“We’re twins.”
“That’s what tripped me up,” he continued. “I came over here to ask you out and I thought she was you. I thought you’d just dyed your hair. So I asked Emily out, and she said yes. When I realised she wasn’t you, it was too late. I couldn’t back out then—it would’ve been rude. Anyway, I came over here to apologise to you for that. I thought you and I had a spark between us, and I messed the whole thing up.”
“It’s okay. It’s not the first time she’s done it. She likes to go after the men I’m interested in.”
“Really?”
“Her husband was my boyfriend first. She has a tendency to want what I have, or in your case, what I might someday have. She gets jealous of me, for some reason. I tell her it’s pointless to be jealous of your identical twin, but she does anyway.”
“Wow. That must’ve been hard for you,” David said, moving closer. He raised a foot to the step below where Evie stood.
He was so close, she could reach out and touch him. She’d admired him from a distance while he dated her sister and had done everything she could not to get jealous, not to wish for something she couldn’t have. He was off-limits. She had no desire to be like Emily and pine for something her sister had. But now that Emily was gone, those feelings had returned.
“It was hard for a long time. But then I moved back to Coral Island and set up my bookshop.” She waved a hand at the blackened ruins behind her. “You see how well that turned out.”
He took another step closer until he was almost touching her. “So, you were interested in me?”
“Um… did I say that?”
“Yes, you did.” He laced his fingers through hers, sending a tingle of excitement up her arm.
“I suppose I did.”
He leaned towards her, his lips pulled into a teasing half grin. “I’m interested in you as well.”
Her stomach did a flip. Then he kissed her, and she forgot everything but the feel of his mouth on hers. He cupped her cheek with his hand and gently pushed his fingers up into her hair. She let herself drift into his arms as her head swam with desire. It was more than she’d expected.
She’d long ago given up hope of finding someone like David. When he’d taken her sister out on a date, she’d packed that piece of her heart away in a box and set it aside. It’d been easy to do—she was used to pushing it away from herself. But now that part of her was wide awake and hungry for more. She stood on tiptoe and laced her arms around his neck, pulling him closer still.
Seventeen
The newspaper articlessplayed across the table in front of Charmaine made her cross-eyed. She stared at them until the words no longer made any sense. She’d promised Bea and Penny that she’d look over the articles, but now that they were in front of her, she wasn’t sure what to think.
The woman who’d run from the law in California could’ve been Betsy. The photos of her were old, in black and white, and the young woman in them had a vague similarity to the pictures Betsy used to have on the walls around the back of the florist shop. Since she’d removed the images from their prime position behind the cash register, Charmaine couldn’t hold the articles up next to them to compare. Instead, she had to try to remember how they’d looked. She should’ve taken pictures of them with her phone. Instead, she squinted at the articles and held them up to look from different angles. It was all too hard.
With a sigh, she pushed one article aside and reached for another. They’d either been photocopied from the microfiche files they’d discovered at the library or were printouts of articles she’d found online. It would’ve been simple to accept the excitement and intrigue of uncovering a conspiracy about her boss where Betsy played the role of an international criminal, but this wasn’t a game, and Betsy was a friend. She hated the idea of exposing her as someone who’d run from a marriage more than fifty years ago, but was still wanted by law enforcement on the other side of the globe.
If this woman was Betsy, maybe she had good reason to run. How would exposing her help anyone? And if she wasn’t Betsy, the innuendo might spread throughout the community, and Charmaine had seen how rumours could destroy someone’s reputation. Her own mother had suffered through enough rumours over the years — the single mother from out of town no one knew anything about and who kept mostly to herself. The local busybodies had nothing to work with, and so they had concocted their own stories about the Billings family. It’d been hard for Mum to ignore, but she’d done her best to stay positive.
The florist shop was silent as dusk settled over the island. Charmaine moved to flick on the lights so she could see better. She pulled blinds down over the windows for privacy. Then she returned to her task, seated on a stool with one foot resting against the table leg.
“Why did you leave your home and husband behind, Betsy?” she asked the grainy printout of a photograph held in her hands.
A loud banging on the front door of the shop startled her. Her heart thudded against her rib cage as she leapt to her feet with a cry. Then, smoothing her hair back with both hands, she hurried to the door and pulled the blind aside to look through the glass into the darkened street.
Frank Norton, Betsy’s son, stood there in a pair of jeans and a short-sleeved shirt that was half untucked. His hair was wildly splayed out over his head as though he’d been caught under a lawn mower, and his socks were mismatched.
Charmaine opened the door. “Frank, how are you?”
He grunted. “Fine. Is Sam ready to go?”
“I’m sorry, Frank. She’s already gone home with Betsy. I thought she would’ve called you.”
“My phone went dead. It’s fine—I’ll head off then.”
He turned to leave, then spun back again. “Do you mind checking to see if Sam remembered her homework? She often leaves it in the back room and doesn’t have it for school the next day.”
Charmaine nodded and left the door ajar. “I’ll go and look. Won’t be a moment.”
