Love in Reality: A Contemporary Romance (The Blackjack Quartet) (12 page)

Rand laughed. “So seriously, how’s it been? Tell me what you’ve been doing since I last saw you.”

“Well, technically, that was this morning when you were ignoring your boss’s little speech,” she teased. “But yeah, it’s been about what you’d expect. I hung out with my sister for the most part. Lots of time working out at the gym—for no particular reason, you understand—and um, well, I think that’s about it,” she trailed off. Not talking about the details of her real life—her anxiety over her Evidence exam or her worries about getting a job offer next semester—rather put a crimp in her conversational topics.

“How are the folks at the bar?” he asked.

“Fine.”

“That’s it?”

“What’s there to say? I said goodbye to Barney, Sheila, and the regulars. They all say hi, by the way. And anything else you can think to ask me is going to get me talking about the game, which I’m sure I shouldn’t do,” she said. “So. Tell me about you. Where’d you grow up?”

She could tell he was hesitating. “Here, actually. Los Angeles.”

“Do you still live at home?” Libby laughed. She kicked off her sandals and tucked her feet underneath her to sit cross-legged. She was having a blast, she realized.

“Oh, lord no,” he exclaimed. “It’s hard enough to go over for dinner. Living there is out of the question.”

“Overbearing parents?”

“How did you know?”

How
did
she know? “I’m not sure. Something about your being an only child, I guess.”

“Don’t remind me. How about you—do you have siblings other than your sister?”

“Nope. The joke in our family is that my parents wanted more kids but by the time Li—” She stopped herself. “—
Libby
and I were toddlers, my parents took every precaution against further procreation.”

“You two must have been a handful.”

“We were. Particularly when we were little, if my mother is to be believed.”

“Terrible twos?” Rand asked.

“Yup. Times two. My mother’s stories are hair-raising, but I think she exaggerates.”

“You and Libby—do you have any of that crazy twin stuff, like secret code language and psychic connections?”

“What is it with guys and these hoary assumptions about twins? Every guy I ever dated imagined we have some weird rituals, like a twin sorority. And that’s when they weren’t trying to think of ways to bring up sex.”

“I know, we men just have one-track minds,” Rand said. “But there must be something that twins do, especially identical twins. Conventional wisdom can’t all be false, can it?”

She leaned back and started to play with her hair. She looked away from the window. Was there something they did? “Not any of those urban legends things, like waking up certain that the other one is in terrible trouble or pain. Believe me, I’m glad. When she’s, um, studying for her law school exams, the last thing I want is to know about it.”

“Other than the fact she’s studying at the desk in the living room, you mean.”

Right. How to explain that. “I’m at the bar when she’s hitting the books. Plus, she studies a lot at law school. They give you a study carrel if you’re on Law Review. She studies all the time.” Rather embarrassing to admit—as Libby, she had no life. When she wasn’t at the bar, she was busy with school. How boring.

“How about the secret language, though?” he persisted.

“We can finish each other’s sentences and we often are the only people who get the joke, but that’s because everyone else is stupid, humorless and slow on the uptake,” she said.

“Uh-hunh,” he agreed solemnly.

“There’s a twin look,” she volunteered. Wow, she’d never mentioned their bond to anyone before, but she suddenly felt like explaining this to Rand. “We put each other first, ahead of everyone. That’s powerful, so we had to have a code of conduct, a way to know when loyalty to the twin trumped all else. That became a specific look.”

Rand was laughing. She could just hear his chuckles, but he worked hard to keep his tone respectful. “Can you demonstrate it for me?”

“Are you my twin sister?” she countered. Silence. “So the answer would be no. And I’m really not sure that it’s a distinct look—it would probably seem like a stern headmistress glare or something. We know it immediately, though, and we can’t ignore it. That’s non-negotiable.”

“What do you have to do in response to this look? Rob banks? Defend your sister from alien attacks? What?”

Um, keep a certain bar owner company while his wife goes through chemo? Oh, and trick this television producer into thinking he’s talking to the perky twin?

Libby struggled to dredge up a safe memory that she could tell from Lissa’s perspective. “Let’s see. Well, there was this time at the bar, on New Year’s Eve. We were both bartending, and Barney had a couple of extra waitresses on for the night. Right before midnight, everyone’s watching the TV to see the lunatics freezing their asses off in Times Square and then the ball drops, you know?”

“More of an East Coast tradition, but I get what you’re talking about,” he said.

“Okay, so there was a minute or so left. I look over and Libby’s giving me the Look. I didn’t know what she was trying to tell me, but there was no way I was turning away from her until I found out. So I miss the ball dropping, which is no big deal, only it just wasn’t what I was planning, you know?”

“Mm-hmm,” he murmured, a low rumble coming through the speakers. He really had a great voice.

“It turned out that Libby had gone to get more glasses, and some drunk guy followed her. She dealt with him okay.” She paused. “I guess you got it right when you said we defend each other from alien attacks. Drunken alien attacks.”

Rand didn’t seem so amused. “Was Libby okay? Had he done anything?”

Libby paused. The memory was vivid—his hand on her breast, shocking and unpleasant. She’d wanted Lissa there to protect her. Of course, they were fresh out of college and still sort of naive, although Libby guessed Lissa had been more experienced around men.

“Not really,” she said. “I think—I was her source of support and reassurance. All I had to do was tell the guy to knock it off, maybe threaten him with the cops, and he left her alone after that.”

“And that was the end of it?”

She paused, then admitted, “Okay, so he made the clichéd suggestion about getting it on with twins, but believe me, we always laugh at those. We told him that was tacky and unoriginal, and that it demonstrated he had a small,” she paused, “mind.”

“Men,” Rand commiserated wryly.

“Yup—we can’t live with you guys, and we can’t shoot you.”

“Hah hah.”

“You laugh, but you know our uncle is the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania,” she taunted him. “So no shooting for us—it would look bad on his record.”

“Well, that’s a shame. Cramps your style, does he?”

“In a good way.” Libby figured Jack wouldn’t watch the show, and if he did, no way he’d know she wasn’t Lissa. Probably he’d have his secretary, Katrina, watch it for him. Katrina couldn’t tell them apart.

“I bet he’s the life of your family parties,” Rand said.

“Oh, he unbends a bit. He’s actually pretty colorful. They call him Blackjack McIntyre,” she said with pride.

There was a muttering from Rand’s side of the window, then he said, “Okay, you gotta go. Just tell them there was a problem with the equipment and we cruelly made you wait a long time to tape your bit.”

“Gotcha.” She got up, swigged the rest of the water, and headed out. She felt giddy just talking with Rand. She struggled to keep the smile off her face as she walked back into the living room.

When she explained about the tech problem, the others just shrugged. Jo looked suspicious, but that seemed to be her default expression. No one appeared to care what Jo thought. Libby put on her most innocent Lissa face and Jo looked away.

Jo’s paranoia was fascinating, Libby thought as she got ready for bed. For anyone who’d watched
The Fishbowl
, it was reasonable to assume there was something—well,
fishy
—about this season’s Fish. There was always a theme; they’d talked about it after the food challenge. Libby couldn’t be sure, but her guess was some experiment to see if alliances went along certain lines: guys versus girls, educated types against the more physical players.

True, Rand had made a point of stressing that Libby should act ditzy. And hadn’t he said something about there being two Fish who were different? If Libby was the plant, though, surely someone would have told her more? The executive producer, Marcy, didn’t strike Libby as subtle enough to put an unsuspecting mole in the Fishbowl.

Of course, Libby was lying but not for any reason the producers could know about. No way they checked that deeply into her background. Had Jo sensed Libby was lying and assumed it was about the show? Ha. She’d never believe the truth.
Hey, Jo, you can stop worrying now. I’m not trying to win. I’m only here because I needed a summer job
. Oh, and because she liked one of the producers.

After Greg came to bed and they turned the light off, Libby remembered every word of her conversation with Rand. She’d made him smile. He might even have laughed at something she said. That must be part of the Lissa act. Lissa was the funny twin.

Libby fell asleep wondering what else she could say to make Rand laugh.

The next morning, Libby helped Kai prepare breakfast for the six Fish allowed the full run of the pantry. At Kai’s direction, Libby whisked a dozen eggs in a bowl while the Navajo woman chopped an onion and some mushrooms.

Kai’s dark straight hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and her face looked scrubbed and natural. She had the most incredible cheekbones Libby had ever seen.

Kai saw her staring. “No makeup, I know. Don’t worry—they’ll never use footage from this early in the morning. Not unless Jo goes postal and starts hurling food,” she said as she began to grate a block of cheddar. “I’ll make myself pretty later on.”

“I’m already forgetting about the cameras. Gosh, can you imagine the stuff they have to watch just to get a few seconds of usable tape?” Libby said.

“Hundreds of hours, if you think about it. Someone must watch every minute of tape where any two of us are interacting. Watching all that footage? Most boring job in the world.” Kai shook her head.

How many people did that take? She could ask Rand. That wouldn’t be against the rules, to ask how the show is put together, would it? A legal topic of conversation.

“You look happy this morning,” Kai remarked.

Libby ignored this and started to pour out six glasses of orange juice. “So what do you do when you’re not a short order cook on national television?”

“Marketing executive in Phoenix.”

“Bartender in South Philly,” Libby said. She prayed Kai wouldn’t ask questions about Lissa’s future plans. Anything Libby answered could be on the show, which Barney and the gang would watch in the bar and compare against the truth. Although why should she worry now about Barney spotting that she’d lied about her bartending job. More important to make sure no one back home figured out she wasn’t Lissa.

Libby stopped herself there. It would be too easy to make herself crazy playing the game, maintaining the illusion that she was Lissa, daydreaming about Rand, and controlling her fears about being found out on top of everything else. They’d have to come get her with a giant net.

“Thinking about home?” Kai asked.

“How did you know?”

“You had this goofy smile on your face, and then you looked sad, and then you looked bemused. I’m guessing a guy.”

Libby laughed. “Not really. I was thinking about my boss. He’s known me since I was in diapers. I was wondering if he’ll actually let the gang at the Cork change the channel away from ESPN so they can watch me on
The Fishbowl
—he might, provided they don’t make a habit of it.”

“So what was up with Jo yesterday?” Kai asked while Libby made toast.

“Gosh, I have no idea. Do you room with her?”

“Nope. I’m in with Tommy and Diane.” She nodded. “Yup, trust my luck to be the third wheel in a John Mellencamp song.”

“I think that was Jack and Diane,” Libby said. “So you’re safe.”

They looked up and laughed. Libby liked her. Kai had unsuspected depths. Maybe her situation was as complicated as Libby’s was.

Nah. Nobody’s situation could be as complicated as pretending to be her own twin.

They dished up the omelets and toast to their teammates, then sat to eat. Libby started to memorize who everyone else was. She went around the table, putting names and occupations to faces. In addition to Kai and Jo, the winning comfort challenge team included Dylan, a cab driver from Chicago who was so handsome Libby had a hard time imagining him as anything other than a would-be actor. Next to him was Jim, the token “old” guy who had completely kicked butt in the food challenge. And last was Chris, a seriously cute guy with a warm smile. Not a patch on Rand’s lopsided grin though…

After breakfast, they went out to join the defeated food challenge team in the garden. The set had changed from last season, but the concept was the same—a carefully landscaped courtyard with a swimming pool, hammock and sofas, all set up to maximize the sort of confidential conversations and petty jealousies that made the show so popular.

“So that’s Fish Food?” Dylan asked Greg, who was still working through a huge bowlful of the nutritionally complete but boring concoction. They’d all seen it on previous seasons. It looked like muesli without any of the fruit and nuts. Or milk. Libby hoped not to find out if it tasted worse than shredded cardboard.

Of course it was fish-themed. Everything was. In fact, Fish Food looked a lot like those weird flakes fed to fish. A stock image on the show featured an unseen hand sprinkling real fish food into the gigantic aquariums built into the walls. Just before the show cut to commercials, there’d be an arty shot of actual fish swimming to the surface to eat actual fish food. Libby would have to ask Rand why the producers didn’t show the real fish attacking each other. Probably they couldn’t risk PETA bad-mouthing the show. She imagined the legal disclaimer at the end of each episode:
No real, live fish were harmed in the making of this program—just human, fake Fish
.