Holiday In The Hamptons

CHAPTER ONE

Ten years later…

“I’VE DECIDED WE should expand the business.” Fliss kicked off her shoes and left them in the middle of the floor as she walked barefoot to the kitchen. “Have you looked at our schedule for the next month? We don’t have a single available slot. Our referrals have doubled, and bookings are through the roof. Time to capitalize on success and think about growth.” Onward and upward, she thought. It felt good.

Her sister, busy feeding a puppy she was fostering, was less enthusiastic. “We already cover the whole of the east side of Manhattan.”

“I know, and I’m not suggesting we expand the dog-walking part of the business.” She’d thought it over, studied the competition and run the numbers. Her head was filled with possibilities. “I think we should branch out into an area that has a better profit margin. Offer additional services.”

“Like what?” Harriet pulled the puppy closer. “We’re a dog-walking business. The Bark Rangers. You’re thinking of branching into cats? The Meow Movers?”

“We already feed and care for cats if the owner requests it. I’m talking about pet sitting. Overnight stays. Holiday cover.” That part got her sister’s attention.

“You want me to stay overnight in a stranger’s home? Forget it.”

“Obviously the stranger won’t be there. If the owner is in residence they’re not going to need pet sitting.”

“I still don’t like the sound of it.” Harriet wrinkled her nose. “I like my own home. And if I do that, how do I foster?”

“I haven’t worked that part out yet.” And she knew better than to suggest her sister reduce her fostering commitment. There was no way Harriet would ever turn her back on an animal in trouble.

And she didn’t want her sister unhappy.

She’d grown up protecting Harriet. First from her father, and then from anyone and everything that threatened her twin.

It was protecting Harriet that had given her the idea of starting the business in the first place, and if she was going to expand then she needed to introduce the idea gradually.

She checked her phone for new bookings. “All I’m saying is that I’d like to look at the business more broadly. You don’t need to worry.”

“I’m not worried, exactly. But I don’t understand where this is coming from. Have we had a complaint about one of our dog walkers or something?”

“No. Our dog walkers are the best on the planet. Mostly because you have an uncanny instinct for sensing when someone doesn’t really like animals. Our screening process is excellent, and our attrition rate is close to zero.”

“So why the sudden change?”

“It’s not sudden. When you’re running your own business it’s important to evolve. There’s a lot of competition out there.” She’d seen just how much competition, but she didn’t share that with Harriet. No sense in worrying her.

“But you’ve said yourself that plenty of people who set up as dog walkers are unreliable. People are not going to trust their beloved pets with an unreliable walker. We’ve never lost a client. Never. Clients trust us.”

“And they will trust us in their homes, too, which is why I think we should extend the service we’re offering. I’m considering running obedience classes, too. I can think of a few dogs who might benefit.”

Harriet grinned. “Who was it this time? Dog or owner?”

“Dog. Name of Angel.”

“The poodle? Belongs to that magazine editor?”

“That’s the one.” The thought of it had Fliss rolling her eyes. She didn’t share Harriet’s tolerance when it came to misbehaving dogs. “If ever a dog was misnamed, it’s that one. He may be an angel on the outside, but on the inside he’s all devil.”

“I agree, but I don’t see why one badly behaved canine would make you question our entire business. Our business is fine, Fliss. You’ve done well.”

“We’ve done well.” Fliss emphasized the we and saw Harriet flush.

“Mostly you.”

“That’s rubbish. Do you really think I would have come this far without you?”

“You bring in all the business. You handle the finances and all the difficult phone calls.”

“And you make the animals so happy, and their owners so happy, that our word-of-mouth recommendations are through the roof. It’s our business, Harry. We’re a team. We’ve done well, but now I intend to do better.”

Harriet sighed. “Why? What are you trying to prove?”

“I’m not trying to prove anything. Is it wrong to want to grow the business?”

“No, if that’s what you really want, but I’d like taking the time to enjoy my job. I don’t always want to be rushing to the next thing. And if we expand, we’d have to find premises.”

“Way ahead of you. I thought we could look for something that also has space for an office. Then our apartment might not be flooded with paperwork and I might actually be able to find my bed. And the coffee machine.” She glanced from her phone to the stack of papers on the countertop. It seemed to grow every day. “There used to be a coffee machine hidden somewhere here. With luck I might find it before I die of caffeine withdrawal.”

“I moved it. I had to put it out of Sunny’s reach. He’s chewing everything he can find.” With the puppy still tucked under one arm, Harriet stood up. She pushed Fliss’s shoes to the side of the room and then walked to the kitchen and scooped up the papers. “There’s a message on the machine. I didn’t get to it in time. New business call.”

“I’ll call them back. I know you hate talking to strangers on the phone.” Fliss grabbed an energy bar from the cupboard and saw her twin frown. “Don’t look at me like that. At least I’m eating.”

“You could eat something wholesome.”

“This is wholesome.” She flicked the button on the coffee machine. “So going back to my plan—”

“I don’t want to spend the night in someone else’s apartment. I like my own bed. We’d have to recruit, and that would be expensive. Could we even afford it?”

“If you’d been paying attention at our last company meeting, you wouldn’t be asking me that question.”

“Was that the ‘meeting’ where we had take-out pizza and I had to bottle-feed those kittens?”

“Same one.”

“Then I don’t think I gave you my full attention. Just give me the top line.”

“It’s the bottom line that should interest you, and the bottom line is looking good.” Fliss poured coffee into two mugs, her head buzzing. With each new success, the buzz seemed to grow. “Better than our wildest dreams.” She eyed her sister. “Not that you’re the wild-dream type.”

“Hey, I have wild dreams!”

“Are you naked in them and writhing on silk sheets with a hot, naked guy?”

Harriet turned pink. “No.”

“Then trust me, your dreams aren’t wild.” Fliss took a mouthful of coffee and felt the caffeine bounce through her system.

“My dreams are no less valid than yours just because the content is different.” Harriet settled the puppy in his basket. “Dreams are to do with wanting and needing.”

“As I said—naked, silk sheets, hot guy.”

“There are other types of wanting and needing. I’m not interested in a single night of sex.”

“Hey, if he was hot enough I’d be willing to stretch it out a few days, at least until we’re both dying of thirst or starvation.”

“How are you ever my twin?”

“I ask myself the same question frequently.” About as frequently as she counted her blessings. How did people survive without a twin? If her childhood had felt like being trapped in a windowless room, Harriet had been the oxygen. Together they’d discovered a problem really did seem smaller if it was shared, as if they could carry half each and make it weigh less. And if Fliss knew, deep down, that her sister shared more than she did, she comforted herself with the knowledge that she was protecting Harriet. It was something she’d done all her life. “It’s because I’m your twin that I know your dreams as well as I do my own. Yours would be a white clapboard beach house, picket fence, a sexy doctor who adores you and a menagerie of animals. Forget it. If you want that kind of relationship, you’re going to need to read about it in a book. And now back to business. I think the Bark Rangers could legitimately offer pet sitting and even possibly dog grooming and obedience training. Think of it as an extension of what we do. We can offer packages where we—”

“Wait a minute.” Harriet frowned. “Are you saying you think romance only exists in books?”

“The type of romance you want only exists in books.”

“You only have to look at our brother to know that isn’t true.”

“Daniel fell in love with Molly. There’s only one Molly. And they’re basically together because their dogs are best friends.” She caught her twin’s eye and shrugged. “All right, they seem happy, but they’re the exception, and it’s probably because Molly is a relationship expert. That gives her an unfair advantage over the rest of us.”

“Maybe instead of expanding the business, you could take more time for yourself. You’ve been working at top speed since we started this business. It’s been five years, and you’ve hardly paused to breathe.”

“Six years.” Fliss grabbed a yogurt out of the fridge. “And why would I want time to myself? I love being busy. Busy is my drug of choice. And I love our business. We have freedom. Choices.” She nudged the door shut with her bare foot and saw Harriet wince.

“I love our business, too, but I also like the parts of my life that have nothing to do with the business. You’ve made a huge success of it, Fliss.” She hesitated. “You don’t have anything to prove.”

“I’m not proving anything.” The lie slid off her tongue while the voice inside her head shouted more loudly than usual. Useless, worthless, never make anything of yourself…

“Don’t you ever want more out of life?”

“More?” Fliss thrust a spoon into the yogurt, deciding it was time she shifted the conversation. This was starting to feel uncomfortable. “I’m young, free, single and living in New York City. What more is there? I have the world at my feet. Life is perfect. I mean, seriously, could life be any more perfect?”

Harriet looked at her steadily. “You didn’t do it, did you?”

Fliss’s heart started to pound. Her appetite vanished.

This, she thought, was one of the disadvantages of having a twin. She could hide the way she was feeling from everyone else in the world, but not from her sister.

She put her yogurt down and decided she needed to work harder at it. She didn’t want Harriet to know that she was terrified. It would make her anxious. “I was going to, I really was. I had the building in sight and I’d memorized what I was going to say—”

“But?”

“My feet wouldn’t go that way. They were glued to the spot. Then they turned around and walked in the opposite direction. I tried arguing with them. I said, ‘Feet, what do you think you’re doing?’ But did they listen? No.” And since when had she been so pathetic? She gave what she hoped passed for a careless shrug. “Please don’t say what I know you’re about to say.”

“What was I about to say?”

“You were going to gently point out that it’s been three weeks since Daniel bumped into him—”

“Seth,” Harriet said. “At least say his name. That would be a start.”

The start of what? She didn’t want to start something she’d worked hard to put behind her.

And she couldn’t blame her sister for pushing because she hadn’t been honest, had she? She hadn’t told Harriet how she felt.

“Seth—” His name stuck in her throat. “It’s been three weeks since Daniel bumped into him—Seth—at the vet practice. The plan was that I’d take control of the situation and go and see him in order to avoid an awkward encounter in the street.”

“You’ve changed the plan?”

“Not officially. It’s more that the plan isn’t working out. It’s awkward.” It was okay to admit that much, wasn’t it? Finding something awkward wasn’t as bad as finding it terrifying. “And I don’t think an encounter in the street could be any more uncomfortable than a face-to-face in the clinic.”

“I can imagine it feels a little awkward, but—”

“A little awkward? That’s like calling a hurricane a light breeze. This isn’t a little awkward, it’s mega awkward, it’s—” She floundered for a description and gave up. “Forget it. No word has been invented that correctly reflects this situation.” And even if it had, she wouldn’t be using it. She didn’t want Harriet to know how bad she felt.

“‘This situation’ being bumping into your ex.”

“You manage to make a highly complex and delicate situation sound simple.”

“That’s probably the best way to look at it. Don’t overthink it.” Harriet lowered the puppy to the floor and stood up. “It’s been ten years, Fliss. I know it was a traumatic time.”

“No need to dramatize it.” Why was her mouth so dry? She took a glass from the cabinet and poured herself some water. “It was fine.”

“It wasn’t fine. But everything that happened is all in the past. You have a whole new life, and so does he.”

“I never think about it.” The lie came easily even though a day rarely passed when she didn’t think about it. She also thought about what Seth’s life might have looked like if he hadn’t met her and occasionally, when she was indulging herself, what her life with Seth Carlyle could have looked like if the circumstances had been different.

Harriet studied her with a mixture of concern and exasperation. “Are you sure? Because it was a big deal.”

“As you say, it’s been ten years.”

“And you haven’t been seriously involved with a man since.”

“Haven’t met anyone who interested me.” Anyone who measured up. Anyone who made her feel the way Seth had made her feel. There were days when she wondered if what she’d felt had been real, or if her teenage brain had augmented those feelings.

“It upsets me when you don’t share your feelings with me. I can understand why you hid everything from Dad, and even from Daniel, but this is me.”

“I’m not hiding anything.”

“Fliss—”

“All right, maybe I hide some things, but there’s nothing I can do about that. It’s the way I am.”

“No. It’s the way you learned to be. And we both know why.” Weary, Harriet stooped to remove Fliss’s shoe from the puppy’s mouth.

Fliss stared at her sister, the urge to confide momentarily eclipsing her quest for privacy. “I—I think about it sometimes. About him.” Why had she said that? If she opened the door a crack, her emotions were likely to come pouring out and drown everyone around her.

Harriet straightened slowly. “Which part do you think about most?”

That fateful birthday. The kiss on the beach. His mouth and hands. The laughter, the sunshine, the smell of the ocean. Passion and promise.

She could still remember it vividly. Almost as vividly as she remembered everything that had followed.

“Forget it. I don’t really think about it.”

“Fliss!”

“All right! I think about it. All of it. But I was dealing with it pretty well, until Daniel told me he’d seen Seth here in New York.” You were supposed to be able to leave your past behind. What were you supposed to do when it followed you? “Do you think he knew I was living here?”

New York was a city of eight million people. Eight million busy people, all running around doing their thing. It was a city of possibilities, but one of those possibilities was to live here anonymously, blending in. It had been perfect, until the day Seth Carlyle had taken a job in the vet practice they used regularly.

“In New York? I don’t know. I doubt he knew he’d be this close to you. It’s not as if you’ve been in touch.”

“No. Never been in touch.” It was the only way she’d been able to cope. Put it behind her. Move on. Don’t look back.

He hadn’t been in touch with her either, so presumably he’d been taking the same approach.

Harriet lifted the puppy back into his basket. “I know it feels difficult, but you’ve built a whole new life, and he has, too.”

“I know, but I wish he hadn’t chosen to move his life onto my patch. I should be able to walk the few blocks around our apartment without having to peer around street corners like a fugitive.”

“You’re doing that?” The shock in her twin’s eyes made her wish she’d kept that information to herself.

“I was talking hypothetically.”

“If you’d done what you planned to do and just walked in there and said, ‘Hi, good to see you again,’ you would have cleared the air and you wouldn’t be glancing over your shoulder. Things will feel easier when you’ve actually seen him.”

“I have seen him,” Fliss muttered. “He was standing in Reception when I made my first attempt to approach the building last week.” It was his hair that had caught her eye first, and then the way he’d angled his head to listen to something the receptionist was saying to him. He’d always been a good listener. It had been ten years since she’d touched him or stood close to him, but everything about him was achingly familiar.

Harriet was gaping at her. “You saw him? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Nothing to tell. And don’t worry, he didn’t see me.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I dropped to the ground like a navy SEAL on a secret mission. I didn’t move until I was sure he’d gone. I had to stop a passerby calling 911, which was both annoying and reassuring because usually New Yorkers are too busy doing their own thing to pay much attention to a body on the ground. Why are you gaping at me?”

“You dropped to the ground. And you’re trying to pretend you’re fine with this?”

“No pretense necessary.” She ground her teeth. Didn’t her sister have a dog to walk or something? “You’re right. I have to do this. I have to meet him and get it over with.” The thought of it made her heart and pulse thunder a protest. It was a fight-or-flight response, and her body seemed to be choosing flight.

“Do you want me to come with you?”

“What I really want is for you to pretend to be me so that I don’t have to do it at all.” She saw Harriet’s eyes cloud with worry and cursed herself for saying too much. “I was joking!”

“Were you?”

“Of course. If I let you do that I’d lose the last shred of my self-respect. I have to do this by myself.”

“Remember what Molly said. You should control the meeting. Make an appointment for one of the animals. That way you have a reason to be there and something else to talk about. If it’s awkward you can keep it professional.”

“If?”

“Memorize one line. ‘Hi, Seth, good to see you. How are you doing?’ I can’t believe I’m saying this to you. You’re the one who is great with people. I’m the one who is tongue-tied and awkward.”

“You’re right. It should be easy. So why isn’t it?”

“Probably because you left so much unresolved.”

“We’re divorced. How much more resolved than that can you get?”

“You were in love with him, Fliss.”

“What? Don’t be crazy. It was a teenage crush, that’s all. Sex on a beach that got a bit more hot and heavy than we’d planned—” Her voice tailed off as she met Harriet’s unwavering gaze.

“You’re doing it again. Hiding your feelings from me.”

“Believe me, you don’t want a dose of my feelings.” She stiffened as Harriet stepped forward and gave her a hug. “Oh. What’s that for?” She felt her sister’s arms tighten around her.

“I hate seeing you hurt.”

Which was why she never let her twin see the true extent of her hurt. “Of course you do. You’re the good twin. I’m the bad twin.”

“I hate it when you call yourself that. I would love to have your qualities.”

“You don’t have room for any more qualities. You’re already loaded with them.”

“I hate it when you call me ‘good.’ I’m not good, and one of these days I’m going to do something really bad to prove it.”

“You couldn’t be bad if you tried, although if you ever decide to give it a try I hope you’ll call me. I’d like to see it. You’re strangling me, Harry. I can’t handle affection before I’ve had at least two cups of coffee.” And because she didn’t trust herself not to say more than she wanted to say. Harriet’s affection was like a key, unlocking a part of herself she preferred to keep secured.

“You’re not bad, Fliss.”

“Try telling that to Seth and the rest of the Carlyle family.” And to her father. “He had a glowing future until I came along.” She poured herself another glass of water.

“He’s a vet. His future looks just fine from where I’m standing. And why do you take all the responsibility for what happened? He made a choice, Fliss.”

Had he? Remembering the details, Fliss felt color flood her cheeks. There were things she hadn’t even told her twin. Things she hadn’t told anyone. “Maybe. That’s enough talking for one day.” She felt unsettled, like a snow globe that had been shaken, leaving her previously settled feelings to swirl madly around inside. How could she still have so many feelings after so long? Weren’t they ever going to fade? It was annoying and unfair. “If Seth is going to be living here, maybe I should leave New York. That would be a solution.”