Page 15 of My Twin Sister's Extremely Famous and Incredibly Hot Neighbor

“You teach? Like painting classes?” He raises his eyebrows.

I silently scold myself. Yes, I, Mackenzie Davenport, teach online watercolor classes. But I’m not supposed to be Mackenzie right now. I’m Jera. JERA! I yell at myself in my head.

“Um,” I say out loud, to give myself time to think. But no matter how hard I try to twist what I said, I can’t do it. I obviously said the word “teach.”

“It’s this little online thing I do. Don’t tell anyone. I’m not revealing who I am.”

He shakes his head. “I won’t say anything.”

“Okay. Thanks.” I push the cart toward the check out.

We pass by a teenager who openly stares at us. “Is that Dustin Sawyer and Jera Davenport?” she asks a woman that looks like her mother. Dustin flinches. I totally ignore the girl, like I usually do when I get mistaken for Jera.

“Of course not. What would they be doing here?” The mom grabs her daughter and tugs her down another aisle.

Dustin gives me a secret smile. I put my art supplies on the counter so the checkout girl can ring them up. I use Jera’s credit card to pay for them, and Dustin grabs all the bags, carrying them for me to the car.

My anxiety lifts as I slide into the passenger seat. “See, that wasn’t so bad,” I say to both myself and Dustin.

“You’re right,” he says as he closes my door. “We didn’t get mobbed or anything. Only one person recognized us, and no one will believe her.”

I laugh. “Poor girl.”

Dustin sits down and buckles his seatbelt. “The brisket won’t be done yet in the smoker. Mind if I take you home and look at some of your work?”

Jera has a few of my paintings on her walls, and I did bring a couple of my watercolor sketch books. It makes me warm inside to know Dustin cares enough to want to see my work. “All right.”

CHAPTER8

Dustin pulls up and I punch in Jera’s code, opening the gate. He parks the car by the front door. We pull off our hats and sunglasses, put them back in his canvas bag, and Dustin picks up the packages. We walk to Jera’s front door. Squint is happy to get out of his carrier, and he runs off to the yard to do his business.

“How long have you been painting?” he asks as I press in the code.

I run a nervous hand over my hair. I should be answering his questions as Jera, but since I already made that mistake, I have to answer as Mackenzie. “I was gifted some painting lessons when I was thirteen. I’ve been seriously painting ever since.”

He smiles as we walk into Jera’s entryway. “You’ve wanted to paint since you were thirteen?”

“I’ve wanted to paint my whole life, but we struggled financially when I was a kid. Dad left, and Mom and my sister and I had to move into our Aunt Helen’s house. We didn’t have money for frivolous things like art lessons. I used the cheap watercolors you get as kids, but I didn’t really flourish until I got lessons and learned how to use real watercolors.”

“Who gifted you the lessons?”

Unexpected emotion surges in me. “My sister.”

Jera was a lot of things. Self-centered and shallow sometimes, but she could be really awesome as well. She’d spent the summer babysitting the Sullivan boys just to pay for my lessons and supplies, and that was something special because the Sullivan boys were a handful.

I take the shopping bags from Dustin, and he follows me through the house and into the library where I’d set up my equipment.

“This is where you film your classes?” He runs a hand over my leather watercolor sketchbook.

“Yes.” I stand next to him and open the book so he can see my rough sketches and washes.

He turns each page slowly as he studies my work. I grow nervous as he flips each page. When he’s done, he turns to me. “Wow, Jera. I had no idea you were so talented.”

My heart does a little samba dance in my chest. It could have something to do with his close proximity. I wave a hand. “That’s just sketches and messing around.”

“Do you have any finished paintings?”

I nod, suddenly nervous to expose this part of myself. Yet, a part of me wants to. I want Dustin to see a part of the real me, not me pretending to be someone else.

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