Marry Me for Real, Cowboy - Valerie Comer Page 0,36
hand found her knee under the table, and Riley dared to breathe. “After the Chantelle disaster, I wanted to be really sure before I went public with Riley.”
“Makes sense. Chantelle was a fiasco for sure.”
Riley really needed to dig into his relationship with the famous singer. Would he tell her if she asked? Did she actually want to know? Probably it didn’t matter, anyway. This was all temporary.
“Uno.” Nathaniel slapped a card on the table and raised his eyebrows at Riley. “And Draw Four.”
“Hey, no fair!”
Adam busted a laugh and reached across the table to knock fists with his brother. “Good job. Way to get her.”
“You’re supposed to be on my side, not consorting with the enemy!”
He shook his head. “Says the girl who’s given me every nasty card she could find. And don’t pretend otherwise when you reversed play my direction and then doled out the Draw Fours.”
She turned to Nathaniel. “Which is kind of true, so why are you picking on me?”
“We brothers stick together.” Nathaniel’s gaze was sharp, no teasing evident.
Riley suppressed a shiver. She would definitely not still be Nathaniel’s friend when this was all over. Good to know.
Noah gathered the cards at the end of the round and shuffled them. He glanced at his twin. “Thought I saw Ainsley in Saddle Springs last week.”
Nathaniel’s head swung to face his brother, and his eyes narrowed. “And...?”
“Sure looked like her. I called her name, but she didn’t turn around, so I crossed the street to catch her.”
Riley noticed Adam was just as riveted as Nathaniel. So was she.
Noah dealt piles of seven cards. “Is she a twin? Because there’s no way Ainsley could have faked not recognizing me. No spark, no nothing.”
“She’s not a twin.” Nathaniel bit the words off.
“Then she’s got a doppelgänger. Well, with shorter hair. And, um, pregnant.”
Nathaniel choked, his eyes wide. “Pregnant?”
“Not Ainsley, dude. This girl who kind of looked like her. I’m sure you wouldn’t have given her a second look, or at least not a third one. You’d have known right away it wasn’t her. I didn’t know her nearly as well.”
“She ghosted me because she’s pregnant?”
Noah laid his hands flat on the table and gave Nathaniel his full attention. “Didn’t you hear a word I said? It wasn’t your ex. I said, ‘Hi, Ainsley,’ and she looked at me oddly and said, ‘You must have me mixed up with someone else.’ And I realized she was right. Uncanny likeness, though.”
Nathaniel jammed his hands through his hair, and his cowboy hat tumbled to the floor behind him. “She’s pregnant?”
Adam exchanged a worried look with Noah. “Bro, listen to the whole story.”
“You don’t understand. She doesn’t have a look-alike.”
“My sister and I share a strong resemblance,” Riley offered.
Nathaniel zeroed in on her. “Enough someone would think she was you?”
“For a few seconds, maybe.” Not likely, though.
“Yeah, and I only talked to this girl for like a minute,” said Noah. “I shouldn’t have said anything about it to you.”
Nathaniel pushed back his chair and towered over them, fists on his hips. “What’s she doing in Saddle Springs?”
Wow, he was fixated. He’d totally missed the point of Noah’s story.
“How far along?”
Noah held up both hands. “How would I know? Not huge, huge, but big enough I’m pretty sure she wasn’t just overweight. But listen to me, Nathaniel. It doesn’t matter, because it wasn’t Ainsley.”
“Is it my baby? Or did she run away because she’d been two-timing me?”
Noah smacked the table and shook his head. “I give up.”
“Nobody’s that good an actor,” said Adam. “There’s always a tell if someone is lying.”
“Yeah, that’s why I wasn’t sure about you and Riley. It seemed fake at first.” Noah surged to his feet, frustration lining his face. “Look, all I’m doing tonight is putting my foot in it. I’m out of here. Good game, guys, Riley.” He tipped his hat to her as he turned to the door.
“I’m going, too.” Nathaniel grabbed his hat off the floor and followed his twin out the door.
Riley let out her breath in the sudden silence. “Well. That was interesting.”
“Yeah. I wonder if it was true?”
“What do you mean? You think Noah made the story up?”
Adam shook his head. “No. I’m wondering if she was really Nathaniel’s ex or not. He seems so sure.”
“He wasn’t there,” Riley pointed out.
“True. Still mighty strange.”
Riley gathered the cards into a pile and slotted them back into their box. “What was all that about being able to tell if someone’s faking it? It was like