks reddened. Natalie’s heart sank and she groaned. “What the hell did you do?”
“You remember that website I signed up for like six months ago?” she asked, twirling a strand of her hair around her finger.
Natalie tilted her head, trying to remember, but it was hard. Everything was fuzzy. She started to shake her head then paused when the memory of that night came back and she laughed. “You mean the married at first sight shit? The one you tried to get me to sign up for?”
“I thought it was a good idea at the time,” she argued.
“You broke up with Alex in the heat of the moment, signed up for it, and then got back together with him two weeks later! Which is when, I might add, he proposed to you.” Lana nodded slowly, not meeting Natalie’s eyes. “So, what are you trying to tell me?”
“Some guy was a match for me on the website and sent me a message.”
Natalie waited for her to explain, but no other words left her mouth. “And what am I supposed to do with this information?”
“I was just thinking—and you can totally say no if you want—but since we’re identical twins, you could kind of take over the account for me and…you know, see what happens.”
Natalie swore she heard her wrong. She blinked furiously for a minute before her quiet laughter turned into howling as she gripped her middle and rolled on the floor. When she could finally talk again, wiping a tear of mirth from her eye, she saw Lana wasn’t smiling at all. Her gut twisted as she quickly sat back up. “You’re serious?”
“Of course I’m serious! This could be really good for you.”
“To be married to some rich bastard I don’t even know yet?” Natalie screamed. “What is wrong with you?”
“Oh, come on, Nat, give it a chance,” Lana pleaded as Natalie pushed to her feet and stormed out of her bedroom to the kitchen. “It’s only for twelve weeks!”
Natalie dug around in the fridge for a beer, popped the cap off, and chugged half of it while she glared at her sister. When she lowered it, smacking her lips at the heavy lager taste, she shook her head. “Why am I not surprised you’d ask me to do something like this? You’re asking me to be you, for three months, with a strange man. How is this not a bad idea?”
“I haven’t talked to him yet,” she informed her quickly. “Which means you can act like yourself the whole time. You’ll just have to use my name.”
“You think he won’t notice I’m not a damn lawyer?”
“You could tell him you’re taking a sabbatical from work. My bosses like me enough, it’s believable.”
“And if we hit it off, then what? I wait until we have three kids and a house before I come clean and tell him I’m not my twin sister? Jesus, Lana, this has bad news written all over it. I can’t!”
Lana’s face reddened even more than before, and she laid her hands on the counter. “You’re being a chicken and you know it. I’m offering you a chance to get out of this cramped apartment and figure yourself out! If you don’t like the man you can divorce him at the end of the twelve weeks, no harm, no foul. He never has to know that you were acting as me.”
Natalie chugged the rest of her beer, hating the voice in the back of her mind actually contemplating this idea. Marry a stranger, just like that? Before the accident, she did lots of crazy shit, was the adventurous one of the two. Since then, her adventures were online and in books.
It’s time, the voice said sternly. She’s right. You’re being a chicken. It’s three months. Get out of the apartment, get away from your job, and go back to the real world.
She opened her mouth to say no but instead, found herself asking, “Can I see what he looks like before I say yes?”
Lana squealed in delight and told her to wait there while she fetched her laptop.
Natalie dug around in the fridge for a second beer and had drunk half by the time her sister returned and set the laptop on the counter. “You do realize how much I loathe you at this moment in time, right? Like you can feel it surrounding you?”
Lana ignored her as she logged into her computer and brought up the browser. “There, see? Isn’t he handsome?”
Natalie prayed he wasn’t so she could have the easy decision to tell her sister she was a nut and be finished with it, but the man’s picture caught her eye. She set her beer down gently and sidled closer to see the image more clearly. His shoulder-length brown hair and the scruff on his face gave him a rugged look she’d always adored on men, but his eyes pulled her in. They reminded her of dark chocolate, and she licked her lips absently as she admired the sharp angle of his jaw and the smooth line of his cheekbones, balancing his face almost perfectly. Then her eyes drifted to his name and her hands gripped the edge of the counter.
“Cunningham?” she gasped.
“Uh huh,” Lana replied, grinning from ear to ear.
“As in Vincent Cunningham? As in the damn billionaire who’s supposedly running for Congress?”
“Yes, that’s the one. He also runs an oil company and owns several cattle ranches,” Lana added, pointing to the screen. “He is quite the man.”
She nodded but immediately shook her head and pushed away from the counter. “No, no! I can’t do this. It’s insane, completely and utterly insane.” She crossed her arms and padded around the living room, wishing her eyes would stop glancing back at the man’s face with that smoldering look and those lips—lips she bet had kissed at least a hundred women and left them wanting more.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.
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