Twins For My Bestie’s Brother (Billionaire Daddies)

1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Lily

T he store is quiet. My father is shuffling around in the back, filling prescriptions, pills softly scraping into bottles. And I’m running the register, just as I did when I was a teenager.

I didn’t expect to be back here behind the register ten years later, but life doesn’t ever go to plan, does it? I know mine hasn’t.

I don’t mind the quiet at all though. This is funny considering I left Cider Bay when I was eighteen because it was too quiet. Now I thank my lucky stars every day I’ve left misty, fishy Seattle behind.

Of course, there’s a price for familiarity. Back in Seattle, I had a regular spot at Glow Tattoo Studios and a significant client base. Here, I’m working at Bolton’s, my family’s nearly century-old drugstore. It’s a trade-off. But one I’m okay with. For now.

While I might not be tattooing anymore, the store is slow enough that I have time to draw, oftentimes uninterrupted, which is great because there are few things I like less than a break in my flow.

I’m close to finishing a nontraditional design of an apple blossom, the Michigan state flower. I’m shading a couple of bright pink buds framing the central flower. A design someone could walk into my shop and ask for right off the wall. If I had a shop.

Maybe someday.

I lean closer to the paper, and work on deepening the pink away from the light source, tucking my tongue into the corner of my mouth.

That’s, of course, when the door chimes open.

I drop my pencil in frustration, knowing who it is before I even look up. “Dammit, Kayla.”

“Sorry, did I interrupt your drawing?”

I look at my best friend. Her expression is so innocent I know I can’t be mad for too long. “What does it look like?”

Her lips purse and then tip up into a conciliatory smile. “I brought lunch,” she says, holding up a white paper bag.

I can smell the grease and salt. I’m salivating. “From Babe’s?”

Kayla flushes. “I’ve been trying to cut back on the fast food, but—”

“Babe’s isn’t fast food; it’s local cuisine,” I correct with a finger in the air.

She drops the bag on the counter. It lands with a thud. “Precisely. Plus, it’s hump day. We all deserve a treat on hump day.”

Kayla comes over every day at lunchtime so we can eat and gossip. If there’s anything in our sleepy town to gossip about, that is.

I open the bag and pull out a foil-wrapped burger that weighs as much as a puppy. “Yes. I needed this.”

Kayla pulls my sketchbook across the counter toward her and glances down at it through her wireframed glasses. “Ooo . . . I like this one!”

“I can tattoo it on you if you want,” I say, peeling the wrapper off my burger.

Her eyebrows jump. “You know I’m afraid of needles.”

I snicker. “I’m just teasing you, Kay.”

“I don’t know how you have so many,” she says, retrieving her own burger from the bag.

I glance down at the bare space on my right arm at my incomplete sleeve of tattoos. I’ve managed to take a bunch of designs from tattooists I’ve worked with that somehow looks cohesive while drawing from all different styles of tattooing. An American traditional pinup, a Japanese koi fish, a crown of New School sunflowers, etcetera. There are some gaps for other images. I don’t know when those will get filled. To get to the nearest tattoo shop that isn’t the old musty place off the highway takes about an hour, and even then, I’m not thrilled with their designs. Plus, the whole point is that each of these tattoos holds a memory of a person. Not just a tattoo for a tattoo’s sake. “Don’t feel it anymore,” I say, then take a big bite out of my burger.

Kayla shakes her head in disbelief. “How are we friends again?”

I chuckle. It’s a good question. Kayla runs the bookstore here in Cider Bay. She’s polite and serious, blonde and blue-eyed. Meanwhile, here I am, brash and bawdy, with a head of curly dark hair and a pierced nose.

Something to say for opposites attracting, I suppose. But there’s also something to be said for time and history. We’ve known each other since we were babies. Sometimes that’s all the closeness you need.

“Besides, my grandfather would kill me,” Kayla adds, regarding the tattoos on my knuckles.

Our eyes meet, and we both laugh. It’s a macabre sort of laugh, but you have to laugh to keep from crying. Kayla’s grandfather died years ago. He was a religious and rigid type, probably contributing to how she turned out her way, and I turned out mine.

“I’ll get you in my chair one day,” I say, then lick some salt off my thumb.

“That sounds like a threat,” Kayla says, looking over her glasses at me.

“It is.”

The door chimes open again. I’m prepared to smile and greet the customer with all the cheeriness I can muster until I see who it is. “Tia,” I say without inflection.

Enter Tia Worthing, mean girl extraordinaire. Sure, it’s been ten years since high school, but I know how to hold a grudge. “Lily,” she says, pasting on an overly bright white smile. Then, she looks at Kayla and her smile falls. “Kayla.”

“Hi, Tia,” Kayla says, her voice fraying nervously.

Everything about Tia is over the top from the auburn-dyed hair to the long painted fingernails. Always has been. She was the most popular girl in school because of her daddy’s bank account. She could afford friends. That also meant that she made a pastime of trampling the rest of us with her snide comments about our clothes and hair, the snickers she shared with her friends, and rumors spread through the school that were near-to-impossible to squelch.

She’s a great reminder of why I left this town.

Tia strides over to the counter. Her beady eyes roll toward the burgers and fries. Obvious disgust twists her lips.

“How is your brother?” she asks Kayla.

“Still hung up on him, Tee?” I ask before taking a huge bite of my burger just to get on her nerves. Tia and Kayla’s older brother, Jackson, dated for a split-second back in high school. Made sense. Track star and popular girl. Of course, when the track star went to college, he didn’t want to be tied down by the queen bee of a small hive. Tia’s never let Kayla live that one down.

Tia’s cheeks turn as red as her hair. “I’m making pleasant conversation, Lily. You should try it sometime.”

I ignore her. “What can I help you with today? I know my dad doesn’t fill your scripts.”

Tia doesn’t take the bait. She smiles. “As I’m sure you know, the reunion is this weekend.”

I shove some fries in my mouth to keep from groaning.

“And since I’m head of the reunion committee, it’s my job to make sure the guest list is all up to date. And I’m afraid your RSVP was lost in the mail,” Tia says. “I got Kayla’s, but not yours.”

“Oh, sorry, I thought no RSVP was kind of an RSVP,” I reply and fish a can of Diet Coke out of the bag, cracking it open with my thumb and sucking it down.

I can tell my crassness is pissing Tia off, which is the point, of course. It doesn’t matter how ‘good’ you act around her, she’s going to be talking shit about you anyway. So, I’ve always acted as I please around her. At least let the rumors be true that Lily Bolton is a Neanderthal.

“In most cases, yes,” Tia says. Then, she flutters her lashes and pastes on the fakest sympathetic expression I’ve ever seen. “But I thought given the circumstances of your return to Cider Bay, I should give you a personal visit to see if maybe you’d reconsidered.”

I stare at Tia. She stares back. Dammit, she wins this time. I sip my Diet Coke and enjoy the burning sensation down my throat. That’s a welcomed pain compared to the psychic damage Tia’s trying to impress upon me. Lucky for her, I’m weaker than usual.

“I don’t want you to feel . . . embarrassed that you’d be coming alone,” Tia goes on, pasting a hand to her chest.

I tap my fingernail against the top of the can.

“Lily isn’t embarrassed about that,” Kayla speaks up on my behalf, which I know she thinks is helpful but isn’t.

“Of course, she isn’t,” Tia says, so insincerely. “Just . . . no one was more surprised than me when I heard you and Will broke up.”

Hearing his name sends a chill down my spine. Will and I left town together ten years ago. And then I left him in Seattle six months ago. Everyone assumes since I’m the one who returned, I’m the one who got my heart broken.

No, he did a fine job of breaking my heart the whole time we were together. I’m finally out of that relationship, and I’m still being haunted by it.

“I mean you were Will and Lil! That’s like a meant-to-be couple name,” Tia giggles.

“Kayla’s right. I’m not embarrassed,” I say, lifting my chin.

“So, I can put you down for a ticket?” Tia asks.

Did she really come in here just to taunt me? “I didn’t say that.”

“Don’t you think it would be a stronger message to send to everyone? That you’re so hunky-dory you can attend the ten-year reunion flying solo when so many of us are coupled up?” Tia says with a sly grin, not so subtly showing off the rock on her left-hand ring finger.

My eyes flick to Kayla’s. She purses her lips, sending me an apology telepathically. I would go if Kayla was going. She even asked me if I wanted to go months ago, and when I told her no, she decided to go to an independent booksellers conference this weekend instead. “I really don’t have anyone I need to see, Tia,” I answer. “Especially when you all stop by the drugstore so often.”

Tia scrunches her nose and laughs. “Okay, well, I’ll tell the committee that you won’t be attending.” She reaches across the counter and touches my bare shoulder, splaying a hand over the face of the pinup sailor girl on my bicep. “Just know, I’ve always thought you could do better than Will. And you shouldn’t feel embarrassed for trying your best.”

I bite down on my lower lip to keep from spewing profanities at her. She doesn’t know the tiniest fraction about my relationship with Will. She doesn’t know what I’ve been through. And for her to suggest that I should be embarrassed after everything he did—

“Lily has done better.”

My eyes widen. So do Tia’s. We both look to Kayla for an explanation.

Tia smiles politely. “Sorry?”

Kayla’s eyes jump between me and Tia. Then, she crosses her arms over her chest. “She’s done better already.”

I want to ask what the fuck she’s talking about, but I’m not going to rat out my best friend for a cryptic lie. Still, though, I raise my eyebrows and flare my nostrils, giving her an ‘Are you crazy?’ look.

“You’ve moved on, Lily?” Tia asks. “Good for you.”

“Yes, and she’ll bring him to the reunion. They’ll be there,” Kayla says.

I force a smile at her. “I will?”

Kayla nods. Her eyes are avoiding mine, lingering on the front windows of the store. “You will.”

“Oh, yes, Lily, you have to,” Tia says. “I’d love to meet him.”

I don’t take my eyes off Kayla. “Yeah, me too.”

“You already know him, Tia,” Kayla says.

“He’s local?”

My blood is boiling. Kayla has a lot of explaining to do once Tia’s gone.

Kayla nods, her sweet smile not faltering for a moment. She gestures toward the door of the shop. “Yep. In fact, you don’t even have to wait; he’s here now.”

Dear God, what has Kayla gotten me into?

Tia turns a split second before I do, a second long enough for me to see the blood leave her cheeks.