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“Yes, ma’am, we surely were.”
Maggie propped her chin on her hand and studied Aaron with a smile. “For some reason, I can picture you getting up to mischief, but it surprises me that your brother was part of it. He seemed so proper and conservative.”
“I guess he is. Now,” Aaron murmured, and once again Shelby would have liked to know what was going on between the twins.
“Oh, here’s Pop,” Shelby’s mom commented, glancing toward the doorway. “I don’t think you’ve met my father-in-law, Aaron.”
“No, I haven’t.” Aaron started to rise, but the older man waved him back into his seat, peering intently at Aaron’s face.
Shelby sat back to enjoy the show.
Pop scraped a chair on the floor and dropped into it, never taking his gaze off Aaron. A sun-weathered, work-hardened eighty, Carl Bell Sr. had a ring of thin gray hair around his brown-spotted scalp and silver-framed glasses through which he peered with intense gray eyes. His nose was crooked and his thin mouth firm. He had hunched a bit with age, softened around the middle, and moved a bit more slowly, but he was still in full possession of his faculties. The thing was, Pop had always been eccentric, a quirk that grew more pronounced each year.
“So you’re Aaron.” He didn’t quite make air quotes with his fingers, but the gesture seemed to be implied.
Aaron nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Humph.” Pop narrowed his eyes, while everyone else watched with poorly suppressed smiles. “I imagine a P.I. might need to use a different name when he goes on vacation. What they call incognito.”
“If he was incognito, why would he come to a place where everyone would recognize him, Pop?” Bryan asked.
Pop had never been overly concerned with logic. “Probably because he’d know he’d be among friends who wouldn’t give him away if anyone asked. You got a picture of yourself with Andrew?” he asked their guest.
Aaron seemed amused. “No, sir, not with me.”
“Humph,” Pop said again and gave the others a somewhat smug glance.
Laughing, Linda stood. “I’ve got to go take care of a customer in the store. I’ll let the rest of you try to convince Pop that identical twins do occur in nature.”
“Pop tends to let his imagination get away with him. And most of us think Shelby is just like her grandfather,” Shelby’s mom confided to Aaron with a smile that was both affectionate and wry. Maybe it even held a bit of a warning, Shelby thought with a frown.
Was her mother actually cautioning Aaron that he couldn’t take everything Shelby said seriously? Well, gee, thanks for the support, Mom, she tried to say with her expression.
If she received the subliminal message, Sarah ignored it serenely, moving to wait on an elderly couple who’d just come in for dinner. She greeted them by name. For almost as far back as Shelby could remember, the Hendersons had traveled in their motor home from Shreveport, Louisiana, at least a couple times a year for weeklong stays at the resort.
Lori drifted in through the diner doors, pausing to look with surprise at the group of relatives gathered there. “What’s everyone doing in here? Oh.” She pushed a fringe of blue-streaked black hair out of her eyes and studied the man everyone had gathered around. “You must be Andrew’s brother. Mimi told me about you.”
“Says he’s an identical twin,” Pop said with a grin and a broad wink, causing everyone to shake their heads in exasperation. “We’ve been instructed to call him Aaron.”
Lifting a thin, arched brow, Lori glanced at Shelby, who shrugged. “Lori, this really is Aaron Walker. Aaron, my sister, Lori.”
They exchanged greetings, and Shelby wondered idly what Aaron thought of Lori, who looked so different from the rest of the family—a deliberate effort on her part. Taller and thinner than Shelby, twenty-year-old Lori wore her colorful hair short and shaggy, tumbling into blue eyes lined in dark, smoky gray. She sported bloodred lipstick and black nail polish, and favored filmy, smoke-colored garments that seemed to float around her when she walked. She refused to call her style “Goth,” saying the term was outdated and inaccurate. She liked to call her taste “ethereal” instead.
However it was defined, the style somehow worked for Lori. Shelby thought her sister looked striking and interesting, especially in comparison to her own wardrobe, which consisted primarily of easy-care shorts and T-shirts chosen for ease of movement and comfort in hot Texas summers. In the winters, she swapped the shorts for jeans, wore long-sleeved tees and donned sneakers rather than flip-flops. Glancing from Lori’s ethereal chic, to Maggie’s pretty, fitted wrap top and cropped khakis, Shelby wondered if maybe she should start paying a bit more attention to her own wardrobe.
Aaron pushed his chair back from the table. “It’s been great meeting everyone, but I should probably unpack and make a few phone calls.”
“Did you walk over?” Shelby asked.
When he nodded she stood. “I left my car here earlier. I can drop you off at your cabin on my way to my place.”
She was aware that everyone watched them as they walked out. Did they think she was chasing after Aaron? She frowned, her ego piqued at the thought. She was going to have to think of a plan that would let her collaborate with Aaron while still preserving her feminine pride.
“So I’ve met everyone in the family except your father and brother now?” Aaron asked when they were in her car.
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