Waking Up to You Overexposed - By Leslie Kelly Page 0,53
Finally, knowing Oliver had to be standing there, gaping, wondering when somebody was going to explain, she let Mad go and took a step back. They both wiped their eyes, probably looking like a pair of saps.
“Uh...does somebody want to tell me what’s going on?” Oliver still looked a little stunned.
Candace walked over and took his arm. “Didn’t I ever tell you that Madison and I are identical twins?”
“I think I would have remembered.” He didn’t sound happy. “How do you not mention something like that? And I can’t believe Buddy didn’t.”
She shrugged, a little sheepish. “I guess it never occurred to him. When we were younger, we were both pretty adamant about not being thought of as just the Reid twins. We wanted to always be known as individuals.”
“Right,” Madison interjected. “Individuals who had each other’s back no matter what, switched places all the time and sat in on each other’s classes for the subjects one or the other of us didn’t like. But everybody had to call us by our given names, not, ‘the twins.’”
Candace exchanged a smile with her sister, both of them obviously remembering their stubborn insistence during childhood on being unique people, not part of a duo. Of course, they’d been inseparable anyway. Oh, how she’d missed her.
“I really wish I’d known,” Oliver said. When he rubbed his hands over his eyes and shook his head, she realized he was more embarrassed than anything else. He confirmed it. “I was an ass. I’m sorry, Madison, I truly thought you were Candace.”
Her sister, who prided herself on chewing men up and spitting them out, both romantically and in the cutthroat world of journalism in which she’d immersed herself, offered him a wide smile. “Are you kidding? I loved every second of it.”
Wondering just how much she’d missed, Candace shot a pointed stare at her sister that silently said, Back off. He’s mine.
Madison put her hands up, palms out in a conciliatory gesture, but ruined it when she wagged her eyebrows up and down. “Candace wasn’t quite as descriptive about you as she might have been.”
Wishing her twin hadn’t mentioned the fact that she’d been talking about him, she changed the subject. “Come on in, sit down, relax. Do you want something—coffee? A glass of wine?”
“Is it from a fifty-thousand-dollar bottle?”
Candace grinned. She’d filled her sister in on the treasure in the basement. “Sorry, no. We figured we’d better leave everything else that’s down there for the appraiser. I have horrible visions of accidentally misreading something and breaking open a bottle that would pay off the mortgage on this place.”
“Ah well,” Mad said, waving a hand. “I guess I’ll make do with cheap swill for tonight.”
“I’ll see if I can find something up to your New York City tastes,” she replied with a chuckle.
Mad followed them into the living room and plopped down on a recliner, flipping the handle to lift the footrest. She kicked off her comfortable shoes and flexed her feet, making herself at home.
Candace went to the bar, grabbed a bottle she’d picked up at a nearby store and popped it open. Oliver, meanwhile, sat on the couch, trying unsuccessfully to hide the fact that he was looking back and forth between them, trying to find differences that were hard even for family members to spot. Candace’s second piercing in one ear, a freckle on her left hand, the tiny scar on Madison’s chin, which she’d split open in nursery school—those, and their vastly different wardrobes, were all that really told them apart now that Mad had given up her redhead experiment and gone back to her natural color.
“You doing okay?” she asked Oliver after she’d given Madison her wine. She touched his shoulder lightly. “I’m really sorry I didn’t say anything. I meant to.”
“It’s all right,” he said. “As long as I’m not going to get charged with groping a stranger.”
Her brow went up. “Groping?” She cast an arch look at her sister. “Just how long did you let him think you were me?”
Mad smiled sweetly. “Long enough to be impressed, little sister.”
Little by virtue of being born twenty-seven minutes after her twin.
Candace sat down and dropped a possessive hand on Oliver’s leg. He covered it with his own, squeezing her fingers, and she knew his embarrassment was fading.
As she sipped her wine, Madison asked a million questions, mostly about Buddy. She was just as fond of their grandfather as Candace and was looking forward to seeing him tomorrow. Deciding his heart probably