Page 24 of Masquerade

CHAPTER FIVE

Kate fiddled with herknife, drawing circles on the table.

“The glasses are the only thing that’s fake.” She gave him a small secret to distract him from the pain of his father’s death, and the bigger secret she’d almost revealed about her cottage.

“Will you dye this when we go on the road?” He reached across to lift the curl escaping from her plait, which he’d unravelled at the library.

Her heartbeat was erratic, a pulse was jumping furiously in her throat, and Kate sensed some enormous force about to explode. She couldn’t remember being spellbound watching a man’s lips form words before.

“This is actually our true hair colour.” She pulled the plait in front of her face. “But yes, I’ll have to dye my hair, leave it loose and borrow some of Anna’s clothes.”

“Are your clothes all shapeless skirts, dark stockings and thick sweaters?” he asked. No condemnation, just matter-of-fact inquiry.

“It’s winter.” She released her plait. His questions were getting too close to why she was Ms. Dowdy. Her fault because secrets only worked when you kept them close. “And my clothing choice is my business.”

“Was your business.” He leaned forward and tugged again on the loose curl.

The pull reverberated through her body, stirring desires dormant since Andrew’s attempt to control her dreams and every waking moment.

“So in a few days, it will be the colour of decadent toffee?”

“‘Decadent toffee?’” She pretended disbelief, but he didn’t look like the suit she’d first met. His hair remained deliciously rumpled from their unprofessional, not-to-be-repeated interlude in the library. His shirt collar was open. The long column of his throat was physically identical to his twin but to her it looked unique. Decadence and toffee could work together. To steady herself she asked, “Does your wardrobe run to work-roughened jeans and scuffed boots?”

“Uh-huh.” His smile was wicked. “From another life. But we have more important things to worry about.”

“What?” A mellow Liam made her wary.

“We’re us. We think, act and make choices our twins don’t.” He placed his hands flat on the table, and her gaze was reluctantly drawn to them. Both twins had beautiful hands, although Niall had a few nicks and callouses to mar the perfection. She shivered, remembering Liam’s hand sliding up her thigh to cup her backside.

“George’s plan requires us to pretend we’re our twins,” he continued. “To consciously try and mimic how they’d behave, especially in terms of promoting Genosearch and posing as the Genosearch models.”

“We’re not performing seals.” Her sensual dream faded. “The most we’ll have to do is pose for a few shots, talk about our siblings as if we’re them and run for cover if the questions become too intrusive.”

“Why did you freak at the continuation of the campaign?” he asked.

“Fear you’d blow my cover,” she prevaricated. An outright lie risked damaging the truce they’d reached.

“Anna’s name is already public knowledge. The world knows she has a twin out there somewhere. Someone could see you coming out of her place and ask you about the billboard.” He pinpointed one of her fears.

“No one has.” She signalled to Tony for more water. Liam had circled back to the purpose of her disguise more than once, a hound on an elusive scent. Telling anyone other than Anna and her editor her deepest secret was a leap of trust she wasn’t ready to make. Especially with a man she barely knew.

“You trust Niall with the truth.”

Not all of it.

“You haven’t given me much reason to trust,” she blurted out. “Niall and Anna go back years.”

He let her comment pass. “In the not-too-distant future, people will be calling us Anna and Niall.”

“They’re friends and know lots of personal details about each other.” Kate frowned. By agreeing to this masquerade, she was entrusting Liam with part of her identity. “We could slip up and disappoint George?”

“George is an interesting man. If we all appeared simultaneously, he’d have a plan B to deal with the confusion.” Liam leaned on his fist, reminiscent of Rodin’sThe Thinker, speculation lighting his eyes. “We need a code. A signal to alert the other in case one of us thinks we’re being observed or has slipped out of character.”

“Something discreet.”

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